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Title: Aspects of Anarchism Author: Anarchist Federation Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: anarcho-communism, Organise!, introductory Source: Retrieved on March 21, 2015 from https://web.archive.org/web/20150321230753/http://www.afed.org.uk/ace/aspects.html Notes: Anarchist Communist Editions (ACE) #14. Collected articles from Organise! magazine on the fundamentals of anarchist communism.
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM is a distinct body of revolutionary social and
political ideas. It offers a radical alternative to the statist belief
systems which have proved their bankruptcy in the twentieth century.
Marxism, in both its Bolshevik and social democratic varieties, has
proved a disastrous failure. Socialism, and the other ideologies based
upon capitalism such as fascism and liberal democracy have proved
overtly murderous or hypocritically so. Only anarchist communism remains
to be tested as a fully coherent approach to organising the world. As
the second millennium passed, its last century saw the almost
unrestrained rise of the State and with it virtually continuous warfare
â plunder dressed up as the âglobal economyâ and ecological devastation.
The people of the world today deserve much more than has been available
to the great majority so far.
The rise of capitalism, the technological state and imperialism are
eliminating the human factor from social life. The individual in the
advanced industrialised state is removed from the community and isolated
in concrete boxes, with television as the main link to the world
outside. The poor majority in Africa, Latin America and Asia struggle to
survive as their way of life is increasingly dictated by the needs of an
insatiable global economy, with their own elites encouraging and
benefiting from this exploitation. Racism and nationalism are if
anything stronger, stirred up by various elements in the ruling class
and taken up by many people in the working class as they see can see no
other answer to their problems. Women are under attack worldâwide with
the rise of religious fundamentalism and the generalised obsession with
the âdecline of the familyâ and âmoral valuesâ.
Anarchist communism is the alternative. It places the individual at the
centre of its approach, for only active, thinking persons can ever be
free. However, the individual does not exist apart from the rest of
humanity. Capitalist exploitation whilst destroying ânaturalâ
communities has created and is creating social solidarity on the basis
of class identity and reality, where people choose to identify with each
other rather than being forced into a community because of tradition.
The ruling classes of the world are waging a desperate class war against
numericallyâvast populations of workers and peasants. In the search for
profits the producing classes are subject to everâmore savage assaults.
But it is out of this struggle between exploiter and exploited, between
the oppressors and the oppressed, that the mass of the population will
achieve human freedom. Social revolution is the only way of achieving
this liberation.
Anarchist communism is often attacked as being a utopian dream since it
is both antiâcapitalist and antiâstate. The argument goes that both of
these are necessary because of âhuman natureâ. Wonât new forms of
exploitation and new classes arise? Isnât it inevitable that some people
have more power than others? Isnât the state necessary to keep order? We
say a loud âno!â to these arguments. Within the general context of a
stateless and moneyless society, the new society will create communities
and other social relations which will be expressions of individual and
social desires. There is no antagonism here between the individual and
the collective for two reasons. Firstly, the individual belongs to and
survives within the context of the collective, so the affinity groups,
co-operatives, industrial and neighbourhood councils which will act as
the social means of organising and acting in society will simply be
extensions of the individual within society. Secondly, all systems and
groups established to get things done will have built into them a number
of devices preventing the abuse of power. They will be assemblies of
those people directly involved, affected by or with an interest in
whatever is being done or proposed and should any form of delegation be
necessary then the delegates will be directly elected, easilyâremovable
and temporary.
Also, given the development of communications technology, mass
participation, either within a popular assembly or via linkups of local
groups and individuals, will be possible. Society will depend of full
access to and communication of information. The assemblies at the local,
district or regional levels will be able to plan for the future on the
basis of input from participation at various stages of the peoplesâ
assemblies. Weâve used a territorial example here but the principle
could apply to all forms of co-operation and work-in-solidarity, no
matter where it happens. Given that there will be no coercive state
apparatus to enforce decisions made within the various popular
organisations, there will be no physical imposing of undesirable
options. The aim throughout will be to achieve results on the basis of
consensus and compromise.
Anarchist communist society will be a moneyless society. Goods and
services will be made available on the basis of need with society as a
whole determining priorities for production and levels of consumption.
People will need to think about and plan this but the horror stories of
âfeeding frenziesâ or people stockpiling goods are sheer fantasies.
There is a limit to the number of things that people can consume,
possessiveness will become an aberration not the norm, there will be no
âwealthâ to accumulate, no advertising to over-stimulate demand and
education about the benefits of sharing, solidarity and co-operation;
all will naturally limit demand and allow production and consumption to
be balanced. One of the functions of money is to act as a âstore of
valueâ. This allows individuals in capitalist societies to accumulate
enormous sums well in excess of what they can ever spend. In a moneyless
society there is no mean accumulating wealth, thus creating another
obstacle to the re-emergence of a ruling class.
It may be objected that this basis of social organisation is fine for
local villageâsized populations but is unworkable on a large scale.
However, there is no reason why it could not operate on a larger scale
if it is based on the principles of voluntary co-operation and
federation, which would still allow for freedom and solidarity. Even
within capitalism huge organisations and corporations are often little
more than conglomerations of small groups organised within a given
managerial structure. Local smallâscale efforts are channeled in a
particular direction. There is no reason those efforts could not be
organised voluntarily for the common and individual good with the
initiative coming from below.
For an anarchist communist society to operate effectively, education in
the widest sense must prioritise a socialisation stressing personal
growth, a love of freedom together with a sense of responsibility, and
solidarity. Capitalist education has effectively gained an acceptance
amongst most of the population of a system that exploits them through a
subtle process of brainwashing and a distortion of the natural tendency
towards social solidarity by stressing patriotism, nationalism or
loyalty to the company. An anarchist communist approach to education
would allow the natural tendencies to develop so that individuals would
he able effectively to participate in the new society with confidence
and the mutual respect that comes from a desire to associate and
co-operate.
Most other ideologies aim to dominate and control nature and indeed the
last centuries have witnessed a total transformation of the natural
world as it has been twisted and distorted to fit the supposed needs of
human beings. Now nature is giving its reply, to such an extent that the
very existence of humanity is threatened. Anarchist communism seeks to
work in harm with natural forces, utilising appropriate levels of
technology to meet peopleâs needs. There are enough resources on the
planet to provide a living for all, without destroying the planet in the
process.
Anarchist communism is the only ideology which challenges all
exploitation and oppression, whether it be of workers by bosses, women
by men or the environment by human beings. It alone emphasises both
freedom of the individual and solidarity within the community and
struggles for a society which is free of both economic exploitation and
the oppressive state. Anarchist communism alone can point the way
forward to survival and wellâbeing.
IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM, the USA has invaded or dominated dozens of
countries and regions including Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua and El
Salvador. In the defence of freedom, Britain imposes martial law on
Northern Ireland. Freedom for Hitler meant exterminating Jews, for
Stalin it required the invasion of Eastern Europe. Everyone today seems
to want freedom. But freedom for capitalist states, corporations and
parties surely cannot be the same as freedom for antiâcapitalists. As
these examples show, there appears to be no one acceptable definition of
âfreedomâ. Has freedom any real value, except as a propaganda weapon to
justify self-interest?
Anarchists take it for granted that freedom is vital to humanity. Yet
others fear freedom, preferring security to the responsibilities that
freedom gives. Under capitalism most citizens see freedom as the ability
to consume the latest video recorder or music machine â is freedom
really about acquiring consumer goods? One of the oldest ideas about
freedom is that it means being left alone to get on with life without
interference. Now this is all very well in a general sense, no-one likes
to be constrained or hindered. But within the context of class
societies, this demand serves as camouflage to justify inequality.
Soâcalled ânegative freedomâ (the absence of constraining laws) much
loved by libertarian and capitalist parties is supposed to benefit
everyone. In practice this freedom is the freedom of the rich to plunder
the poor, of freedom for businessmen to exploit their workforce, for
advertisers to humiliate women and so on. Such freedoms to exploit and
mistreat are often protected by laws passed by the powerful to protect
their privileges. Where there are gross inequalities of power, freedom
only maintains inequality at the expense of the great mass of the
population.
Socialists, and particularly the Marxist variety, are more likely to
view freedom in class terms. Now whilst classes exist, it is clear that
freedom is a fiction. But have Marxists in power done any better than
the capitalists? Without exception they have been severely repressive.
Using the rhetoric of the âdictatorship of the proletariatâ, the party
tries to exert total control over the proletariat (the workers). Marxism
is an ideology of intellectuals with special âscientificâ insights (so
they claim). When given power such intellectuals use their insights to
decide the kinds of âfreedomâ people will enjoy. MarxistâLeninist states
are without exception class divided societies with severe codes of
labour discipline, extensive political police networks and political
repression. All MarxistâLeninist states are prison states in which
freedom only exists for the ruling class. This is not ancient history â
the heirs of these parties and governments are still around today,
seeking the chance to take power. One of the strengths of anarchist
communism is that it has not developed a sterile formula for freedom.
Freedom is seen as a rich and vital element applicable to all areas of
human activity. From an anarchist communist perspective, freedom exists
in both individual and social terms â there is an intimate
interrelationship between the two.
Anarchists argue that wherever there are coercive or bureaucratic
institutions freedom will be affected. In human relationships, the
hierarchical family is usually a patriarchal and adult-dominated
institution. So called democratic organisations that institutionalise
power and authority become oligarchic, either openly through the
degeneration of internal structures or covertly via informal
leaderships. On a grander scale, the state curtails freedom (to benefit
the ruling class) by means of the legal, bureaucratic and military
systems it maintains. In contemporary society there is a working
alliance between all types of coercive institutions to maintain order,
from the family upwards. Freedom involves the destruction of externally
imposed order (and, perhaps, internally imposed selfâdiscipline when
this denies human development). To achieve freedom, government from
without must be replaced by voluntary co-peration within society.
Anarchists envisaged a society in which individual freedom is maximised
whilst preserving the freedom of others. Anarchists argue that
individuals should act as they feel fit, so long as they do not
interfere to an intolerable degree with the freedom of others. Put
differently, freedom has limits, the limit being arrived at when others
are exploited, dominated or in some other way harmed.
Since humans are naturally social animals, for freedom to accord with
our nature, it must be in a societal context. In respect to social
freedoms anarchist communists see them as being integrated within
community. Freedom is unimaginable outside of community. In contemporary
society, community, in the sense of meaningful social solidarity, has
been largely destroyed class domination. One of the key tasks of
postâcapitalist society will be to recreate community to promote
personal and social development. There may arise, however,
contradictions between individual and societal goals which anarchist
communists argue can to a large degree he overcome through a system of
federation. Individuals, local and larger groups of people agree to act
in unison so long as it is advantageous. From the individualâs point of
view, the advantages of voluntarily joining with others are those of
communal living e.g. friendships sexual relationships, support,
availability of goods and services. So long as the individual gains more
from participating in society it will be advantageous. When the
disadvantages become in tolerable, the individual has the option of
âdropping outâ. From the communityâs point of view, it has the ârightâ
to defend its collective freedom from individual saboteurs and can seek
recourse in expulsion of the antiâsocial individual. Given that the vast
majority of us will want the benefits social life and society bring, it
is important we begin to work out and act out the balance between the
individual and community, in both thought and action.
Freedom in the real world of capitalism and the state is an illusion. In
an anarchist communist society, with its social equality and solidarity,
it at last becomes possible
THE AIM OF ANARCHISM is to obtain a free and equal society. For
anarchists now the biggest problem is how to achieve the transformation
from the present capitalist world to an anarchist one. Anarchists are a
tiny minority throughout the globe but we believe that an anarchist
society will be to the benefit of all humanity. Since we think that
anarchism is objectively in the interest of all, many people question
the emphasis on class struggle to achieve a revolution. Here we will try
to explain the Anarchist Communist analysis of class and the need for
class consciousness amongst the working class if anarchist ideas are to
triumph.
Much confusion is caused by the concept of class. This is not the place
to examine the myriad economic, sociological and psychological
definitions, all of which have important insights to offer in the
analysis of present society. Instead we will concentrate on the
Anarchist Communist political definition which holds that the working
class for, want of a better term, includes the vast majority of the
worldâs population who are oppressed and exploited by a tiny minority of
rulers, the Boss Class, who order them about and live off the produce of
their labour. These are not precise terms and it is not to label
individuals as belonging to one class or the other, nor should it be.
Class is a collective entity and can only exist in the context of a
social whole. We identify the working class as the prime agent in
changing society because of its numerical and productive collective
strength and the obvious fact that those poorer and more oppressed have
more to gain and less to lose in overthrowing capitalism and are
therefore more likely to do so. However to gain that result what we
describe as the working class must recognise themselves for what they
are and how they stand in relation to the bosses. As Marx correctly
said, only the class, conscious of itself, can achieve the revolution.
For anarchists the implication of this is that the revolution cannot be
carried out on behalf of the working class by an âenlightenedâ minority
acting in its name. This does not imply, as many well meaning anarchist
âeducationalistsâ proclaim, that the vast majority of individuals must
become convinced of anarchist politics before we can act to implement
anarchism. Class consciousness is not a product of individual commitment
but an ideological transformation effecting every aspect of social
interaction. It will be reached not when everyone can quote Bakunin and
Malatesta ad infinitum but when the working class recognises itself as
such and libertarian forms of organisation are seen as both possible and
the natural way to run our lives. To bring this sense of class
consciousness into being, anarchists must simultaneously work to break
down the ideological domination of capitalist ideas, and struggle as
part of our class against capitalism in practice. The first of these we
do by spreading anarchist ideas and by exposing the false values of
liberalism, democracy, labourism etc for what they are, excuses to
justify the rule and privilege of a small elite. Anarchism in turn gains
from this by learning from the experience of the working class from
which all anarchist theory ultimately derives- the concept of anarchists
advocating workers councils is a good example of this. Participation in
the class struggle comes naturally to anarchists as we are not only
struggling against our own oppression but recognise that as one aspect
of a whole oppressive system which generates solidarity with others in
the same position. This natural desire to fight back has the added good
of showing the rest of our class what anarchism is really about rather
than the lies and myths spread by the media. These two strands of
anarchist activity are entwined as better ideas make us more effective
in action and involvement in struggle leads to better ideas.
It is important to realise that continuous anarchist activity will not
lead inexorably to the growth of class consciousness. Capitalism is
continually reinventing itself to ensure its own survival. Not only does
it rubbish libertarian communist ideas and reinforce its own ideological
stance through the education system, the media etc but it always aims to
co-opt movements of resistance into its own system. The trade unions,
Marxist-Leninist parties, even the Labour Party all started out to
challenge capitalism, even if only in a tame way, and all have ended up
as part of its structure or an alternative form of capitalism. The class
consciousness we wish to create must be such that it not only stands
opposed to the present system but must be capable of controlling those
who will use the class struggle to achieve power for themselves. To this
end an emerging Class Consciousness must manifest itself as more than an
vague feeling amongst our class but express itself in organisation on
libertarian principles not least in a coherent and united anarchist
movement. The ideas and practice of the Anarchist Federation are one
step on this road.
WHAT IS âORGANISATIONâ? Itâs a vast subject so letâs think about one
kind of organisation relevant to anarchists. This is the âRevolutionary
Organisationâ. Each kind of organisation has its own purpose enabling
people to accomplish what they cannot individually, harnessing energy
and resources in productive ways. However organisations are not pure
rational constructs. They have their own culture, often obscured by
formal structures. Strip away the theoretical organisation of states,
corporations and political parties and you reveal the hierarchy,
authority, fear and greed that is true organisation in a capitalist
society. Because of this some anarchists reject not only the âorderingâ
imposed on our minds by capitalist society but all forms of
organisation. We in the Anarchist Federation recognise the problems of
organisation but accept that it is necessary both in and in achieving a
libertarian society. What is important is to make organisations that
reflect the ideas of anarchist communism in their own practice.
To create effective organisations we must know our own and otherâs
minds, therefore there must be a high degree of communication, of
sharing. We must set about creating aspiration, setting achievable
targets, celebrating success, rededicating ourselves again and again to
the reasons why we have formed or participate in the organisation. And
because organisation is a mutual, sharing activity these things cannot
be contained within one mind or merely thought but acted out and given a
tangible existence through words and actions. At the same time, we must
remain individuals, capable of independent and objective appraisal, not
cogs in some vast machine.
What then is the purpose of ârevolutionary organisationâ ? Can it be
described ? Given that the need for revolution already exists,
revolutionary organisation must increase the demand for revolution. It
must increase the measurable âweightâ or âforceâ of the resources joined
to demand revolution. The structure must increase the ability of the
organisation to perpetuate itself while its ends remain un-realised. It
must increase the ability of the organisation to resist attack, by
increasing the determination and solidarity of members and by so
arranging itself that damage caused to it (from external attacks,
defections, internal conflicts and so on) are minimised. It must be
flexible, be able to absorb or deflect change or challenges to it, have
the ability to change or cease as circumstances dictate and the
self-knowledge to initiate change when change is required. High levels
of positive communication, mutual respect and celebration, shared
aspirations and solidarity all describe the revolutionary organisation.
Anarchists in a free society will be self-ordering and society will be
self-regulating. The organisations we construct will arise out of the
needs of the moment, filtered by our knowledge and perceptions.
Organisations, whether free associations, collectives, federations,
communes or âfamiliesâ will be fluid and flexible but retain the ability
to persist. They will be responsive to individual and social need. They
will have a structure and culture matching the needs, beliefs and
purpose of members. They will not have the super-ordered, monolithic or
divergent cultures of competition, fragmentation, subordination or
conflict that exist within organisations today. Creating organisations
that have a revolutionary structure is an act of revolution itself. The
more we do it, successfully, the better we will be at making the
revolution and the closer we will be to achieving revolution. But to be
successful we have to learn far more about the nature of organisations,
what is effective communication and how we respond to demands for
change.
The Anarchist Federation is one attempt to put these ideas into a
practical form. We do not claim to have all the answers, but we are
convinced that anarchist communism can only hope to make real progress
as the leading idea in a united revolutionary movement. Working as an
organisation has made our interventions in the class struggle stronger
and our ideas clearer than they could be alone or in local groups, and
though we still have a long and hard road to travel, ever increasing
co-ordination is unmistakably the way forward. A powerful revolutionary
organisation will not come about by people simply agreeing with each
other. Only through the dynamics of working together can we achieve the
unity of activity and theory necessary to bring about a free and equal
society.
âAnarchism is organisation, organisation and more organisationâ,
Malatesta
THE IDEA THAT THE INDIVIDUAL is of supreme importance is only a
relatively recent development in historical terms. For most of human
history, belonging to a group took precedence as people identified with
the tribe, the clan, the family and locality. Social solidarity was what
counted and acts committed by individuals were perceived to be the
responsibility of the wider social groupings to which they belonged.
Blood feuds, for example, which involved warring extended families,
often arose from the action of a single individual but carried
collective responsibility. Unlike modern capitalism, which tends to
isolate individuals, pre-capitalist systems tended to incorporate them.
People were bound together through a variety of social ties. This social
solidarity was once a normal and universal form of relationship, though
not the only one people shared.
Insofar as individuals find it extremely difficult to live in total
isolation, it is surely possible to agree that social solidarity is
natural. Human beings are social animals who find it beneficial to
co-operate and necessary to associate with each other. Even within
modern industrial societies, the urge to belong to some community or
other seems overwhelming. In the fight against exploitation and
oppression within the capitalist system, people have always recognized
the need for solidarity in order to win even basic demands. From the
beginning of the 19^(th) Century, striking workers and those undertaking
social struggles such as rent strikes or campaigns for better housing or
sanitation understood the power of standing together and tried to create
and maintain the greatest degree of unity in order to beat those who
opposed them. The tension between capitalismâs self-serving
individualism and the need for united action by the working class has
been one of the main preoccupations of workers in struggle. The rights
of the individual (to act within the law as they think fit no matter
what the cost) has been consistently proclaimed by employers and
governments precisely to break the strength of the organised working
class. When if you did not work, you starved, the âscab labourerâ who
took your job while you were on strike was the most hated person in
working class communities. How much easier to encourage people to âscabâ
when the right to work and to act in oneâs own best interests is
championed by government ministers and enforced by police truncheons.
The best kind of solidarity is, of course, of all people with all other
people. Anarchist communists have always struggled to create this kind
of solidarity no matter what artificial difference is maintained to
divide us. Because we work for working for working class unity we oppose
those unions who pit one worker against another (for instance white
collar vs manuals, unskilled vs craftsmen, employed vs unemployed).
Trade unions act as a barrier to wider solidarity since their main
concern is a particular craft, occupation or industry. Sectionalism,
meaning a divided workforce, has always been a feature of trade unionism
in Britain, a fact maintained by union bosses and welcomed by employers.
Solidarity on a mass scale can be tremendously powerful. During the
General Strike of 1926, sympathy and support for the locked-out miners
was so great that there was no strike-breaking at all from within the
working class â the ruling class had to do essential jobs themselves,
policemen, soldiers and college students driving trams and moving coal!
Such solidarity was extremely powerful, so powerful that the union
bosses feared it might escape their control. Though terrifying the
government as the months of strike went by, it was the union leaders who
called off the strike when the legitimacy of a government that would not
meet the workerâs just demands began to be questioned. Without a
government, the cozy lives of the union leaders would disappear; they
would rather millions suffered lower wages and worse conditions than
surrender their privileges to the solidarity of working class people.
The failure to achieve solidarity of purpose and action usually has dire
consequences. During the 1984 Minerâs Strike, internal dissension within
the unionâs ranks and lack of significant support outside seriously
weakened the struggle to preserve the mining industry, hundreds of
thousands of jobs and hundreds of coalfield communities. If solidarity
is important for struggles which are of a defensive and limited nature
within capitalism, then it is clear that in order to overthrow the
system, the widest and most determined unity is going to be essential.
Failure to involve the great mass of working class people and at least
neutralize most others will lead either to quick defeat or civil war.
The greater the cohesion and solidarity of people and their struggle,
the easier will be the task of creating post-revolutionary anarchism,
the free society.
An anarchist society by definition requires the absence of government.
Anarchists also seek an end to all coercive institutions and
relationships. What replaces them, and allows millions of people to live
and work in relative harmony without laws, governments and police? Part
of the answer must lie in the creation of networks of social groups
which meet the needs of individuals and with strong bonds within them
and between the groups. We must be a society of individuals and of
social groups.
While the danger exists that social pressures will narrow the area of
personal freedom, these will be countered by libertarian education and
socialization, the creation of a desire, a hunger if you like, for
personal expression and fulfillment amongst all people. We will also
need to create social structures and dynamics which promote the greatest
possible degree of personal autonomy. Anarchist communists believe that
social solidarity is simply the most ânaturalâ form of living in the
world. Anarchy will not be an amalgamation of unconnected, isolated
individuals, but a dynamic solidarity in which people interact on the
basis of freedom and equality.
RIGHTS constantly crop up in our lives. Almost all debate and choice
about what we can or cannot do is coloured by talk about different
rights. Natural Rights, Human Rights, Childrenâs Rights, Animal Rights,
the Right to Life, The Right to Die, the Right to Know, the Right to
Privacy and endless others. All are appeals for people to get what they
deserve and what they are entitled to. Collectively rights amount to a
universal fairness, which, if only they were all respected, would leave
no one with cause for complaint. All that is needed for any disputes in
society to be resolved is for conflicting rights to be weighed against
one another and the most equitable solution found. It will not surprise
our readers that we think this view is utter rubbish and we tend to
agree with the philosopher Jeremy Bentham who said that natural rights
were a ânonsense upon stiltsâ. This article takes a very brief look at
rights, critiques whatâs wrong with them and sets out what anarchists
can use as an alternative in political dialogue. Obviously we are not
going to say that changing the theoretical framework of political
discussion can bring revolutionary change in itself. However we do say
there is an interchange between ideas and practice which grow from one
another. Rejecting campaigns for our ârightsâ enables us to see beyond
immediate goals inside the confines of present society just as actual
struggles have shown us the need to go beyond what the bosses can
concede in terms of rights.
The question of rights became a major political influence with the
American and French Revolutions and has since expanded to almost all
aspects of human interaction. One distinction worth making is between
positive and negative rights. The latter are rights which allow
individuals freedom from interference from the state. These rights,
mostly advocated by ideological liberals, were in general the first to
be put forward e.g. the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness in the American constitution. Positive rights have come later,
pushed for by state socialists and Keynesian capitalists. They differ in
requiring action by others or the state to ensure their fulfillment. An
example is the right to work. To âenjoyâ this right someone must provide
a job for you to do. The distinction between these two types of rights
is by no means clear cut and they are united by the justification for
their existence. All these claims of rights rest on being part of a
natural order with which human society should conform, hence the term
ânatural rightsâ.
Logically there are gaping holes in the theory of rights. Firstly there
is no evidence that rights exist as part of a supposed natural order.
Even if they did, to move from what actually is to what ought to be is
not necessarily so (naturalistic fallacy if you want to know G.E Moore
about it). For example it is natural for people to die of disease but
that doesnât mean we shouldnât try to cure the sick. Secondly, rights
accruing to certain groups have problems of demarcation. Do human rights
extend to fetuses? Do animal rights extend to non-vertebrates? However
to anarchists these are minor quibbles. Our objection to rights rests on
their political content. Rights are only of use if they can be enforced.
To which we must ask â who decides what rights there are and who will
make sure they are put into effect? This cannot be simply side-stepped
by more âdemocraticâ or anarchist forms of decision making. The idea of
rights presupposes that there is a correct answer to be discovered and
that makes it an issue for experts. Anarchists do not believe that there
are factual answers to how people interact. It effects everyone in a
community and everyone should participate in the decision making
process. No one is greater expert on you than yourself. Of course if you
want to build a house you would be foolish not to consult people with
expertise in architecture or bricklaying but they have no greater
knowledge than anyone else in the community as to whether a house needs
to be built. These types of decision can be blurred on occasion but with
rights we can see a definite difference. Rights are the product of a
hierarchical society. If you are in dispute with someone over a clash of
rights you must appeal to a higher authority. When decisions go against
people in British courts they go to the European Court of Human Rights.
Regardless of whether they win or lose they have surrendered control of
their own lives to someone else. We are not saying that the idea of
rights is a manipulative con by capitalism to divert rebellion into
acceptable channels but it is a product of capitalist, individualistic
and authoritarian thinking which cannot serve as the basis for a society
of freedom and equality.
What can be done about this? Obviously we shouldnât give up what
practical rights the bosses have conceded to us in the present. In fact
they should get a hearty kicking for even thinking about taking away our
rights to pensions, striking, free abortion etc. Unfortunately theyâve
already done most of that if we ever had it anyway. We need somehow to
gain power for ourselves that they canât take away. Without speculating
overmuch on a future anarchist society we can see some key features of
it emerging through the struggles of our own class in the here and now.
One of these is the kind of arguments we use in settling points of
controversy between us. Anarchism rejects opinions that rely for their
justification on what is ânaturallyâ the case or on someoneâs judgment
simply because of who they are. Instead we aim at a leadership of ideas
that convince people because of their own merits. Real decisions about
peopleâs lives cannot be resolved fruitfully by recourse to abstract
categories, however benign they may appear. To place our faith in rights
is to abdicate responsibility for our own decisions and surrender to a
tyranny subtler but more all embracing than the cosh.
CONTRARY TO POPULAR PREJUDICE, fostered by both media caricatures and by
the antics of a small number of self-proclaimed âanarchistsâ, anarchism
is neither ârugged individualismâ nor individualistic rebellion. Whilst
anarchists argue that the realization of individual freedom is central
to any authentically revolutionary politics, we donât equate this
fundamental freedom with the right of individuals to manifest their ego
without regard for social totality. More importantly, it is our belief
that it is collective action which creates change and is essential to
anarchism rather than the activity of isolated and atomized individuals.
This is such common sense that it should not require comment but so
often individualism is regarded as the bedrock of anarchism rather than
its actual opposite. That is not to say, of course, that social
anarchists, especially anarchist communists, are opposed to
individuality â far from it â but that in capitalist society
individualism is at best an excuse by some to selfishly indulge
themselves and at worst an ideology which encourages the most horrendous
competitiveness and exploitation. Capitalism loves (and sings the
highest praises of) individualism while crushing real individuality.
Capitalism fears, however, collective action. A trade unionâs strength
is founded upon the potential of its members to take for collective
action. The unionâs ability to mobilize and control this action is
crucial to itâs credibility and position as a mediating influence
between worker and boss. If the possibility of collective action is
removed, trade unions tend not to be taken seriously by either employers
or members any more.
The individual can be compared to the finger of a hand. On itâs own it
is not particularly strong or effective but in unison with the other
fingers it can become a fist. The working class, in whatever context
whether community or workplace, is more easily dominated and exploited
when it is divided and, because divided, powerless. When it organises
itself collectively, it has the potential to act in a concerted manner
against capital. The workplace provides opportunities for individual
action such as sabotage, absenteeism and âtheftâ but these activities,
even when organised clandestinely, can be more effective when done
collectively. Individual actions may alter relations and conditions
within a class but not between classes or permanently. And it is far
more likely that the actions of the ruling class in manipulating social
relations to its advantage will bring about change far more easily than
the efforts of one or more individuals. If not mutuality, what then? As
Malatesta says, My freedom is the freedom of all.
Collective action also creates a spirit of combativeness as people
realize that, far from being powerless, they do have the power to bring
about change. The most outstanding example in recent years was the
anti-Poll Tax movement. If resistance to that tax had been purely in
terms of individual non-payment, of individuals separated from others
refusing to pay, rather than in the form of a community of collective
struggle, then it would have rapidly collapsed as isolated individuals
were picked off by the State.
Mutual aid as a basis for human society and all forms of social
relationships and organization is vastly superior as an organizing
principle than competition or regulated interaction (contract).
Kropotkin showed conclusively that mutual aid was the rule amongst the
most successful species (of all kinds, including predatory ones and
humankind): âThose speciesâŠ. which know best how to combine have the
greatest chance of survival and of further evolutionâ. Success for the
individual is always bought at the expense of the group and is both
destructive and energy-consuming. At the same time âspecies that live
solitarily or in small families are relatively few, and their numbers
limitedâ â and the energy required for them to live at any other than a
rudimentary level is great. A simpler life for some means less life for
others. The social relation that activates and extends mutuality in time
and space is solidarity. It is what changes the natural impulse to
co-operate and to share into a force governments fear. It is the means
by which the potential new social relations acquire the strength to
change society and which enable relations and institutions based on
mutual aid to retain their strength.
The individual anarchist can only do so much on her/his own. The feeling
of isolation which capitalism imposes on the individual rebel can often
lead to disillusionment and despair. Collective action in the shape of
an anarchist group can accomplish far more whilst a national network
constantly keeping militants informed and motivatedâŠ.. well, who knows
what we could achieve? Why not take the individual decision to take
collective action with the Anarchist Federation?
ONE OF THE CENTRAL THEMES OF ANARCHISM is that people should have the
freedom and the means to take full control of their lives. Anarchists
have developed an individual and collective approach to human
emancipation. This has come to be called direct action and takes many
forms. Anarchists believe that there is a strong correlation between
means and ends and this means freedom is not something that can be
granted to us by politicians. We have to act for ourselves if we want a
better world.
The belief in self-emancipation arises from a deep distrust of
politicians, statesmen, bureaucrats and others who would claim the right
and expertise to run society. Anarchists are cynical of such people
whether they are on the right or left of the political spectrum. The
absurd socialist position which advocates for example, capturing posts
within the state system, inevitably ends up with people being at best
imprisoned by the system, or more likely with them being transformed by
the system itself. Parliament has tamed every fiery MP that has remained
for any prolonged period of time within its walls. Direct action
essentially means taking control of our own lives and action to create a
better world without the mediation of political parties and other
organisations that would act on our behalf. As anarchists have pointed
out for generations, even the most wellâintentioned of leaders and
organisations become corrupted by power. The sociologist Robert Michels
went so far as to speak of an âiron law of oligarchyâ which he argued,
overcomes the most democratic of representative organisations. The only
realistic way to bring about a better world is to do it ourselves.
Anarchists then reject authoritarian, bureaucratic and representative
institutions as being opposed to our interests.
Direct action though, has a more positive character. It enables the
oppressed and exploited to gain selfârealisation of their value and
helps bring about self-empowerment. Setting and achieving goals actually
increases the awareness and self-confidence of those in struggle; it is
a liberating process in itself. The oppressed, when they engage in
struggle, develop and discover qualities that they never dreamed they
possessed. And since the struggle is under the control of those directly
involved rather than under outside agents, like full time union
officials, it also develops skills of organisation and propaganda. A
recent clear example of this is to be found in the thousands of local
antiâpoll tax groups which sprang up around the country in the 1980s.
Starting from scratch, ordinary people created effective local direct
action groups which dealt a fatal blow to the Poll Tax. Even when
struggles end in defeat, they can indicate what methods and tactics
should not be used in the future. However, it is the traditional
organisations of the working class which are most likely to fail. For
example, the trade unions which are run by tired and cynical hacks
invariably hold back and limit the struggle. The characterisation of the
National Union of Mineworkers as âlions led by donkeysâ is not far from
the truth for that and other trade unions. One of the beauties of
doingâitâyourself is that it is an extremely flexible approach which can
be used effectively on an individual, group, or mass level. The isolated
anarchist, for example, can and should spread the anarchist message,
whether by leaflets, stickers, local newssheet, posters etc. It would be
wrong, however to fetishise the individual act. On the collective level
people can organise much more effectively, having larger resources and
numbers to be able to act on a wider scale. Mass strikes, occupations,
riots and other militant forms of revolt are dramatic examples of what
is possible given the imagination, motivation and militancy of workers
in struggle. Less obvious acts include working to rule, go slows, and
sabotage.
A form of direct action which has caused some controversy in the ranks
of anarchism is âpropaganda by the deedâ, as distinct from (for
instance) consciousness-raising or âpropaganda by the wordâ. This has
involved political assassinations, bombings, etc and was acclaimed by
late nineteenth century anarchists, including, for a brief period,
Kropotkin. Usually such acts were carried out by individuals or small
groups who were isolated from the mass movement. Assassinations of kings
and politicians may have been dramatic but were universally
counterâproductive in that they provided the state with
counterârevolutionary propaganda weapon and an excuse for repression.
Sometimes, direct action takes forms which herald new revolutionary
forms of organisation, embryonic examples of post-revolutionary society
within the present one. When workers occupy and control factories, they
are demonstrating their claim and power over them. The factory
committees which sprang up in Russia in 1917 before the Bolshevik
counter revolution showed that workers had the ability and inclination
to take over production.
In many uprisings, the masses themselves have taken over the task of
maintaining order in the face of counter- revolutionary sabotage and
terror. In fact the whole process of revolution is like one huge school
of selfâemancipation and experiment. There have been in the twentieth
century dramatic examples of working class, people rejecting their own
forms of political organisation in favour of more direct forms of
self-organisation, such as political assemblies. The soviets of Russia
in 1905 and 1917 and Hungary in 1956 immediately come to mind. However,
and this is crucial, action in itself is not enough. There has to be a
political awareness and consciousness if selfâorganisation is not to be
subverted by the authoritarians. The soviets in 1917 became intoxicated
by the radical sounding propaganda of the Bolsheviks and transformed
into willing tools of their enemies, the state socialists. A similar
development took place in Germany a year later, though this time it was
the rightâwing Social Democratic Party that side-tracked the revolution.
Despite these and other difficulties there is still no doubt that only
direct action by the oppressed can lead to liberation. Freedom has to be
taken â and by us in each and every aspect of our lives.
THE QUESTION OF HUMAN NATURE is a fundamental starting point of any
political and social philosophy. The major historic political
philosophers such as Hobbes and Rousseau had very definite views on the
subject, that shaped the nature of their proposed ideal societies.
Generally speaking, political standpoints which have a âpessimisticâ
view of human nature are on the right of capitalism. âPessimismâ in this
context means that human beings (or at least the masses) are seen as
morally weak, corruptible, greedy and in need of leaders. Societies
based on this view must be organised on a hierarchical basis, with the
weak masses being controlled by an enlightened or otherwise superior
elite or ruling class. Fascism and conservatism share the view that
leadership, a strong state to enforce that leadership and economic
inequalities are natural, even necessary, being merely a reflection of
the reality of human nature.
It has to be admitted that, in society on these islands and indeed in
many others, many working people accept this pessimistic viewpoint.
Decades of propaganda from schools and the media have been swallowed
whole and an acceptance of inequalities and the impossibility of an
egalitarian society are generally accepted. Human nature, we are
assured, makes a just and equal society an impossible utopian dream.
Anarchist communism as a political doctrine involves an âoptimisticâ
view of human nature, whilst taking a very critical (some would say
cynical) view of the realities of present-day social and political
organizations within the capitalist system. We obviously reject the
pessimism of the Right, which we are convinced is nothing more than a
crude justification for exploiting most of humankind. How can such an
optimistic view of human nature be justified on the part of anarchist
communists?
Firstly we look to anthropology to show that human societies have been
and are often organised on communistic lines. Harold Barclayâs People
Without Government and Pierre Clastreâs Society Against The State
contain numerous examples of people living without classes or the State
perfectly happily. Archaeology tells us that that the State and economic
classes emerged in a number of places (Mesopotamia, Egypt etc) only
about 5000 years ago (compared with 100,000 of human pre-history before
then) â the rest of the world coped without the State for a lot longer
than it has been around. The reasons why the State and classes did
emerge are controversial issues but the truth is that humans lived in
classless societies for tens of thousands of years. If human nature was
always selfish, greedy, individualistic and mean (as so many right-wing
philosophers with a vested interest tell us), such societies could never
have existed, never mind surviving for millennia.
Our critics say it is impossible to âproveâ the anarchist communist case
that people are basically co-operative and social in their approach to
life. After all, there are daily examples of individuals acting in
uncaring and selfish ways. Our reply to this is that the development of
hierarchy, social classes, the State and capitalism have all taken their
toll and have distorted our fundamental human natures. Human beings,
unlike all other living creatures, have the capacity to act consciously
against their natures and are highly flexible in their response to
âabnormalâ social conditions which typify everyday life. What is
remarkable is that given the fundamentally anti-human nature of
capitalism, so many people still retain any sense of co-operativeness,
solidarity and a caring approach to life. People need security in their
everyday lives within the context of community solidarity and cohesion.
In pre-war Germany, conditions were so bad that millions of people voted
for the illusory sense of security that Fascism offered (and joined the
Nazi Party out of a desire to be safe, to belong to something), rather
than the chaotic bourgeois democracy of the Weimar Republic. For an
interesting discussion of this, read Erich Frommâs Fear of Freedom.
Today, the desperate need for security and community induces people to
join all sorts of religious cults, to merge themselves wholly in the
dance scene, to seek communal expression for their fears, whether
paedophile witch-hunters or Muslim youth gangs. The rise of alternative
religions in the West and other phenomena is directly attributable to
the anti-human nature of capitalism.
Along with the basic needs of community and security (both economic and
psychological), humans must have a significant degree of personal
autonomy or, if you like, freedom, if they are to develop according to
their natures. Capitalist societies offer the illusion of freedom (to
consume) whilst enslaving millions in factories, shops, offices and the
home. The political and legal systems fix the limits of freedom ever
more narrowly, distorting and deforming in all sorts of ways the daily
lives of working people. Exploitation and domination by capitalism has
created an army of confused and lost people, unable to relate with
others on a meaningful level or only within the culture and language of
their âtribeâ.
Children are moulded to conform to a sexual division of expression and
behaviour, which prepares them for a later division of labour on gender
lines. Boys are cajoled into playing active, aggressive and masculine
roles. Their natural responses must be suppressed â âbig boys donât cryâ
â and they are conditioned to deny themselves. Girls are brought up to
be passive and dependent, with the ultimate aim of motherhood as the way
to achieve completeness as a person. Even roles such as âNew Manâ and
âlad-etteâ are manufactured to create the illusion of freedom but
instead create only a compulsion to behave (to consume) in a particular
way. Socialisation of this sort begins at birth and carries on
relentlessly throughout childhood and pre-adult life. Even supposedly
fundamental concepts such as âmasculinityâ and âfemininityâ are not
natural, but are taught and must be learned through a long and often
painful process. No wonder so many people are fucked up, given that the
process is imposed on all, regardless of who they actually are.
Only anarchism, and particularly anarchist communism, allows the full
development of human beings which is as much dependent on interactions
of all kinds with other humans as it does on the individual will we
ourselves may exercise. It alone bases its approach on the proven need
of humans for both collective security through community (on the one
hand) and personal autonomy (on the other) via solidarity and
sociability. Place these within the context of a non-exploitative and
classless society, the necessary pre-condition for protecting and
nurturing human nature, and you have anarchist communism. Though human
nature is necessarily very complex, only in an anarchist communist
society of the future (but which is being built today) can human nature
be given its full expression and revealed in all its fullness.
Creativity, love, belonging and freedom are mutilated in todayâs
society; packaged and sold where a profit can be made, damaged and
destroyed where they canât. In the society of the future, these
qualities of essential human nature will be set free.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CLASS SOCIETIES, which in ancient times replaced
egalitarian societies throughout the world, were disastrous for the
great mass of humanity. Although there were often gains, in terms of
increased productivity through improved communications etc, society
became divided into haves and have-nots. Class societies are based on
exploitation â the process by which the many provide for the greater
well-being of the few. The âinventionâ of private property and the
explosion of capitalism as the dominant economic system in the last few
hundred years brought the process of exploitation to near perfection.
Exploitation under capitalism primarily means that workers are robbed by
their employers of the full value of their labour. If the boss wants
profit, and money to package, advertise and develop the product, he can
only get it by stealing a greater and greater share of its market value
from the person who produced it. There is an irony here since, of
course, the bosses hate pilfering by workers. Grand larceny by one is
okay, it seems, petty theft by the other is not. Only a portion of the
wealth that workers create actually goes to them and sometimes a very
small proportion indeed! The rest goes to the capitalist as profit,
leading over time and depending on the level of exploitation, to the
creation of huge personal and corporate wealth. Even quite small
employers frequently leave millions in their wills.
Karl Marx, despite anarchist criticism of his failure to analyse the
dangers of state power, powerfully explained some of the ways
exploitation occurs. Wealth, he pointed out, comes about when the raw
materials provided by nature (wood, cotton coal and so on) are
transformed by labour using technology (tools, scientific processes,
machinery etc). Before capitalism, the production of goods was a series
of transactions between independent producers. The woodsman sold timber,
the carpenter shaped it, the merchant transported it, the retailer sold
it. Each sold what he or she owned for what it was worth to them or what
the market offered, freely and by their own decision. Wealth stolen and
accumulated during centuries of feudalism (dependent on the exploitation
of bonded labourers), allowed proto-capitalists to take control of these
transactions away from the people themselves, turning them into waged
labourers entirely dependent on the owner. The forests were enclosed and
became the property of the nobles, who sold rights to their timber to
the new merchants and industrialists. Carpenters could only get wood if
they agreed to sell the finished articles to the industrialist who then
controlled the price to the retailer. As more and more parts of the
process fell into the hands of a single person, the capitalist, more and
more of the profit available at each stage of transaction began to be
accumulated in a single place, giving the owners even more power, for
they could now demand lower prices for commodities and higher prices for
finished goods, buying the parts of government they needed â the army,
local militias, magistrates, law-makers and so on â to protect their
wealth and accelerate the process.
Of course, what is supposed to regulate this process is the market and,
in the 20^(th) Century, the interventions of social democratic
governments. In good times, when the market is booming and prices high,
the owning classes make great profit. Presumably these entrepreneurs,
the great risk-takers who build political and commercial empires, take a
loss when economies contract and prices fall? Not a bit of it! Because
they own everything, and are protected by government, they find it
easier to reduce their costs by laying-off their workforce, sacking
people. The workers become an economic liability in times of recession
and the labour power of the worker, the power that creates all wealth,
merely one more commodity that can only be sold for what the market for
labour, again controlled by the owning classes, is prepared to pay.
So the workers are robbed day in and day out. What they own is bought
for less than it is worth. What they produce is taken from them for less
than they could sell it for. What they must buy to live is sold to them
at more than it cost to produce. Unfortunately, most workers ie us, are
unaware of this. Many workers accept the principle of âa fair dayâs
work, for a fair dayâs payâ, little realizing that the âgameâ is unfair
from the start. Because most of us contribute only a small part to the
finished article, this exploitation is largely invisible. We think
managers simply manage, control a process of production, are just like
us, when in fact they are scheming day in and day out to increase
productivity or push down costs â to make profit. A bad boss will make
us angry and sometimes create a sense of injustice, for instance when
even profitable factories are closed, but rarely do we feel consciously
exploited.
The workers, by and large, accept the capitalist economic approach of
seeing themselves as one of the costs of production, rather than the
main source of societyâs wealth. In doing so, they unwittingly accept
the basic premise of the capitalist system. There are many reasons why
workers unthinkingly accept their exploitation. In part it is due to the
persuasive power of education and the mass media but also it is a result
of trade unionism.
Trade unions accept capitalism. Their role is not to help bring about
its destruction but to operate within it. In doing so they help promote
capitalist exploitation. The unions try to improve wages and conditions
but to do so they must accept the bossesâ right to manage and to go on
exploiting people. If workers, through their trade unions, ever manage
to reclaim too high a proportion of the wealth they create, the bosses
simply close the factory as âunprofitableâ. The process of collective
bargaining between workers and management is a recognition of the
legitimacy of the system. In other words, the best that unions can offer
is a âfairerâ (!) system of exploitation.
By dividing workers on the basis of what they do, by skill, industry and
class, trade unions also aid the process of exploitation by dividing
workers one from another. A divided working class is a weakened one.
Where employers feel they have extra scope to extend the level of
exploitation, they will do so. For example, young workers, women and
recent immigrants are easily exploited due to a whole range of cultural
factors that make them vulnerable, and suffer as a result. Despite
so-called protective legislation, the rise of feminism and âgirl powerâ,
women still earn a lot less than men, even when the work is of a similar
nature.
Unlike many Marxists who view the process of exploitation in supposedly
âscientificâ terms, anarchist communists have no truck with such
âobjectivityâ. Capitalism is a system which is morally unjust,
corrupting, degrading and highly destructive of environments, people and
societies. The wages system, which is the basic mechanism of
exploitation, must be swept away as part of the movement to destroy
capitalism. As Kropotkin pointed out, all of the wealth of the world
which has been produced over the centuries is the result of the efforts
of all humanity. This wealth must be restored to all of the people of
the world â it belongs to no-one and everyone.
It has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour
is good in itself- a convenient belief to those who live on the wealth
of others William Morris, Useful Work vs Useless Toil 1885
LETâS FACE IT, work as we know and loathe it today, sucks. Anybody who
has worked for a wage or a salary will confirm that. Work, for the vast
majority of us, is basically forced labour. And it feels like it too!
Whether youâre working on a casual or temporary basis and suffer all the
insecurities that entails or are âluckyâ enough to have a permanent
position where the job security tightens like a noose around your neck,
itâs pretty much the same. Work offers it all: physical and nervous
exhaustion, illness and, more often than not, mind-numbing boredom. Not
to mention the feeling of being shafted for the benefit of someone
elseâs profit. Think about it. Work eats up our lives. Not just the time
weâre physically engaged in it either. Apart from the hours weâre paid
for, work dominates every facet of our existence. When weâre not at the
job weâre traveling to or from it, preparing or recovering from it,
trying to forget about it or attempting to escape from it in what is
laughably called our âleisureâ time.
Indeed work, a truly offensive four-letter word, is almost too
horrifying to contemplate. The fact is that those of us âin workâ
sacrifice the best part of our waking lives to work in order to survive
in order to workâŠâŠ This scary aspect of reality is so frightening that
work itself becomes a kind of drug, numbing us, clouding our minds, with
the wage packet the ultimate reward. Think about it too much and even
the âcushiestâ of jobs becomes pretty unbearable. Apart from the basic
fact that if you donât work (sell your labour power) and would rather
not accept the pittance of state benefits you donât eat, wage slaves are
dragooned into âgainful employmentâ by ideologies designed to persuade
of the personal and social necessity of âhaving a jobâ. This can be
described as the âIdeology of Workâ. What we need to ask is, where did
these ideologies come from and how did they manage to get such a hold on
us?
Ancient Greek civilization, that model for modern democracies, did not
consider physical labour to have any intrinsic value other than itâs
immediate benefit to the individual and community. That an ideology of
work did not develop in Greek society was due to the simple fact that
most labour was provided by a captive population, its slaves,
conscripted and coerced at will. The abject powerlessness and dependence
of the slaves upon their masters meant that there was minimal need to
convince them of their toilâs worth or value. This was also true of the
many forms of bonded servitude that existed throughout the ancient
world. We have little record of what the slaves themselves thought about
the work they were compelled to do, although the slave-gladiator
Spartacus would later give Roman slaveholders something to think about!
An identifiable ideology of work began to take shape with the decline of
slavery and the emergence of feudalism. The Catholic Church has,
throughout its history, been uniquely part of the political apparatus of
the ruling class and has always served its interests. The many medieval
peasant uprisings and heretical movements based on the poverty of Christ
threatened both State and Church alike, proclaiming an earthly heaven
where the power of the nobles to enforce work through taxation would be
ended by sharing out the wealth of both amongst the poor. Additionally,
people began to control their working lives more, demanding higher wages
and organizing in independent craft guilds. In response, the idea of
work as a spiritual and noble activity began to be preached from the
pulpits, divinely ordained. Those who worked began to be accorded a new
status within the overall divine hierarchy with nobles and priests at
the top, sturdy yeomen in the middle and humble villein below. Those
free spirits or broken men who resisted domestication, âsturdy beggarsâ
and âscroungersâ were vilified by the ruling classes who passed
draconian laws against so-called vagrancy and vagabondage. Individuals
who had not been integrated into the economy were portrayed as lazy and
ungodly outlaws and forced into what would eventually become the
embryonic working class.
Calvinist theology maintains that only a pre-selected few, the Elect,
will see heaven. The proof of oneâs saintly nature and assured heavenly
reward was believed to be earthly success so Calvinism developed a
strong work ethic. Calvinists dedicated themselves to working hard and
accumulating wealth, mute witness to their divine manifest destiny. This
single-minded, methodical and disciplined ideology was highly useful to
the emerging capitalist classes who were, in many countries, the
religious classes as well. It also provided a theory of society that
ensured the successful transformation of medieval societyâs bonded
labourers (serfs) into (theoretically) free men â the wage slaves of the
future who have to sell their labour â without too much risk that they
might turn their backs on the whole sordid mess. As a result capitalism
fundamentally changed the nature of work.
The protestant work ethic, as it came to be known, was reinforced as
industrial capitalism consolidated itâs grip on society (though not
without considerable and violent working class resistance). Itâs
virtually impossible now to realize that virtually everything produced
by society (except those requiring collective effort like mining,
brewing or baking) was owned by those who produced it, who were able to
control the value of their labour through the price they were prepared
to sell it for. The âsuccessâ of the factory system meant that
capitalism had a means to create vast numbers of jobs but at the price
of surrendering this power and wit it, freedom itself. But for decades
it could never meet its need for labour, hence the wholesale
enslavement, sorry recruitment, of tens of thousands of women and
children into factory and mine. New laws were passed which restricted
the ability of people to work on a temporary or casual basis. Existence
itself (without means of visible support) became a crime as the
industrial masters sought to discipline an essentially free peasantry
and artisan class into docile factory armies. To the stick of social
stigma, the workhouse and prison for those who refused to work, the
bosses added the carrot of permanent employment for the loyal and humble
worker, wage differentials for skilled and semi-skilled labour, a mythic
social prestige for the âkings of labourâ (miners, steelworkers and the
like). A âjob for lifeâ became a commonly-held and achieved aim
maintained in periods of healthy capitalism but withheld when recession
or the need to restructure capitalism arrived. In even recent times,
children were able to leave school at fourteen and be with the same
employer, often doing the same job until retirement. The work ethic was
reinforced by encouraging workersâ self-identification with their work.
Even today, the first question following an introduction remains âWhat
do you do?â Minerâs villages, working menâs clubs, factory leagues,
trades unions, the occupational pension â aspects of society that
divided workers one from another as much as they defined them. This job
identification was reinforced by craft, and later trade, unionism which
encouraged skilled workers to regard themselves as a special case and to
practice mutual aid and solidarity only within their own trade or even
grade of work within the trade.
All of this was happening as wage labour was becoming generalized and
assisted in its legitimization in the eyes of the new working class and
in society as a whole. Unemployment became a moral not social problem,
whilst those without work became âvictimsâ, âunfortunatesâ by
progressives and pariahs by everyone else. This ideology dominated
despite the efforts of socialists to get across the basic fact of life
that unemployment was created by capitalism, and no-one else. Large
numbers of people continue to blame themselves for their unemployed
state, for their poverty and lack of any human worth, an attitude the
state sees no reason to change. It keeps people from demanding work when
none is available but does not prevent them being coerced back into the
labour force when they are once again needed.
This ideology of work has begun to be challenged by recent changes in
capitalism itself, by chronic mass unemployment and under-employment,
the phenomenon of temporary and casual work, short-term contracts and
flexibility. The notion of a job for life, so widespread in the boom
period of post-war capitalism, has become a thing of the past for most
working people outside the so-called professions. The apprenticeships
which created skilled manual workers for manufacturing industries are
almost non-existent. Work is transitory, fragmented and periods of
unemployment regarded as a natural condition. Many young working class
people have never experienced the âdignityâ which labour is supposed to
bestow and those who have never known the âworld of workâ feel little
guilt in not being part of it. At the same time it is obvious that work
as a basis for capitalismâs desired smooth social integration of the
working class is being undermined both by chronic global economic
crises, which is requiring rapid and radical restructuring, and by new
technologies which are increasingly making certain classes of workers
redundant.
So where does this leave libertarian revolutionaries and our vision of
social change ? Will our arguments for a society without âemploymentâ ie
without bosses and wage labour, make more sense to working class people
for whom work has already become a despicable means to an end, and for
whom work has little meaning. Is there the possibility that a weakening
of workersâ identification with their âoccupationâ will engender a
weakening of their identification with the status quo? Or perhaps the
atomization of large sections of the working class by the continuing
process of capitalismâs development bring a further dissipation of class
consciousness?
Whatever the consequences of the decline of the work ethic and ideology,
one thing is for certain and that is that wage labour will remain an
alienated and alienating experience for those who are forced to take
part in it at whatever level, and that the exploitation inherent in work
under capitalism will not go away. The emancipation from work is the
task of the workers alone!
MOST PEOPLE on the left would argue that âdemocracyâ is infinitely
preferable to fascism and many working class people dies in what they
saw as a fight against the tyranny of fascism. However, this supposed
alternative also takes away our liberty in perhaps a more insidious
manner because of the smoke-screen it hides behind. One of the main
distinctions between the two is the use of naked force by fascism as
opposed to the subtle brainwashing used in a democracy. One method is
blatant and crude, the other is subtle and sophisticated but achieving
the same goal: our passive acceptance of a system that oppresses us. A
major plank of this menacing strategy is the cult of leadership, a cult
that is incompatible with the establishment of a society based on
freedom and equality.
In any society there is a wide range of abilities, with most people
falling somewhere in the middle. The collective intelligence, knowledge
and experience of the many far outweighs the contribution of the few
so-called âgeniusesâ. Despite this, human history has been marked by the
usurpation of struggle and movements for social change by leaders who
claim to know best. The struggle of men and women for freedom from the
political, economic and spiritual shackles that bind them has always
been long and painful. But time and again, having rid themselves of one
tyranny, people have allowed another to replace it. Afraid to use their
new found freedom, they hold up their wrists up to some new jailer. If a
truly free society is to be achieved, which can only be an anarchist
communist society, we must do more than get rid of the obvious sources
of oppression. The working class must also transform itself as
individuals so as to reject leaders, and any new tyranny.
It is not surprising that people are so willing to submit to leaders.
Capitalist society is organised so as to bleed us of our ability to
think for ourselves and take control of our own lives. This learned
passivity manifests itself on the most subtle psychological levels.
Individuals are taught from an early age that the best way they can
fulfill the human urge to sociability, to belong, is to obey, to accept
authority and the hierarchy of leader and follower. There are many
examples of such hierarchies and the sub-cultures that support them,
from political parties to skinhead gangs. There is a dress and hair code
(think New Labour drones!) that identifies people as members of the
group. To become a member, individuals signal their acceptance of its
culture (and its hierarchy) by changing their clothes, their look, their
views, to conform. If the individual questions group behaviour, or
challenges the formal or informal leadership structures, then she/he is
rejected and loses group membership, a traumatic experience for many.
Even groups supposedly challenging capitalism, such as the old-style
communist and trotskyist parties, incorporate and crystallize its
values, and the hierarchies and division of labour into (for instance)
âleadersâ and the ârank-and-fileâ. The subversion of the urge to
sociability and the search (in a troubled world) for security has
produced a cult of leadership. Schools and youth movements are urged to
train children to become âthe leaders of tomorrowâ. Job references must
emphasise the applicantâs âleadership qualitiesâ. Workers must elect
leaders who will negotiate with the boss. Political parties of left and
right choose a leader and then ask voters to choose between them, with
the winner making decisions for the entire population. The cult of
leadership pervades the whole of society.
Before we examine what is involved in this general acceptance of
leaders, we want to differentiate it from something often confused with
leadership: individual initiative. This fundamental impulse to originate
and construct, to create something helpful to others and which wins
their approval is common to all humanity. It is a self-expressive
impulse that has nothing to do with the will to power of the few. The
realization of the self, the expression of our uniqueness, is one of the
most powerful of human aspirations and a basic building block of a free
society and must be preserved at all costs in modern society. However,
as anarchist communists, we profoundly believe that the individual can
only realize her/himself in a social context, within the community and
not in spite of it. We are asked to admire the rags-to-riches story of
those who have rejected their origins for a life of wealth and privilege
but rarely learn the human cost of success, both to the individual and
those they have harmed along the way. We marvel at the fact that such
people have become âmonstersâ, seemingly supra-human figures, without
realizing that, having abandoned community, their individuality is all
that defines them any more. In contrast, if we are able to express
ourselves within the context of the many different groups and
communities that we belong to, our individuality is enhanced and not, as
is so often said, submerged.
We are also told we need leaders because without obedience there would
be chaos. It is assumed that without anyone telling us what to do, we
would not know what to do and nothing would get done. Nor would we know
how to behave. As anarchists we know that human beings are naturally
co-operative, problem-solving animals who could manage perfectly well
without leaders, and that it is capitalist society that fosters
aggression and selfish competition. t is rare indeed for leaders to
actually have the answers that solve the social and personal problems
confronting us. This need to overcome such problems leads us to
charismatic conmen and women who we allow to offer leadership. What they
offer is a sham, a demagogic ritual that actually persuades us that the
work, the effort and sacrifice demanded to solve the problem we are
confronting is worth it, to please the leader. Many supposedly
progressive groups, including parties of the left, proclaim the simple
need for better leaders. The workers, they say, or the people, have been
let down by bad leaders. In other words, they want themselves to replace
the âbadâ leaders currently in power. This is just another sham, a
dangerous diversion for what we need is no leaders, not better ones.
The social hierarchy that we accept as a natural order is just as
unnatural and illogical as government itself. There are no ânaturalâ
leaders, only a ruling class which has grabbed power and uses this power
to exploit and dominate the mass of humanity. Social classes are not
ordained by nature but the historical product of an exploitative
society. Unfortunately the acceptance of hierarchy has filtered down to
all levels of society and even exists in the organizations workers
create it challenge the system.
Collective responsibility is the alternative to leadership and the
counterpart to equality. If we are to succeed in building an anarchist
communist society, then the working class must learn to rely on itself.
And each individual in that class must be prepared to take
responsibility and participate in the transformation of society. The
revolution must not only be against the ruling class but against leaders
and hierarchy at all levels of society. And, most importantly, it must
be a revolution against our own passivity.
A BIG WORD used by many to describe societies that are ruled by men.
Originally it was used to refer to more âprimitiveâ, older cultures,
comparing them with the matriarchal (ruled by women) societies that had
apparently come before. The term became popular in the late â60s and
â70s with the growth of the womenâs movement. Instead of talking about
capitalist society, which was a sex-neutral term implying the rule of
capital, feminists were keen to use a word highlighting the dominant
role men played in society. Bosses, military leaders, politicians,
rapists, wife beaters, etc, are, for the most part, men. Even working
class men rule in their own home and upper class women are dependent and
subservient to their dominant husbands and fathers. By using the term
patriarchy, feminists hoped to challenge the assumption made by
revolutionaries of various tendencies: that ending capitalism would
automatically end womenâs oppression.
Patriarchy could be used to describe a whole social system. In theâ70s
and 80s, debates raged as to whether such a social system existed.
Traditional leftists in the Marxist organisations denounced the use of
the term because it implied that menâs oppression of women was more
fundamental than the bossesâ exploitation of the working class. Women
activists accused the political organisations of putting all oppression
down to class exploitation, so ignoring the existence of menâs role in
society as oppressors. Others tried to bridge the gap by using the term
patriarchal capitalism, arguing that both sexual oppression and class
exploitation were important: âBy patriarchy we mean a system in which
all women are oppressed, an oppression which is total, affecting all
aspects of our lives. Just as class oppression preceded capitalism, so
does our oppression. We do not acknowledge that men are oppressed as a
sex although working class men, gay men and black men are oppressed as
workers, gays and blacks, an oppression shared by gay, black and working
class women.â (Editorial statement: Scarlet Women 8, newsletter of the
Socialist Feminist Current)
In the end nothing was resolved. In the Leninist organisations, the
âclass sideâ won and womenâs oppression was once again relegated to a
side issue. Many women retreated angrily into separatism, reinforcing
the view that men are the key enemy. So where do anarchist communists
stand in all this? Anarchist communists reject the view that womenâs
oppression will end with the overthrow of the bosses and recognise it
cannot be explained simply in terms of an economic system. A more
complex framework of analysis is needed, recognising the role of
ideology and the role of men in keeping women down. For this the concept
of patriarchy is useful, though a rather abstract term. This does not
mean that male domination is natural or unchangeable. It is not men as
such who are the enemy, but the roles of masculinity that they are
playing and the power they have. At the same time womenâs oppression
cannot be understood solely in terms of patriarchy as this fails to
address the way capitalism has influenced womenâs oppression, creating
different circumstances for women in different classes as well as giving
then differing amounts of power. In the same way that we cannot gloss
over difference between men and women within the working class, we
cannot gloss over differences between women. Nevertheless, the concept
of patriarchy highlights the fact that women are oppressed and that they
are not just oppressed by capital but by men, who have an interest in
maintaining this situation.
In some cases it is obvious to see how men benefit from sexism: menâs
superior place in the labour market, and the emotional and material
benefits they gain from the family. However, men benefit in less obvious
ways, as in sexuality, with women bearing the burden of contraception.
Anarchist communism is about transforming all areas of life â not just
material circumstances. It follows that we need to challenge the whole
culture which will involve revolutionising the relations between men and
women, liberating both sexes from the traditional role that we have been
brainwashed to play.
This struggle must be part of the general revolutionary movement to over
throw capitalism. Capitalism uses the gender differences to its own
advantage â the âmacho manâ for war and business and the feminine womanâ
for caring, supporting and picking up the pieces. The revolution must be
one that ends all power, whether it is that of capital, the State or
male. On its own, the concept of patriarchy is inadequate for
understanding womenâs oppression. However used in conjunction with a
general class analysis it plays an essential part in our understanding
of society.
ALTHOUGH ANARCHISM AS an idea is compledy incompatible with any with any
form of racism, the Anarchist movement has not been free of the racism
inherent in the societies from which it has come, the most infamous
being Bakuninâs panâslavism and antiâGerman views.
More than this, anarchism is largely the product of white Europeans who,
however committed to the concept of a global emancipation of all
oppressed people, were and are limited by their own cultural background,
and one of the consequences of this is that the movement has
concentrated on class and the state as the prime factors in achieving
freedom and equality while other forms of exploitation such as race, but
also gender, sexual orientation, disability, age etc are regarded as
side issues which will either magically disappear on the abolition of
capitalism or are subsumed as just another facet of the class struggle.
Many, if not most, anarchists are conscious of these failings in our
movement and while a full social revolution can only come from the
combined struggle and theory of all the oppressed, with the aim of
furthering our own understanding, here are some notes from the anarchist
movement of today on why we oppose racism, what our analysis of racism
is and how we can best fight it.
The idea that people should be treated differently because of physical
or genetic differences is so ethically revolting and frankly ludicrous
that you might well think it is a waste of time to refute such blind
prejudices with cogent arguments. Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity
and to clear up a few difficulties, here are some key points. Anarchist
communism is a society of all rational beings, the fact there are no
substantial differences between soâcalled racial groups is a diversion,
it would not matter to anarchists if there were and the whole debate on
racial science, though doubtless interesting in terms of human biology,
is politically useless as an argument for or against racism. The
simplistic, antiâracist views of those in power obscure the real reasons
for opposing racism. If Jesse Owens had won nothing at the Berlin
Olympics he would still have been as entitled to equal treatment with
white people and Hitlerâs National Socialism would still have been as
evil and repugnant a doctrine. The problem with racists is not that they
have small brains, as in a famous advertising campaign, but that they
have wrong ideas. A second point is that cultural differences do not
imply political differences. Anarchism recognises cultural differences
between groups of people as well as between individuals. If my neighbour
likes pop music and I like classical it should have no bearing if we
meet together as part of our local community to, say, decide on
installing central heating in our block of flats. In a future anarchist
society, groups the world over will have to coâoperate on practical
issues all the time, this will give them an opportunity to share their
cultural backgrounds but not for one to impose it on another. The
problem is not of differing cultures but of differing power.
Finally on this subject, anarchism is distinguished from liberal
antiâracism in economics. We do not advocate individual or national
inheritance of money or any form of property. There has been much
argument over the issue of compensating disadvantaged racial or national
groups for exploitation of their ancestors, for example affirmative
action on employment in America or compensation to African countries for
the effects of the slave trade. The anarchist response is to demand an
immediate redistribution of goods and services worldwide on the basis of
need enacted by a global revolution, but this is not the same as giving
people what they have a right to or giving back what they have been
robbed or cheated of. Even if it were possible to assess correctly all
the injustices of the past, an incomprehensibly difficult task, we can
do nothing to compensate the dead. More fundamentally we regard the
worldâs wealth as an accumulation of the work and ideas of the whole
human race throughout history and as such it should be equally available
to all according to their needs. As an example, you could not read this
article if paper had not been invented, but noâone can identify all the
thousands involved in that process nor should that give, if it were
possible, their descendants an exclusive right to the use of paper,
because it is the common inheritance of humanity. The mistake of undoing
the evils of the past is in perpetuating its divisions while in reality
only a few in privileged elites benefit.
The problem for anarchism is how opposing racism fits in with righting
all oppression and exploitation. Anarchism has traditionally seen class
as the key merit of analysis, not only because it the key division in
the establishment of capitalism in Europe but also because unlike racial
or gender divisions, it is a totally social construct so that people can
not only change class but that class itself can be abolished, whereas
with race only the exploitative nature, not the concept itself, was to
be changed. Equality between races or any other physical distinction
would therefore logically come with the abolition of class. But this was
not seen as being true the other way round, so that there could be a
society in which there is no discrimination on grounds of race, which is
still hierarchical and exploitative. While there is much truth in this,
it is a fact that the vast majority of struggle initiated in favour of
the working class, e.g. social democracy (for example, the Labour Party)
and Marxist-Leninism, have proved capable of taking power on behalf of
the working class without showing any sign of abolishing inequality.
Without conscious effort to that end, it does not follow that an
anarchist revolution would eliminate existing prejudices. While the
traditional anarchist emphasis on smallâscale community decisionâmaking
would have a very real danger of leaving global differences in wealth
unchanged from that of capitalism.
The struggle against racism does not preclude a simultaneous equality in
all other forms of social relations; in fact it logically requires it.
Overcoming racism is not a separate issue or a first step in achieving
an Anarchist communist society, but an integral part of the process. How
large a part depends on how much states and bosses exploit people on
racial lines and how well we stop them subverting the struggle with
liberal myths of âequality before the lawâ and token âsuccessâ stories
of individuals making good under capitalism. As with any form of
oppression people of colour can only be secure in their freedom if
everyone else is. This is where the struggle against racism may provide
a keystone of libertarian theory, for racism is little more than the
inverse side of social solidarity. Identifying this natural sense of
solidarity with exclusion of others gives racism its strength, but in
fighting it we can acquire the tools of a coâoperative social
interaction.
As materialists we believe that the struggle for freedom comes out of
the real experience of people fighting their oppressors and developing
an alternative society from the process of doing so. This means that the
prime move must come from each oppressed group itself. For racism in
Britain this involves the nonâwhite population organising according to
their own understanding and experience, but with the support of those
who are oppressed in other ways. This is not simply a union of different
groups working together to make themselves more effective, but a
recognition that individuals face many forms of oppression
simultaneously and just as each of these can only be fought by joining
together with others who suffer in the same way, the whole edifice of
tyranny can only be overcome by joining together all oppressed groups.
No basis of struggle is intrinsically more important than another in
achieving this, the important thing is to form from them a unity of
theory and practice. Just to finish, this piece has been long on theory
and lacking in practical ideas as to combating racism in everyday life,
which is just as important to the anarchist position, and we hope to
deal with this in detail soon. In the meantime, if this article is too
heavy, feel free to bop some white supremacist on the head with it.
OF ALL THE âISMSâ, militarism is the most poisonous, destructive and
dangerous. When active it destroys people, cultures and rational
thought. When relatively passive (though it is never truly passive), it
enters the minds and value systems of society in a way that reinforces
conformity and obedience.
Military values require uniformity, not only of appearance but also of
attitude and values. The armed forces expend considerable effort in
ensuring that soldiers at al levels accept without question the inherent
and unquestionable superiority of their methods, aims and ideology. In
the heat of battle there is no scope for questioning the validity of the
campaign or particular action. Robot-like acceptance is paramount.
Militarism, the glorification of military values and methods, has a long
history. In Europe, Asia and South America that undoubted symbol of
militarism, the military uniform and with it social prestige, has
existed for thousands of years, as witness Assyrian carved reliefs
looted from Iraq but now in the British Museum showing the disciplined
ranks of the kingâs army; these are well over 2,500 years old. Military
values also accept without question the validity of hierarchy. Orders
start at the top and are passed down to the ranks. Whilst there is scope
for individual decision-making â no large organization can cope without
some imaginations and initiative â this is only permitted within a
strict and rigid chain of command. Despite skepticism within the ranks,
orders are there to be obeyed. Obedience is an essential feature of the
military approach and, in wartime, failure to obey can lead to severe
punishments.
A further feature of the military approach is discipline. The soldier,
sailor or air force person must act as part of a team, exercising
self-discipline in all circumstances. And this self-discipline must be
an extension and internalization of the wider military discipline.
Discipline, hierarchy and obedience combine to realize most effectively
the ultimate aim of military values, the activation of violence. Since
the days of the spear and the bow, military technology has pursued a
single goal, the most effective destruction of the enemy with the
minimum loss to oneâs own side. Capitalismâs vast investment in, and
profits from such technology has given the armed forces of the worldâs
most powerful nations a killing capacity that now makes the mass
destructions of Dresden or Hiroshima look like tea parties.
Militarism is the application of military methods and values to the
wider society. This is done most effectively when it accompanies some
other so-called truth such as religion, racial purity, imperialism and
nationalism. In its most effective expressions â Nazi Germany and
Stalinist Russia â all opposition was either eliminated or cowed and the
whole society subjected to military methods and organization, leading
ultimately to war. Whether racial nationalism in Germany or âsocialism
in on countryâ in Russia (leading to the Great Patriotic War of 1941â5),
the identification of nation with the army was a powerful concoction.
More recently there have been pale imitations such as Saddam Husseinâs
long war against Iran or the racial-religious-nationalist ideology that
fuelled the Rwandan genocide, with the virtual destruction of civil
society in all its senses. The re-emergence of religious fundamentalism
as a significant force, combined with nationalism and militarism, is
brewing a truly powerful cocktail of destruction. Last seen in pre-war
Japan, it is on the rise both in the Islamic states along Russiaâs
borders and in America itself. Imagine a
christian-imperialist-militarist USA saving the world through war with
the godless hordes beyond its borders.
Militarism is not restricted to dictatorships. It insidiously permeates
many corners of life in supposedly peace-loving and democratic
societies. Young boys in particular are subtly and not so subtly
inculcated into militaristic behaviour and thought. The scouts and the
various military cadet forces all pretend to offer individual growth and
adventure but actually promote military ideas and values. Should anyone
remain skeptical, compare the uniforms, organization and activities of
the scouts with those of the Hitler Youth; the similarities are
remarkable. Such militaristic youth organizations are symptomatic of an
underlying tendency towards militarism in capitalist society. Violent
computer games and videos are the scandal of polite society while
teenagers fingering sub-machine guns or clambering over tanks whenever
the army comes to town to recruit is widely seen as okay.
The British military presence in Northern Ireland has further deepened
and extended public acceptance of militarism. The fact that the British
armed forces have systematically used repressive violence to maintain
capitalist order has raised barely a murmur on the mainland and is
largely unseen outside the Six Counties. Compare this to the outcry
whenever a British soldier is killed or injured or imprisoned for
gunning down an unarmed civilian. The British soldier has been raised
upon a pedestal and even when convicted or murdering a civilian is
considered to be innocent by the Establishment and mass media.
The annual poppy day rituals at war memorials throughout Britain remind
the populace of the importance of the armed forces to our culture.
Pretending to honour those who were killed or wounded in war (while
insulting the widows and handicapped with poverty level pensions), they
only serve to glorify it. These ceremonies make the entire machinery of
war sacred, giving it a religious-patriotic-spiritual quality. Though
fought on behalf of the ruling classes, wars are legitimized and placed
beyond criticism. Spectacles such as these keep the public interested in
things military at a fairly constant level, ready to be mobilized in
time of the ruling classâs need to go to war. They, and the accompanying
propaganda, are part of a mythologizing process that legitimizes all
past British military actions. And, by extension, serve to legitimize
all future conflicts.
Militarism, whilst low-key in the so-called liberal democracies, has
been given a new dimension and magical quality by advanced technology.
There are no limits on what technology and science are supposed to be
able to do and it is brought into our lives by combat magazines and
cameras in âsmartâ missiles. We are not told, until after, just how
badly supposedly advanced military technology performs or its
effectiveness at killing âourâ troops, friendly forces or civilians.
Death by friendly fire is a price the winning side is well prepared to
pay and nothing compared to what the enemy will do unless stopped! The
constant refrain of superior military technology is meant to convince
the home front of its moral superiority and to justify investment into
new weapons to maintain that superiority in future wars.
Because weapons must be sold to armies and their use sold to the people
who must fight and pay, they are often publicized in startling ways.
Fascination with military technology has been harnessed to give the
stateâs murder machines a sexy quality: look at that fighter bomber,
admire itâs power, itâs smooth lines, itâs performance. Combat chic,
surgical strikes. The arrogance felt by the military elites is shared by
the ordinary soldier in militarized armies (as opposed to, for instance,
conscript armies, militias or guerilla forces), based on a cult of
masculinity which reaches poisonous heights in the armed forces. The
parody of what men should be like is given its full expression through
the cult of heavy drinking, brutality, hardness and segregation from
women. This leads in turn to a casual brutality in occupied countries
(and to those towns in Britain occupied by army barracks), for instance
the Paras in Ireland and the Falklands, US Marines in Okinawa, Dutch
troops in Bosnia and Canadian soldiers in Somalia. Mass rapes of German
women by Russian soldiers in WWII, by Serbian forces in Bosnia or by
interahamwe militias in Rwanda are an inevitable consequence of a
militarism built on the manipulation and exaggeration of the diseased
masculinity capitalism fosters. Any idea that the armed forces are based
on gender-neutral team-work and merit is dangerous rubbish and the best
thing working class men and women can do is fight to dismantle such a
corrupt institution.
Fortunately, but not always successfully, militarism has been countered
by anti-militarist movements. Revolutionary anarchists have always taken
a lead in anti-militarist activities. It should be obvious to all (but
isnât!) that the people who have least to gain and the most to sacrifice
on the altar of militarism are working class people. Apart from the cost
of developing and maintaining the military in peacetime (how many jet
fighters equal a hospital â not many), the cost in wartime is measured
in blood. It is undoubtedly true that anti-war movements organised by
official trade union and labour movements have usually been hopeless
failures and often complete betrayals. The ignominious collapse of the
Second Internationalâs policy of opposing WWI and recent loyalty to the
stateâs cause in Iraq and Afghanistan fall into this category.
It is perhaps the constant and subtle techniques of mass persuasion
which accounts for the apparent enthusiasm for wars by large sections of
the working class. This misplaced faith in the State and the Nation has
had disastrous consequences. Given the current military capacity of
countries like the USA, and its willingness to use all the weapons in
its arsenal, no matter how horrific and destructive, the war against
militarism has never been more important.
THE WHOLE DEBATE about crime is hopelessly confused and confusing. One
thing in certain, in the population at large, there is a fear of crime
which politicians, especially the Tories but increasingly New Labour,
are exploiting for political gain. There is an ever-growing demand by
reactionaries of all kinds to âget tough with crimeâ. It is an easy
slogan to make which guarantees attention but, despite decades of
initiatives and massive spending on policing, courts and prisons, crime
is nowhere near being defeated. Why is this?
In capitalist society, what crimes actually are is determined by the
state. They may, or may not, coincide with what working class people
think is wrong behaviour. People living on social security benefits or
the often extremely low wages offered by capitalists cannot survive on
what is offered them. Is it any wonder that people resort to social
security âfraudâ, shoplifting or other petty crimes or donât ask which
particular lorry something offered in a pub or over the garden fence has
âfallen off the back ofâ? Their attitudes change when they become the
victims of crime, naturally! But not all crimes associated with poverty
are tolerated. It is an unfortunate fact that some working class people
are quite happy to steal from or abuse their own kind. Stealing
television sets and videos on council estates or racial or sexual
attacks are examples of criminal behaviour which is not acceptable to
the working class.
Does this mean people have double standards? Not at all. Crime must be
seen in class terms. Crime is defined and combated largely by the ruling
classes acting through the state to maintain their order and protecting
their property. The maintenance of order is presented as being in the
interests of all classes but in reality is all about creating stable
conditions for the promotion of capitalism. Capitalism is itself based
upon a form of robbery: exploitation. But this is not defined by the
state as crime. Similarly, we all have personal property to protect but
the state is mainly concerned with the protection of private property
and the instruments of legal robbery: banks, factories, shops etc.
Working class people are generally aware of this. It is common to hear
that there exists âone law for the rich and another for the poorâ. So
far, from an anarchist communist standpoint, we must be skeptical, to
say the least, about the whole debate about crime.
We are clear about one thing: antiâsocial crime, meaning anything which
oppresses, robs or does violence to the working class, must be opposed.
We cannot wait until âafter the revolutionâ to fight the active enemies
of the people. Racist attacks, sexual assaults, muggings are not
acceptable and we have to find solutions to these problems here and now.
This will mean vigilance and selfâdefense by the affected communities.
Middle class crimes and assaults on the working class by asset strippers
and speculators, though often invisible, are also insidious and must be
opposed collectively, where possible, in this long dark night of
capitalism. Of course such activities are rarely seen by the state as
crimes at all, or if they are, they carry relatively light punishments.
Antiâsocial acts are a direct expression of predatory capitalism.
Selfishness, bullying, violence and legalised robbery are all inherent
in the system. The tentacles of class society and its ethics have
entered into every part of life. It is not accidental that men are
responsible for most crimes and that women hardly figure in crime
statistics. Men are socialised from birth to be aggressive, violent,
hard and tough, whilst women are socialised to be submissive and caring.
This sort of upbringing does untold psychological violence to boys as
they are shaped by their parents and society to struggle and fight. Add
to this a strict and regimenting school system, a future of unemployment
or deadâend jobs together with boredom and you have a mixture which
invites trouble. This is not to excuse macho behaviour but is an attempt
to place it in perspective. Crime and capitalism are inseparable.
If crime is a part of capitalist society, what will happen in an
anarchist communist society? Anarchist communism is based upon the
principles of a classless society in which freedom arises out of
community solidarity and an enlightened system of socialisation and
education. Private property will be abolished and the goal of production
will be for the fulfillment of human need, not the accumulation of
private wealth. Goods and services will be planned by the active
communities working with similar communities elsewhere. The individual
will be encouraged to take part in decisionâmaking. In this way, goods
and services will be provided to meet everyoneâs needs, so far as this
is possible. Also, many services will be provided by the community just
as public libraries are today, so that entertainment, transport etc will
be on the basis of free access. Anarchist communism requires the
abolition of money and exploitation. With a moneyless society there will
be no possibility to accumulate wealth beyond that which a person can
possibly hold on to. Since goods are free, there will be little point in
stealing and therefore most, if not all, crimes against property will
disappear.
In a caring society which will do away with the desperate struggle for
everyday survival, many of the material bases of want will disappear.
The revolution will consciously seek to eliminate antiâsocial behaviour
and so education and the socialisation of children will be directed
towards tolerance, equality and sharing. Violence, which is an
ever-present undercurrent of life today, will be discouraged through the
development of co-operative play and education. The current obsession
with aggressive individualism combined with the glorification of all
kinds of competitive aspiration produces many social ills, not just
crime. Whilst individualism as a means of achieving personal fulfillment
is to be encouraged, it must be done so in a positive way. Gain for the
individual is again for society as a whole. The point of anarchist
communism is not to stifle individual effort but to allow it to express
itself in constructive directions. In present day society, most people
are cut off from their neighbours. Very few real communities survive and
those that do are deeply imbued with the values of capitalist society.
In an anarchist communist society, community and solidarity will bind
society together.
Despite education and other means of socialisation there will be
isolated acts of violence, sexual assaults and other antiâsocial
behaviour. Many of these will be carried out by people who are
emotionally disturbed. The community has a right to protect itself and
steps will have to be taken to eliminate violent and other destructive
behaviour. Such people should be cared for as far as possible within the
community. This approach has nothing common with the current dumping of
the mentally disturbed onto the streets. In âface to faceâ communities
everyone will recognise their neighbours and take on a collective and
individual responsibility for social care and control. Psychiatric and
medical help will be aimed at the integration of disturbed individuals
and the promotion of their welfare. There are no easy solutions to some
disturbed and obsessive behaviour such as sexual assaults, arson etc.
But the approach to such problems will be enlightened, therapeutic and
socially-based, not punitive.
This leads us to a discussion of punishment. Punishment, the infliction
of violence for so-called crimes, has been a feature of virtually every
society from the earliest recorded history. The Old Testament approach
to punishment in which not only the guilty are harmed but also their
relatives and descendents is be found in many societies. Aspects of this
approach have come down to us today in Islamic law and in the last Tory
governmentâs initiative in blaming and punishing parents for their
childrenâs crimes.
There are several justifications given for punishment, all of which are
seriously flawed. Revenge is the most primitive; being based on the
desire to âget evenâ with the criminal. The âretributiveâ approach
starts from the assumption that individual crimes deserve punishment;
murderers deserve to be executed, rapists deserve castration. Apart from
the problem of gauging what is an appropriate punishment for each and
every crime in a whole range of circumstances, this approach assumes
that one act of inflicting pain (robbery, assault etc) is to be
condemned while another, that of punishment (which might be equally
brutal e.g. stoning of adulterers) is fine. It also accepts that a
higher authority, i.e. the state, alone has the right to inflict
punishment.
Linked to the vengeance justification for punishment is the idea of
deterrence. Indeed the two are usually cited together in determining a
âsuitableâ punishment in the courts. The idea that criminal behaviour
will be reduced by the threat of punishment on being caught does not
stand up. Firstly, many serious crimes take place on the spur of the
moment when people lose selfâcontrol through anger, jealousy or drugs.
There is no thought of the consequences of such acts. Secondly,
premeditated criminal acts are not deterred by the thought of an
eventual punishment. What concerns criminals is the likelihood of
getting caught. If being arrested seems likely, the crime doesnât get
committed A few hundred years ago pickâpockets were executed at public
hangings. Active among the enthralled crowds were professional
pickâpockets! So much for deterrence.
The idea that society will be better off by carrying out punishments
misses the point. An unequal, unfair society creates its own
criminality. What needs to be eliminated is the social and economic base
for crime. Similarly the idea of reforming criminals within the prison
system is a sick joke. There is precious little enlightenment in
Britainâs repressive prison regime. In modern Britain, it is not the
criminals that need to be âreformedâ but society itself which needs to
be changed, lock, stock and barrel.
THE DESIRE TO PUNISH â to inflict pain on perceived wrong-doers â has a
long and inglorious history. It is an essential fact of punishment that
it is imposed by people in power upon those who are relatively
powerless, and for a specific purpose: to preserve a customary way of
life, a society, a political system from attack or destruction at the
hands of the disobedient. Religions, which have so often been the
hand-maidens of authoritarian rule, are full of accounts of the most
horrendous punishments delivered by God and his followers to those who
deny his authority or commandments. An eternity of hellish pain awaits
all who transgress in even minor ways, if they do not then submit to his
authority before they die. The secular arm of the State âits police and
army, magistrates, teachers and bosses â also reserves its greatest
punishments for those who defy its power. It is also true that
punishment is ineffective in achieving its (stated) aims.
Anarchist communists seriously object to the idea of punishment, on a
number of grounds: moral, ideological and practical. Kropotkin, for
example, in his pamphlet Prisons And Their Moral Influence On Prisoners
demolishes all of the arguments used by the State to defend human
incarceration. In what seems a remarkably up to date observation, he
wrote in 1877 that âOnce a man (sic) has been in prison, he will return.
It is inevitable, and statistics prove it. The annual reports of the
administration of criminal justice in France show that one-half of all
those who yearly get into the police courts for minor offences received
their education in prisonsâŠ.. As for central prisons, more than
one-third of the prisoners released from the supposedly correctional
institutions are re-imprisoned in the course of the twelve months after
their liberationâ (from Kropotkinâs Revolutionary Pamphlets, Dover
Books). The picture in these islands is hardly different today,
indicating a pathological lack of imagination on the part of the State.
In Britain, around one person in a thousand (and in the USA, it is one
in every hundred) is currently in prison â and crime is said to be
continually on the rise! So much for punishmentâs effectiveness in
combating crime.
There are a number of arguments supposed to support the idea of
punishment. These include the idea the idea that a given action deserves
a certain reward or punishment â the âgoodâ child gets a reward, the
âbadâ child is punished. Where good and bad actions are arbitrarily
defined, where they are not agreed to by all but simply imposed
definitions, and where supposedly bad actions include a range of things
that are good for the human being (for instance to express yourself
rather than sit quietly or to steal food when you are hungry), the rules
of society will always be broken. The setting down of punishments in
some kind of code and their supposedly objective application always
reflects the arbitrary values, attitudes and prejudices of those writing
the laws and enforcing them â the ruling class in other words. Since
most laws are designed to protect private property and enforce social
inequality, it is not surprising that most punishment is meted out
against those who steal and upon those with least â the working class.
Another standard argument for punishment is that it deters people from
committing crime or other âanti-socialâ acts, again defined in terms
which support the status quo. The problem once more is that it just does
not work. As Kropotkin pointed out, the prisons were full of persistent
offenders, despite frequent punishment. Hanging, for a range of offences
from murder to the theft of an animal or even a single handkerchief, did
not end 18^(th) Century crime. Indeed it was often remarked that, while
the people stood enthralled at the public hanging of a petty thief, his
or her brothers in crime were working the crowd and relieving the
admiring public of their valuables! So much for the ultimate deterrent!
Many people have a pretty primitive need to extract revenge for a wrong
committed against them. Blood feuds are an example of this, where one
wrongdoing has to be matched by another from generation to generation,
to the absurd point that the killing go on even when the original cause
of the vendetta has been forgotten about. As a rational response to
wrongdoing, especially on the scale committed by the State, vengeance
which is motivated by irrational feelings must rate as a wholly
inappropriate response.
A further approach (and oh! how inventive societyâs intellectuals have
been in trying to defend the indefensible) includes the idea that
wrongdoers should be helped or reformed, thought there is always a
surprising amount of pain included in any ârehabilitativeâ process!
Unfortunately the State has no real interest in exploring the social
causes of crime which might prevent it in the first place, and in curing
the criminal only when society at large turns against excessive
punishment. The State may lip-service to the idea of rehabilitation but
for every John McVicar or Jimmy Boyle, famous criminals who have both
âreformedâ, there are hundreds of thousands who gave not. Punishment
remains to keep the lid on social unrest but patently fails to do so.
So what is the anarchist communist view on punishment? Firstly, it
should be realised that we reject all the usual justifications and
methods of punishment both today and in any future anarchist communist
society. Capitalism damages people in countless ways, so it is not
surprising this expresses itself in anti-social acts and behaviour.
Capitalism creates the conditions within which âcrimesâ are committed â
crimes both of violence and against property in the form of poverty,
unachievable desires, the flaunting of wealth and social status and so
on, dividing, depriving and humiliating millions of people. Anarchist
communism, in contrast, is based on a perfect equality of goods and
choices, involving people in the creation and management of society that
makes life worthwhile, secure and free.
In capitalist society there are huge differences in wealth and power, so
it is very likely that its victims turn to violence and robbery in ways
that are similar to the workings of capitalism itself. A society based
on social justice, equality, freedom and the abolition of money. Given
these circumstances, many of the preconditions which give rise to crime
and punishment will disappear. Similarly, the abolition of the concept
of the victimless crime will remove a whole category of acts from the
realm of wider social involvement.
The classical anarchist approach to the problem of anti-social behaviour
is therapeutic; to persuade the individual to remove themselves from the
society they are harming and to put themselves out of harmâs way. In
extreme cases, where offered help was rejected, communities could claim
the right not to have to endure the behaviour any more, imposing a kind
of exile, shunning or turning away upon the individual or group. If harm
was threatened or inflicted, the right to self-defence which all humans
would retain would not be unknown. And surely, both individuals, groups
and societies have the right to protect themselves form internal and
external threats. Care would need to be taken that such a therapeutic
approach was not used as a punishment, to control dissidents or
stigmatise those different to the majority in some way. This would
require a completely open society unlike today, when the punishment,
control and incarceration of the âmadâ in secure hospitals goes on
largely in secret. It would be foolish to argue that anarchist communist
society would implicitly mean the abolition of anti-social behaviour â
but what constitutes anti-social behaviour would have an extremely
narrow definition unlike today, when it is extremely broadly defined.
There are no simple solutions to the problems caused by serial rapists
and killers, for instance, two extreme forms of anti-social behaviour
that no individual or society could be expected to tolerate. Our
response should be governed by two principles which often exist in
tension with each other but which are not incompatible: firstly the
justification of individual and communal self-defence and protection,
and secondly, the freedom of the individual. A caring approach, applied
in a humanitarian and non-harmful way must in the end be the basis of an
anarchist communist alternative to punishment.
IT CAN BE argued that the logical consequence of libertarian communist
thought has always been the creation of a âgreenâ society since it has
always posited the need for the destruction of capitalism, the system
which, as we know, must expand or die and which has given birth to the
ideologies of productivism and consumerism.
Anarchist and libertarian communist thinkers in the early days of the
revolutionary working class movement, in their criticism of the âmodernâ
industrial system and its tendency to transform the worker into a part
of the machinery, can be seen as proto-greens. But it would, however, be
stretching things to say that the early anarchist movement was anything
like a consciously âgreenâ movement, despite the critical contribution
of people like Elisee Reclus, William Morris, Edward Carpenter and Peter
Kropotkin. Whilst all of the above writers produced work that contained,
âgreenâ implications or at least sentiment, none can be seriously
considered as systematically âgreenâ thinkers. What can be argued is
that the communist vision of people like Morris and Kropotkin, that of a
de-centralised society of integrated labour in humanised environments,
stands in stark contrast to many âsocialistsâ (beginning with some of
the âutopianâ socialists but given a âscientificâ basis by Marx) who
considered The Factory as a model for the new society.
Such thinking found its realisation in the rapid industrialisation under
state capitalism in the Soviet Union, which although bound to do so by
its need to compete in world markets, found a perfect ideological
support in the (generally unchallenged) belief amongst socialists that
the industrialisation of the world was an âhistorical necessityâ. It is
no coincidence that some of the most horrendous environmental
destruction has been carried out under the banner of socialism!
Unfortunately, anarchists have not been exempt from holding an
uncritical attitude towards industrial âcivilisationâ. Whilst it would
be unusual to find any outright glorification of the modern factory
amongst anarchists, undoubtedly from reading anarcho-syndicalist
literature from the end of the last century, right up until quite
recently, the impression is given that technology is not up for
criticism and, disturbingly, that little life takes place outside of the
factory. Anarchist communists havenât been much better in this respect.
Why is that? Obviously, anarchists and libertarian communists are
products of their times and the level of environmental destruction at
the time of the first mass anarchist movements was by no means as
apparent as it has been in the period since World War Two. Whilst
revolutionaries argued that capitalism was destroying the worker and
peasant, body and soul, it was not so obvious that capital was in the
process of destroying the earth on which both worker and peasant stood.
Neither was it possible to foresee that capital would develop the
capacity to annihilate all life on the planet in the space of a few
weeks or less with the aid of nuclear fission. The consciously âgreenâ
movements which paralleled the great workers movements were generally
mystical, often reactionary âmiddle-classâ movements, sometimes strongly
Malthusian and racist and rarely identified with the existing
âprogressiveâ social movements.
Yet today much of the green movement claims to hold much in common with
âanarchismâ. Even some of the most reformist elements in the green
movement, from time to time, feel obliged to make noises about
non-hierarchical organisation, devolved decision-making and other things
historically identified with anarchist politics. Amongst large numbers
of the direct-action orientated green activists, âanarchistâ sentiment
is strong, though often very unfocused, and there is contempt for
traditional forms of politics. There is also alienation from the
traditional focus of anarchism, the class struggle. Often the working
class are identified with the âculture of industryâ and, understandably,
the notion of class solidarity is easily lost on, for example, road
protesters (often unemployed) whose regular contact with their class
brothers and sisters is in the form of ÂŁ2.50 an hour rent-a-cop security
guards!
The anarchist movement itself has been forced to take on board
explicitly green politics, has had to confront the issue of progress and
has had to seriously discuss the nature of technology. Perhaps the first
libertarian communist writer to comprehensively address the question of
the ecological crisis and its solution has been Murray Bookchin. Indeed,
Bookchin can be counted amongst the first theorists of the modern
ecology movement itself, with books like âOur Synthetic Environmentâ
(1962) and âCrisis in our Citiesâ (1965) setting the agenda for what
would later be known as Social Ecology. Whilst using the anarchist
critique of hierarchical power and the relationship between means and
ends as a starting point.
Bookchin has developed a political perspective that has had a
considerable impact upon, particularly, the North American green
movement. His popularity amongst US and Canadian greens has been
bolstered by his argument that the âtraditionalâ focus of revolutionary
attention (whether Marxist, Anarcho-syndicalist or Anarchist Communist),
the struggle of the working class, is no longer central to the
revolutionary project. His belief that the key to social revolution lay
in the development of oppositional lifestyles and the ânewâ social
movements (feminist, anti-nuclear, anti-racist etc.) has recently been
revised to some extent. Social Ecological thought, which sees the
potential for a liberatory technology (liberated from its present
owners) in a future ecological libertarian society has come into
conflict with another green current claiming to be anarchist, the
anarcho-primitivists. The anarcho-primitivist position basically holds
that an non-hierarchical society is impossible whilst any form of
industrial civilisation remains and that, therefore, talk of a
liberatory technology is nonsense. Whilst many writings from the
anarcho-primitivist âmovementâ (it is a far from homogenous entity) are
an excellent counter-balance to technophile arguments coming from
various sources (including ârevolutionaryâ) their overall perspective
lacks any revolutionary dynamic and often betrays a confused
misanthropic idealist fanaticism at odds with authentic anarchism.
Any would-be revolutionary movement today cannot ignore the necessity of
developing a âgreenâ perspective. But this does not mean simply tagging
on a few eco-friendly ideas to an otherwise concrete grey politics. It
entails an active engagement with specifically anti-capitalist forces
within the green movement. It means presenting a class struggle
anarchist analysis of the present struggles against environmental
destruction to those involved, to those effected. The struggles against
the roads, for just one example, are implicitly class struggles as they
challenge not merely present government policy but capitalist logic
itself, the logic (and necessity!) for expansion. Likewise, when the
greens talk about âzero growthâ anarchist and libertarian communists
must point out the explicitly communist nature of this idea. Equally,
the latter must attempt to understand the implications of their politics
for the environment (in the broadest sense). Already a dynamic is
appearing as the limitations of traditional politics are becoming
increasingly exposed as the world and its inhabitants face the choice of
a new society or slow annihilation. If the historical choice has been
between socialism or barbarism it is now between green libertarian
communism and a barbaric death in clouds of toxic fumes.
ONE PART OF THE ANARCHIST MOVEMENT is collectivist in the sense that
they believe that a future anarchist society will be based on a series
of communities of one sort or another. Anarchist communists in
particular envisage individual freedom and security, for instance, as
deriving from social life, where we live and work in solidarity with one
another. Our goal, therefore, is not a world of individuals concerned
only with their own well-being regardless of others, but one in which
personal freedom develops and is expressed to the benefit of all.
Freedom comes from, and does not stand in opposition to, community.
Collectivist anarchists are, unfortunately, lumped alongside all other
anarchists who themselves are portrayed by the media as isolated
individuals bent on terror. The reality is that, throughout history and
mostly even today, anarchists work in groups and some, like the
Anarchist Federation, seek to build large-scale national and
international organizations. We seek to build a mass anarchist movement.
The problem that presents itself, once we reject individualism, is how
to organise the movement and, hopefully, a future society in ways that
maximize the benefit of solidarity while preserving and extending
individual and collective freedom. How do we, in our revolutionary
struggle and the eventual transformation of society, avoid the pitfalls
of bureaucracy, elites and power?
To quote one Italian anarchist, Errico Malatesta, âAn anarchist
organization mustâŠ. allow for complete autonomy and independence and
therefore full responsibility to individuals and groups; free agreement
between those who think it is useful to come together for co-operative
action, for common aims; a moral duty to fulfil oneâs pledges and to
take no action which is contrary to the accepted programmeâ. (Il
Risveglio, October 15 1927). In other words, for an anarchist
organization to operate effectively on a principled basis, its members
must combine freedom with responsibility, full participation in the
decision-making processes with a commitment to carry out collective
decisions No anarchist organization can be effective if its members act
against collective aims and methods. Equally however, no organization
can be anarchist without total freedom to take part in the formulation
of goals, aims and methods plus, ultimately, the right to withdraw from
this process.
The usual method adopted by anarchists to combine freedom with
organization has been federalism. This idea is the reverse of the
standard form of organization in which decisions are made at the top by
an elite and carried out by the rank and file. Under a federal system,
autonomous members of the organization, organised in groups or branches
at the base make the decisions which are carried out by the
organization. Political power flows from the base to the summit or
rather, from the circumference to the centre, since anarchist
organization is horizontal (based on equality), not vertical (based on
inequality and hierarchy. Anarchist organizations should be expressions
of the collective voice, not directing centers which control people.
The basic âunitâ is the member who voluntarily joins the organization.
Usually a member will be part of a local or industrial group which
freely agrees to join a larger unit at, for instance, the district
level. The district is in turn affiliated to a regional body which is
part of a national and ultimately international federation. The most
local or central group will take those decisions which affect it most
closely and which it is best placed to decide about. Small collectives
might decide how to live and work together â this will have small impact
outside. A district commune might decide on the location of a new
medical centre but the damming of a river, which has much wider
consequences, would have to be agreed upon by a group of communes, with
all interests represented. Each part of society, which is, of course,
the individuals comprising that society, can influence the orientation
of the whole, its goals and methods. Should a group disagree with
decisions reached, it has the right to withdraw from the process and its
affiliation with the whole. However, if it has participated in the
decision-making process, to quote Malatesta again, it has a duty âto
take no action which is contrary to the accepted programâ so long as it
remains within the boundaries of the whole: whether organization,
commune or federation.
For a federal system to operate in an anarchist fashion, there must be
the greatest possible degree of involvement by members, free
communication and checks on the development of either âleadersâ or
âfunctionariesâ, for instance through rotation of all representational
positions, the regular and extraordinary recall of delegates or
âofficialsâ, and a ban on permanent postings. Strictly speaking, in both
anarchist organizations and societies, there will be no âofficialâ or
âformalâ positions and no âofficialsâ to occupy them. Each part of
organization and society represents itself directly through mass media
accessible to all with an interest, and through temporary delegates,
sometimes elected, sometimes chosen by lot. In the end, however, the
health of any organization will be dependent on and ultimately reflect
the enthusiasm and commitment of those who comprise it.
Not only anarchist organizations but anarchist societies would operate
on a federal basis. Society would be a âhoney-combâ or âlatticeâ or
inter-connected groups, collectives and communes, sometimes making
decisions for themselves (but sharing information about the decisions
with others), sometimes joining with other groups to make joint
decisions and carry out joint activities. Each group would have the
right to self-determination in respect of itâs own affairs and also the
right to secede from the whole in extreme circumstances. The basic
social grouping would probably be the neighbourhood commune (for
decisions affecting all who live in a particular area) and the affinity
group (for those who work together or otherwise co-operate). These would
voluntarily federate to a wider body, perhaps regional or provincial (in
the former case) or as a federation or association (in the latter).
Delegates from the groups and communes would deal with issues that
required the co-operation of more people or other communes. There would
be a natural limit to the complexity of this form of organization since,
at a certain level or beyond a certain point, co-operation ceases to be
more effective than at local levels.
Federalism is a straightforward form of organization which combines the
maximum individual and local freedom and autonomy with collective
decisions. It permits planning on a wide scale through negotiation,
co-operation and mutual agreement, whether planning is being done by a
group of anarchists or a complete anarchist society. Federalism, with
its vital right to secession, safeguards all minorities from potential
majorities, even anarchist ones! However though an ideal picture,
federalism alone cannot create or preserve a free society. It must be
combined with the elimination of centralized power, hierarchy, authority
and inequality. Where these are preserved, freedom is a sham and any
federation entirely bogus, a fact that would be revealed as soon as one
group challenged or opposed another. In theory, the old Soviet Union was
a federation of republics which enjoyed the right of secession. In
reality it was probably the most centralized of twentieth century
nations. The federal structure of Yugoslavia was similarly bogus. When
the central authority failed, as it did in the 1990s, local nationalisms
and ethnic rivalries re-emerged and the pseudo-federations
disintegrated, with disastrous consequences. Any such federation based
on group, social or national inequalities, and which involves none of
the essential features of the anarchist vision, can form the basis of
anarchist organization nor complete the task of revolution. It is the
task of revolutionary anarchists and the working class to create it.
INTERNATIONALISM is the solidarity of revolutionaries across national
boundaries, Is a key part of working class struggle. The last two
hundred years or so has seen national states glorifying patriotism and
nationalism. As a tool of social control it has been very effective,
indeed millions of people have sacrificed their lives for the national
cause.
The First and Second World Wars are just the clearest examples of a
continual process of aggression carried out by nation states against
their rivals.
As Leninist âcommunismâ has collapsed all over the world, the
ideological gap has been to a large extent filled by nationalism. This
is carried to an absurd degree in countries like the former Yugoslavia,
where statelet confronts statelet, all in the name of national pride and
selfâdetermination. Yet this nationalism which has been so powerful in
the 20^(th) Century goes against the whole development of capitalism. If
nothing else, capitalism is internationalist, at least as far as the
major corporations are concerned. These enterprises are huge, employ
hundreds of thousands of workers in several countries and often possess
capital in excess of some of the worldâs second rank nations. Firms like
ICI, Exxon, General Motors, Coca Cola, Sony etc., whilst being based
within nation states, owe no country loyalty. Their goal is growth and
increased profits. They are unwilling to be held back by mere national
governments. Partly in recognition of this fact of capitalist life and
partly to secure the domination of the worldâs markets, once again major
imperialist rivalries are beginning to emerge. NAFTA, the EC, and the
courting by Japan of countries around the Pacific Rim, are all aimed at
securing domination of the worldâs markets.
For these reasons alone, it is vital that the revolutionary working
class movement looks for unity. However, workersâ internationalism is
not simply a response to the international threat of capitalism.
Internationalism dates back to the 19^(th) Century, especially to the
formation of the International Workingmenâs (sic) Association (The First
International). There was a recognition of the need for international
revolution and thus the necessity of an internationallyâorganised
revolutionary movement. Despite the cynical manipulation of socialists
such as Marx, who preferred to wreck the First International rather than
let it fall under the influence of the anarchist, and the patriotism and
chauvinism displayed by the social democratic parties which wrecked the
Second International on the eve of the Great War, internationalism has
been a continuing threat. Leninâs Third Internationalism was a tool of
the Bolsheviks, becoming under Stalin a shameless conveyor belt for
Soviet foreign policy.
These pseudoâinternationalisms do not invalidate the necessity of
international solidarity, they make it all the more vital. Unlike
capitalism which seeks conformity on a world scale â Big Macs and Pepsi
from New York to Beijingâ internationalism welcomes and supports the
diversities of peoples. It is anti-racist and advocates a unity based on
the recognition and celebration of our differences and similarities.
Internationalism is a positive statement about the solidarity of all
exploited and oppressed working people. Internationalism is also a
tactical device to enable the revolutionary working class to overthrow
capitalism. If capitalism is internationalist, so must be the working
class. Given the wide differences in economic development between
nations, it would be surprising to find revolution breaking out on a
world scale simultaneously. No, far more likely will be revolution
occurring within the national boundaries. Then, international solidarity
becomes vital to defend the isolated revolution and to spread it onto a
wider a wider scale.
We should not fall into the trap believing that revolutions must
necessarily succumb to the forces of world imperialism. Just because the
USA, for example, has a vast arsenal at its disposal does not mean that
it can use it, or that if used, it can be effective. The example of the
USAâs inability to defeat the warlord Aideed in impoverished Somalia is
an example of the limitations of armed intervention. So the young
working class revolution, even if initially restricted to one or two
countries has a good chance of success, if there is international
working class support. Such support might include strikes, boycotts and
agitation for revolution on âhome frontâ. Finally, internationalism is
not only means to the end of revolution. It is an end in itself, in the
sense that national barriers and parochialism will be broken down. There
will be an international federation of peoples. For the first time the
world will belong to noâone and everyone.
Long live the International!
THE ISSUE OF VIOLENCE within the anarchist movement has long been
controversial. The early anarchist movement associated with Michael
Bakunin was openly insurrectionary and the anarchist communists of the
late 19^(th) century regarded acts of terror against oppressors as
perfectly legitimate. Kropotkin, Malatesta, Most and others enthused
over acts of âpropaganda by the deedâ. This idea stressed the importance
of exemplary actions like strikes, occupations of public buildings etc,
by small groups of revolutionaries that would ignite an already
revolutionary situation. It very quickly turned into the idea of
determined individuals carrying out individual attacks on kings,
presidents and capitalists. Given the severe repression in many European
and South American countries (for example France after the bloody
crushing of the Paris Commune) and where open activity was difficult,
this was understandable. The State, through the media, was able to so
closely associate violence with anarchism that the two ideas became
almost interchangeable in the public mind, to the detriment of the
movement. Today there are many soâcalled anarchists who reject the whole
revolutionary tradition. So, how should revolutionary anarchists
approach the issue?
The first point to make is that it is states acting in defence of
privilege and exploitation that practice violence on a large scale. The
assassination of heads of state pales into insignificance in contrast to
the normal, everyday actions of the state. In a real sense, States are
organised violence. The armed forces, police, prisons and so on are
institutional forms of violence used to protect the status quo. And the
status quo is in itself violence for it means mass poverty,
homelessness, poor health and despair. Should anyone question this
legalised everyday terror they are met with the full repressive fist of
the State.
And states are not content to inflict violence on their subject
populations, but relish the opportunity to apply it to other peoples.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perhaps the most horrific
examples of this. Some leaders, such as Hitler and Stalin, excelled in
murdering millions at home and abroad. Set against such horrific, mass
violence comitted by states, the bomb throwers and revolutionaries of
history must be seen for what they were -heroic, if misguided people
actinng in selfâdefence against ânormalâ state violence. With the
exception of pacifists, most people accept selfâdefence as legitimate.
To defend oneself or oneâs family from attack is readily understood and
accepted. To defend an oppressed and exploited class (of which we
ourselves are part) is just an extension of this principle. To use
appropriate and measured violence against the very embodiment of
violence which is the state, is no more than to launch a counterâattack.
A violent insurrection or general strike must be seen in these terms â
legitimate, justified and necessary self-defence against the monster of
the capitalist state. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge this necessarily
accepts the ârightâ of the capitalist state to devour us.
A key point however, needs to be considered, namely that individual acts
of violence, however well intentioned, justified by anger, poverty or
despair are generally counter productive. Individual terror and group
conspiracies are quite easily containable by the State. Rather than
inspiring the masses to insurrection, they have generally appalled them,
especially given the huge propaganda machines available to oppressors.
Revolutionary mass violence is, however, a different thing if it
expresses a determination to overthrow exploitation and oppression. And
it takes various forms. The seizure of workplaces, banks and other
property is inherently violent since it forcibly removes their
possession from the owners. To not do so would be to capitulate to the
system of exploitation. Anarchist revolutionaries defend every method
used by the oppressed against the enemy from peaceful and legal protest
up to and including violent uprising. Violence as a goal in itself is
unjustified and indeed in revolutionary situations working class people
have tended to shrink from its use. Not so the State, which if it
secures victory in any particular phase of the class struggle, unleashes
mass terror against itâs enemies, the people. Anyone doubting this
should look at the aftermaths of the Paris Commune in the 1870s or the
Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
Revolutionary violence is the clear expression of the massesâ refusal to
continue any longer with the old ways. Sometimes, however, determined
minorities, often inspired by MarxistâLeninism, have managed to seize
control of such movements for their own ends. The 0ctober Revolution of
1917 led to the creation of one of the worldâs most brutal states. This
mistake must not be repeated. Either the revolution is about smashing
the State once and for all or it merely brings about another form of
oppression
During the last ten years, the working class worldwide has been subject
to everâincreasing attacks. Mass unemployment is now seen as ânormalâ by
those unaffected by it, inevitable or a product of âdevelopmentâ. There
has been a large redistribution wealth from the poor to the rich,
leaving millions in a state of near destitution. Exceptionally
regressive taxes have driven millions into a hand to mouth existence.
State inspired racist violence is common in some parts of our cities.
Given this context, is it surprising that we have had outbursts of
nearâinsurrectionary violence? The Poll Tax riot in Trafalgar Square was
a clear and welcome expression of class anger, as were the âhit squadsâ
which immobilised vehicles and stood up to the police during the lengthy
minersâ strike of 1984â85. When black people form selfâdefense groups
against racist attacks, they are justified. When demonstrators retaliate
against police provocations they are justified. When a whole class rises
up against the State and Capitalism, it is justified.
When we read accounts of people suffering often horrible deaths in the
struggle for life â butchered by war lords, starving in isolated
settlements, dying of disease in urban shanties â perhaps those who
condemn revolutionary violence will start to think more clearly.
Capitalism and the State arenât going to go away or be reformed. They
need to be destroyed, and unfortunately violence by the working class is
almost certainly a necessary ingredient in this process.
ANARCHISTS HAVE LONG been associated with mindless violence in popular
images. We can see The Secret Agent on television and often read of
âriots lead by anarchistsâ in newspapers. So what have anarchists done
to deserve this? The ruling class have always used âanarchistâ as a term
of abuse, even before the anarchist movement arose in the 19^(th)
century. Todayâs rulers never miss an opportunity to slander us either.
But anarchists are not entirely without blame. Towards the end of the
last century many anarchists became impatient with the slow results o
âpropaganda by the wordâ and developed the theory of âpropaganda by the
deedâ. At first this was understood as the action of determined groups
of revolutionaries by demonstrations, insurrections and other forms of
collective direct action to ignite an already potentially revolutionary
situation. But in later decades it became identified with individual
assassinations. It was thought that if anarchist militants took an
active lead and physically attacked members of the ruling class the
working class would be inspired to revolution.
This theory was a total disaster. It left perhaps 20 prominent leaders
(who were easily replaced) dead, and the whole anarchist movement
severely damaged. Governments were given an excuse to pass repressive
laws aimed at smashing the workersâ movement and to whip up
antiâanarchist hysteria. The Russian anarchist communist Kropotkin, who
had been a staunch defender of these tactics was one of the first to
realise that they were mistaken. In a series of articles in 1890 he
stated that: âOne must be with the people, who no longer want isolated
acts, but want men (sic) of action inside their ranks.â He went on to
warn against: âthe illusion that one can defeat the coalition of
exploiters with a few pounds of explosivesâ. It is clear that as a means
towards social revolution, terrorism is a nonâstarter. If this is the
case, then why do terrorist groups exist today?
Obviously the obvious answer is that the terrorists of today are not
interested in social revolution. Most are involved in ,national
liberationâ struggles, are marxistâleninists or both. They are usually
authoritarian vanguardists of the worst kind. In their own terms these
groups are occasionally successful, that is they âliberateâ a country or
establish a new dictatorship called âsocialismâ. Anarchists should have
no time for these wouldâbe bosses of tomorrow. Yet terrorism still holds
a fascination for some people who would consider themselves anarchists.
These range from the cheerleaders, often seen sporting the teeâshirt of
their favourite terrorist group, to the action men who think we should
take up armed struggle now. Much of this can be explained by impatience
and a lack of understanding of what social revolution means. To create
an anarchist communist society working class people must destroy the
current power structure and take power into their own hands. Terrorist
groups do nothing to further this aim. Being a small armed elite they
take on the role of a vanguard which will solve peopleâs problems for
them. Anarchists should be able to see the flaws in any group which has
the arrogance to think it can solve the worldâs problems by itself. At
the very least this can lead to further divisions within the working
class â between the terrorist leaders and the passive followers. Instead
of encouraging people to think and act for themselves, terrorists seek
to control struggles for their own ends. As Gerry Adams, the president
of Sinn Fein said, âThis is a special message for young people â no
hijackings, no joyriding, no stone throwing at the Brits. If you want to
do these things, there are organisations to do it for you.â Even
terrorist groups which claim to be anarchist cannot escape from their
vanguardist nature. An âanarchistâ from the June 2^(nd) Movement in West
Germany argued â...analysis of imperialism tells us that the struggles
no longer start in the metropolis, itâs no longer a matter of the
working class but whatâs needed is a vanguard in the metropolis that
declares its solidarity, with the liberation movements of the Third
Worldâ. This is hardly putting forward a libertarian communist position.
The work of revolutionaries is to clarify and coâordinate struggles as a
part of the working class. In nonârevolutionary periods anarchist
communists will be a conscious minority with âthe leadership of ideasâ.
We must always be pushing for struggles to go as far as possible and be
linked up with other movements. However, we should never let ourselves
overâestimate our own importance and we should never forget that when
revolutions do break out revolutionary organisations are often taken by
surprise. Another question which must he addressed when looking at
terrorism is the use of violence. By planting bombs in public places
terrorists again show their arrogance and a disturbing contempt for
human life. In any bombing campaign whether by air force, car bomb or
parcel bomb, there will inevitably be civilian casualties (or collateral
damage if the bombing was done by an air force). Whilst this will
provide no problem for the authoritarians of governments and terrorist
governments in waiting, for revolutionaries this is unacceptable. We
reject the random violence of terrorists but we are not pacifists
either.
For us, the old violent tactics/nonâviolent tactics are falsely
polarised. Many activities involving mass action do not involve
violence, whilst others do. Large demonstrations and strikes can often
turn to violence and we should accept the need for selfâ defense. Groups
like the hit squads arising from the miners strike are genuine
expressions of working class resistance. It would be foolish to sit in
ivory towers of idealistic principles condemning this.
As anarchists we must constantly fight in all areas of life to advance
the revolutionary process. At times we will need to defend ourselves
against the violence of our enemies. But no matter how hard the struggle
is, or how frustrated we are in failure, we must never forget old
declaration: âthe emancipation of workers must he brought about by the
workers themselvesâ. Elitist groups of any kind can only be a hindrance
to this.