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Title: Organising against Capitalism
Author: Andrew Flood
Date: 1997
Language: en
Topics: anti-capitalism, Organizing, Red & Black Revolution
Source: Retrieved on 8th August 2021 from http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr3_organise.html
Notes: This article was originally published in Red & Black Revolution no. 3.

Andrew Flood

Organising against Capitalism

Over the last few years I have taken part in many forums which have

discussed the collapse of the left, the changes in capitalism and the

need for a new opposition. Not all of these have been exclusively

anarchist, I attended the ‘Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and

Against Neoliberalism’ organised by the Zapatistas in Chiapas in the

summer of 1996 for instance, but most have been held by anarchists in

Britain or Ireland. A common feature of these events is a recognition

that everything has changed in the last decade, that many of yesterday’s

answers are discredited today and that there is a need for the

construction of a new movement. Such discussions cannot remain on the

theoretical level, we must start to put these ideas into practice in

building a new anti-capitalist movement.

Seven years ago the Berlin wall came down, bringing to a definitive end

the period of history begun by the Russian revolution in 1917. Since the

1950’s this was known as the Cold War. To supporters of the Western

status quo the end of this period was a signal that history had ended.

Not in the sense that nothing interesting would ever happen again but

rather that the most perfect model of society had been found and tested

in the form of the ‘western democracies’. Now it was only a question of

allowing time for the rest of the world to catch up. The future was rosy

since the ‘peace dividend’ along with the new markets and productive

capacity of eastern Europe would usher in a new era of prosperity.

Five years ago the peace dividend collapsed with the ‘war’ against Iraq.

A war that was no more than a high tech light show for western viewers,

but which led to the loss of up to 200,000 [1] relatives and friends for

those in Iraq. Parallel to this, civil war was brewing in Yugoslavia,

and the economies of eastern Europe were collapsing, resulting in

widespread poverty, civil war and — particularly for the old — a

dramatically reduced life expectancy. The ‘New World Order’ that was

coming into being, we were assured, would indeed introduce global

prosperity but first some belt tightening and the removal of ‘new

Hitlers’ was required. This of course required the maintenance of a

strong military!

Three years ago this ‘New World Order’ received its first real

resistance when rebellion [2] broke out in one of its show pieces of

improvement and modernisation. Mexico was a ‘model’ of how developing

countries which started to move from a state led to a free market

economy could also reach the ‘end of history’ and join the first world.

The Zapatista rising blew away this smoke screen to reveal an end of

history that excluded most of Mexico’s population. The period since has

been scattered with examples of capitalism not only failing to provide

for people’s needs but, more importantly, people recognising this and

organising on a mass scale against it. This resistance has spread to the

very western countries which were supposed to have moved beyond the need

for the population to take to the streets to oppose the state. History,

we have learnt, is not over yet.

Dead and buried

State socialism has died as an attractive alternative to anyone, that

much is a welcome truth. The need for an alternative to capitalism

continues to be strong. Supporters of state socialism have become

dwindling cadres of various Leninist groups, ‘New’ social democrats

indistinguishable from conservatives and the occasional dinosaur whose

brain has yet to recognise that there is a difference between

sloganeering about ‘socialism from below’ and actually organising in

such a manner. The end of these organisations — which mostly served as

barriers to workers organising themselves — is welcome, but there is a

price to pay. The weakness of libertarian ideas in Britain and Ireland

means the possibility of an alternative to capitalism died with these

fake ‘alternatives’ in the minds of many activists. This is not terminal

but the message that alternatives to capitalism, other than the state

run (non-) alternatives that were on offer, exist will have to be widely

spread.

Another legacy of the domination of the authoritarian left is that we

are left with a tradition of working class struggle being almost

immediately tied to a particular political organisation. Workplace

struggles, for instance, take place through the organisational

structures of the trade unions but the left, rather than encourage

self-activity in economic struggle and the extension of this

self-activity to the political arena, have instead sought to tie the

unions to the Labour party. This is of course just a reflection of the

left’s strategy on the economic level which, instead of encouraging

workers to take direct control of their struggles, have instead directed

the attention of militants towards electing left wing bureaucrats to run

the union on ‘their’ behalf.

This pattern extends outside the workplace as well, in Britain in recent

years we have seen an often obscene struggle between different left

groups as to who can control working class militancy against fascism and

racism. Campaign after campaign arises that pretends to be independent

but on examination is obviously controlled by one organisation alone.

Even where joint work occurs, large amounts of energy may be squandered

in attempts to control the decision making structures of campaigns. Many

activists have become demoralised and then exhausted by these

bureaucratic squabbles.

The party and the class

This pattern of organisation occurred because the key thing for the

authoritarian left was the relative strength of their organisation and

not the level of self-activity of the class or even the strength of the

class. Historical and current defeats of the working class were analysed

as being due to the absence of a strong enough vanguard that was

equipped with the right slogans, rather than due to a weakness of

self-organisation and a reliance on minority leadership by the class. An

excellent recent example of this logic was provided by Tony Cliff, the

leader of one of the surviving Leninist groups, the British Socialist

Workers Party. In 1993 mass demonstrations took place all over Britain

aimed at preventing the Tories closing the remaining coal mines. These

demonstrations however remained firmly under the control of union

bureaucrats and Labour MPs with workers playing the role of a stage army

to be marched up and down hills under their control.

To the SWP though, the weakness of this movement was that they did not

have enough members to control it. As its leader, Tony Cliff, said at

the time

“If we had 15,000 members in the SWP and 30,000 supporters the 21

October miners’ demonstration could have been different. Instead of

marching round Hyde Park socialists could have taken 40 or 50,000 people

to parliament. If that had happened the Tory MPs wouldn’t have dared to

vote with Michael Heseltine. The government would have collapsed.”[3]

This sort of logic, which can only see the strength of the struggles of

the working class in terms of the strength of the party, is precisely

the same logic that kept Leninists defending policies they knew to be

rubbish year after year. It was what kept Communist Parties all over the

world together as the Russian tanks rolled over the working class of

Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968. To go further back again

it was what caused the Workers’ Opposition [4] , in the process of being

purged from the Bolshevik Party in 1921, to be to the forefront of

attacking the revolutionaries who had risen in Kronstadt. This despite

the fact that these sailors they were massacring had a programme far

more in common with their platform than that of Lenin and Trotsky, who

directed the massacres!

This is putting the party first, so well described by Trotsky in 1921

when he rounded on the Workers’ Opposition declaring

“They have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of

democratic principles. They have placed the workers’ right to elect

representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not entitled to

assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed

with the passing moods of the workers’ democracy !”. [5]

This is the logic behind the decades of sabotage of working class

struggles by Leninists, justified by the recruiting of a few extra

people into the party. This is also why gaining positions of power is so

central to Leninist doctrine, so that through these positions they can

control struggles — even if they lose popularity within them.

With the attraction of ‘actually existing socialism’ or ‘degenerated

workers’ states’ consigned to the dustbin of history, many Leninists

have reconsidered their position and abandoned Leninism. Indeed it seems

just about everywhere discussion groups have formed made up of

ex-members of Leninist and Social-democratic organisations trying to

sketch out a new left. So far these initiatives have tended to run

around in circles or to partially re-invent the wheel. Few appear to

have considered anarchism seriously as having already answered, at least

in part, many of the ‘new’ questions they are now puzzling over.

Sometimes because they have judged anarchism on the poor state of the

local movement, but commonly due to a combination of a fear of breaking

with the last idol, Marx, alongside a failure to understand that the

organisational purpose of anarchist groups is completely different in

aim and content to that with which they are familiar. If you are

familiar with an organisational practice that constantly seeks to take

things over then the anarchist method of organisation can seem worse

than useless.

Anarchist organisations exist not to obtain leading positions in the

organisations of the working class, but rather to achieve influence for

anarchist ideas. From this point of view there is absolutely no point in

loyalty towards an organisation whose ideas you do not agree with. The

anarchist organisation should seek neither to absorb the whole class

under its leadership nor to simply become the class by recruiting every

worker regardless of their understanding of anarchism. Rather our

organisation(s) need to be nuclei for anarchist ideas and organisation

that will be active in all the struggles of our class and so carry these

ideas into and between these struggles. Our aim must not be the creation

of one big anarchist organisation through which all the struggles of our

class will be conducted, but rather aiding the growth of a tradition of

working class organisation that is based on direct democracy and

independent of all political organisations.

The role of the anarchist organisation is not to compete in the

destructive rat race for control of working class organisations, but

rather to seek to undermine the rat race itself by creating an

alternative tradition of self-organisation of struggles. Such a

tradition cannot be built either through attempting to guide struggles

within anarchist organisations (the classic tradition of

anarcho-syndicalism) or by withdrawing from broad struggles to create

narrow anarchist dominated groups operating on the edges of them.

Anarchists must be wherever workers are entering into struggle,

attempting to influence the direction and organisational strategy of

that struggle towards self-organisation. In practice this means

anarchist organisations must encourage their members to join and become

active in organisations of working class struggle like Trade Unions and

community campaigns despite the fact that we may share nothing in common

with the leadership of these organisations.

The struggle goes on

In recent years a host of grassroots movements have demonstrated not

only that the class struggle is very much alive but, on single issues at

least, capitalism can be defeated. Even in Ireland the struggle against

Water Charges shows the continued power of ordinary people. The December

1995 French strikes against neoliberalism demonstrated the potential for

these struggles to begin to develop an alternative vision of society.

1996 saw mass strikes and demonstrations in Canada, Germany, and parts

of Australia where demonstrators also stormed the parliament building.

If such movements are limited to being protest movements against aspects

of capitalism, they also offer a very positive strategy as they were

based on direct action that frequently took them outside the narrow

confines of protest allowed under capitalism.

Yet it was only France which showed the potential in such struggles for

the growth of anarchism. In the aftermath of the December strikes all

French anarchist groups reported a marked increase in interest in

anarchism and the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-F [6] grew from just over

1,000 members to 6,000 by late summer of 1996. France is also where the

struggle is moving from a defensive to an offensive one, the lorry

drivers’ strike which brought the country to a halt in November of 1996

demanded a lowering of the retirement age and working week. Contacts

with French anarchists since December 1995 have indicated that a new

mood is entering the workers’ movement there, large numbers of people

are talking about different ways of organising society.

In Britain and Ireland [7] however, while anarchists have continued to

play a major role in local struggles throughout the 1990’s, they have

completely failed to break out of the very small circles of activists

they relate to. What is more disturbing in many cases is the lack of

interest in or discussion of doing so. Rather than looking for ways of

winning numbers of people to anarchism, many groups have become content

with providing a service to local struggles on the one hand or on the

other providing commentaries for the left in general on how such

struggles are (or are not) good, bad or indifferent.

In terms of national organisations, of those that existed in 1990 in

Britain and Ireland (WSM [8], Organise!, ACF [9], Sol-Fed/DAM [10],

Class War [11]) none have grown significantly although we can note the

addition of the SFA [12] and the self destruction of the AWG [13].

Excuses of course can be provided, some good, some indifferent but in an

overall sense the complete failure of any of these organisations to win

a significant number of new people to anarchism, despite both the

potential in terms of struggle and the redundancy of the alternatives

has to say something. The fact that the same experience has been

reflected in the USA, Australia and New Zealand underlines that

something, somewhere is badly wrong. The question is what?

Where are we going?

This failure in a period which saw anarchism proved ‘right’ in many

respects should cause anarchists to pause and think. Does it reflect a

fundamental failure in Anarchism, perhaps an inability to deal with the

conditions of the modern world? Or is it something to do with the way we

have been organising over the last few years? If we are serious about

revolutionary change and do not want to be just a permanent protest

movement, we need to confront this question head on. The easy answer of

course is to blame it all on the international circumstances we find

ourselves in, the general swing to the right found throughout society.

According to this perspective the failure of the organised anarchist

movement to grow [14] in the post-Cold War period is due to the lack of

opportunity. Circumstances, which include the collapse of Soviet style

‘socialism’ and the boost this gave to capitalism, mean that very few

people believe there can be an alternative to capitalism. From this

point of view there is little anarchists can do except wait for workers

to enter into mass struggle and re-discover the need for an alternative

to capitalism.

Yet in terms of anarchism a strategy of waiting for ‘the workers’ to

enter into prolonged periods of struggle before expecting large numbers

to become anarchists is deeply flawed. The level of struggle itself

brings things to a head long before this process can be completed as

capitalism, rather than waiting for the revolutionary movement to gather

its strength, will precipitate the revolution by attacking first. This

was what happened in 1936 in Spain when the majority of the capitalists

opted for backing a military coup rather than allowing the anarchists to

continue to gain in numbers and influence. During the Spanish revolution

many anarchists laid their failure to complete the revolution on the not

unreasonable [15] grounds that the anarchists, being a minority [16],

could not make the revolution for fear of creating an ‘anarchist’

dictatorship. If the majority of an organisation of anarcho-syndicalists

with over one million members could feel this unprepared after a couple

of decades in existence as a mass organisation, the suggestion that we

can afford to wait for the next revolutionary wave before growing is

perhaps not the wisest of strategies.

Many of those at the forefront of the struggle in Spain were aware of

this problem, even in the anarchist stronghold of Barcelona on the

outbreak of the revolution. They were aware of how the moment of

revolution is always forced prematurely on revolutionaries rather than

being something they can hold back until the time is ripe

“There was total disorder. We formed a commission and thereafter all

arms were handed only to revolutionary organisations ... 10,000 rifles,

I calculate as well as some machine guns, were taken. That was the

moment when the people of Barcelona were armed; that was the moment, in

consequence, when power fell into the masses’ hands. We of the CNT

hadn’t set out to make the revolution but to defend ourselves, to defend

the working class. To make the social revolution, which needed to have

the whole of the Spanish proletariat behind it, would take another ten

years....but it wasn’t we who chose the moment; it was forced on us by

the military who were making the revolution, who wanted to finish off

the CNT once and for all..” [17]

This is one of the key questions anarchist have to tackle in the

aftermath of the Spanish revolution, for it should be clear that far

from being a combination of exceptional circumstances the environment in

which the revolution took place is typical of the environment all

revolutions have taken place in. Unlike the Leninists we cannot advance

a strategy where a small minority of activists, prepared with the right

ideas before a revolutionary upsurge, can then manoeuvre themselves into

the leadership of such an upsurge. A successful anarchist revolution

requires not only huge numbers of conscious anarchists but also a

massive confidence throughout the working class in its ability to

immediately move to take over the running of the workplaces from the

local to the global level. Such a confidence can only come from

experience of self-managing struggle in the years before the revolution.

Here and now anarchists cannot be content to exist in isolated

propaganda or activist groups but must seek out ways to draw in wider

and wider layers of society.

Playing a waiting game

We could hope for revolutionary periods that last decades but

historically such periods are far shorter and revolutions begin when the

revolutionaries are in a small minority. It seems more sensible to lose

our complacency about being small ‘guardians of the faith’ now, while

awaiting mass upsurge, and look for ways to win over at least a sizeable

and militant minority in the period before the next revolutionary

upsurge. For when it comes we need to have the numbers and confidence to

make sure it does not stop short of overthrowing capitalism but also

goes on to defeat the authoritarian left that will argue for a new

state.

This means organising alongside our class in the here and now, despite

whatever differences we may have with the way unions or community

campaigns are structured. Our role in the unions or community

organisations must be to bring anarchist ideas into them and gain an

audience for these ideas by being the best activists. Anarchist methods

have to be shown to work in people’s day to day lives. We cannot gain

this audience by carping from the outside about flaws in their structure

and refusing to involve ourselves until these flaws are spontaneously

rectified. The authoritarian tradition of organisation will not be

changed by small numbers of activists criticising from outside. Instead

it will be eroded over time if anarchists enter struggles and argue for

different methods of organisation as the opportunities arise.

It is useful to consider why it seems necessary to make these arguments,

ones that should be self-evident. To start answering this question it is

useful to examine the forces that created the anarchist movement in the

English speaking world.

Anarchism re-emerged in the English speaking countries in the post-WWII

period in two forms, one was a kind of liberal radical democracy that

paid lip service to the historical movement and the movement elsewhere

but never really had all that much to do with anarchism. Essentially it

combined a utopian wish for a nicer world with a rejection of any and

all of the methods needed to achieve such a world. It comprised a

minority of those who called themselves anarchists but received the bulk

of the attention of the media because it included a number of prominent

intellectuals.

Secondly there were groups formed by activists who were inspired by

anarchism as a fighting ideology that seemed to avoid the pitfalls of

Leninism. The label ‘class struggle anarchist’ is sometimes used to

distinguish this second set from the liberals above. But because these

groups were a tiny minority in a much larger social democratic or

Leninist left they came to adapt themselves almost completely around the

issues and practices of that left. They tended to define themselves not

in a positive fashion but in a negative one, against some aspect of the

existing left, so they would

seek to build ‘real revolutionary unions’ rather than social

democratic ones

write a funny and aggressive paper rather than a boring and

complaining one

expose the authoritarian practices of the left

not bore people with talking about politics but ‘do stuff’ instead.

Cold War Culture

This is part of the cultural legacy of the Cold War for anarchists, an

attitude where the idea of mass national and international organisations

may get lip service but very little energy or enthusiasm goes into

constructing them. Another legacy is that many anarchists have come

through the destructive mill of Leninist politics and are nervous about

seriously addressing organisational issues in case this is seen as

‘latent’ Leninism.

This culture also arose in part as a reaction, often by ex-members, to

the manipulative practices and authoritarian internal organisation of

the left in general. This also resulted in a tendency to shy away from

anything too closely connected with recruitment, spreading ideas (paper

sales/public meetings) or trying to advocate a strategy for a particular

struggle (as opposed to criticising someone else’s).

This culture was never useful but it is entirely useless for anarchists

today in a situation where there are a vanishingly small number of

authoritarian left outfits to expose or be mistaken for. There is a very

serious need to junk a lot of the prejudices and traditions developed in

the long years under Leninism and initiate a positive, outgoing,

organising and growing movement to take its place. We can no longer be

satisfied with being a ‘pure’ opposition, we must begin to move into a

position where anarchist ideas lead struggles rather than simply

explaining why they are failing or will in the future be sold out.

In Britain it may be said that ‘sure the national organisations have not

grown but locally there are far more anarchists around and involved in

stuff’. This might be true but while these groups may be useful in

aiding struggles they are very limited in building a wider

anti-capitalist movement. Where this is discussed local groups tend to

repeat on a local scale the problems of ‘national’ organisations

(discussed below). This does however raise a second question, why do so

many otherwise active anarchists reject not only the existing national

organisations, but it would appear organisation at the national level

altogether?

A large part of this must be the experience of national organisations,

which in most cases has been negative. There is a sharp tendency in many

countries for national organisations to become little more than

propaganda groups which criticise but are seldom seen as doing anything,

while local groups become the centre for activity but seldom manage to

develop strategies for promoting anarchism. So while national

organisations are associated with sectarian feuding, at least local

organisations are seen as doing something, even if that ‘something’

isn’t particularly coherent. This division is disastrous as it separates

theory and action into two separate spheres and commonly two separate

and mutually suspicious sets of people. It is impossible to build a

movement on this basis and until organisations arise that are capable of

bringing together theory and action such groups that exist will be

condemned to continuing irrelevance.

Make love not war

This conflict is also avoidable. While there is a clear and pressing

need for coherent national (and international) organisations, this in no

way precludes anarchists coming together on a geographical basis to work

on common projects. In fact local co-operation between organisations

with political differences would seem to be essential in preventing or

overcoming sectarianism. There are many projects that need considerable

resources but don’t require more then a minimum of political agreement,

for instance the opening and running of centres and bookshops, that will

obviously benefit from such co-operation and indeed, in areas where

anarchism is weak, cannot take place without it. Likewise joint activity

around campaigns will commonly be possible and make the anarchist input

very much stronger. The holding of regional gatherings of anarchists can

only help the flow of information.

Almost everyone’s experience of first encountering the left is to find

the divisions and rows that go on frustrating and puzzling. ‘Why can’t

everyone just come together and be more effective?’ is a common plea of

newcomers. With time you understand that many of the differences are

actually important, and indeed from the perspective of vanguard

organisations it is a central part of their politics to see similar

organisations as the biggest problem because they are ‘false prophets’.

Anarchists have been influenced by this practise too but it is entirely

nonsensical for us. Where we disagree we are competing on the terrain of

ideas alone, we are not competing for leadership positions in working

class organisations. So adopting the sectarianism of the vanguardists

towards each other is suicidal and has to be overcome. As long as

anarchist groups are on the fringes of society this sort of behaviour is

likely to continue. It’s both a product of and a cause of being on the

fringe. But revolutionary change requires that we move into the centre

of society.

The anarchist organisation(s) has to become a centre for struggle in

today’s society. In this way, although it may not be possible to win a

majority of workers, it should be the case that a very large minority

have either worked alongside or in anarchist organisations and so a

large minority have experience of libertarian practice and know it can

work. The organisation needs to not just preach the need for social

revolution but organise the fight against the day to day grind of

capitalism now.

This implies an organisation quite different from any that currently

exist. The advantage of the syndicalist method is that, where it can be

applied, it results in an organisation that is based very much on day to

day struggles in the workplace or, at a more advanced stage, in the

community. If the limitations [18] of anarcho-syndicalism have caused us

to reject it as an adequate organisational tool, this should not prevent

us from recognising its strength in creating genuine, mass, grassroots

organisations.

Stop and think

Let us stop for a moment and consider what level of organisation we’re

talking of. We mean not only activists on every street and in every

workplace but social centres in every neighbourhood, weekly or even

daily papers with circulations in the tens or hundreds of thousands,

radio stations.... and all this of sufficient strength to resist the

state oppression that will come before the revolution. It must have

activists who are known and trusted in all the struggles occurring

throughout the class.

What is the role of our organisations instead of being social clubs or

talking shops? That role must be to become a ‘leadership of ideas’

within the struggles and organisation of the working class. That is for

the organisation to gain the credibility and acceptance, so that when it

speaks people listen and seriously consider what it has to say. At the

moment, particular individuals within a group often succeed in doing

this on an individual level by becoming known as a ‘good head’, with

whom it is worth talking to about a new situation in a struggle. This

may give a certain local influence to that individual, but it does not

give a wider influence to the organisation, or lead people to realise

that it is anarchism as a set of ideas that is worth looking at as the

motivation of this ‘good head’.

If the organisation hopes to influence the struggles and ideas in the

class, it must speak with an agreed voice. This idea was put forward in

the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists as the need

for “Tactical and Theoretical Unity”.

Because it is difficult to talk of a leadership of ideas because of the

negative connection most anarchists draw between the word leadership and

authoritarian politics, I want to explain the term and then move onto

discussing a practical example of what this means in practice.

Bourgeois politics is based around the concept of the ‘leadership of

position’. This means that you get to a particular position and, because

you are in this position, you then get to implement your ideas. The

position may be that of a politician or a union bureaucrat but the basic

idea remains the same, the position gives you power over people. In

fact, once in power you don’t even have to pay any attention to those

you claim to represent. It is not unusual for this sort of leader to

claim some sort of special understanding which the people he represents

lack because they lack the time or information to form this judgement.

Obviously anarchists completely reject this form of leadership.

However Leninists deliberately confuse this form of leadership with a

second form, that of the ‘leadership of ideas’, into the general term

‘leadership’.[19] Many anarchists make the mistake of accepting this

deliberate confusion and so end up rejecting or feeling uncomfortable

with the idea of becoming a ‘leadership of ideas’ [20]. This is the

source of confusion, not just in politics, but also on more general

questions like that of the role of specialists in the workplace (e.g.

surgeons, architects etc.).

What the leadership of ideas means is not that the organisation holds

any special position but rather that it has built up a record of being

‘right’ or ‘sensible’ so people are inclined to take its advice

seriously and act on it. Its power lies solely in its ability to

convince people. But obviously to develop such a reputation, it must be

able to speak with a common voice in its publications and at strategy

meetings. Otherwise, although individuals may develop this reputation

the organisation cannot!

Follow the leader?

So why do we need to develop organisations that are seen as a

‘leadership of ideas’? There are two answers to this. The first is that

it is a bad thing for this development to take place at the individual

level as it tends to lead to informal cults of the individual.

The second though is more profound. The world is a big place, if we ever

hope to see an anarchist revolution we will require to be able to

address the majority of the population with libertarian ideas. It’s

unlikely the capitalist media will ever allow any individual the sort of

media access this would require (and, even if they did, this — for the

reasons outlined above — would not be a good thing). So this is going to

have to be achieved on an organisational basis.

There are two reasons for joining an organisation. The first is to meet

like minded people and in the end tends to result in a small

organisation that consists of a circle of friends (and feuding

partners). The second is because you believe that the organisation is

trying to achieve what you are trying to achieve, that the parts of it

you can’t see (because of geographical separation or just complexity)

will act in a similar way to how you will act, that in the event of a

crisis you will then be part of a large number of people acting in a

common way on the basis of prior agreement. All these require tactical

and theoretical unity.

The main misunderstanding which arises from discussion of the need for

theoretical and tactical unity is that an organisation which has such

agreement will consider itself to hold the ‘true’ ideas of anarchism and

all others as heretics. It’s not hard to see where this idea emerges

from, again from the culture of the left and the 57 feuding brands of

Leninism. But for anarchists such an attitude has to be impermissible.

It is also obviously incompatible with the role of the organisation I

argued for earlier — that of being a nucleus of ideas and activists

within the struggles of the working class rather than something which

seeks to become the formal leadership of the class.

A final area of controversy around this idea is the surrender of

individual sovereignty it entails. The original ‘Platformists’ talked

about this as a “Collective responsibility” the organisation shared for

the action of its activists. Alongside this is the responsibility of

activists to implement the decisions of the organisation even where they

clashed with their own views on this matter. Some anarchists see this as

being akin to the organisational discipline required by many Leninists

where party members are required to give the party a “monopoly of their

political activity” and follow “democratic centralism”.

Of course there are similarities but there are also similarities with

respecting a picket line even if you voted against the strike. In fact

every day in our lives we voluntarily adhere to a “collective

responsibility”, when we share cooking or holiday arrangements with

others, or even settle on going to a pub we are not all that keen on

because that’s where our friends want to drink! Doing things that are

not your first preference are pretty much part of all social

interactions, the only way to avoid this in any society would be to live

the life of a hermit.

Follow the Party?

What makes these decisions different and acceptable to us is in fact

what separates “collective responsibility” from “party discipline”. The

first and most important of these is that we have an equal say in how

these decisions are reached. In the anarchist organisation all have an

equal say and vote in defining the organisation’s position through

conference discussions or mandated delegates. In the Leninist

organisation the closest you get to this is getting some sort of vote on

which party leader tells you what to do [21]. Secondly, in the anarchist

organisation the nature of this discipline is voluntary in the sense

that members should be free to leave organisations they disagree with

and join ones they agree with without being regarded as “class traitors”

(readers will be aware of how Leninist groups relate to each other)

[22]. A third difference is that members would be free to carry on

whatever activity they were interested in providing it did not

contradict the agreed policy of their organisation, rather than having

their political activity monopolised by the party leadership.

Many of the readers of this article may find themselves agreeing with

the sort of organisational structure and principles it outlines. But

this is not written merely as a set of ideas to be thought about and

then laid aside. If you agree with the core ideas presented here then

you have a responsibility to start to put these into action by searching

out others who also agree and taking the first steps in building such

organisation(s). It is my experience that many of the anarchists I have

met are completely selfless when it comes to putting themselves in

exposed physical positions in the struggles of our class, it is time to

put the same sort of energy into building anarchist organisations that

can re-define the traditions of working class struggle and prepare for a

successful revolution.

[1] This casualty figure is the maximum estimate for actual war deaths I

have seen. It is a sign of the continued acceptance of the rationale

behind the war in the West that no-one actually seems to either know or

care how many died on the Iraqi side, or that perhaps 500,000 Iraqi

children have died since the end of the war due to the combined effects

of destruction at the time of the war and sanctions since.

[2] The EZLN rising of 1 Jan. 1994 in Chiapas; see Red & Black

Revolution No. 1 for an analysis of the Zapatistas.

[3] Quoted in ‘The SWP and the Crisis of British Capitalism’, 1992

[4] A faction within the Bolshevik party that was based on the unions

and demanded a return to some workplace democracy. The main result was

that factions were then banned in the Party!

[5] R.V. Daniels ‘The Conscience of the Revolution’ Pp. 145–6

[6] This is split into two sections, the section with its HQ in Paris

was expelled from the IWA-AIT at its December 1996 Congress.

[7] This article is referring to the anarchist movement in Britain and

Ireland except where I state otherwise. This is the area where I am very

familiar with the internal life of organised anarchism but from what I

am told similar problems apply in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

These countries all share a common tradition of union and political

organising, dominated by struggles for the leadership of the movement

and where self-organisation of struggle has seldom progressed beyond a

slogan.

[8] Workers Solidarity Movement (publishers of Red & Black Revolution)

[9] Anarchist Communist Federation

[10] British section of the IWA, now called Solidarity Federation,

formerly the Direct Action Movement

[11] Although including Class War in a listing of national anarchist

organisations is problematical as they keep changing their minds about

whether they are or are not anarchists.

[12] Scottish Federation of Anarchists

[13] The Anarchist Workers Group which self-destructed in 1992 when it

abandoned anarchism, changed its name to Socialism from Below and then

vanished.

[14] There has been an increase in interest in anarchism as a set of

ideas but in English language countries this has not translated into a

significant growth in organisation.

[15] Not unreasonable in the context of syndicalism where either the

union is capable of taking over the economy on its own or it is not. In

terms of non-syndicalist anarchist politics, however, the idea of

completing the revolution on a non-syndicalist basis through the

creation of other organs of workers’ self-management was open. By 1937 a

sizeable minority of the CNT were willing to explore this possibility in

the form of a revolutionary junta elected (and recallable) by the CNT

and CGT workers.

[16] The CNT had about one million members at the start of the

revolution, this may have risen as high as two million by 1937.

[17] CNT textile worker Andreu Capdevila, quoted in ‘Blood of Spain’

P.72

[18] See the article Syndicalism: Its strengths and weaknesses in Red &

Black Revolution No. 1

[19] Which is why we must be careful not to imagine that the Leninist

concept of democratic centralism, which means no more than

democratically selecting who gets to decide party policy, has anything

in common with the anarchist concept of theoretical and tactical unity.

[20] Bakunin discussed the difference in the two forms as being two

different forms of meaning of the word authority; i.e. to be an

authority on something as opposed to being in authority over something.

[21] In practice, though, this selection is fixed through mechanisms

like the use of slates. Leninist groups are infamous for having the same

leader ‘elected’ again and again until he dies and the organisation then

splits!

[22] In fact, as usual, we can observe that the Leninists have adopted

the methods of capitalist organisation on this issue, with a division

between those who make decisions and those who carry them out whereas

collective responsibility models the future anarchist society, where

those making the decisions will be all of those effected by those

decisions (workers’ self-management in the economic context).