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Title: What is Anarchism? Author: Anarchist Federation Language: en Topics: introductory, anarcho-communism, class struggle Source: Retrieved on 5th October 2021 from http://afed.org.uk/about/what-is-anarchism/
Anarchism is a set of revolutionary ideas that are, at root, very
simple. Anarchists believe that we are all quite capable of looking
after ourselves. No leader can know what you need better than you do. No
government can represent the interests of a community better than the
community itself. We believe that everyone should have the option to
take part in decisions that affect them, wherever they take place. Only
in this way can we have a fair and just society in which everyone has
the chance to fulfil themselves. Everything in anarchist ways of
thinking follows from this basic principle.
For anarchists, taking back control over our own lives is the
revolution. We see two ways of working as being key to being able to do
this: direct action and self-organisation. Direct action is when those
directly affected by something take action to fix it themselves, rather
than asking someone else to do it for them. A strike that forces
management to make concessions or face losing money is direct action
where lobbying an MP or going through union negotiations is not.
Squatting derelict land and turning into a community garden is direct
action, whereas pressuring the council to clean up vacant lots is not.
When we act by ourselves to achieve something that we need then we are
taking direct action – whether that’s sharing food with others or
fighting the police in a riot.
For direct action to be possible then there also needs to be self
organisation. This is organising without leaders or phoney
‘representatives’, and it allows us to take back the power to make our
own decisions. Self organisation allows us to break down and overcome
the hierarchies that separate us. In self-organised groups everyone has
an equal say and no one is given the right to represent anyone else.
This kind of group is capable of deciding its own needs and taking
direct action to meet them in a way that any hierarchical group based on
representatives – like a political party or a trade union – cannot.
Because of this we reject the use of the state – that is government,
parliament, the courts, the police and so on – to bring about
revolution. No one can free anyone else. We all have to free ourselves
by acting together. No government, even a ‘socialist’ or ‘revolutionary’
government, can do this. Any group or party taking over the state simply
becomes a new set of leaders, exploiting us in the name of ‘socialism’
rather than ‘capitalism’. This is what happened in so-called ‘communist’
Russia. Only by destroying the state, not taking it over, can we free
ourselves.
For anarchists, direct action and self organisation are essential tools
for freeing ourselves. They are the way that we as a working class can
confront the problems in our own lives collectively, working together
against the whole system of capitalism and the ways it tries to divide
us.
These ideas have not just been plucked out of thin air. Anarchist
communism is a living working class tradition that has worked in ways
large and small throughout the history of capitalism. It does not come
out of the abstract ideas of a few intellectuals but from the concrete
actions of millions of people.
For many, the word communism is associated only with the brutality of
Soviet Russia, or with Cuba, China, and North Korea. These societies are
amongst some of the worst tyrannies the world has ever seen, killing
millions through famine, war and execution. As anarchists we don’t
forget the prison camps, the slave labour, or the unjust trials and
executions – indeed anarchists were often the first to suffer these
attacks.
However, unlike the press who use the example of ‘communist’ governments
to claim that revolutionary change is impossible, anarchists also refuse
to forget the example of the millions of people who have fought against
this in the name of true communism. These people organised themselves,
without leaders, into groups that used direct democracy, meaning that
everyone had an equal say in how things were run. They used direct
action, first against the state and capitalism, and later against the
new Soviet rulers.
The true communism that they fought for is the extension of these ways
of working into every aspect of life. The communist slogan ‘from each
according to their ability, to each according to their need’ sums up the
idea. Nobody should be short of anything that they need. Individuals
receive goods and services because of how much they need them, not
because of how much they can pay or how much they deserve them. People
give back to society, through the work they do, according to what they
want and are able to do. Everyone will have the chance to do interesting
and creative work, instead of just a minority while everyone else is
stuck with boring drudge work.
This society would be organised through local collectives and councils,
organising themselves to make the decisions that need making and to do
the work that needs doing. Everyone gets a say in decisions that concern
them. We believe that in fighting for this kind of future we are
fighting for the full freedom and equality of all. Only this will give
everyone the chance to be whatever they can be.
It is the many examples of people organising and resisting in this way
that we call the communist tradition. The workers councils of
revolutionary Spain, Germany, Russia, Hungary, France, and Mexico all
give a small glimpse that we can look to when thinking about how we can
fight capitalism and free ourselves. Time and time again the world has
seen ordinary people using direct action, self organisation and direct
democracy to build new societies and lives for themselves. It is these
ideas and successes that we try to build on in today’s fight against
exploitation.
Anarchist communism is more than an abstract vision of the future and it
is more than a nostalgia for the revolutionary movements of the past. It
is a living working class tradition that lays the foundations for the
future society in the here and now. Everything we will be after
capitalism we must learn under it and through the fight against it. The
revolution is not and never can be a blank slate – that way lies the
corpses piled up by ‘revolutionary’ terror (such as happened in France,
Russia, and China). Instead, revolution must be built out of the
materials to hand by those of us alive today.