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Title: Some thoughts on organization
Author: P. Murtaugh
Date: Spring 1978
Language: en
Topics: organization, libertarian marxism, Libertarian Socialism
Source: Retrieved on 12th August 2020 from https://libcom.org/library/some-thoughts-organization
Notes: Published in Volume 2, Number 2 of The Red Menace, Spring 1978.

P. Murtaugh

Some thoughts on organization

What is the type of organization that we, as anarchists, libertarian

socialists and libertarian Marxists, should be working towards? What

should be our immediate organizational goals? It is not enough to simply

deplore the present lack of serious organizational work amongst

anti-authoritarians. Some sort of concrete plan must be set forward to

deal with the circumstances we find ourselves in.

In order to find out what sort of plan we should put forward we should

first take a long hard look at the present state of our movement in this

part of the world. In doing this we should neither overestimate our

strength by labelling every decentralized protest movement anarchist or

libertarian (often these movements are merely temporarily decentralized

as various authoritarians are working mightily to take them over).

Neither should we overestimate the strength of our opponents to the

extent that we advocate imitating their propaganda style and

organizational forms slavishly. This is not going to gain us the

recruits they presently make; all it will do is attach us as a tail to

the commie dog. And doom us to eternal marginality! I feel that we

should recognize the inherant limitations, in our context, of the commie

style and concept of revolution.

To deal with the most obvious fact first, the romantic idea of The

Revolution (do we always have to capitalize it?) as a gigantic street

fight is ridiculous in the extreme. In the first place the present

military forces in North America are too strong to be defeated by

military insurrection. The most that such a frontal assault on the state

could produce is more repression. Second, should an insurrection succeed

by some miracle (molotov cocktails and 303s against Phantom Jets — fat

chance!) we would be confronted by the fact that our societies (Canada

and the U.S.) are hardly of the type that could survive the chos

involved in a civil war. Perhaps five per cent of the population have

any access at all to self sufficiency. Revolutions are not glorious

events where everyone goes out singing the Red Flag, shoots the police,

hangs the boss and immediately takes possession of all the wealth of the

world in pristine mint condition. They are long, bloody, destructive,

and, above all, chaotic events. Just think what wouId happen if the

majority of people no longer had Safeway and McDonald’s to gently nurse

them. No rhetoric please about “people will work these things out”.

They’d starve. How many millions are you willing to see sacrificed to

the glorious future? Also, stop and consider what the first response of

starving people is — THEY WANT A STRONGMAN TO SAVE THEM. Finally, I

don’t think that any reasonable person could deny the fact that the

atomic umbrella that our empire has built up to supposedly protect

itself against the Russian empire is also trained on us. Do you expect

to put up a barricade high enough to stop a missile?

Second, we have to recognize the main barrier to non-insurrectional

revolution (this is not equivalent to non-violent revolution) is the

inability of liberatory organizations and actions to build up a

competing system. We do not live in a capitalist society where the

ruling class reacts to threats to its hegemony by either repression or

bribery. We live in a managerial society where the inner dynamics of the

competing and co-operating bureaucracies drive them to integrate

threats, to turn them into means of strengthening themselves (though

repression is still often used). Our response to the ruling class should

be not to try to push them with demands (they love it), but rather to

build up links between the various isolated struggles. A new system

should be built. Food co-ops should be linked to strikes. The mostly

urban based left should re-investigate its relationship to the

countryside. ETC, ETC, ETC.

The building of such links should be intermediate level goal. We have to

get ourselves together first, but this eventual goal should be kept in

mind. We cannot imitate the commies and set up our organizations with no

other goal than to put pressure on the ruling class, especially since

the jackpot that supposedly comes at the end of this process, the big

time revolution, is probably impossible. Such organizations will either

be marginalized or will be integrated a la the Communist parties of west

Europe. The commies, if they do consider ‘links’ necessary, think that

the function of link should be reserved to the party alone. This should

not be our goal also. The links between struggles will not be built just

because a group intervenes with theory. We must proceed to gather the

technical resources that these links will need. This is a question that

should occupy our thoughts now, not at some in the future. What exactly

will be the resources that various struggles will need to link up?

Transportation? Radios? Computing power?

Anyway, moving from the future into the present, what is the present

state of the anarchist movement in our part of the world? Our

organizations that span localities such as the SRAF or the IWW (I

realize that the IWW is not ‘exactly’ anarchist, but it is close enough

to be counted as libertarian) comprise perhaps 1000 members, at a

liberal estimate. Other organized anarchists, and other libertarians,

comprise perhaps double that amount, once again at a liberal estimate. A

pretty poor showing in a population of over 200 million. The number of

convinced anarchists who are not members of formal groups comprise

perhaps ten to fifteen thousand. I think that these figures point out an

immediate task. What is the matter with the two large scale

organizations? Why do the majority of anarchists refuse to join them?

Even more importantly, why are the vast majority of anarchists

unorganized? I don’t believe that it is because they are all

individualist anarchists.

I would like to deal with the latter question first. One of the great

reasons why the majority of anarchists are unorganized is th that many

anarchists consider that any specific anarchist organization is somehow

‘counter-revolutionary’, an imposition on the people. Organizational

libertarians have failed to criticise this position thoroughly enough.

This is perhaps the most important ‘theoretical’ task of our movement.

It was good to see the article ‘Why the Leninists Will Win’ in the last

issue of the Red Menace as a beginning of this criticism. While the

non-organizational anarchists may refuse to help us in practical work

they still read anarchist literature. Perhaps we can persuade them of

the contradiction of refusing to work on specifically anarchist projects

while working in organizations controlled by far less savory groups and

individuals as many of them do.

As to those unorganized anarchists who are afraid to declare their

anarchism because of possible loss of jobs, harrassment, etc., I feel

that they should not be allowed to act as brakes on the more militant

members.

Now, as to the main organizations in North America, the SRAF and the

IWW, it seems that their main problem is the fact that they offer little

in the way of organizational resources to groups affiliated or to

members. Each city or locality is almost totally self-contained. The

accumulated experience and resources of long term groups are not made

available to neophyte groups. The result is an immensely high rate of

turnover and mortality in newly formed libertarian groups. The local

narrowness of the member groups of these organizations has to be

overcome. At the present time we should not be thinking so much of

expanding the presently existing grroups as of forming ones in new

localities.

With all of the above in mind, what are the concrete tasks that we

should be thinking of at the present time? The first task is probably

the correction of the lamentable state of our press. The libertarian

movement does not have a North American paper, even though it has dozens

of magazies. The appeal of magazines is inherently limited. Our goal

should be the establishment of a weekly (if possible) newspaper,

enjoying wide newsstand distribution across North America. The most

likely candidate for such an organ is the Open Road, published out of

Vancouver. Its present publishing frequency is far too infrequent (4

times a year). Serious attention should be paid to increasing its

distribution to the point where it can begin to publish more frequently.

If necessary, this may mean giving consideration to the idea of

canvassing the libertarian movement for funds for the support of full

time staffers for the Open Road.

The second task is probably the establishment of a serious program of

publication of various materials, utilizing a press and other materials

that are our own and are not dependent on some government grant. Maybe

such a thing already exists. If it does, however, its existence is

mostly unknown to the general North American libertarian movement.

Which brings up still another point. Just exactly what is the state of

our present resources? What materials, printing resource, speakers,

advice, knowledge, etc. do the various isolated N.A. libertarian groups

have available to help each other? Too little interchange of a practical

nature has taken place between groups. This should be one of the

immediate tasks also. The establishment of a serious program of touring

speakers should be uppermost in our minds at the present time.

Many of the above tasks are already being thought about in a disjointed

fashion amongst libertarians. Some are even being acted upon. The

problem is that the action undertaken by isolated groups falls into a

void the minute it goes beyond their local horizons. Believe it or not,

we do have trans-local groups (the SRAF and the IWW). While criticisms

can certainly be made of these groups, it is still incumbent on

libertarians to make them from within the organizations it question. It

is useless to carp and complain from the outside, while refusing to help

in the transformation of these organizations into effective organisms.