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Title: The Left Author: Andrew Flood Date: 1995 Language: en Topics: the left, critique of leftism, Red & Black Revolution Source: Retrieved on 8th August 2021 from http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr1_left1.html][struggle.ws]] and [[http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr1_left2.html Notes: This article first appeared in Red & Black Revolution No 1.
It has become something of a cliché to refer to the death or collapse of
the left. Whatâs still missing however is an analysis of what went wrong
with the left. One that goes beyond surface manifestations, and reaches
into its core politics. This lack of analysis means that much of the
ânew leftâ is not that new at all, merely a repackaging of old ideas in
new wrappers.
Major changes have occurred in the left [1] throughout its short
history. In both numbers and politics there have been wide swings from
times of hope and mass numbers to times of despair and collapse. In the
late 60âs and early 70âs the left grew internationally, attracting huge
numbers and leading real battles. Today this growth has collapsed almost
totally, many of the organisations that led it no longer exist and the
ideas of those that survive, have been for the most part so discredited,
that it is unlikely they can ever recover.
Since the Russian revolution the left has been divided into two great
camps. There were those who followed the Bolshevik model of a
revolutionary seizure of state power and those who followed the more
traditional Marxist model of social democracy, seeking to gain state
power electorally where possible. Although there were other significant
movements, including the anarchists, what shaped the left today were the
splits within those two camps and the perimeter of debate laid down
around them.
The Communist parties built real mass parties in many countries, and
expanded their influence from Russia to a host of other nations. Along
with all those who claimed the Bolshevik legacy, they rode a carpet of
triumphalism for many years, one that limited debate around revolution
to variations on the Leninist model. Even in countries like Ireland
where they never reached significant numbers, the prestige of Russia and
the other revolutions enabled them to wield an influence far out of
proportion with their numbers, among intellectuals and in the unions.
But towards the end of the 1980âs the whole edifice crashed to the
ground almost overnight. In the east the parties were overthrown, in the
west they split into competing and mostly irrelevant factions.
The social-democrats in the years after the First World War expanded on
the earlier success of the German SDP and came to power in country after
country. Most of the western democracies have had social democratic
governments in the intervening period. But the left social-democrats had
always looked to the USSR as a guide, while their policies were very
much based on ability to control and direct national capital. In the
80âs the changed nature of capital, from a national form to an
increasingly trans-national one made social democratic economic programs
redundant. The control of the national economy needed by the nation
state for even the limited reforms of social-democracy is beginning to
vanish. Witness how even the threatened election of a Labour government
in Britain resulted in rapid capital transfers out of the country. The
left within the social democratic parties collapsed due to the
increasing impotence of their program and the emerging crisis in the
USSR. Their mass membership first dwindled and then collapsed. Today in
rhetoric[2] as well as deed they are indistinguishable from the liberal
parties.
This twin collapse was international and resulted in the vast bulk of
those who called themselves socialist abandoning left politics and
activism. As a related consequence the 1980âs also saw the âleftâ
leaning national liberation organisations like the ANC or FMLN come to a
compromise with imperialism and reach a settlement. This had a
demoralising effect on those whose primary focus was solidarity work for
these organisations, one that is still to reach its full consequences as
events unfold in South Africa and Palestine.
There were many who saw themselves as outside the Communist parties and
the social democrats. Sometimes the differences were real, as with
anarchists. Sometimes they were not so real but appeared so because of
the very narrowness of debate, as with most Trotskyists. Even with this
perceived gap the very fact that huge numbersabandoned politics had a
knock on effect. This was demoralising but it also meant that effective
action became increasingly impossible. Even if the arguments were won,
the networks that could have carried them through no longer existed.
All those bodies which could be described as âleftâ have seen a collapse
in involvement. This effect is seen not just in political organisations
but more importantly in all campaigning bodies. The effect is seen in
the unions where the number of activists has dwindled to the point where
most unpaid positions are uncontested. This has led to the outwardly
positive âelectionâ of revolutionaries to trades councils and branch
committees. The reality behind this is more to do with nobody else being
willing to take the job. In no sense has the broad layer of activists
(who might once have seen far left politics as loony) been won over,
rather most have dropped out or come to see revolutionary politics as
irrelevant rather than dangerous.
The ability of the left to explain what is happening around it, to
intervene in events and to change the course of them has vanished.
Although illusions in the state was always the major problem of the
left, today the activity of what remains is little more than attempts to
get the state to police society for the better. For example the
far-right is to be countered by trying to get the Fascists banned by the
state at national and local level. In fact much of the left today see
people themselves as the problem and see more police, more intrusive
management, more control over what can be said and seen, as the
solution. Most notably this has arisen in the focus on censorship as not
just a method but almost the only way of fighting both racism and
sexism.
The death of the left is also reflected in its lack of hope. Where once
the left was all about an exciting vision of a future society now it is
pre-occupied with a fear of the future and a longing for the past. New
scientific discoveries instead of being seen as part of the process of
liberating man from nature, are instead seen as part of a plan to create
a Huxley type âBrave New Worldâ. Hence recent articles in surviving
Trotskyist journals argue against Chaos Theory and the Human Genome
project as being anti-Marxist. Science once seen as the solution to many
of humanityâs problems is now seen as a major problem in itself.
This is what is meant by saying the left is dead. Its numbers have
collapsed, it has no vision or direction and instead of looking to the
future it worships the past.
From one point of view anarchists can in part welcome this collapse, as
it is the collapse of authoritarian socialism. Most of the left
organisations were social-democratic or Leninist in character and so
their ideas were incapable of constructing socialism. The nature of the
collapse re-enforces the anarchist rejection of the authoritarian
methods of these organisations as it was these methods that destroyed
the potential for socialism. After years of being told that compromises
and deceit were the fastest (if not only) way to create socialism,
anarchists feel entitled to repeat the response of Voline to Trotsky in
1919 at the height of the Russian Civil war:
Trotsky: âOne canât make an omelette without breaking eggsâ
Voline: âI see the broken eggs now whereâs this omelette of yours?â
In the English speaking countries [3] and in particular Ireland, the
anarchist movement is much too small to replace the numbers and
influence once held by the left. So the collapse of authoritarian
socialism is widely seen as the collapse of socialism and a
demonstration that capitalism, whatever its flaws is the best that can
be hoped for. Even in the countries where the anarchist movement is
substantial (and in many countries it is the main force on the
revolutionary left) it is as yet inadequate for its basic task (i.e.
revolution). In terms of ideas, the anarchists may have the best ones
but as yet they are not capable of winning the masses to overthrowing
capitalism and creating anarchism.
In the English speaking countries there is not and has not been a
significant anarchist movement with the possible exception of the period
up to World War I in the USA. Anarchists have operated as a small
section of a larger left. Because of the small size of the anarchist
movement the collapse of this larger left has had profound effects on
it, both due to the general climate of demoralisation and also because
it is no longer possible to exist purely as an opposition to Leninism
and social democracy. This is a good thing because some anarchist
organisations had come to limit themselves to explaining âWhy the left
is wrongâ on a whole number of issues rather than trying to construct an
alternative themselves.
It might be hoped that with the twin collapse of Leninism and
authoritarian socialism people would flock to the banner of anarchism.
For the most part this has not happened. Instead over the last decade we
have seen the emergence of a number of ânewâ left organisations which
claim to represent a decisive break with the past. Sometimes this
represents little more than a change of names. In other cases these new
organisations arose as splits by members unhappy with the direction of
exisiting organisations, their initial politics coming from ex-members
of that organisation. The Committees of Correspondence in the USA was
formed by members of the Communist Party USA who lost an internal
argument over the direction (âreformingâ) of that party.
Many members of the old left organisations recognised that their ideas
were discredited and no longer relevant, and voted with their feet,
leaving not only left organisations but oppositional politics in
general. But not all vanished, some have made efforts to remain active.
Some of these have refused to learn anything, or admit that mistakes
were made, instead they carry on activity in a parody of yesteryear.
Some of the Communist parties for instance reacted by returning to
worshipping the period of Stalin or Brezhnev and blame the âreformersâ
for all their current woes. The Irish Communist Party responded to the
collapse of the USSR by hiring a skip and throwing most of the Gorbachev
material from their Dublin bookshop into it. In most Communist parties
however the majority came to the conclusion that revolution itself was
no longer possible and instead became social democrats or abandoned left
politics for âprogressiveâ politics where the working class is seen as
just one more pressure group in a rainbow coalition.
Some organisations did become aware of their own death and sensibly
dissolved themselves rather than causing damage as they thrashed around
in their death agonies. But they were wrong to imagine that just because
they could conceive no future relevance for revolutionary politics that
revolution was no longer relevant. Instead they were faced with a jump
that they were incapable of seeing the other side of. Indeed the upturn
in industrial disputes over the last year in Europe, most notably around
Air France, indicate that the class conflict goes on and may even be
picking up some of its lost momentum. Unemployment and poverty have
again become obvious features of capitalism. To this extent the crisis
on the left is mirrored by a crisis in capitalism, its hope of the early
80âs of an eternal boom now dashed on the rocks of recession.
That the left has collapsed is contested by only the most irrelevant
sects. But the attempts to explain why it happened are poor, focusing on
the surface manifestations; the economic crisis of the USSR in the 80âs,
or conspiracy theories about the CIA. The right and many on the left
went for the simplest explanation of all, socialism cannot work and
revolutions have to end in dictatorship. But the failure is not with the
idea of socialism but rather with what those who called themselves
socialists became. It was not socialism that failed but the socialists!
Above all, this failure arose from the left ideologies that looked to
good leaders to liberate the rest of us. To these ideologies the role of
âordinary peopleâ differed, from the tickers of ballot papers to the
stormers of barricades. The role of decision makers however was denied,
it was to be placed in trust with an intellectual elite until the far
off day when this power could be returned.
The tragic part about this is that the warnings about where the statist
path would lead have been around since the working class first became a
formidable force at the time of the Paris Commune [1871]. The debate
between the anarchists and Marxists that split the 1^(st) International
was fought around this issue. But for various reasons those issuing the
warning, the anarchists, failed to convince the rest of the left [4].
The two major trends of the 20^(th) Century socialist movement, the
Leninists and the social-democrats, were not as radically different as
it may have seemed but rather represented two sides of the same coin.
The actual structure of rule in the Soviet Union was never really a
major problem for either of these groupings, their disagreements were
over whether such a society had to be established through revolution, or
could be âreformedâ into being. Both currents sought to create socialism
through the actions of a few, wielding state power, on behalf of the
many. Left social-democrats like Tony Benn went further and were
commonly happy enough to describe the USSR as actually existing
socialism. In Ireland, organisations like the Workers Party held a
similar (if quiet) position towards North Korea and, along with members
of Labour Left went there on junkets.
The argument between Leninism and social-democracy was not about how a
socialist society could be built, both aimed to use state power to do
this. Rather it was whether sufficient control of the state could be
gained through the parliamentary system. Many Leninists may have claimed
to wish for more democracy [5] in the USSR but they all stood over the
Bolshevik destruction of democracy, only moving to opposition when their
particular hero was ousted. Organisations like the Socialist Workers
Party that claim to stand for âsocialism from belowâ defend the actions
of the Bolsheviks in imposing one man management, crushing workers
councils and censoring, imprisoning and executing members of other left
tendencies. This has to call into question any claimed commitment to
democracy, or socialism from below.
Even in the short term the left commonly offered no way forward. It
would be wrong to overstate the case but a large section of the left was
not interested in helping workers win struggles except in the most
abstract sense. Instead involvement in struggle had just one thing
behind it: âbuild the partyâ. This commonly took the form of setting up
a party controlled âfrontâ which would campaign around an issue solely
in order to recruit those who were motivated to fight on this issue.
Once the potential recruits dried up, then the campaign was quietly
wound up. A common response to contacting someone about a new campaign
was the question of âwhose front is itâ. Anyone who has been involved
with left activity for any period of time will have been through
meetings and campaigns disrupted and possibly destroyed by different
left factions wrestling for control.
The effect this had on activists was seen by the way membership of many
left organisations operated like a revolving door, with people
interested in socialism walking in one side, only to be thrown out the
other, disillusioned and burnt out. âEverything for the organisationâ
was the unofficial slogan of the left. This destroyed many peoplesâ
belief in socialism as a source of inspiration as they got sucked into
the methods of treachery and deceit that this involved.
Many of todayâs activists have either come through this mill, or have
had bad experiences of the left using them. This has created a legacy of
suspicion and even hostility which forms a real barrier in building
solidarity today. It also means that many activists have no interest in
building revolutionary organisations but instead limit themselves to
building campaigns. Revolutionary organisations are seen as self-serving
edifices rather than bodies with a positive and vital contribution to
make to struggle. The attitude that characterises these activistsâ view
of the revolutionary organisations is suspicion.
So in this way the left has actually played a substantial negative role.
It has constructed a monstrous caricature of socialism and the methods
of socialism. Rather than bringing people forward, it has sucked the
spirit out of them. Not just those parts of the left who created and
worshipped the USSR but also those whose methods have alienated tens of
thousands of activists. In this context many activists see left
organisations as useless barriers, interested only in selling papers and
sectarian squabbles.
This crisis of the left has become increasingly apparent over the last
decade and has resulted in the formation of many new groups, including
ourselves. As the crisis became particularly obvious, the process of
disintegration speeded up and the new organisations if anything became
more confused. Most of the more recent ones have no common vision of
anything positive in the past but are united solely by a feeling of
âthatâs not the way to do itâ towards the existing left. But consciously
or unconsciously, various strategies have been adopted by some as the
way forward. It is these strategies that must be examined to judge the
potential of such new groups.
Groups whose aim is a new flavour of Leninism or social-democracy can be
written off at the start. The record of their strategies for the last
century speaks for itself. From the libertarian point of view the fault
is in their core politics, that which makes them statist. However many
have become aware of these flaws and so many of the groups that have
arisen in the last decade would claim to be neither. It is these forces
which are important in terms of the emergence of a new left.
Certain limitations have to be recognised from the start. It is
inevitable that many of the newer left organisations have a blinkered
vision, brought about by their youth and small size. Their memory
extends back maybe a decade or so at most. They are unaware of events
outside their own country except in the broadest terms, and force events
to fit into an analysis generated from their immediate and narrow
experience[6]. This is a real if unavoidable problem, but one that is
greatly reduced when it is recognised and taken into account. It is also
a reason why it is vital to convince many of the older layer of
activists that there is still a point in revolutionary politics, but
that a thorough re-examination of basic politics is necessary.
It is not intended to discuss organisations claiming to be in the
anarchist tradition in this article. What will be discussed is
organisations who believe that the wheel needs to be re-invented (i.e.
that there is no historical tradition worth basing themselves on). These
see the solution in junking the left to date, and re-building from
scratch. This is the most common set of strategies to have emerged in
the last few years. What has united these different strategies to date
is that although it is pointed out repeatedly that mistakes were made
and the old left is irrelevant, there is little analysis as to the cause
of this irrelevancy. The assumption is that with the verbal break from
the âold politicsâ, all the problems it created fade away.
This assumption is fundamentally flawed as it assumes that the reasons
for the failure of the left to date are understood. In fact for the most
part, instead of analysis, all that exists is a set of popular
prejudices and some surface understanding of the problem. This approach
also assumes that there is little need for newer members to re-discover
the cause of the previous problems, that this information will somehow
be transmitted down by the older members (leadership?). This in itself
is a direct example of the re-appearance of one of the problems
associated with the failure of the old left. The division into leaders
and paper sellers.
Organisations adopting these strategies are often faced with an
additional problem. They attract long time members of various other
organisations who have brought a fair amount of political baggage with
them. Although they can say âyes we were wrongâ they canât admit the
possibility that some of their former critics were right, at least in
part. One British group, Analysis [7], decided that the Russian
revolution was not so relevant after all. To them the turning point for
the failure of socialism was the support the social democratic parties
gave to their various ruling classes in voting for World War I. As they
put it âHad the revolution never occurred, had Stalinism never existed,
Marxism would still face the crisis it does todayâ [8]. This was a handy
way for a bunch of âexâ-Leninists to avoid facing why they had remained
uncritical of the Bolsheviks for so many years.
This political baggage also surfaces in that although many can admit the
Russian revolution was in part destroyed by the politics of Bolshevism,
they can only do so after first making clear that their critique is not
related to the âmoralismâ of the anarchists. This is the hallmark of an
organisation that never sees itself as addressing âordinary peopleâ. Who
in their right mind would approach such a discussion with âIâve nothing
against shooting leftists to achieve revolution, but it does not workâ.
The anarchists were full of moral indignation at the Bolshevik shooting
of leftists and workers and quite right too! But they also argued that
terror was crushing the revolution by destroying popular initiative and
debate. To read Volineâs or Maximoffâs, (two of the exiled Russian
anarchists) accounts, is not to encounter page after page of moralism
but to find concrete example after example of the crippling of a
revolution by a party obsessed with its need to be in control. It is
also fundamentally dishonest and reflects the attitude of the guru to
his followers. It is obviously not expected that anyone will look at the
original âmoralismâ.
It is the strategies that are based around this method that are looked
at here. Strategies based on the premise that little if anything can
usefully be salvaged from the leftâs history. Strategies based above all
on the idea that to date nothing useful has been done, except perhaps in
the field of theory. And it is in this approach to theory and its
perceived relationship to practice that the greatest problems arise.
To see nothing coherent in the past but still wish to be active leaves
an organisation with an immediate problem. What do you base this
activity on? One strategy used in this case, where a wide body of theory
is quickly needed, is equivalent to filling a shopping trolley at a car
boot sale. What appears to be the most useful ideas from the past are
picked up, regardless of their relationship with each other.
The adoption of such a strategy is often characterised by a tendency for
the organisation to see itself as the only one capable of understanding
whatâs going on. Itâs not hard to see how this mentality develops when
all around seem to be intent on carrying on regardless on a sinking
ship. Apart from this inherent elitism, this strategy carries it own
problems.
Chief among these is that, if an organisation places itself in the role
as saviour it must be able to provide answers to everything. The
development of coherent ideas takes time. This time can be reduced
considerably by picking what appear to be the best ideas around. While
this approach is highly flawed it can perhaps be feasible if sufficient
time is spent re-developing these ideas to fit into the core of the
organisations existing politics. (There is also the wider question of
âis it necessaryâ?) In practice however, temptation wins and one gets
treated to a frantic super-market spree as the group hurtles around
quickly grabbing whatever has the best packaging off the shelves.
Unfortunately at some later stage itâs discovered all the bits donât
quite go together. But by then everybodyâs got their pet piece and no
one has much in common.
Another strategy that is emerging is for organisations to shun activity
in favour of a retreat to academia, to re-examine the text books in
order to emerge some time in the future with a shiny new theory. This is
often the next stop for individuals who have been in a group where the
shopping trolley fell apart. Activity or contact with the outside world
is diagnosed as the problem, whatâs needed is temporary isolation, with
your message just being aimed at others on the left who have realised
something is wrong.
Their deliberate use of archaic language shows us that what we have is
politics designed to impress the existing intellectual left [9]. There
is no excuse for putting across simple ideas in complex terms unless you
intend your material to be used as a sleeping aid. These may seem like
irrelevant stylistic matters but actually they reflect an important
point.
This is that the new left is repeating many of the mistakes of the old,
in a re-packaged form. The idea that the answers are to be found in text
books, that somewhere, there is a magic theory or theories which will
show the way forward is just a re-working of the old Trotskyist idea of
a âcrisis of leadershipâ[10]. Ideas are important and the right ideas
are vital but it is people who are the life blood of the revolutionary
process. Far more people are aware that the current system is offering
an inadequate future for themselves and their children than are involved
in revolutionary politics. Most people come into conflict with the
system at one stage or another. What is lacking is the belief that there
can be an alternative, that change is possible.
Whatâs needed are arguments on why revolutions have failed in the past
and how they can succeed in the future. But what is also needed is the
development of a tradition of success. People must believe that they can
win in order for them to start to fight back. This belief can be created
by winning small victories. Whatâs more it is only by real experience in
struggle, that ideas can be tested, it is only by encountering real life
that the ability to convince people can be honed. Those who would
retreat to the libraries are like armchair tourists who imagine watching
Holiday â95 is the same thing as walking down those far away streets.
There is another side to this âemphasis on theoryâ coin. Another
strategy which has been adopted by some organisations is one in which
theory is either discarded beyond rudimentary aims and principles, or
left to a small elite. No need is perceived for politics developed
beyond a âwe hate capitalismâ. Nor is a need seen for politics to be
developed within the whole organisation as opposed to a small elite,
steering the ship. In many cases this last strategy is not adopted in a
conscious fashion but rather is the end result of an anti-organisation
attitude. It stems from an alienation from and rejection of the
traditional methods of the left so that these methods themselves rather
than just their implementation are rejected. It can perhaps be
characterised as âall action and no talkâ!
Such a strategy frequently results in the organisationâs activities
being limited to cheerleading for others, unwilling and unable to
influence the actual course of events. Blind activism is substituted for
theoretical discussion. Most of such organisations are short lived,
quickly becoming demoralised after finding themselves being used as foot
soldiers by some more organised section of the left. Even for those who
survive for some considerable period this is often as a result of
hermetically sealing themselves off from the rest of the left. This is
achieved by dismissing other groups through crude labels whose political
content is zero or close to zero (such as âstudentsâ, âtrendiesâ, âsadâ,
âmiddle classâ, âboringâ, the reader will probably be familiar with
other examples).
This labelling is similar to the technique used by many Leninists and so
demonstrates the unconscious vanguardism some of these organisations
have assumed. Their publications cover their activities along with those
whom they cheer on alone, they also present themselves as the âonly
revolutionariesâ. They reject attempts to involve wider forces if they
are not going to dominate the resulting alliance. This vanguardism,
along with the sectarian characterisation of others, in conditions of
feared defeat or frustration, has even, with a number of organisations,
resulted in poorly excused physical attacks on other leftists!
The last two strategies discussed, the âIvory Towerâ and the âall
action, no talkâ are in fact twins. They share in common the idea that
theory and practice can be separated, and perhaps need bear no
relationship to one another at all. To believe that one can be developed
without the other is a fallacy. So also is the idea that one is the work
of intellectuals, the other the work of activists. The two go hand in
hand. It may be possible to come up with fine ideas in your back room or
carry out actions on the streets but it is only where these two combine
that the potential for revolution gains space to emerge. In the
development of ideas and the activity of struggle it is not just the
results that matter. As important is the process, the development of the
ability and confidence to make decisions and carry them through. This
ability must be developed not just in the organisation but in every
individual, if the division into leader and led is to be avoided.
This is an echo of the anarchist insistence that the end (the
revolution) cannot be separated from the means (revolutionary
organisation) used to obtain it. The surest safeguard against future
hijacking of revolutionary movements by authoritarianism is not to have
a golden rule book or a sub group to keep the movement pure[11] but a
tradition of self-activity. This is a hint at the direction that needs
to be taken.
We are coming through a time of cataclysmic change for the left. The old
methods of organisation have failed, the new ones that are evolving are
flawed and sometimes not even all that new. Some of the problems faced
have been identified in this article, the more difficult question is how
to go about constructing a new left? Part of the answer to this question
is the realisation that the problems discussed above have a common
solution. Is it necessary to re-invent the wheel? Or is there already a
left tradition whose analysis is a starting point explaining the failure
of the left in the past. Such a tradition does indeed exist and whatâs
more it also provides from its history a positive model of socialist
organisation.
In the left from Ashes to Phoenix? it was argued that the left as it had
come to be known has collapsed. The new left that is arising from the
ashes carries much of the baggage and many of the mistakes of its
predecessors. It is without clear direction, knowing it wants to build
something new, but not sure what this will be or how to do it. It bases
itself on a hodgepodge of different traditions or on none. These
criticisms are easy to make, what is more difficult is to pinpoint a way
forwards.
This article indicates the direction that needs to be taken. There is a
current within the left that stands out in its opposition to the
division of revolutionary organisations into leaders and led. This
current is anarchism. However new organisation(s) should not be built on
the basis of a turn to the past. Rather it must be recognised that
previous anarchist movements have also failed, and not just for
objective reasons. None of them are adequate as models, so it is not a
question of constructing international versions of the CNT, the Friends
of Durruti or any other group. Indeed any project that picks an
organisation from history and says this is what we should be modelled on
would seem to be more interested in historical re-enactment than
revolution.
Anarchism put forward an accurate critique of the problems of Marxism as
a whole. Anarchism also demonstrated methods of organisation based on
mass democracy. This is its importance, as not only does it go some way
to explaining why the left has failed but it also points the way to how
it can succeed.
Anarchism crystallised around opposition to the idea that socialism
could be introduced by a small elite on behalf of the minority. There
are, were and probably will continue to be Marxists that claim Marx also
opposed this idea but to do this is to deny the historical argument that
took place at the end of the 1860âs between the Marxists and the
anarchists. It is also to ignore what Marxism has meant in the period
since then.
To an extent the anarchist critique of Marxism can be portrayed as
unsophisticated, not explaining where the authoritarian side of Marxism
comes from in sufficient depth. Certainly in the English speaking
countries, anarchism appears theoretically weak when compared to the
vast body of work calling itself Marxist. But complexity or detail does
not make an analysis correct, sometimes the simplest of ideas carry
profound truths [12]. And when the record of the anarchist organisations
are compared with those of the Marxists one finds on those key issues of
20^(th) century socialism, the state and role of the revolutionary
organisation, the anarchists were consistently on the right side. The
worst of the anarchist deviations, the power sharing with the bourgeois
republicans in Spain palls into insignificance when compared with the
damage done by social democracy or Stalin.
The strength of anarchism has been its belief in the ability of the
working class to take its destiny into its own hands free of
intermediaries. This and its uncompromising rejection of the state and
politics of manipulation has left a legacy that can be sharply
contrasted with that of other left currents. This makes it very
different from both Leninism and social democracy, whose basic ideas are
quite closely connected. Many of the old debates and the style they were
carried out in are now irrelevant, it will take time before new, more
positive debates become the norm.
For the left today, in a period where many believe social-democracy and
the USSR have demonstrated that socialism cannot work, the
demonstrations of self-management by anarchist inspired workers are of
key importance. The Spanish revolution saw the democratic running of a
large part of the economy and a sizeable military force by the working
class [13]. This provides us with an actual example of the non-utopian
nature of self-management. In practice such forms also arose
spontaneously in revolutions where anarchist ideas played no major part,
including that of Hungary in 1956 [14]. In the future it is to these
examples we should look to for inspiration.
What the anarchist movement needs today is not a historical re-enactment
of past glories. Whatâs more, in the English speaking countries at
least, the anarchist movement, to be polite, leaves a lot to be desired.
There is no real mass tradition of anarchism outside the pre-WWI USA.
Even this was more of an example of anarchist ideas playing a major role
within a wider movement than of an anarchist mass movement. There have
been no real anarchist syndicalist [15] unions or mass organisations.
Individual anarchists like Emma Goldman may have been important figures
but they represented isolated examples rather than movements.
In the inter-war years anarchism was nearly destroyed internationally by
dictatorship, fascism and Leninism. Those countries where the tradition
was weak, in particular the English speaking ones, saw a complete death
of any understanding of anarchism and its re-interpretation by
academics, among these George Woodcock. This re-interpretation attempted
to rob anarchism of its base in class struggle and instead reduce it to
a radical liberalism. This had (and continues to have) disastrous
consequences for the growth of anarchism from the 60âs on in these
countries.
One of the most harmful ideas introduced by these academics was the idea
of anarchism as a code of personal conduct rather than one of collective
struggle. This occurred partially by their inclusion of all pacifists
from Tolstoy to Gandhi as anarchists and partially from a completely
false understanding of the anarchist movement in Spain. The Spanish
example was particularly absurd, anarchists were presented as moralists
who would not drink coffee rather than as members of an organisation
based on class struggle, over one million strong.. Itâs true that
anarchists do have a different sense of what is âright or wrongâ than
that instilled in us by capitalist culture but this flows from their
politics rather than the reverse.
Anarchism is different from Leninism and social democracy in that it
understands that the means used to achieve a socialist revolution will
determine the success or failure of that revolution. This was not true
for the revolutions that brought capitalism to power, there it was
possible for the new elite to emerge regardless of how it had got its
backing. Socialism requires mass participation. As such it will not be
granted by an elite but will have to prevent the emergence of elites.
This can only be done if the mass of society is already acting on the
basis that no new centres of rule can be allowed to emerge, that they
themselves must plan, create and administer the new society.
The identification of anarchism with counter cultural movements (like
punk rock and increasingly the âcrusty/new age travellerâ scene) arises
from this âliberalâ interpretation. In turn this image of anarchism as a
personal code of conduct encourages the counter culture to attach the
label anarchist to itself. This âanarchismâ is an often bizarre set of
rules ranging from not eating at McDonalds to not getting a job. If
anything it represents a hopeless rebellion against, and alienation
from, life under modern capitalism. It is a self-imposed ghetto, its
adherents see no hope of changing society. In fact the counter culture
is often hostile to any attempt to address anyone outside the ghetto
[16], seeing this as selling out. However the counter culture is not
entirely apolitical. A significant minority in Britain for instance will
turn out for demonstrations and where physical confrontation with the
state occur they often become the cannon fodder.
There are also significant areas within this counter culture where work
is done which can give a positive example. Perhaps the best example of
this is the squatting movement of the last couple of decades which saw
huge numbers of people using direct action to solve homelessness by
taking over empty buildings. Of course the bulk of these people were
outside the counter culture, immigrant workers, the young homeless and
those including young married people whose jobs could not cover the high
rent in London and for whom council accommodation was unavailable or
inadequate.
However the fact that so many of todayâs anarchists came to anarchism
through this counter culture has repercussions for building new
movements. To an extent they find it difficult to break with the
anti-organisational parts of the counter culture. This response
dovetails with that of activists who have had bad experience of
revolutionary organisations. The counter culture also tends to see the
way forward in winning over the ghetto rather than addressing mainstream
society and getting involved in its institutions. Having identified the
existing left as being only interested in theory and building the party
organisation, they end up rejecting the need for both theory and
organisation. In short, they attempt to create their own new ghetto to
which they can win people.
Whatever about the poor state of the anarchist movement in English
speaking countries, a different, much stronger tradition is found almost
everywhere else. Language limitations restrict our ability to comment in
depth on many of these but there are anarchist organisations in most if
not all European, Central American and Southern American countries.
There are also organisations in some Asian and African countries. In
some of these countries they are the biggest or only force on the
revolutionary left.
This is an area that is not just holding its own but is indeed growing.
This year the IWA welcomed its first African section, in the form of the
Awareness League of Nigeria and has entered into discussion with two
unions in Asia. Since the mid-70âs anarcho-syndicalist unions have been
re-built in Spain and the Swedish SAC has moved from reformism back to
anarchist-syndicalism. Anarchists were the first sections of the left to
resume activity in Eastern Europe, the first opposition march in Moscow
since the late 20âs was staged by anarchists on 28^(th) May 1988 under
the banner âFreedom without Socialism is Privilege and Injustice.
Socialism without Freedom is Slavery and Brutalityâ, a quote from
Bakunin. In the last year several anarchist groups have emerged in the
republics of former Yugoslavia and some have started a process of
co-operation against the war there. Central and Southern America have
also seen groups re-emerge into public activity, in some countries, like
Venezuela, the anarchists are the only national force on the left.
In a period where all other sections of the left have been in decline,
anarchism has re-established itself and started to grow. This is all the
more remarkable when you consider this growth has come about almost
completely internally, no major resources were pumped in from the
outside. Compare this with the Trotskyist groups who poured huge
resources into Eastern Europe for relatively little return. This
included sending members over to maintain a permanent presence in Moscow
and the other capitals. Anyone reading the Trotskyist press would be
aware of their constant appeals for funds to help in this work. This
attempt to import Trotskyism in any of its varieties failed to make any
significant impact. Anarchist groups, on the contrary, emerged from the
countries of the East to make contact with us in the west. They were
based on âleft dissidentsâ rediscovering a banned history, their
membership coming from sections of society as far apart as intellectuals
[17] to punk fans and independent union activists.
So although the situation can seem very much isolated in any of the
English speaking countries there is a very much larger and more together
movement elsewhere. It is by no means perfect, it is dominated by
syndicalism but it is a start. The question for us and the readers of
this article is how to go about building mass anarchist movements in our
countries. The beginnings of such a movement exist in almost all
countries, anarchism has consistently attracted new blood and new
influence.
Both the historical legacy of anarchism and the (related) fact that it
is currently the only substantial anti-Leninist but revolutionary
movement in existence lead to the conclusion that the best starting
point for building a new left is anarchism. But what sort of anarchist
movement is needed? The objective has to be kept in mind, to aid in the
creation of a revolution that will found a future society without
classes or the rule of a minority. It also has to be recognised that
anarchism in the past has failed to fulfil this objective, most notably
in Spain where it could have carried the revolution through, at least
locally.
We must learn from the mistakes of the past. It is not enough to build
large loose organisations formed on the basis of opposition to
capitalism and an adherence to anarchism as an ideal. Experience has
shown that these become paralysed when faced with an unforseen set of
circumstances as with the Spanish CNT, or effectively taken over by much
smaller but more coherent forces as was the fate of many of the other
syndicalist movements. At a key moment they are likely to falter and it
at this point that authoritarians can step in and assume leadership over
the revolution.
More importantly, the building of local groups with only with the
intention of getting stuck in but no vision of becoming a mass movement,
has little to offer when it comes to creating a libertarian revolution.
Such groups and the networks that are constructed from time to time may
start off vibrant but quickly lose a sense of purpose and cease to exist
over time. In Britain in particular a large number of these have arisen
over the last decade, and in Ireland we have had a few. They leave no
real legacy, however; who can even remember the Dublin Anarchist
Collective, Dundalk Libertarian Communist Group, Scottish Libertarian
Federation or the Midlands Anarchist Network.
Some anarchists in Russia and Spain after the revolutions there
attempted to identify why their movements were defeated by the
authoritarian forces. Their conclusions were remarkably similar and
apply to anarchism today in many countries.
Some of the Russian exiles formed a group in Paris that published a
pamphlet [18] based on their experiences that argued:
âThis contradiction between the positive and incontestable substance of
libertarian ideas, and the miserable state in which the anarchist
movement vegetates, has its explanation in a number of causes, of which
the most important, the principal, is the absence of organisational
principles and practices in the anarchist movement.
In all countries. the anarchist movement is represented by several local
organisations advocating contradictory theories and practices having no
perspectives for the future, nor of a continuity in militant work, and
habitually disappearing. hardly leaving the slightest trace behind
them.â
A decade later in 1938 a second group, the Friends of Durruti composed
of several thousand members of the Spanish CNT published a pamphlet [19]
explaining why the CNT had failed to complete the Spanish revolution. It
was part of an attempt even at that late stage to turn the situation
around:
âWe [the CNT] did not have a concrete program. We had no idea where we
were going. We had lyricism aplenty; but when all is said and done, we
did not know what to do with our masses of workers or how to give
substance to the popular effusion which erupted inside our organisation.
By not knowing what to do we handed the revolution on a platter to the
bourgeoisie and the Marxists who support the farce of yesteryear â
Although the Friends of Durruti were talking of the problems faced
during an actual revolution their criticism is also relevant to todayâs
situation. Lack of organisation prevents many anarchist groups from
being effective and in the event of a revolution in the future will
prevent them from leading it to success.
What is needed is an organisation with coherent ideas and a practice of
democratic debate and decision making. One capable of dealing with
crisis and making rapid decisions without relying on a âleadershipâ.
This is an easy statement to make, in practice it is not easy to create.
All too often such attempts either succumb to authoritarianism or
collapse into sectarianism and isolation. They become isolated in their
own ghetto, interested in argument but no longer capable of or even
interested in intervening in struggle.
Building an effective anarchist organisation is not something that can
happen overnight. Even the initial formation of core politics takes a
number of years. Then the process of winning people over to these
politics and giving them the skills and knowledge required to play a
full role in a revolutionary organisation takes a considerable amount of
time. To maintain coherency and democracy the organisation can only grow
slowly when small, even in ideal circumstances doubling perhaps every 6
months to a year. And in the course of that growth it is all too easy to
lose sight of the goal and lapse into isolation, sectarianism and
irrelevancy.
Even given the right theory, an organisation is dependant on the
experience and commitment of its membership in order to put its ideas
into practice and arrive at new sensible strategies. The commitment
needed can only be maintained if the internal culture of an organisation
is one in which debate is favoured and sectarianism is discouraged.
Obviously the political positions are also important but that discussion
is beyond the scope of any one article. However it is possible to
identify key areas of organisational practice that an anarchist
organisation needs to be committed to in order to avoid the mistakes of
the past, and grow in a consistent, coherent way. These are:
An organisation is strong only because it represents the collective
efforts of many individuals. To maximise on this these efforts need to
be completely collective, all members working towards a common goal with
common tactics. This is not just in relation to revolution but in every
area the organisation involves itself in. This has been called tactical
unity.
Authoritarian organisations have tactical unity because commands are
passed down from the leadership, unity only breaks down when
disagreements arise within the leadership. These organisations may have
a formal adherence to theoretical unity but usually this comprises of no
more than the ability of the membership to repeat the utterings of the
leadership [20]. This is not an option for anarchists, in order to
achieve tactical unity there must be real theoretical unity. This
requires unrelenting discussion, education and debate around all
theoretical issues within the organisation with the goal of forging a
set of clearly understood positions and the ability of all the
membership to argue for and present new ones. Rather than parroting a
party line there is needed an organisational understanding of how to see
and interact with the rest of the world.
This practice not only gives the organisation real strength in its
activities, but also gives it the ability to react in a crisis. The
understanding developed and the experience of decision making are
precisely the tools needed when it comes to aiding the creation of
revolution and the establishment of a socialist society based on real
democracy. The continuous interaction of the members with society brings
the skills and practice of the organisation into the wider movement. We
wish our ideas to lead, not because we have control of particular
positions, but because of the superiority of our organisationâs ideas.
Too often revolutionaries see themselves as separate from and above
everyday life. The working class is often talked of as a separate,
foreign entity rather than the place where we live and interact on a
daily basis. Activity is seen as the cart to be placed behind the horse
of revolutionary theory. Some Marxists refer to this as a cornerstone of
their organisation. They have expressed it as âNo revolutionary practice
without revolutionary theory.â Activity is thus seen at best, as the
method by which new recruits are won [21], at worst, something that is
not as yet necessary.
If building a mass revolutionary organisation was simply a matter of
having a good theory, perhaps there would be something in this approach,
at least for authoritarian socialists. A few learned types go up the
mountain for some years to consult the written word of the gods of
socialism. They interpret this as a creed for new times, carve it in
stone and return to the assembled masses on the plains below, ready to
lead them to the promised land. This is still a popular approach to
revolutionary organisation at the moment.
But a quick look at the history of the left demonstrates that the mass
organisations have not been those with the best theory but those most
able to interact with the mass of the population. The strength of Maoism
or the Sandanistas to name two once popular movements, was hardly in
their theoretical clarity. Rather it was in their ability to interact
with a sizeable section of the population, despite the weakness of their
political understanding.
Anarchists need to root their politics firmly in actual struggle, at
whatever level it is occurring. Through this involvement, as serious
activists, respect can be gained and so an audience won among the real
âvanguardâ, those actually involved in fighting at some level against
the system.[22] Theory, as far as possible, must be taken from
experiences of struggle and tested by that experience. It must be
presented so that it gains a wider and wider influence within the major
movement.
Too often anarchist groups are composed of a small core of people who do
the vast bulk of the work and financing of the organisation and a much
larger periphery who avoid this commitment. This is unacceptable and a
recipe for disaster. Revolutionary organisations require a large
commitment in both money and time if they are to grow. All individuals
involved must be willing to make this commitment, there is little room
for hobbyists.
The left is coming through a bleak time, one of defeat and retreat
stretching back over a decade. It is all too easy to become demoralised.
But it is part of a price that has to be paid for a century of following
a variety of dead ends. The left may be largely comatose for the moment
but the force that created it is as active as ever. Capitalism is
incapable of fulfilling the needs of the people of the world, and so
long as it exists it will throw up oppositional forces. In Ireland,
issues such as the X-case and the service charges demonstrate how people
will be forced to fight back, although these are not offensives and
should not be portrayed as such. In Mexico the EZLN rising on New Years
day exposes the same force.
The question for us is how to avoid the mistakes of those activists who
went before us. Anarchism is weak at the moment, but the possibility
remains open to build the organisations and confidence in the class that
are required to win change. Revolutionary opportunities will arise, the
task is to build the skills and confidence needed to seize them, and
that work starts today.
[1] It is intended here to avoid the practice of pretending to be
somehow separate from the âleftâ and share nothing in common with it.
All those on the left operate in a common environment, despite their
political differences in approaching this environment. Differences are
in the politics held and the methods used, not in any mysterious force.
[2] And it was rhetoric along with their mass membership that gave them
their only claim to be socialist. The record of social democrats in
power has been dismal, with even the most favourable reading of history
giving them few achievements and a multitude of sell outs.
[3] The situation in the English speaking countries is being addressed
in particular.
[4] These reasons among others include the confused politics of part of
the anarchist movement at the time, demonstrated by its turn to
âpropaganda by deedâ (assassinations) in the 1890âs.
[5] Democracy is being used here as shorthand for a society under
socialism where all decisions are made at the lowest possible level by
those they affect, or by delegates who are mandated, recallable etc. Not
whatâs called parliamentary âdemocracyâ.
[6] So for instance because at the moment the unions in Britain or
Ireland are weak and completely under the domination of the bureaucracy
they presume no real struggle can emerge from them and that the
bureaucracy is unbeatable.
[7] They produced three issues of a journal of the same name before
disintegrating.
[8] Analysis No 2., page 3.
[9] Recently a letter in the science journal Nature accused researchers
of writing papers in such a way so as to be impossible to understand
unless you worked in the field. It is as if the use of obscure terms is
how you prove your credentials. If this is true of mainstream science it
is certainly true of many of the new left publications.
[10] Basically that the time is ripe for revolution and all thatâs
needed is for the right leadership to come along, raise the correct
slogans and break the working class from the current reformist/centrist
misleaders.
[11] As with the FAI in the Spanish CNT, whose role was to combat
reformist tendencies (as well as carrying out âfund raisingâ and
retaliation for attacks by the bosses hired guns on union organisers).
[12] Indeed if volume and complexity of theory alone were the yardstick
used Christianity or Islam! should be considered.
[13] by anarchists, these accounted for the failure of anarchism to
create an alternative, however much it could point at the possibility of
that alternative.
[14] It is important to recognise that none of these things were
complete however, due to a situation of dual power with the state.
However the period from after the revolution in 1936 to May 1937 saw
most major decisions being made in a democratic fashion with the state
only interfering at the national level.
[15] These examples should have ended the debate over whether the
working class could collectively run the economy. To the idealists where
the idea is more important than the reality however we still receive the
mantra of âtrade union consciousnessâ and âneed for the stateâ.
[16] The IWW in the USA was indeed a real union but it was explicitly
not anarchist. Its politics although having much in common with
anarchism (and despite the fact many anarchists were members) was more
probably described as revolutionary syndicalist.
[17] A fair part of this view originates with a single study by a right
wing bourgeoisie scholar in Spain based on one village at the time of a
minor uprising in 1932. His work has since been shown as completely
inaccurate. See The anarchists of Casas Viejas by Jerome R. Mintz [1982]
for a fuller discussion of this event and its subsequent falsification.
[18] An example of this was the recent beating up of one of the more
political and successful punk singers, Jello Biafra the lead singer of
the Dead Kennedyâs for âselling outâ. His leg was broken so badly that
it was so swollen it could not be put in a cast.
[19] There is an excellent interview with activists of KAS (Russian
anarchists, using the name of the anarcho-syndicalist organisation
suppressed by the Bolsheviks in 1918) in issue #5 of Independent
Politics, Winter 1994 that describes the origins of these groups in more
detail. The following quote describes the formation of one of the groups
that came together from 12 cities in the late 80âs to re-form KAS.
âIn Moscow this was a student group called Obshchina, community or
commune, which dates back to 1983. There was a group of people, friends,
and in 1985â86 they had been the organising committee of the All Union
Revolutionary Marxist Party. Later there was some evolution of ideas and
by the time the Obshchina group was created in 1987 the main
participants already knew that they stood for anarcho-syndicalism. This
was mainly under the influence of Bakuninâs critique of state socialism
and Marxism. These people were mainly historians and had the possibility
to read materials in the archives, which was closed to the general
public.â
[20] Although defeat at the hands of Francoâs better equipped army, or
by even stronger international intervention would have remained a
possibility. There was little international support that could be called
on. Obviously without spreading internationally the revolution could not
have survived long.
[21] Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists.
[22] Towards a Fresh Revolution.