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Title: Anarchism today
Author: Workers’ Solidarity Federation
Date: 1995
Language: en
Topics: 1990s, anarchist movement, Workers Solidarity, state socialism, social democracy
Source: Retrieved on 29th October 2021 from http://struggle.ws/africa/wsfws/1_1anarchism.html
Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity Number 1 May/June 1995.

Workers’ Solidarity Federation

Anarchism today

At the present moment socialism is in crisis both in the West and the

East. This is despite the need for a real alternative to capitalism.

After all racism, — mass unemployment ,homelessness and poverty show

that capitalism has failed to provide for the majority.

This crisis of socialism affects the Western reformist Social Democrat

or Labour Parties. It also affects the various groups of Marxists/

Leninists/ Trotskyists.

They are paying for their betrayal of socialism in this century. What

they conceived socialism to be has been- totally discredited. What we

need to do is to reclaim the revolutionary and anti authoritarian

socialism represented by anarchism.

LABOUR PARTY BLUES

The large ‘socialist’ tradition of Social Democracy (or labourism) is in

deep trouble. These reasons for this are not hard to find.

The Social Democrats in the West always aimed to reform capitalism

towards socialism. They sought to do this by introducing a welfare state

through parliament, by setting up arbitration procedures and by getting

the union leaders, bosses and government to cooperate in the “humane”

management of capitalism.

Many Social Democratic policies were adopted by most First World states

from the end of World War 2 to the early 1970s. This was .partly because

capitalism was going through a boom. It was also because of high levels

of class struggle.

Capitalism entered crisis in the 1970s and the capitalists needed

working class wages and living standards to be driven down. As co-

managers of the bosses’ states, the Social Democrats in power led the

offensive.

In Britain this led to massive conflict between the Labour government

and its working class and union supporters 1970s. In Sweden it was the

Social Democrats who dismantled the welfare state in the 1980s. (This

was not the first time Social Democrats attacked workers to save

capitalism: in Germany they led the counter revolution against the 1919

workers uprising

Obviously working class people resisted with some success but many

struggles were sabotaged by the trade union bureaucracy. There were many

defeats and so disillusionment with Social Democracy and even class

politics grew.

COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET BLOC

Most of those groups who draw their traditions from Marx, Lenin, or

Trotsky are already collapsing or have collapsed. They usually saw the

so- called “Communist” countries as being “actually existing socialism”.

The collapse of these regimes, in Eastern Europe, Russia and also

countries like Mozambique, has resulted in the belief that scialism

itself cannot work.

To anarchists there is no such problem, we realised that the Soviet

Union stopped moving towards socialism between 1918 and 1921. The

revolution was destroyed from within by the Bolsheviks who believed that

a centralized, authoritarian State apparatus under the control of their

Party was necessary to introduce socialism. The result was a form of

State capitalism run by a tiny bureaucratic elite

STATE SOCIALISM

Clearly much of what passed for socialism this century was nothing of

the sort. Rather than see their version of socialism as flawed, many

have come to see capitalism as triumphant.

But there is an alternative: the anarchist tradition. This has always

rejected the reformism of Social Democracy and the authoritarianism of

Marxism. It has refused to see socialism as something being imposed by a

minority wielding state power “on behalf of the majority,” whether that

minority was in parliament or a “workers state.”

Anarchists believe that the capitalist economic system must be done away

with and replaced with a new economic order in which the working class

of the world will own and share all the wealth they produce.

The hierarchical and authoritarian political institutions of capitalism

must also be smashed. The state structures cannot introduce socialism

but will actively sabotage the working class cause.

Firstly, parliament cannot ;challenge capitalism. Real ,power does not

lie in. parliament but in the civil service, the military and the board

rooms of the companies. And MPs often quickly adopt ruling class values

and lifestyles (the gravy train).

Secondly, state institutions are built so that the small number of

bosses can rule over the majority from the top down. These hierarchical

undemocratic structures will always create hierarchical and undemocratic

society. The so- called “workers’ states” advocated by the Marxists to

introduce socialism have thus proved to be its greatest enemy.

We also reject the elitist and undemocratic idea that a party of

professional revolutionaries is needed to make the revolution for the

workers. This can only lead to the creation of new ruling elite.

The mass of the people must make the revolution by and for themselves.

WHY ANARCHISM?

By contrast, anarchists argue that the mass of “ordinary; people” must

make the revolution for themselves. Every member of the working class

(workers, youth, housewives, unemployed, rank- and- file soldiers, rural

poor) has a role to play.

We believe in a revolution that comes from the bottom up and is based on

worker and community councils. This would be defended by a workers

militia which is internally democratic accountable to the masses.

The role of the Workers Solidarity Federation and other anarchists is to

encourage ordinary people to take their struggles in their own hands and

to fight for a society without bosses or governments.

The crisis of the traditional Left opens the way for the spread of the

anarchist idea. As a result anarchism is growing rapidly across the

world, including in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Experience demonstrates that there is no authoritarian- route to

socialism. Join the WSF and build for revolution from below.