The Case for Revolution
Anarchists argue that illegitimate authority
should be dismantled from below. As human
beings, we are innately curious about our
possibilities for self-improving, self-directed
activity, and we become justifiably angry
when those possibilities are limited by the
exercise of power. Our curiosity towards freedom
and our anger towards injustice can be channelled
into anarchist practice. Anarchist practice
is about taking actions to destroy hierarchy
and to create horizontality in its place,
evaluating the effectiveness of these actions,
and using that evaluation to guide further
actions. In this video, I want to talk about
some of these actions of destruction and creation
that I think are effective.
Prefiguration and Anarchist Organisations
Prefiguration can be summed up in the slogan
‘building the new society in the shell of
the old’. Anarchism cannot exist if we do
not organise ourselves in an anarchist manner,
and so we must create the social relations
of liberty, equality and solidarity (free
co-operation between equals) that will characterise
an anarchist society, in the present world
as it is. That is prefiguration. Anarchists
want to build a socialist society based on
common ownership of the means of production,
workers’ self-management and direct democracy.
That means that we need to create working
class organisations that are self-managed
and directly democratic, and these organisations
need to struggle against capitalism and the
state.
An example of such working class self-organisation
is anarcho-syndicalist unions. Anarcho-syndicalist
unions are labour unions organised in an anarchist
manner. They have two major functions, which
are in the short term to struggle for better
pay, shorter hours and other benefits while
capitalism still exists, and in the long term,
to seize the means of production with a general
strike, and form the democratic organs of
a libertarian socialist economy. Examples
of syndicalist unions include the Industrial
Workers of the World, which is somewhat anarchist
in its character, and the Confederacion Nacional
del Trabajo or CNT, which played a significant
role in the Spanish revolution.
As well as syndicalist unions, many anarchists
also advocate for the creation of specific
anarchist federations, which also have a direct-democratic
structure. Two kinds of anarchist federations
are synthesis federations and platformist
federations. Synthesis federations are organisations
which attempt to bring together anarchists
of different stripes – mutualists, collectivists,
communists, syndicalists and individualists
(not anarcho-capitalists), all under a big
tent approach. Platformist federations are
more tightly organised, based on ideological
and tactical unity, collective responsibility
and federalism. Ideological and tactical unity
means the members all have a shared, common
set of ideas and goals, as well as common
methods, such that we don’t contradict ourselves
in our thought and action. Collective responsibility
means that individual members are responsible
for the political activities of the federation,
and the federation as a whole is responsible
for the political activities of the individuals.
Federalism refers to the organisation of the
platform by means of horizontality and free
agreement.
Organisational dualism is an anarchist perspective
which argues for specific anarchist organisations
like platformist federations to work alongside
mass organisations like syndicalist unions,
to facilitate the conditions for working class
self-emancipation. Personally I think that’s
a strong position. Although I have some caveats
about collective responsibility, namely that
it can be appropriate for individuals to act
in a personal capacity, platformism and syndicalism,
roughly speaking, are what I think anarchists
should be doing. That’s not to say that
networks of small, self-managed affinity groups
aren’t also valuable; these forms of organisation
stem from our natural human ways of relating
to one another – groups of friends – however,
a mass social movement to dismantle capitalism
and the state, and take over the running of
an advanced industrial society requires mass
organisation.
Direct Action and the Culture of Resistance
A key role of anarchist organisations is to
take direct action. Direct action is action
taken by oppressed people to disrupt or dismantle
oppressive systems without the interference
of authority figures and bureaucrats. Referring
back to the principle of prefiguration, we
hold that horizontal structures are the legitimate
bases of action, not whatever the authorities
will allow. We cannot allow authorities to
set parameters around our resistance, because
those parameters reflect their interests,
and exclude the actions necessary to dismantle
them. These are key reasons for taking direct
action.
With escalating campaigns of direct action,
we can force bosses to meet our material demands.
This can include things as small as a demand
delivery, where we produce a letter demanding
that our grievances be resolved, and hand
over the letter to the employer with a visible
show of collective support. It can also include
a communications blockade, where we hammer
the bosses with complaints over the phone,
social media, emails and so on, all in the
same time period. Further up the scale are
strikes and pickets, where we refuse to work
and form a line outside of the shop to stop
people from entering. We can also occupy the
workplace and stop management from entering,
which they know is just a step below expropriating
them and running things ourselves. Seizing
the means of production requires direct action
on a mass scale, in particular, a general
strike, where all of the workers across all
industries refuse to work. Our labour is the
source of their profits, so if we stop working,
they stop profiting. With our collective strength,
we can shut down the basis of the capitalist
system.
Although direct action is the reason we won
the 8-hour day, minimum wage laws, and health
and safety regulations, it isn’t just about
economic struggle. For example, sit-ins and
riots played a significant role in the black
civil rights movement in the US, fighting
racial segregation. They won. In 1965, 150
gender non-conforming people occupied Dewey’s
Coffee Shop to fight discriminatory denials
of service to LGBT people. They won. In 1977,
disabled people took part in the 504 Sit-in,
occupying federal buildings, forcing Joseph
Califano to sign federal civil rights protections
for disabled people. They won. These historic
victories are examples of how, when we act
for ourselves instead of submitting to the
authority of bosses and politicians, we win.
Just recently, a Swedish woman stood up on
a plane to prevent the deportation of an Afghan
refugee to almost certain death – this kind
of civil disobedience organised on a large
scale would be an excellent way of resisting
border controls and the Trump regime.
By participating in direct action and anarchist
modes of organisation, people become transformed
by revolutionary activity, and learn the skills
of self-organisation that are needed for the
future society. A culture of resistance is
about developing that transformation, and
therefore militant anti-authoritarianism,
on a mass scale. We want anarchist ideas and
practices to proliferate among our class and
all oppressed groups.
Anarchist organisations need to produce outreach
material, which shows people what we do, what
we’re for and against, and why. This material
needs to present anarchist ideas and methods
in a manner which is both informative and
highly accessible to the public. Oppression
is an urgent matter, and we cannot waste our
time with academic masturbation, producing
material written for the sake of sounding
smart that nobody outside of a small clique
is going to understand. Likewise, we should
also reject anti-intellectualism, or the notion
that working class people are somehow too
stupid to take an interest in theory. Both
of these tendencies are destructive, and they
present a barrier to bringing solid anarchist
politics to the masses. In our outreach material,
we also need to record when our actions succeed
and fail, and why, so that we can apply what
we’ve learned.
Sometimes, it’s necessary to organise independently
as people who are oppressed according to gender,
sexuality, race, ability and so on, without
the interference of groups that are at an
advantage. This follows from basic anarchist
ideas of autonomy; oppressed people are strengthened
when we can share common experiences and use
that to guide our actions. In anarchist organisations,
there ought to be specific caucuses for these
groups.
A culture of resistance is also about building
self-organised structures of mutual aid, which
subvert systems of oppression. Lorenzo Kom’boa
Ervin has written about building a black survival
programme, which includes things like creating
a Black liberation educational system from
nursery to college, where black people can
increase their self-knowledge and learn their
history. The Black Panthers organised free
breakfast programmes for school children and
educated the youth about black liberation.
One of the demands of the local chapter of
Action for Trans Health in my city is for
trans people to be properly medically trained,
so that they can safely meet their own needs
and bypass the bureaucracy that’s been created
against them. These kinds of things are a
part of the culture of resistance.
There ought to be anti-fascist organisations,
which physically confront white supremacists,
stop them from organising, and work in communities
to counter the ideologies that are convenient
for capital and the state. We need to make
the point that immigrants don’t drive down
wages, bosses do.
Many people already believe that politicians
are corrupt liars. A culture of resistance
means the ruling class are completely delegitimized
in the popular imagination, so that for every
sickening royal display, it’s matched with
widespread calls for the guillotine. In Argentina,
around the time of the recovered factory movement,
the slogan was ‘que se vayan todos’ – all
of them must go. At one point five presidents
were overthrown in ten days due to the upheavals.
That’s the culture of resistance.
Social revolution
Anarchists don’t want a political revolution.
We’re not interested in Bolshevik-style
coups, a mere change of rulers, or small groups
of conspirators claiming to act on the public’s
behalf, and we don’t believe a free society
can be constructed by means of a government
decree. We want a social revolution – the
complete dismantling of hierarchical systems
in all aspects of life. Suppose that there
exists a large network of affinity groups,
syndicalist unions, anarchist organisations,
community assemblies, anti-fascist groups
and so on. Through the infrastructure of popular
organisations of struggle, the masses have
developed the skills for self-government,
and ultimately desire the abolition of all
oppressive hierarchies, and the construction
of a state and class free, libertarian socialist
society. If our organisations are shutting
down industry, using a revolutionary general
strike to try to take possession of the means
of production – at that point, the ruling
class is left with the police and military.
That’s the biggest barrier to an anarchist
society. The ruling class use brute force
through the police and military to exercise
authority over the rest of us, and they will
not relinquish their power. They use physical
aggression against us to maintain their rule.
For these reasons, alongside a general strike,
an armed insurrection would be necessary to
carry out coercive expropriation of capitalists,
and to confront the state. Anarchists generally
hold that this is justified on the grounds
that we are defending ourselves against a
system which is fundamentally violent towards
us. As I’ve said before, we need horizontal
federations of workers’ militias to defend
ourselves against reaction, things like Makhno’s
Black Army that existed in Ukraine, or the
Durruti Column in Spain.
There are a number of things to bear in mind
when thinking about the possibility of conflict
with the state. The first is that many people
join the state military to get access to certain
benefits like education. We can circumvent
that over time by meeting people’s needs
through the infrastructure of popular organisations.
This infrastructure should also aim to completely
delegitimize the propaganda that joining the
ruling class’ military is fighting for freedom
and democracy. These factors would make it
more difficult for the state to hoover people
up from the domestic population as resistance
to the capitalist system grows. So we can
shrink their military. Secondly, the conditions
that would be created up to and during a revolutionary
situation, would increase the likelihood of
mutinies and defection – so for those who
do join their military, having been told a
story that they are protecting the domestic
population from invaders, only to then receive
instructions to fire on that population – a
proportion of that group may well defect and
refuse to fight. So there’d be a fair chance
of mutiny on their part. Thirdly and finally,
popular militias would massively outnumber
the remaining police and military that they’d
have, and they could be defeated with a guerrilla
campaign. States do whatever they can to keep
popular movements broken up, small and divided,
because the armed and organised masses are
too great a threat for them to contain. Having
carried out coercive expropriation and overthrown
the state, the infrastructure of popular organisations
would become the new means of organising industry
and the society, and we would have libertarian
socialism.
Internationalism
Our aim should not merely be to create anarchism
in some small pocket of the world. In those
situations, surrounding powers will do what
they can to economically strangle and violently
crush it, like they did in Spain and Ukraine.
Capitalism is a global system, and it will
take a global effort to dismantle it. For
these reasons, the libertarian socialist movement
needs to be international in its scope. Anarchist
organisations need to affiliate into an international
confederation, which some have done – the
International of Anarchist Federations has
member organisations in Europe, Argentina,
Mexico and Chile, and it keeps close contact
with the anarcho-syndicalist International
Workers’ Association, which has member organisations
in Europe, Australia, the United States and
Brazil. These kinds of organisations should
be a means of co-ordinating revolutionary
activity on an international scale.
Should there be an anarchist social revolution
in a given area, I think the international
response should be one of providing mutual
aid to the revolution, and also using the
threat of a good example to catalyse revolutionary
activity in other areas across the globe.
What we want is a situation where revolutions
are snowballing from country to country. The
formal abolition of chattel slavery, and the
end of feudalism shows how systems that are
international in their scope can be overturned.
There’s no reason to believe that capitalism
is somehow an exception or that it’s going
to last forever.
Concluding Thoughts
To sum up – prefiguration, anarchist organisations,
direct action, social revolution and internationalism
are an interconnected web of strategies and
tactics that we can use to bring anarchism
to the world in which we presently live. If
we want an anarchist society, these are the
practices which, (in my opinion) are the most
effective to bring that about. I’ve not
said anything about lifestylism, propaganda
of the deed, illegalism or insurrectionary
anarchism, which I don’t view as effective
strategies. Some anarchists will disagree
with me on that, or indeed on the other points
I’ve raised. This is just a positive case
for the strategies that I think are effective.
The best-case scenario is that enough people
participate in these actions and organise
together, seeing an end to global capitalism
and ushering in the construction of a non-hierarchical
society. The worst-case scenario is that not
enough people participate in these actions,
and global capitalism unfolds into humanitarian
catastrophe on a scale that we can’t recover
from. We’re not going to know if that’s
transpired until it’s too late, so we might
as well act now to increase the chances of
the best-case scenario, and if the worst comes
to the worst, we will at least have the consolation
of saying that we tried our best.
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the
will. To quote Buenaventura Durruti – “We
are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are
going to inherit the Earth; there is not the
slightest doubt about that. The capitalist
class might blast and ruin its own world before
it leaves the stage of history. We carry a
new world, here in our hearts, and that world
is growing in this minute.”
Many thanks to my contributors on Patreon:
Brandon Haukoos-Tischer, Comrade Dr Frasier
Crane, Cyclidéon, Divayth Fyr, Flagburner,
Google hushabye valley or I’ll give you
a swirly, Jack Bryant, Joe Martin, Marty,
Michael Norling, Patrick Gordon, Richard Pearson,
and XxX_Swagmaster420_XxX.
This has been libertarian socialist rants,
thanks for watching.
