I’ve been given a blog over at libcom.org, who are expanding their roster of bloggers in an attempt to make the blog section more prominent in a coming overhaul of the site. At the moment, my blog largely contains stuff re-posted from either here or Truth, Reason & Liberty. The only exceptions being What is wrong with crossing a picket line? and I’m striking on N30 because… With luck, that will soon change and there’ll be a lot more original content over there.

This site will remain as an archive, and people can still comment and debate on the posts where they remain relevant. But other than that it will be dormant. I’ll encourage everyone to update their links and bookmarks, as Property is Theft! can now be found here.

I was inspired to write on this subject by a conversation with another rep within my workplace. They aren’t, or certainly don’t identify as, an anarchist. However, they have agreed with a lot of the ideas that I have articulated on workplace organisation – in particular the need to build from the ground so that workers as a mass can take control of their own struggles from the union bureaucracy. Where the differences came was in the attitude to the existing bureaucracy. In particular, to the executive committees which make decisions on the direction of the union and its response to decisions made by the bosses, largely in isolation from the will of the rank-and-file. Agreeing with me that simply putting different faces into the existing structure was useless, he asked why we couldn’t put people into positions with the specific aim of using them to change the structure.

The Workmates Collective on the London Underground is one practical example of anarcho-syndicalists building rank-and-file structures within and without existing trade unions

As I have already alluded, this idea within the libertarian movement is called boring-from-within, an idea articulated by the now-defunct Workers Solidarity Federation of South Africa in Unions and Revolution;

We must do two things if we want the unions to play a revolutionary role. First, get rid of the union bureaucracy and make sure that the unions are controlled by the membership. Second, win the union membership over to Anarchist- Syndicalist ideas.

We must work within the existing unions to achieve these goals. All unions are workers combat units. Leaving the mainstream unions to form new “pure” revolutionary unions has serious consequences. It withdraws militants from the unions, leaving them at the mercy of bureaucrats and reformists. It isolates militants in tiny splinter unions because the masses prefer to join large, established unions. Small groups of revolutionaries working inside established unions can achieve impressive results. For example, the main French (CGT) and Argentinean (FORA) union federations were won over to Anarchist-Syndicalism in this way in the early twentieth century.

At this point, the idea isn’t distinct from that prevailing within the Solidarity Federation in Britain, whose industrial strategy argues that “workers will still be likely to hold union cards here to avoid splits in the workplace between union members and non-union members.”

However, it is beyond this point where the two strategies differ. Whilst Solfed argue for building up “an alternative structure to official union structures that are dominated by full-time bureaucrats,” the boring-from-within approach involved attempting to directly transform the existing structures in order to democratise and de-bureaucratise the union.

In its position paper on trade unions, the Irish Workers Solidarity Movement lays out the strategy for transformation in some detail;

7.3 No WSM member will accept any unelected position that entails having power over the membership.

7.4 Members elected as shop stewards consider their position as that of a delegate rather than that of a ‘representative’ who can act over the heads of the members.

7.5 When going forward for elective positions we make it clear that we are not accepting the structure as it now exists. We will fight for more accountability, mandation, information for members, etc.

…

7.6.5 UNION DEMOCRACY

(a) We fight to change the role of the full-time officials – not to change the individuals who occupy the positions. Their decision-making powers have to be removed and returned to the rank & file membership. They should be elected and paid no more than the average wage of the people they represent. They should only serve for a fixed period of no more than five years after which they return to ordinary work. The unions will have to win the demand for jobs to be kept open in order for this to be realistic.

(b) All officials to be subject to mandation and recall.

(c) We are totally opposed to the ICTU “two tier” picket.

(d) For regular branch and workplace meetings, in working hours where this is possible.

(e) For direct elections to all committees, conference delegations and national officerships, subject to mandation and recall.

(f) All strikes to be automatically made official as long as they do not contradict trade union principles.

(g) Support for all disputes, official or unofficial, in pursuit of higher wages, better conditions, jobs, trade union principles or any issue in the interest of the class.

(h) For the publication of minutes of all union meetings.

(i) Where revolutionaries can gain enough support to win election to national officerships in large unions, or indeed small ones, this support should not be used to merely elect a candidate. Instead it should be used to fundamentally change the structure of the union in such a way as to return power to the membership and turn the officers into administrators and resource people rather than decision makers.

This relates to the strategy argued for by my fellow rep at work. Yes, we should be organising at a rank-and-file, building mass participation and forcing a culture shift when it came to decision-making and to taking action. But why could we not compliment that by trying to put people into place on the Group and National Executive Committees who would support this and could help remove any potential barriers that might arise?

The Workers Solidarity Movement are amongst those who argue for a "boring-from-within" approach to trade unions

On the face of it, this is a compelling argument. Building from the ground, almost from scratch, is not an easy task to contemplate. Surely, there’s no harm in using the existing structures where you can, and making sure that you have people within them who are willing to step back from them when the time is ripe to put the new structures into practice?

However, the question here is – if such a thing is possible – then why does it not follow that you can simply replace the existing leadership with a more militant and “left” one, and see things change that way?

The answer, as those who argue for the above strategy would broadly agree, is the fundamental nature of the trade union bureaucracy. As the WSM themselves state, “no matter how radical or left-wing [the leadership] are at the beginning, their role sucks them into the business of conciliation.” More explicitly, “if they are to have anything to bargain with at the negotiation table,” then ” the union official has to sell the employer labour discipline and freedom from unofficial strikes as part of its side of the bargain.” Hence their role as “keepers of industrial peace.”

Does this change if you enter the role with the specific aim of supporting rank-and-file organisation and transforming a trade union into a revolutionary one? To a degree, perhaps. After all, you will be far more conscious of the pressures that the role will place on you and arguably better equipped to address them.

However, in practice we see that this awareness doesn’t help you to fare any better. As Joseph Kay wrote in Thinking about unions: association and representation, “the problem is highlighted by the number of modern day bureaucratic unions with radical syndicalist origins (of which the French CGT, founded under large anarchist influence is the most obvious example).” It was Buenaventura Durruti who rebuked the CNT during the civil war for seeking to “get the CNT legalised and alleviate the repression,” because “bureaucratisation and subsequent mediation was a result of taking on a representative role.”

JK cites the Direct Action Movement pamphlet Winning the class war;

Of all the areas that the unions seek to have influence in by far the most important is its dealing with management, for it is from this area that all their power flows. They must retain the right to negotiate wages and conditions with management. It is by having the power to negotiate on behalf of workers that they retain their influence within the workplace and ultimately attract and retain members. In turn it is having that control and influence in the workplace that they are of use to the boss class. The unions offer stability in the workplace, they channel workers anger, shape and influence their demands and, if need be, act to police the workforce.

It is for this reason that the CNT now consciously spurn representative functions, arguing against “giv[ing] your ‘representatives’ the power to sign and negotiate for you” as “you and only you, are representative. When you take in your hands your problems, you gain representation.“

It is not difficult to see how this works in practice.

If you are a delegate, directly accountable to the membership, it is very difficult indeed to stray. You are there to voice the demands of the workers, and their response to offers made, with no capacity for independent decision making. If you violate that mandate, you can be instantly recalled.

By contrast, a representative has been mandated by their election with decision-making power, and is part of a key body with responsibility for negotiation in the manner described above. Even if they are put forward as a candidate by a group to whom they consider themselves answerable, they cannot be recalled from their seat if they betray that trust, as such a mechanism doesn’t at present exist. Thus, the accountability rendered by direct democracy almost completely dissipates when it is used to “bore-from-within” a system of representative democracy.

The frequency of wildcat strikes by postal workers is one example of struggles going beyond the official leadership, but rank-and-file control cannot be imposed from above

It could be argued that, in building up the strength of the rank-and-file at the same time, you create a situation whereby even if instant recall cannot be enacted the recall will still occur the next time elections come around. But there are numerous flaws in this logic.

In the first instance, there is the problem of numbers. Even with the straightforward objective of switching the leadership in PCS, the Left Unity faction which currently dominates had to build for many years in order to have the strength to put forward a full slate of candidates. Within the current structure, a single voice or even a minority voice is not significant enough to influence the direction of the union – as in PCS the rival 4themembers and Independent Left factions currently experience.

Thus, in order to “change the role of the full-time officials” and make other fundamental changes in how the union is run at the top, you essentially have to take over the leadership. Not only does this require an immense amount of time, energy and resources better spent on rank-and-file organising, but it then puts you in the same position as any other broad left takeover. It is now you “at the negotiation table” with responsibility to “sell the employer labour discipline” in negotiations. The fundamental nature of power structures means that they do not allow for their own dissolution, and there is little reason to expect that we will witness anything other than rank-and-file militants falling prey to bureaucratisation.

More pressingly, if a rank-and-file movement has enough influence as to sway the election of officers to an executive, why do they need to seize power of the executive at all?

If there has been a steady effort at organising workplace committees based on mass participation and direct action, and you have lay reps taking up the role of delegates, you have already dismantled the existing power structure at a local level. If this is spread across enough of a cross section of any given trade union that you can be the major voice in elections, it is a safe bet that you have already lain the foundations for building a national federal structure.

Thus, to alter the structure of the union, you simply have to circumvent it. Rather than wasting the effort of taking over the existing leadership in parallel with rank-and-file organisation, the rank-and-file can establish an entirely different structure and vote en masse to disaffiliate from the reformist union whilst establishing a revolutionary one. I have over-simplified the idea somewhat, as this is not a quick process and there would be a significant battle of ideas to be won, but fundamentally that is the essence of the thing. The bureaucracy has essentially been jettisoned and the bosses are forced to deal with a militant rank-and-file rather than officials who will meet them halfway.

There is a clear precedent for attempts to transform the fundamental nature of a trade union being akin to alchemy. Down that path, we repeat mistakes already made and become what we were fighting against. In order to build a revolutionary union movement which is genuinely led from below by the rank-and-file, what we need is to build the new structure within the shell of the old.

In a recent Truth, Reason & Liberty article on the importance of such debate I pointed to Steve Ryan’s Time to build a new rank-and-file and Tom Denning’s The unions and the fight against austerity  as good starting points. My own contribution is here. But beyond the question of what we need to do, there is that of how we go about it. This has been the subject of recent open meetings hosted by the Commune and Solidarity Federation. The sad thing is that because of the course worker organisation has taken at least over the last thirty years, these debates must essentially be seen as attempts to revive a practice long-forgotten.

In considering how to build from below, for a rank-and-file strong enough to take control of its own struggles, there are a number of obstacles to overcome. The myth of the authoritarian left is that of the “crisis of leadership,” whereby an otherwise directionless or apathetic working class lacks the particular form of top-down control that brings militancy and effective fightback. In fact, the opposite is true: the focus on leaders and top-down organisation, combined with the defeats of the past few decades, has demoralised and disempowered the rank-and-file workforce. As such, the task is not to get “the right leadership,” but to build people’s confidence in their ability to take control of their own struggles and abandon the leadership.

A culture of resistance

Solidarity Federation's victory over Office Angels is one example of how struggles can serve to increase the confidence of people to act on their own initiative

Building people’s confidence means, ultimately, demonstrating that ordinary people can win on their own terms. Thus, the self-belief required to win victories and the successes that increased confidence feed into one another – though obviously such a cycle has to start small and build up.

The fortunate thing is that, as dire as things can often seem, we aren’t starting from scratch. Rank-and-file based organisations and campaigns already exist on a community basis, if not a workplace one, and provide a springboard from which to build something bigger. For example, the Solidarity Federation’s recent victory against Office Angels was followed up with a statement to temporary and agency workers making the point that such wins are possible, and making exactly the point that solidarity and direct action work.

In a similar vein, the Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty have won in a year-long dispute against “workfare” providers A4E. They had been denying an ex-miner his JSA because of his refusal to attend meetings without a rep. A campaign of disruptive solidarity actions here also won the day with the stopped benefits repaid.

The point with both cases (and no doubt other examples before them) is that they prove to ordinary people the power of collective action and the protection we get from sticking together. Unlike joining a servicing union, which is as empowering as joining the AA, it is something tangible that can be seen on the ground. The more it happens, the more people are inclined to be part of it. A culture of resistance grows, and you see more and more people acting on their own initiative.

Of course, this does not spontaneously transfer to the workplace, especially in the case of a strike by a traditional union. It often seems to be the case that whilst the current escalation in the class struggle has inspired the resistance culture in those who don’t come under the umbrella of traditional organising – the unemployed, agency workers, the UK Uncut movement, and even school pupils, to give just a few examples – those within the strongholds of the trade unions remain the least radical.

Another recent example of direct action solidarity is the Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty's success against A4E

This comes back to the focus on building “broad lefts” and the “right leadership,” reducing those on the shop floor to little more than chess pieces in other people’s power plays. The unions play their role as the keepers of industrial peace well, and most of the left goes along with it by promoting illusions to the contrary. Hence why, in the midst of uprisings across the world and genuinely radical direct action against state and capital, a one-day strike being initiated entirely within the restrictive parameters of the law is hailed as the possible end of the government by various “revolutionary leaderships” who really ought to know better.

It is here that militant workers face one of the more difficult tasks. Not only do we have to build from the ground up, an imposing task in itself given the conditions mentioned earlier, but we have to challenge the existing hierarchies of the union.

Circumventing the bureaucracy

I have laid out in some depth how an anarcho-syndicalist would operate in a workplace organised by a mainstream trade union here, here, and here. But it is worth remembering that these are my own thoughts on the matter rather than a strict blueprint.

Rather than a formula, then, it is better to talk of key principles;

• Decision-making by mass meeting
• Recallable delegates, not representatives, where necessary
• Local control of strike funds
• Rank-and-file controlled strike committees
• Direct action

On which basis, people can learn the power in their own hands and to act on their own initiative.

There is a strong libertarian trend within the growing youth movement, and recent disputes over schools becoming private academies on Merseyside have inspired spontaneous mass walkouts by pupils

I have taken the first tentative steps in this direction where I work. We have recently established a hardship fund on the basis that the committee responsible for making decisions on applications and for fund-raising is drawn from the membership, not reps, and that it is independent of the Branch Executive Committee. It is (very) early days yet, but I am hoping that if it takes off it will be yet another small example of just how people can run their own affairs without top down leadership.

Within the current context, the next big issue will be building for a “yes” vote in the coming strike ballot. However, my main aim will be to go beyond that – making the argument for people to not only vote for the strike action but take it. For most people, especially in the era of single-day strike action, a strike day is just a day off. They can catch up on shopping, go out for a drink, or generally take advantage of not being in work. Picket lines generally consist of the six official pickets recommended by the code of practice (PDF). But this is part of the growing disconnect between the working class and the struggles they’re involved in and it is vital that this is challenged.

But it needs to also be stated that those who come down wouldn’t be “observers” or “supporters,” for the purposes of nervous officials wanting to keep everything strictly above board. We should be arguing for mass pickets, and those joining the line should take an active role not only in the duty but in deciding on how the action plays out. In other words, we need to mobilise people to act for themselves, not to be led.

Propaganda plays a significant role in this, and it will be integral that a message of rank-and-file control gets out there. Even if we discover that thirty years of demobilisation cannot be overcome that easily, the seeds need to be sown now rather than left until the next big struggle that comes along.

A culture of ideas

In Anfield, a child being knocked down by a car prompted parents to blockade the road outside a school to prevent motorists parking by the school gates and posing a danger to the children

The examples given above are just a few ideas. No doubt there is much more that can be done in terms of mobilising people. But I will end by suggesting that one of those things should be to encourage people to take part in the discussions that are going on about how to build for both these strikes and the broader fight.

The authoritarian left claims to share the concern to organise at a rank-and-file level. But they do so with the clear intention of building up a broader base of footsoldiers, to be led into battle. As vanguards and revolutionary leaderships, they are above the working class, separate from it by their belief that they should be in charge of it whilst it doesn’t hold the right consciousness. The same, too, with union officials, who talk of “members” and “reps/activists” as though two separate species.

For those of us on the libertarian left, and particularly within the anarchist tradition, that cannot be the case. We reject illusions in the existing leadership precisely because we reject formal leadership. We are not seeking to become a replacement vanguard, and we are part of that rank-and-file that needs to take control of its own struggles.

This means that we do not debate only amongst our fellow militants and radicals, but that we take part in and seek to recreate the vibrant intellectual culture that was an inherent feature of the working class at the height of its power. The ideas we promote should be strong enough to stand up on their own merits. This being the case, scrutiny and robust debate with other workers who do not necessarily share your viewpoint is no bad thing and is to be encouraged. We can only have a situation where decisions are made by mass meeting if everybody is aware of and part of the discussion on the same issues. Everyone’s viewpoint is equally valid, and unlike the authoritarian left and the trade union bureaucrats we should be seeking not to dominate or steer meetings and discussion but to be a part of it as everyone else.

Ultimately, if the aim is to have ordinary people taking action for themselves, then the ideas are the most important part of the equation. We can promote a culture of resistance, but by the nature of the beast we cannot produce a formula or a rigid programme. If people are to take control of their own struggles, they must decide how for themselves. The role of militants within the workplace is simply to be part of that, and to argue and demonstrate that it can be done.

For anarcho-syndicalists, this raises questions in relation to our own strategy. Not least, if even a one-day general strike would flop in the present conditions, how on earth would any revolutionary general strike succeed?

The short answer is that it wouldn’t. We are not, at present, in any position to kick-start a revolution and there is no point being less than honest about this. But this doesn’t mean that it will never work, or that in order to reach a point where it will we have to push towards a point where we have across-the-board unionisation and stable, permanent employment in all industry. At any rate, such would necessitate building the level of consciousness and class power required for revolution – and it would be a waste to utilise it purely to push for a more preferable balance of class power within social democracy.

Rather than wish away the conditions we face in the here and now, what we have to do is recognise them for what they are and adapt our tactics accordingly.

For example, as I’ve written previously, there needs to be an acknowledgement that the workplace strike is not the only effective method of utilising the economic power of our class. Too often, other forms of direct action are written off as merely “protest” whilst strikers are presented as the vanguard of the labour movemennt. Strikes are important, and those of us in strongly-organised workplaces are best placed to engage in them most effectively. But this doesn’t rule out occupations, economic blockades, lock-ins et al as effective tactics, or render them secondary to the strike.

With this in mind, it is possible to envision a general strike – or mass action to the same effect – being successful even with increasingly casualised labour. The question that remains is how exactly we reach the point that could be put into practice. But first, it is worth looking at the endgame. How does an anarcho-syndicalist general strike work, and what makes it revolutionary?

Why a revolutionary general strike

At the root of anarcho-syndicalist philosophy is the recognition that political and economic organisation cannot be addressed separately.

The Spanish revolution of 1936 remains the most explicit example of the revolutionary potential of workers expropriating the means of production and using direct action to implement self-organised communism

Where the Bolsheviks sought to seize state power through political action in order to use it in bringing down capitalism, we emphasise direct action by the workers themselves as the primary means of transforming society. Likewise, whereas apolitical syndicalism seeks the overthrow of the bosses but leaves the questions of politics to the individual worker, we argue that how society is organised has a direct bearing on how the economy is organised, and vice-versa.

In other words, ours is the syndicalist advocacy of association and direct action over representation coupled with a clear anarchist revolutionary perspective. As Emile Pouget put it in Direct Action, we “live in the present with all possible combativity, sacrificing neither the present to the future, nor the future to the present.”

So the revolutionary general strike: the same means with which we fight for concessions in the present being those by which we tear down capitalism for the future. Pouget and Emile Pataud, both members of the French CGT, wrote in How we shall bring about the revolution that “the stoppage of work, which on the previous day had been spontaneous, and was due to the accident of personal initiative and impulse, now became regularised and generalised in a methodical way, that showed the influence of the union decisions.”

Thus, the general strike would not be a strike in the traditional sense, i.e. the simple withdrawal of labour, but a takeover of the means of production by the working class. As opposed to the political revolution taking state power, and (allegedly) implementing workplace control from above, workers would directly expropriate workplaces and transfer production from capitalist to workers’ control.

The important point is that it is the same means by which we rebel every day, spontaneously and sporadically, which when generalised through the agitation and organisation of the “active minority” of the revolutionary unions becomes the means of our emancipation as a class. Thus, revolution is ongoing and organic as the “organisation for fighting” becomes “a social organism.” Though it certainly wasn’t perfect, and as with everything we should acknowledge the mistakes and draw lessons from them, the Spanish Revolution of 1936 demonstrates that this is not just an abstract concept but entirely possible to put into practice.

Combatting casualisation

But if that is the case, the point now must be to adapt such a strategy to fit quite different economic conditions. Casualisation is the result of 30 years of fairly steady decline for the labour movement, following on from the defeats of the Thatcher era.

Up until that point, the balance of class power allowed us – even with the bureaucracies at the helm – to force and defend significant concessions. Since, we have at best been able to slow down the active roll back of those victories. Moreover, the retreat of trade unions into given industrial strongholds has allowed for broad disparities in conditions amongst the working class. Where they are still relatively strong, the unions have maintained a passable defence of working conditions – albeit occasionally at the expense of newer staff, creating two-tier workforces. Where they are non-existent, there has been a steady decline of working conditions and even of the permanency of employment, leading to the current phenomena of casualisation.

Proof of just how pernicious this trend is came with the brief rise of McDonald’s Workers Resistance. This rank-and-file union initiative aimed to organise workers within one of the great symbols of post-industrial capitalism and alienated labour. However, it was extremely short-lived and enjoyed almost no support from a trade union movement now reduced to preserving itself as best it can in existing territory. Much broader solidarity would be needed to break the beast.

Workers demonstrate against the exploitation of casual labour by the supermarket Tesco

An example of this that has arisen in the labour movement, and lasted longer than MWR at any rate, is the Starbucks Union. In the face of extreme union-busting tactics from their employer, Starbucks workers have been able to establish a rank-and-file led fighting union, the key difference being the solidarity it enjoyed from the broader Industrial Workers of the World union. A similar initiative has arisen within the Jimmy Johns fast food chain.

In terms of building in the present, it remains the case that militant workers ought to be pushing for such forms of self-organisation within our own workplaces. Likewise, the aim of our propaganda work should be to encourage others to act in such a way within their workplaces and communities, as well as to offer support and practical solidarity where it is needed. Since revolutionary action will inevitably be drawn from the same spirit that drives day-to-day struggle, it is vital that such organising work goes on. Other activities under this remit include showing solidarity with other workers’ picket lines, and acting in support of agency workers and others who are in no position to defend themselves through the formation of a union – as Solidarity Federation are currently doing against the Office Angels employment agency.

All of this is quite basic stuff – and I have covered a lot of it in more depth in my “What is anarcho-syndicalism” series. In essence, what we are talking about here is rebuilding that notion of collective action and class solidarity that for a lot of people has been absent from the landscape of the last thirty years. Certainly, the scale of the present attacks is reviving it – particularly amongst the youth – but this is no excuse for complacency.

Anarchists don’t seek to lead struggle any more than we seek to detach ourselves from it, but we certainly do argue for specific forms. Namely, direct action and self-organisation, and we will continue to put forward this perspective as the struggles escalate. As an active revolutionary minority, we will always seek to educate, agitate and organise in favour of a movement built from below and led directly by the rank-and-file of the working class.

If such a tendency grew in strength, particularly amongst the low paid and casual workers, there is every possibility that it would force concessions that would improve the conditions of the lower end of the workforce. However, even if the only aim was the social democratic myth of “nicer” capitalism, we should not kid ourselves that this will reverse casualisation. Indeed, it may accelerate the trend, with employers wanting rid of these troublesome militants who organise even in seemingly impossible conditions. Not to mention the significant reserve army of labour in the unemployed which is a tactical advantage for the bosses. Which is why the ultimate aim of such a movement of grassroots organising should not be a reformist but a revolutionary one.

Building the strike

Reaching the point where such a thing as a revolutionary general strike can take place will not, in any situation, be a simple matter. It took 80 years of agitation to build for the revolutionary moment that made history in Spain in 1936. Recreating such a feat the current era will similarly require a monumental amount of effort to come to pass.

The 1911 Liverpool general transport strike brought Britain the closest it had ever come to revolution

But even if we knew it would take 150 years (or never come at all), this is not something we can wait on. As anarcho-syndicalists, the aim is always to encourage that spirit which we believe will carry us to revolution – that of self-organisation and direct action. We do so not with the anticipation of revolution just around the corner, or with the resignation that it will never come, but because such struggle is necessary. Either we fight, to advance our interests as a class, or we sit back and resign ourselves to a rolling back of everything our forebears have won in 150 years of stuggle. Perhaps even further.

If we reach a general strike situation, that building and organising never stops. A comrade of mine who travelled to Spain during a recent general strike told me of how the CNT acted in that situation. As well as having picket lines and marches on the day, as the strike began they were going from shop to shop, workplace to workplace, calling people out on strike.

Such actions would undoubtedly form part of a revolutionary strike. Not only calling people to withdraw their labour from the bosses, but encouraging the seizing of the means of production, advocating the structures of support and solidarity that would maintain workers’ self-management. Of course, this would have been done before hand as well, but this doesn’t mean that once a call out has been made you should simply assume that it will be honoured. If that were the case, there would be no need for organisation.

In particular relation to casualised workplaces, this is why the effort of building and organising is important in the present. But even when revolutionary ideas are the norm, we should never underestimate the power that bosses can have over workers where there is no protection through organisation. Indeed, if there are clashes they will likely be borne of fear more than anything else.

However, to end on a positive note, one thing I will note is that such casualisation now, though repellent in a number of ways and though it should be actively resisted, may actually make it easier for an anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary movement to emerge. The era of the closed shop pretty much entrenched the power of the union bureaucrat, formalised their role of policing the workforce, and made genuinely radical resistance difficult if not altogether impossible. Now, there is considerable space for the ideas of self-organisation and direct action to grow. Which is exactly what they are doing.

Ultimately, we should take nothing for granted. There is no single, set-in-stone formula for making things better. There are only ideas, which must adapt to the realities that they are meant to address if they are to remain relevant. But what we do know is that, however long the odds, revolutionary strike action in the name of a better world is not impossible. In fact, its something which we ought to strive for.

It is not an organisation, as conspiracy theorists and ill-informed media pundits alike contend, but a tactic. There is, very often, more to it than just masking up. After all, though the way they do so is overblown hysteria, those mainstream commentators are shrieking about vandalism and violence against property for a reason. On the breakaway from the March for the Alternative, I witnessed several people use a dumpster to smash in the doors of a HSBC branch. At G20 demonstrations in 2009, protesters also forced their way into a bank. Indeed, as Infoshop.org’s black bloc FAQ notes, “the black bloc that marched in Seattle during the N30 anti-WTO protests is the one that put black blocs on the international radar,” and “they engaged in a variety of activites, including property destruction.”

I’m not going to condemn this. The debate over violence against property should be a tactical one, and I have already laid out my own perspective on this. The moral debate that the media and the state seek is a divisive one that serves the interests of the ruling class, so I refuse to engage with it. My only point is that the black bloc and vandalism have become almost synonymous.

As a result, to defend the black bloc is in the eyes of many to defend mindless hooliganism and rioting on the streets. Me stating otherwise won’t change that perception for most with such a mentality, but it remains that I do not advocate violence or destruction for their own ends. To repeat, my argument is a tactical one concerned with class struggle from an anarcho-syndicalist point of view.

The purpose of a black bloc is to demonstrate a strength in numbers and anonymity for the security of those taking part

The limitations of the black bloc

From the outset, it should be obvious that, if a black bloc is useful at all, it is useful only in specific circumstances. There appears to be a presumption amongst critics of the tactic that those who advocate it do so as an all-or-nothing approach. i.e. that the black bloc is the movement, and beyond it there is nothing. This is simply not the case.

For example, Owen Jones writes that “it substitutes for the collective power of the working-class.” The bloc is “a self-selecting elite (i.e. those with the stomach for causing property damage) taking the initiative in … place” of the “organised power of working people.” Adam Ford traces the philosophy of black bloc tactics back to insurrectionist Johann Most‘s “strategy whereby convinced revolutionists would substitute themselves for the working class in acts of violence against state and capitalist targets.” The Socialist Worker goes further to portray anarchists as a whole as “believ[ing] small, imaginative groups of radicals should act on behalf of the masses.”

The three critics above come from quite different perspectives. Jones is a member of the Labour Party. Ford is a libertarian Marxist. The Socialist Worker is the paper of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP). But all seem to agree on the black bloc (or autonomism, in the SWP’s terms) representing substitutionism.

If that were the case, then I would agree with them. As an anarcho-syndicalist, the core of my political philosophy is that working class people have a great collective power and that, by combining, we can use it to bring about enormous social change. In fact, I would explicitly contrast that with the diverging forms of vanguardism offered by Labour and the SWP, both of whom actually do intend to “substitute themselves for the working class” – Labour by representing it within the existing capitalist system, the SWP by taking the mantle of its “revolutionary leadership.”

The reason that the black bloc doesn’t represent this kind of substitutionism is because it doesn’t exist beyond mass demonstrations – but the people who comprise it do.

As a tactic, it would indeed be ineffective on a picket line, leafleting a working class estate, or during a long-term squat or occupation. That is why we don’t see it in those situations. But the black bloc not being there doesn’t mean that those who engage in black bloc tactics aren’t. As the Evening Standard was kind enough to point out, we are more than capable of changing our clothes.

Critics of the black bloc are right to point out that defeating capitalism requires a mass movement. It is exactly what I have previously advocated myself. The only difference being that where others would call for “stronger,” “better,” or “more militant” leadership, the libertarian left consistently advocate the rank-and-file of the working class taking control of their own struggles and self-organising. This, of course, is not something that arises spontaneously but as a result of education, agitation, and organisation by anarchist and other radical workers.

In that respect, then, the criticism of tactics which “substitute for the collective power of the working-class” is one best applied by anarchists to the various would-be vanguards of the authoritarian left rather than against anarchists. In looking at where the black bloc is useful, it should be remembered that it is a tactic to be deployed in particular situations – not an all-encompassing strategy to defeat capitalism.

Antifa

One movement in particular which deploys black bloc tactics effectively is the international Antifa, or militant anti-fascist, movement. Again, it must be emphasised that the black bloc is not a universal strategy for taking on the far-right. It is a tactic for specific situations. During which, it works extremely well.

Black bloc tactics are particularly effective in militant antifascism, not least when facing the large, organised, and extremely violent neo-Nazi street gangs of mainland Europe and Russia

The breadth of militant anti-fascist tactics is emphasised by Liverpool Antifascists;

Liverpool Antifascists rejects the liberal argument that we must appeal to authority in order to make the bad men go away. Fascism is an attack on the working class, and it must be defeated through working class self-defence. We must confront and dismantle their hateful and divisive ideas. We must build a movement to outnumber them and drown them out on the street. We must physically resist them when they try to organise and put their policies into action, or to invade our communities.

This is militant antifascism. “No platform” is not the form of censorship and state oppression that liberals advocate. It is working class self-defence against the ideas and the force of the far-right.

It is on the latter point, physical resistance, that I will dwell.

Fascism is a violent ideology. Its advocates have consistently engaged in hate campaigns which have seen homes burnt out, businesses looted, and people seriously injured or even killed. Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany is perhaps the most lurid example of this point, but such racist violence has been deployed by the far-right and the English Defence League are only the latest far-right group to get in on the act.

In Britain, street-fighting fascism never gained serious ground simply because working class people repelled the far-right from their communities and smashed the thugs off the streets. This did not happen in isolation, and certainly winning the war of ideas has played and continues to play an important part. But the fact remains that if they hadn’t been physically resisted, groups like the National Front would be a significant threat today, rather than reduced to a handful of ageing boneheads who spend most of their time reminiscing about their “glory days” on internet forums. Militant anti-fascism works.

Beyond Britain, it is perhaps even more vital because fascist attempts to rule the streets weren’t snuffed out early. As a result, neo-Nazis in Russia are able to mobilise in their thousands, and to carry out terrorist attacks and beheadings with impunity. In Germany, street clashes between fascists and anti-fascists are akin to war zones, with thousands of people on each side.

Even in Britain, being identified as an active anti-fascist carries with it a certain level of risk. In Germany, Poland, Russia, and many other places, it can be deadly. The shooting of well-known Russian anti-fascist Ivan Khutorsky, on his own doorstep, is a case in point. Faced with such an enemy, the anonymity and strength of numbers afforded by the black bloc tactic is the only sane response.

On demonstrations

Beyond the anti-fascist movement, mass demonstrations are the other arena in which the bloc can be effective. This is particularly true in times of heightened state repression, or in the intensified class struggle which usually results in such.

It is a common argument that, as Jones put it, the tactic “provides a pretext for the state to crack down on basic civil liberties.” However, this ignores the fact – as the Solidarity Federation argue – that “repression is not provoked by violent actions, but by effective actions.” Anybody with historical awareness knows that “there is a long history of peaceful pickets and occupations being violently broken up by police, from the Chartists to the Miners Strike.”

The black bloc formed at the TUC March for the Alternative was the largest ever seen in Britain

A case in point here is the student movement which was for a significant time the driving force in the anti-cuts struggle. Without the occupation of Millbank Tower (which required attacks upon property in order to succeed), the momentum which carried the movement forward simply wouldn’t have been there. Hence the deliberate campaign of police repression, and the much more determined use of violence against protesters at subsequent demonstrations. Then there is the entirely peaceful UK Uncut, who were previously attacked with pepper spray by police, and who on March 26th were arrested en masse despite assurances to the contrary.

This is not to mention the ever-present threat of state surveillance. Writing for Red Pepper, FITwatch’s Val Swain explains that “for the past six years a secretive, unaccountable, publicly-funded yet privately-run organisation has collected, collated and analysed vast amounts of personal data relating to political activists, organisers and protesters.” As well as taking pictures at demonstrations and operating an “image and criminal database containing the personal details of thousands – possibly hundreds of thousands – of protesters, data that it shares with NCDE and the Counter Terrorism Unit,” the police “plac[e] FITs [Forward Intelligence Team evidence gatherers] outside lawful public meetings of political and campaign groups, so that those attending have had to deal with uniformed police with large cameras taking their photograph before they even got through the door.”

The police is active in “targeting and deterring those judged to be the most likely perpetrators of future crimes.” In practice, this means that the state is cracking down on basic civil liberties regardless of pretexts. It is in the interests of our own security, then, that more and more activists are masking up and adopting the black bloc tactic. Because the only worthwhile response to repression is to challenge it head on, not to bow to it and tone down our actions.

As Buenaventura Durruti said during the Spanish Civil War;

They persecute us. Yes, of course they do. We’re a threat to the system they represent. If we don’t want them to harass us, then we should just submit to their laws, integrate ourselves into their system and bureaucratize ourselves to the marrow. Then we can be perfect traitors to the working class, like the Socialists and everyone else who lives at the workers’ expense. They won’t bother us if we do that.

That is the response that the “official” movement seems to want. Uncover your faces and march placidly; you may protest only if you do it within the established parameters. Those who take to dressing in black and hiding their identities are actively refusing to take that position.

A beacon for the disaffected and violence on the periphery

As stated earlier, I would argue against violence and destruction for its own sake. For that reason, a distinction can be made between those who smashed in the windows at Millbank so as to force their way inside and randomly smashing the windows of banks or branches of McDonald’s. Though, to repeat, this is a tactical distinction and not a moral one.

Though black bloc formations can utilise or attract violence and vandalism, this isn't their primary purpose

The former was an act of vandalism which facilitated an iconic direct action, the sight of red-and-black flags waving over Tory HQ being the catalyst for a militant movement against the government’s attacks on education. The latter is an expression of anger or frustration, largely without direction. Two black bloc participants interviewed in the Guardian refered to such acts as “symbolic.” The point is to “show that direct action in the wider society was both valid and possible.” The only problem is that this isn’t the message that comes across.

For such a message to come across, the direct action deployed by a black bloc has to have an impact on the status quo all by itself. Millbank did that, for reasons stated above. I would argue that on March 26th the black bloc did this to a lesser scale, acting as a roaming blockade that – forcing Oxford Street to close down – inflicted significant economic damage. When the largest part of it joined the occupation of Fortnum and Mason’s, it also made the link between two different forms of direct action, underlining the argument for a diversity of tactics in the class struggle. By contrast, the trashing of the Ritz occured on the periphery of the bloc, more an outburst of impotent anger than anything else.

But, contrary to Jones and the SWP, the reason it took place wasn’t as a substitute for a mass-based movement – it was a manifestation of the frustration many people feel at the lack of such. Ford argues that the vandalism was “a result of the TUC leadership’s predictably traitorous embrace of the Labour ‘opposition’, and mildly critical partnership with those determined to push working class living standards back to the levels of the 1930s.” As such, “when largescale grassroots struggle does emerge, the ‘need’ for acts of destruction as adverts for anarchism will disappear.”

The positive we can take from this is that even if the result is violence on its periphery, the militancy shown by the black bloc drew in not only people who felt the need to break away from the main march but also those who hadn’t been involved in protest at all that day. If those who made up the black bloc really did only exist on demonstrations, then Jones might be right that this “is a sign of failure, not of success.” But that isolation is a myth, built up by others to serve their own agenda. We are workers, students, and unemployed. We are parents and children. We are male and female, gay and straight, transgender. We are in unions, community groups, and all manner of organisations. In short, we are of the working class – not apart from it.

Looking into that, it is not hard to discover that militancy and direct action go far beyond demonstrations and the blocs we form on them. They are a part of everyday struggle, and everybody can get involved. It is on this side of things, long after the big demos are over, that anarcho-syndicalists continue to agitate for mass participation and for struggles led by the rank-and-file.

The fight against capitalism neither begins nor ends with the black bloc. It is not a strategy, but a tactic for use in specific situations. It has very definite limitations beyond which it is not just ineffective but counterproductive. But perhaps its greatest strength is that most people who participate in it, unlike its critics, are aware of that.

There is an organisation known as the United Campaign for the Repeal of Anti-Trade Union Laws, which has been trying to challenge restrictions through law and policy changes. The core of their argument is that Britain’s laws are in violation of the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which the country has signed up to. Thus, there are legitimate grounds to “demand our human rights and freedoms for the 21st century.” It cites the United Nations’ view that “the common law approach [in UK law] recognising only the freedom to strike, and the concept that strike action constitutes a fundamental breach of contract justifying dismissal, is not consistent with protection of the right to strike.”

The limitation to this approach is that, aside from anything else, it has failed to yield gains. The Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill fell in parliament, and all that this sought to do was “reduc[e] regulatory burdens on trade unions in relation to the balloting and notice requirements for lawful industrial action.” The much broader Trade Union Freedom Bill, which still “does not go as far as the international laws ratified by the UK” fell during a Labour government and stands no chance whatsoever during a Conservative one.

Britain has the strictest anti-strike laws in the west, often reducing official picket lines to a handful of people and reducing the effectiveness of industrial action

This, once again, highlights what the Solidarity Federation call the “paradox of reformism;”

The reason that reason gets us nowhere is that politics is not based on good arguments but on power relations. Democracies institutionalise power struggles to a certain extent, since it’s rather disruptive to have periodic coups and civil wars every time there needs to be a change of government. But only certain interests are institutionalised. Here’s a clue: they’re not ours.

…

If we want to win, we need to recognise that being right doesn’t cut it. It’s a matter of power. A case in point: it is true that the British welfare state was founded at a time when the national finances were in a far worse state. But it’s worth looking at what the ruling class were saying when the welfare state was founded. For the avoidance of any doubt, let’s hear from a Tory: “We must give them reforms or they will give us revolution”, said Quintin Hogg in 1943. When the ruling class feared the working class, a welfare state was a price worth paying. Now they don’t fear us, they feel confident to dismantle it. So the paradox is without the threat of revolution, reformism is a non-starter. On the other hand, with an unruly mob on the streets and a strike-prone workforce, those reasoned reformists all of a sudden look like workable negotiation partners to whoever’s in government. They’ll no doubt claim it was their ‘responsible’ protests which got them there.

It’s all about the balance of class forces. It’s primarily a power struggle, not a moral argument.

Thus, if we want to defeat the anti-strike laws there is a very simple answer. We need to break them. To make the laws unenforceable is to render them obsolete.

The threat of leadership

Of course, things aren’t quite that simple on the ground. From the position we are in at present, there is a lot of work to be done to ensure that we can put the theory into practice.

Thatcher and Blair didn’t just implement the most restrictive trade union laws in the western world. They brought about a significant culture shift which has played just as much a part in diminishing the strength of the organised working class by eroding class consciousness. I examined this point more fully here, as well as the ways we can challenge it. But, thanks to Cameron’s all-out assault in the name of austerity, class is back at the top of the agenda and half of our work has been done for us.

This isn’t to encourage complacency, of course. The fact that class consciousness is rising in struggle, particularly amongst the young, is a reason to redouble our efforts in agitating for a militant, direct action strategy in the fight against the cuts and capitalism.

But as consciousness increases, we also need to be aware of – and to challenge – illusions in official leadership and hierarchies. This goes for the Labour Party, of course, and for the numerous other sects which style themselves as our vanguards and revolutionary leadership. But, in the particular arena of industrial disputes, we need to be particularly wary of the influence and intent of the trade union leadership.

As Anton Pannekoek wrote, the leaders and bureaucrats of the union movement “sit in conferences with the capitalists, bargaining over wages and hours, pitting interests against interests, just as the opposing interests of the capitalist corporations are weighed one against another.” This is how “they learn to understand the capitalist’s position just as well as the worker’s position” and so take it upon themselves “to regulate class conflicts and to secure industrial peace.”

Though portrayed as enemies or rivals, trade union leaders and bosses end up collaborating to quell industrial unrest to the detriment of workers

Writing previously on the limits of trade unionism, I cited the Communication Workers’ Union as one example of the contradiction between member militancy and leadership sell-out. But there are others, not the least of which was the conduct of the Trades Union Congress during the battles against Thatcher.

As an article for Australia’s Green Left describes it;

In 1980, the steel strike was the first national strike against the Tories. The steelworkers went for a 17% pay increase (the inflation rate was 20%) and fought to protect jobs. British Steel offered 2%, and proposed plant closures and 52,000 redundancies.

The steelworkers fought hard. Huge pickets were mounted at some sites, like Hadfield’s in Sheffield, and flying pickets were organised against private sector steel users.

After a 13-week battle, the workers won a 19% wage increase (including 5% for productivity trade-offs), but thousands of jobs were lost. It was a victory for the government. The main reason for the partial defeat was the isolation of the steelworkers.

Following this, the Tories moved to beef up anti-union laws by outlawing solidarity strikes and picketing. The TUC’s response was to call a national day of action, in which 250,000 people marched in 130 cities. But there was no follow-up action and the anti-union legislation was passed.

By October 1981, the Tories were on the nose. The Social Democratic Party-Liberal Alliance was scoring 59% in opinion polls. The Tories announced new anti-worker legislation, which included outlawing unions from engaging in political action, allowing employers to sack and selectively redeploy workers, and sequestrating unions’ assets if they broke industrial laws.

The union tops failed to call for strike action. Instead, they adopted a position of “non-cooperation” with the act. If a union was attacked, the TUC promised to support it.

…

In the first major test of the Tory’s legislation, railway workers launched an all-out strike to stop trade-offs in working conditions. The strike was solid and picket lines were respected.

The TUC called a general council meeting, ordered the workers back to work and warned that if the strikers did not obey, the rail union would be suspended from the TUC. The union was forced to accept defeat and go back to work.

The TUC “non-cooperation” with the act turned into a cynical betrayal. The rationale was that the strike must end to get Labour re-elected.

… The next major industrial stoush was in the printing industry, between the National Graphical Association and Eddie Shah, the owner of the Stockport Messenger.

Shah won an injunction to have the union remove a picket line but the union refused. The union was fined £150,000 for contempt of court. The picket line at Warrington was attacked by 3000 riot police. The cops broke the line, chased people into neighbouring fields and beat them up.

A further fine of £375,000 was imposed and the union’s assets were sequestrated. The union called a 24-hour strike and went to the TUC for support, citing its pledge to defend any union under attack.

The TUC decided not to support the printers — a move warmly welcomed by Thatcher. Thornett’s describes the TUC’s decision as a “total collapse in front of the anti-union laws without a shot being fired — a defining moment in the history of the British trade union movement.”

Thatcher now knew that she could pick off each union one by one. The coalminers were next in line, followed by Murdoch’s attack on the newspaper printers.

This was nothing new, only the TUC and trade union leaders accepting their “capitalistic task of securing industrial peace – now at the cost of the workers.” As such, forging independence from the leaders and hierarchies of trade unionism is vital for working class militancy against the bosses to flourish.

Mass assemblies and strike committees

As opposed to bureaucrats voting behind closed doors to end action for their political interests, regardless of the effect upon those in struggle, workers need to be making decisions for themselves as a collective.

Tom Mann, the syndicalist leader of the Liverpool Transport Strike committee, addresses a mass assembly of workers

The main vehicle for that is the mass assembly. Workers build confidence in their own strength through collective action, and an integral part of that is the ability to make decisions for ourselves. Thus, rather than limiting the input of the workforce to a statutory ballot, after which union leaders and executive committees decide the timing and the form of action, assemblies of all workers involved in a given dispute allows for this open debate and decision-making. It makes it easier to organise pickets, plan solidarity and fund-raising actions, and generally maintain the strength of an action.

Where mass assemblies are not practical, for example in disputes and actions spread across a broad geographical area or involving a number of sites, an elected strike committee is the next best option. Such a committee should be composed not of representatives imbued with the power to make decisions for their constituents, but of delegates with strict mandates who are accountable to those who elected them and instantly revocable.

In establishing such a committee, those taking action are able to coordinate their activities efficiently and respond to issues rapidly whilst still making sure that it is ordinary workers who are calling the shots, beyond the reach of the demobilising forces of trade union bureaucracy. This also, again, reinforces the idea that workers are able to take action of their own accord, as a class, and helps to build the confidence and consciousness required not only for significantly larger actions such as a general strike but also to reinforce how things will look in the event of a radical re-organisation of society in workers’ interests.

An instructive example of the former is the Seattle General Strike of 1919. This saw the entire city shut down whilst a general strike committee comprising three delegates from each striking local effectively ran the city and ensured that vital services were maintained.

Fundraising

In the workers’ movement, solidarity isn’t just a word. It is a weapon. It is the basic principle behind working class people combining to defend their collective interests and reciprocally supporting each other’s struggles.

A picket line of the CNT-AIT, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union

In practical terms, it can take many forms; from joining and supporting the picket line of another workforce to donating money to those who have withdrawn their labour. The latter is particularly important if we want to build a culture of industrial action that is independent of union bosses, because the availability or refusal of strike funds is one way in which they are able to demobilise people and turn action on or off as they see fit. Hence the importance of locally controlled strike funds.

Such monies do not, obviously, spring up out of nowhere. By bringing the control of funds back to the grassroots, so we also bring them the responsibility for raising them. There are a number of ways to do this. Self-organised groups, such as Liverpool Antifascists, use benefit nights and gigs to raise money. As they put it, “these events not only serve to raise money … but to lay down links in communities and raise awareness of the … cause.” Thus, not only do such actions raise cash, they also forge the community links and sense of comradeship that is equally vital to maintaining struggles.

In particular, this is a good way of drawing those outside of the affected workplaces into the action, and they can be encouraged to contribute to the fight not only financially but by turning up at pickets or demonstrations as well.

Practical solidarity and mass picketing

Not all disputes follow the same pattern. As such, there is no single formula that can be prescribed to guarantee success. However, as a general principle, building practical support and solidarity is integral to any potential victory. Particularly, as in Britain, if you are standing up in defiance of restrictive laws. The broader the base of support for an action, the harder it is for the bosses or politicians to make workers suffer any backlash.

One of the most recent examples of this is the Lindsey Oil Refinery dispute of 2009. When workers at the plant took part in a wildcat strike against the use of cheap labour and the threat of layoffs, they were sacked. The bosses were well within their legal rights to do this, as the law grants protective rights only to those who engage in official action on the back of a statutory ballot. However, what they weren’t banking on was the anger that this would provoke across the industry. It sparked wildcat walk-outs across the country in solidarity with the sacked workers and, though the Unite union stepped in to negotiate an end to the unrest, it was this unofficial solidarity which saw the wildcats’ jobs reinstated.

On a smaller scale, during a protest outside Liverpool Town Hall as the City Council set its budget implementing service and job cuts, police found themselves powerless to do anything when protesters blocked the road and refused to move. The Public Order Act makes obstruction of a public highway unlawful, and gives the police the power to move on assemblies of more than 20 people, but due to the sheer volume of people and their determination to make a stand, it was as though the act simply didn’t exist.

This point is particularly important when considering one of the most effective tactics in deterring strike breakers – the mass picket. According to the code of practice on picketing (PDF), such picketing is unlawful on the same basis that all public assemblies of more than 20 people are. The code of practice cites concerns that such “may well result in a breach of the peace or other criminal offences” and warns that “anyone seeking to demonstrate support for those in dispute should keep well away from any picket line.” However, as innumerable examples of non-violent direct action demonstrate, an action being unlawful doesn’t matter in the slightest if there are sufficient numbers and practical solidarity to make it effective.

The 2010 firefighters' dispute in London was characterised by mass pickets and militant blockades

The 2010 London fire disputes are an excellent case in point. During the strikes inspired by attacks on pay and conditions, near enough every firefighter who was on strike was on the picket line, supported by public demonstrations of around 200 people. This enabled them to stage blockades of scab fire engines in order to keep those brought in to undermine the action from doing their jobs effectively.

Going beyond the unlawful to the illegal, there is no reason that the same principles cannot apply. We know, for example, that the government is putting contingency plans in place to deal with mass strike action, drafting in scabs from unorganised workforces and off the employment lines. In terms of practical solidarity, one important response to this will be following the example set during recent postal disputes and getting the argument out to such potential strike breakers for stable, secure employment over scab jobs. However, as I’ve argued previously, the fact that six people can put a munitions factory out of action and then be acquited of all charges on the back of a significant support campaign and the sympathy of the jury suggests that those who sabotage, occupy, or blockade scab firms needn’t become martyrs in doing so.

Such things cannot be condoned by trade union leaders. Not only do they defy their established role as the managers of industrial peace, but the legal and financial implications for any union supporting such action automatically takes it off the cards. However, rank-and-file self-organisation has the specific advantage of there being no figurehead to single out, no corporate entity to penalise.

There are innumerable other actions that can be taken, to strengthen a picket line, raise money for those on strike, or demonstrate practical solidarity. Where there isn’t a full withdrawal of labour as in a strike, there are still plenty of creative forms of direct action workers can utilise. The point is that, under the control of the workers taking part in them and built on a broad foundation of militancy and solidarity, there are few limits to what can be achieved.

Best descriptor for Marxism and Leninism I’ve ever read has to be “analysing everything through the eyes of corpses.” Genius.

This was a reference to the tendency of nearly all groups and currents (though far from all individuals, I hasten to add) which identify as Marxist to treat the writings of Marx, Lenin, et al as gospel.

An image of Lenin beating a shackled worker with the words of Marx by Clifford Harper, from http://radicalgraphics.org/

Yes, some dead guys with beards said some things which are spot on. But they were still flawed people who got things wrong as well. That’s why anarchists are anarchists and not Proudhonists, Bakuninists, Kropotkinites, etc. If you use the fact that some revered thinker of the past said it as proof of your argument instead citing them as someone who made a particular point more articulately, then what you have is dogmatism and not reasoned argument.

History is something we should learn from, but we shouldn’t live our lives through it. Unless we’re after a career as an archaeologist.

Anyway, from this a much broader discussion emerged about anarchism, Marxism, and the varying ideas that different tendencies have on organising, class consciousness, and building a communist society in the wake of revolution. Because of the quality and sheer size of the discussion, it seemed a shame to let it disappear into the depths of my Facebook profile as time lapsed. This is therefore an attempt at sifting the content to produce a readable and hopefully interesting blog on the same subject.

I have covered this territory before, in Communism and the state, but hopefully the fact that this is drawn from a rather open-ended discussion with a Marxist will offer the topic some freshness.

In that previous post, I boiled down the difference between anarchists and other flavours of communist to two sentences from Karl Marx;

Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

The most significant anarchist contention with Marxism is with the idea – solidified and put to brutal practice by Lenin, but originating with Marx – that the working class need a revolutionary leadership, and that rather than building the new world in the shell of the old we need this “transitional state” where a new elite takes over the state apparatus to run things in the interests of the workers before “true communism” can be achieved and the state magically “withers away”.

We know now that this doesn’t happen, and that the inevitable result is Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong-Il, and Castro. Had Franco been defeated, the putting down of the anarcho-syndicalist revolution in Spain would have guaranteed it there as well.

And this, as I say, stems back to Marx. Not his economics, but his politics. They are the politics by which a revolution drowns in blood and the new boss emerges even more brutal and corrupt than the old boss.

In response to this, the Marxist contention is that what I describe ” are not ‘inevitable result[s]‘ of anything other than the total isolation of revolutions in underdeveloped economies, with the later ones having Stalinist policy imperatives thrown in for extras.”

It’s also a bone of contention that I “equate Marxism and Stalinism.” Though I would argue that I don’t equate Marxism and Stalinism. I do equate Leninism with Stalinism, the one being derived directly from the other, and think that Marx himself gained more authoritarian leanings as time passed which helped to inspire that. These two positions are similar, but not the same.

Returning to the main point, rather than the isolation of revolutions in “underdeveloped economies,” I contend that communism died in the USSR because Lenin killed it. Just as the CNT militias were winning against the fascists until the anarchist revolution was crushed, so the decentralised forces of the soviets might have won against the counter-revolution whilst genuine communism was built from the ground up. This, in turn, might have inspired greater success in revolutions elsewhere. But, because of the Bolshevik seizure of power, we’ll never know.

The short-lived Spanish revolution of 1936 demonstrated how 80 years of anarchist agitation and education could bring about a seemingly spontaneous revolution which utterly transformed society. It also demonstrates, again, the counter-revolutionary ethos of Leninism and the folly of trying to use existing government structures to your own end.

I’ll quote the Marxist counterpoint to this at length;

Marxists argue the need for a workers state. Why? Not because Marx dogmatically said we should (he didn’t), not because Lenin, the Bolsheviks, the Russian working class established one. We argue this because we recognise that the role of the state, at bottom, is to act as armed enforcers for the ruling class – in a period of revolutionary transition, in which like it or don’t, forces of reaction WILL use every violent means at their disposal to bring about counter revolution, the working class (and peasants etc where they still exist…) will need to enforce its will on the forces of counter revolution. We’ll also need some other functions – organisation, administration – but not nearly so much as has been the case in the past.

Here’s the point though – Phil makes the point that it is inevitable that there will as a result of the very existence of that state be counter revolution, the establishment of authoritarian or totalitarian dictatorships, and makes the very strong argument of experience and empirical observation, citing Russia, Cuba, wherever else he mentioned, to back this up. The trouble is that’s mixing up correlation (B happened after A happened) with causality (B happened because A happened). For brevity just in the case of Russia; yes the revolution was ultimately overthrown (we could quibble about when, but WTF) – but I’d argue it became a deformed workers state, ruled by a privileged bureaucracy supported by a ruthless state machine because it was isolated, it started off from the point of being a backward, almost medieval economy, it’s best revolutionaries were killed off or exhausted in the civil war, and the purges put paid the rest – the reaction flowed from the failure of the revolution to spread. Had the revolution – as it so nearly did – taken hold in the industrialised west then we’d have seen a very different story.

However, I would challenge the notion of the “deformed workers state” arising purely because of “isolation” and other external factors. Rather than being forced to by “pragmatism” in difficult circumstances, Lenin’s deliberate destruction of the soviets and genuine communism was a tactic to seize power, for which external invaders served as a convenient excuse. Everyone was making it up as they went along. But working class self-organisation was being put into practice from the beginning of the revolution, and the Bolsheviks were the first to attack and undermine it for their own purposes.

Even if it were true that Lenin was driven by good intentions gone awry, rather than a desire to brutally secure power, the fact remains that nothing justifies slaughter and repression such as occurred at Kronstadt, for example. Not unless we are to accept the legitimacy of the USA PATRIOT Act and similar repressive legislation enacted by capitalist government in the name of the “war on terror.”

Nevertheless, my Marxist comrade contends that “if we remove the basis of the capitalist state (i.e. have a viable revolution on the basis of developed economy – how unlikely is simultaneous world revolution?” Thus, “the workers state exists only to protect this against counter-revolution and facilitate the development of new social structures based on common ownership, production and distribution.” Once that point comes, “withers away because it’s roots are dead, but it will still need to be dismantled carefully by a watchful working class.”

The only problem, as he concedes, is that there will be “people wanting to acquire and protect privilege for themselves.” However, surely “if the class has got it’s shit together sufficiently to overthrow capital,” then “how much of a threat can we seriously envision that being?” The problem is, referring to real-world events, that the only answer is “a lot.”

There was a suggestion that Marxists are referring to “a radical new species of ‘state’ which doesn’t fit the received usage of the word.” On which point, I can say that if you took a voluntarily federated system of self-organised community and workplace collectives and called it a “state,” because it served the function of governing society albeit in a libertarian and horizontal fashion, I would be fine with that. If that’s what Marxists mean by a “worker’s state,” then we’re probably on the same rough page.

However, if they mean a central government, operating in the same fashion as a central committee/steering committee/executive committee in a party or traditional trade union (even if it is nominally democratic) then we’re definitely not.

Political purges and forced labour camps, or gulags, are synonymous with Stalinism - to anarchists the inevitable result of vanguardist politics, to Marxists a "deformity" of Russia's failed transition from capitalism to communism

When discussing this issue, there’s often a presumption that anarchists believe in an instantaneous transformation of society. But that’s not the case.

We don’t believe in a transitional stage between capitalism and communism, true, for the very reason that if you overtake rather than dismantle existing structures and replace private proprietors with a public bureaucracy (state capitalism, as the means of production are still out of the hands of the producers) it becomes as self-perpetuating as the previous system was. But there is still obviously transition, even if it isn’t clearly delineated. If society spontaneously collapsed now, what rose in its place would likely be a horrendous nightmare world akin to Mad Max. The important issue is one of consciousness.

For Marxists, just as there is a clear transition between capitalism and communism, so “there is stratification of consciousness within the working class.” Thus, “the transformations in human relations and the human condition must inevitably be something that can only begin post-revolution.” Both of these ideas (whether intentional or not) pave the way towards vanguardism, the intellectual priesthood of the left claiming a monopoly on the correct consciousness and thus power over the proles.

But I believe that I could explain these ideas to someone who had no knowledge of politics (obviously avoiding unnecessarily complex terminology used by intellectuals purely to sound smart and keep their knowledge “specialist” rather than widespread) and they’d get it. Almost everybody can see the realities of the class system in their everyday lives. They also self-organise and operate collectively on a regular basis. The only difference is that this is unconscious, and at a conscious level there’s propaganda and the norms of capitalist society to contend with.

(Likewise, there’s no guarantee that the most politically conscious Marxist, having read everything by Marx, Engels, et al would “get it” when it came to the lived practice of communism. Passing your theory test when driving doesn’t guarantee you’ll pass your practical, and equally there are probably loads of established and good drivers who would fail the theory test.)

For anarchists, the process of raising consciousness also isn’t clearly delineated. Consciousness is raised through action – education, agitation, and organisation both before and after the revolution. This includes horizontal organisation in revolutionary unions and other bodies now, both as a way to challenge capital and to build working class confidence in our own power so that we can reorganise society in a horizontal, federal structure. The lived practice isn’t just a post-revolutionary thing. It grows through every day class struggle with bosses and landlords, it will grow further through revolutionary struggle against the system itself, and by the time you’ve ousted the old regime you’re over halfway there.

This is a transition. But you don’t need a formal transitional state, and you certainly don’t need to maintain the existing apparatus with new people at the top until people “level up” at some ill-defined point later on, and the embedded bureaucracy goes against its own nature to step aside for true communism. Or, as my Marxist comrade put it, “a state that exists for the sole purpose of hastening its own negation.”

That won’t happen, and is little more than a fairy tale. Any real revolutionary transition would happen far more organically. It would happen through struggle, our means in overthrowing the old society reflecting the way in which we build the new.

As with every blog I write, what follows is written in a personal capacity and doesn’t necessarily represent the views of any organisation I am a member of.

Introduction

The most prominent social issue facing the working class in Britain today is “the cuts.” Capitalist governments are imposing austerity measures upon their countries in the wake of the financial crisis, and working class people are paying the price of balancing the books.

Whilst banks thought “too big to fail” are once more paying out million-pound bonuses after being bailed out with taxpayers’ money, schools, hospitals, care homes and other vital services that ordinary people rely on are facing the axe. Hundreds of thousands of people’s’ livelihoods – and with them, their homes and the welfare of their families – are at risk through job losses and benefit cuts. We are literally being made to pay for a crisis created by the financial sector.

All of the above is now well known to most people. Now that the effects of the cuts are becoming apparent, they are provoking opposition across all sectors of society. They have raised class consciousness in the young and brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets. Many for first time.

But where is this new movement heading? Present conditions have incited a lot of anger and waves of protest, but much of it is directionless.

Many people are being duped into thinking that protest is the end game. All they have to do is walk a distance, wave a placard and join in with some chants, and they’ll have done their bit for society. Unfortunately, too many opportunistic politicians and would-be revolutionaries are content to keep up this pretence for their own narrow ends. And the trade unions, whilst talking big, are content to do as little as possible to rock the boat.

The intention in writing this is to argue for a strategy to fight the cuts based upon the principles of revolutionary unionism and working class self-organisation.

Winning the argument?

In the struggle against austerity, one of the main focuses for those concerned is “winning the argument.” That is, on making the case as to why the cuts are not the best way to address the deficit crisis and that there is an alternative – not as a line of reasoning to underpin the actions being taken, but as an action and a strategic point in itself.

The argument itself is sound. The deficit that is now being pointed to as the justification for cuts leapt up considerably in 2009/10, as the government spent £1.5 trillion to keep the banks afloat in the wake of the economic crisis[1]. Far from being the result of a “bloated public sector,” a national debt of £1000.4 billion[2] can be traced back to the financial sector.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) makes this case in greater depth in their pamphlet, There is an alternative[3]. As well as pointing out how investing resources in HMRC to close the tax gap is a more viable solution than cuts, they point to the “real waste” – such as the Trident nuclear submarines or the war in Afghanistan – which costs billions of pounds per year as a cut which would benefit rather than hurt ordinary people.

Where ”winning the argument” falls down is not in the case it is making, but in who that case is being made to.

There is considerable benefit in educating the public on this issue. Not only does it provide a counterpoint to government propaganda and the institutional biases of the mass media, but it provides a focal point for discontent and class anger.

Already, the argument for “tax justice” has inspired protest movements such as UK Uncut [4]. That is just the beginning of its potential. By sparking debate, and challenging the consensus that cuts are tough but necessary to sort our finances out, it has brought the realities of our class system into focus once more. As people see services they rely on disappear, their income shrink, and life get harder, the realisation that there is an alternative helps us to bring these people into a broader movement to fight back, rather seeing things get worse and believing that there is nothing to be done about it.

Making the same case as an appeal to authority does not yield such gains. Although those in power will often feign empathy with their electorate, the simple fact is that they have none. They are on the wrong side of the class antagonism that defines capitalist society and so have and serve interests that are oppositional to those of the working class. We cannot defeat the cuts by appealing to the reason of those making them.

The dead-end road of electoralism

There are several positions being advocated at present that put electoral politics and lobbying politicians at the heart of a campaign against the cuts. These differ depending on who you talk to, but can roughly be boiled down to three approaches: straightforward reformism, to vote Labour without illusions, and the approach of the former Militant Tendency.

It is worth looking at each in turn, to see what they offer and why as a strategy they are flawed.

1. Reformism

The straightforward reformist approach doesn’t offer any specific political party as the solution to all our ills. It does hold that individual politicians, of whatever party, can be swayed in their actions by political lobbying and sustained pressure from voters.

A good example of this is the PCS Make Your Vote Count (MYVC) campaign[5]. In particular, they pushed candidates and party leaders in each council to sign up to their five public service pledges[6] as a way of raising the profile of their campaign and pushing for politicians to support it.

The most obvious flaw of this approach, which applies equally to those mentioned below, is the sheer amount of time and resources it takes up. Professional lobby groups have vast sums of money to throw around, and are able to peddle their wares in the very corridors of power. They are, after all, funded by large corporations and exist only to pursue a given single-issue cause. Ordinary people, and even larger bodies such as trade unions, cannot claim those advantages.

Whilst the corporate lobbyists do it as a job, we do it on the side. People have the pressures and struggles of everyday life to contend with, and so can hardly take much time out to appeal to their MP or local councillor’s sense of reason. Unions’ resources and funding is spread across numerous areas, from the salaries of full time staff and maintenance of offices to pursuing employment tribunals and legal challenges, and providing training for their reps.

But even if we were able to create a multi-million pound lobby group along the lines of those funded by corporate interests, which is very unlikely, it would still be one amongst many. It would also be a largely wasted venture, as lobbying is only a minor factor in why politicians serve the interests of the ruling class.

Capitalism isn’t just “the economy.” It is a complete system, social and political as well as economic. It defines power relations within society and maintains the domination of a small minority of people who control most of the wealth and capital over everybody else. This doesn’t change with a different party at the head of government, and it becomes the case that the only divide between mainstream parties is a strategic one, reflecting differences of opinion amongst the ruling class.

Labour, in opposition, are on the warpath against “Tory cuts.” But in power all they offered was a different time frame[7]. The Tories blame Labour for making the cuts necessary, but they’re the ones implementing them – and this is not the first Tory government to do so[8]. The Liberal Democrats, viewed by many (particularly students) before the election as the “nice” alternative to both, were always a pro-business, anti-worker party. In 2009, they were the first to argue for a public sector pay freeze[9]. They support even tougher anti-strike laws than those implemented by Thatcher[10]. Their councils are fond of using scab labour to break strikes[11], and their Welsh Assembly members condemned those who respected civil service picket lines[12].

Looking across Europe, we can see that even greens and socialists – once in power – defend capitalism as ruthlessly as liberals and conservatives. In Ireland, the Green Party ended up implementing the Corrib gas project they had previously been vocal opponents of[13]. In Germany, too, they have been accused of selling out on every principle they claimed to stand for[14].

These are just a few examples. If a minority party gets a single member into office, they can be a lone voice of dissent – gaining credibility, but ultimately ineffective. But when a larger contingent enters the trappings of power, it is not long before compromise and “realism” are required. That “power corrupts” may be a cliché, but it is also true.

2. Vote Labour without illusions

Most of the above quickly demolishes the idea that we can achieve anything by “holding our nose and voting Labour,” or “voting Labour without illusions.” The idea that we should vote for a party simply because it is not quite as bad as the alternative betrays a level of cynicism that borders on apathy. On the other hand, those who suggest that we can push the Labour Party away from capitalism by agitating within it for a more militant approach veers between naivety and opportunism.

In relation to the cuts, recent debates have seen Labour councillors argue with a straight face that we should support Labour council cuts because they are not as bad as Tory cuts[15]. They contend that “what is needed in these circumstances is proper engagement with Labour councils over what cuts are being proposed and why, rather than a blanket refusal to engage with any cuts at all.” But this is nothing more than sophistry to help the party save face. And votes.

It may be true that, if Labour councillors refused to make the cuts, then either unelected bureaucrats or central government would step in to do so. But that does not mean we should accept this and lay down whilst a different party implements cuts in a slightly different way. Despite claims by Labour councillors that they are doing all they can to protect the most vulnerable, we are still seeing life-line services cut and people’s jobs being axed[16]. If we “engage” with that, we are accepting working class people being thrown onto the scrap-heap as an acceptable loss.

3. Militant Tendency

As an alternative to accepting Labour council cuts as “nicer” than Tory cuts, some on the left (especially members of the Socialist Party) are advocating the tactics used by Liverpool and Lewisham city councils in the 1980s, when they were controlled by the Militant Tendency.

According to former Militant councillor and current SP activist Tony Mulhearn[17], this involves “work[ing] out how much is required to fund the existing council services in 2011 and pass[ing] a budget in line with inflation.” When this inevitably results in a shortfall, the exact figure of that shortfall could then be identified and presented as a concrete demand in any campaign for increased funding.

The problem with this strategy is that when put into practice it didn’t work. Those involved in Militant at the time will always boast of how they built 5,000 houses, created 1,000 new jobs, and built sport centres, parks, and nurseries[18]. What they don’t tell you is that their illegal budget didn’t help them win back the funding shortfall from the government. The people of Toxteth won £20 million of extra money in 1981 by rioting against the poverty and deprivation in their area, but in 1985 the council capitulated on its slogan of “Better to Break the Law than Break the Poor.”

For many working class Liverpudlians, the sight of fleets of taxis travelling around the city to deliver redundancy notices typifies the era. Supporters argue that this was just a tactic to buy time, and that the notices did not technically guarantee redundancy, but this glosses over the fact that most council workers felt that their jobs were under threat. It was not accepted by the unions, nor by the public at large, albeit thanks in part to a deliberate propaganda effort by the government and the media.

It transpired afterwards that this foolhardy tactic wasn’t even financially necessary, as the council had negotiated a £30 million loan from Swiss banks months before. As if that wasn’t enough, under the cover of fighting rhetoric, the council had already made cuts, through a partial run-down of services as it ran out of cash[19].

When the Socialist Party argues for a similar strategy today, we should be wary. Their actions in the 1980s demonstrate the limits of reform and rebellion within official structures, as well as the tendency of working class “leadership” to sell its subjects out for its own gain. Militant didn’t put its own neck on the line, but those of the 30,000 workers issued with notices. They were actually little different than those councillors today who ask people to “engage” with them as they shed jobs and attack services – except that the moderates are more honest about their position than the Militant were.

A direct action strategy

“Direct Action is a notion of such clarity, of such self-evident transparency, that merely to speak the words defines and explains them. It means that the working class, in constant rebellion against the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its means of action.” - Emile Pouget

Anarcho-syndicalists start from the position that politics is not based on rational debate but upon power relations in society. When the welfare state was built, the organised working class was far more powerful than it is today. As Tory MP Quintin Hogg put it in 1943, “if you don’t give them reform, they will give you social revolution.” That is why, when Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy and in heavy debt from World War II, the welfare state was born. Now, even though the national debt is much less[3], the diminished power of the working class leaves the government confident in its ability to carry out cuts.

In order to challenge the cuts agenda, we do not need to “win the argument” or to elect the right people into power. We need to shift the balance of power back in favour of the working class. This can only be done by encouraging people to self-organise and take control of their own struggles, in the community and in the workplace.

1. Rank-and-file control

The point of direct action is that the working class do not put pressure on those in authority to negotiate, nor work in partnership with them to solve common problems. Instead, we identify what we want and either take it or force those in power to concede it to us. As its essence lies in un-mediated class struggle, by definition it cannot be directed from above by any self-styled revolutionary leadership. Direct action has to be initiated, and led, from below by the rank-and-file.

This acts as a safeguard against being demobilised from above by bureaucrats or politicians who will put their own careers ahead of class interests; but it also serves as a demonstration of our own power. By organising in this way, we learn to exercise that power without the need for political leaders or vanguards. This not only allows us to challenge the present rolling back of workers’ rights and defend the status quo, but also to look beyond it and question the way that society is organised as a whole.

2. Workplace struggles

With up to a million job losses muted across the public and private sectors[20], militancy on the shop floor will be vital to the fight back against austerity. This inevitably means industrial action in its varied forms – such as strikes, go-slows, working-to-rule, occupations and sabotage. But it also means building up ground-level organisation in order that we cannot be demobilised from above by trade union bureaucrats.

For example, decision making should take place locally through mass assembly. These gatherings would include all workers in the workplace, regardless of union membership, with the obvious exception of managers and scabs. Such assemblies can then elect recallable delegates to speak for the dispute as long as they adhere to their given mandate. By rotating such delegates on a regular basis, and the ability to recall those who stray from their mandates, we make our voices heard without singling out any one person as a “ringleader” or as being “in charge.”

The control of strike funds by the workers themselves is another essential point. Full time officials can use strike pay to turn action on and off as they need, whereas locally controlled monies can provide support where it is needed so that workers can carry on fighting. The organising of benefits and fundraisers to keep the fund topped up also serves as a convenient way to muster solidarity from the local community and to maintain the link between the striking workforce and the rest of the public. Such solidarity is vital not only in keeping people’s’ spirits up, but also as a practical weapon. We should never forget that all struggles are connected and that by explicitly linking the fight of different workplaces and communities we can forge a mass movement which is not controlled centrally but organic and spreading according to the needs of real people.

There also needs to be a real effort to challenge the government and employers’ attempts to draft in scabs from elsewhere. In 2009, activists leafleted Job Centres urging people not to take jobs which crossed the picket lines of striking postal workers[21]. At the same time, more militant tactics such as the sabotage and blockading of firms and offices which provide strike breakers can also be extremely effective in defending industrial action.

3. Community organising

In communities, the same principles apply. We seek to build organisations based upon the mass assembly of all who live in a given community, and to reject the control of councillors, religious officials, and other so-called community “leaders.”

Here, too, the working class exercise great economic power. This is important to remember because it is in the community that the unemployed, the retired, and others detached from workplace issues can play their part in the class struggle. If we want an example of the power of community action, we need only look at the Glasgow Rent Strike of 1915[22]. There, faced with increasing rents and heavy penalties for challenging the profiteering of their landlords, people rose up and refused to pay en masse, their action so powerful that it forced the government to intervene and restrict rents. The victories won by the Seattle Solidarity Network[23] are also a potent example of what well-organised community direct action campaigns can achieve.

Economic power outside of the workplace can complement economic power within it. At present, the high percentage of unorganised workers and workplaces reduces the idea of general strike to little more than a slogan. However, economic blockades – mass actions whereby a group of people shut down a given target by stopping people entering and preventing it from doing business – can have the same impact as a strike if implemented properly. One example of this is the impact fuel blockades have had in France recently[24].

Alongside a wave of industrial action, such blockades could replicate the effect of a general strike. Over time, a running campaign of direct action both industrially and socially would cause severe disruption, not only as an economic attack on capital but as a political event which makes the country ungovernable.

Pushing such a strategy, we would build up the organisational strength of the working class considerably. But we would also lay down an explicit challenge to the state and its mandate to govern us. If we want a chance of actually stopping the cuts, this is the only approach that makes sense. The working class need to make the ruling class fear us and the potential for revolution once again.

Sources

[1] Telegraph: Bank bail-out adds £1.5 trillion to debt, 27/02/2011

[2] http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=277

[3] PCS: There is an alternative: The case against cuts in public spending

[4] UK Uncut bases its actions around the concept of tax justice and the idea that there is an alternative to cuts. For example, see: http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/cuts/government

[5] http://pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/myvc/index.cfm

[6] http://pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/myvc/PCS-public-service-pledges.cfm

[7] Telegraph: Labour to put off spending cuts until after the general election, 13/05/2010

[8] Bloomberg: Cameron Aims to Outdo Thatcher as He Tackles U.K. Welfare State, 18/10/2010

[9] Telegraph: Lib Dems plan public sector pay freeze and big cuts in Government projects, 15/09/2009

[10] Guardian: Lib Dems propose strike ban in strategic services, 24/02/2005

[11] Labournet: Enterprise Liverpool brings scabs against GMB – UNITE joint action, 04/09/2009

[12] BBC News: Labour, Plaid AMs to miss debate due to picket line, 24/03/2010

[13] Shannonwatch blog: Green Party shreds and incinerates its principles to achieve power-at-all-costs, 02/06/2009

[14] http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/grn-a30.shtml

[15] Though Cowards Flinch blog: 10 reasons the Left should support Labour Council Cuts, 21/02/2011

[16] Liverpool Echo: 1,500 Liverpool council workers to lose jobs due to government cuts, 27/01/2011

[17] Liverpool Daily Post: Read Tony Mulhearn’s letter to Joe Anderson, and Joe Anderson’s reply, 21/12/2010

[18] http://www.liverpool47.org/legacy/legacy.htm

[19] Several lengthy critiques of the Militant programme explains these points in depth. For example, see: http://archive.workersliberty.org/publications/readings/trots/liverp.htm

[20] Personnel Today: Government cuts will see half a million private sector job losses, 13/10/2010

[21] Industrial Workers of the World: http://iww.org.uk/node/359

[22] Libcom.org: 1915: The Glasgow Rent Strike

[23] For more information on the Seattle Solidarity Network and its actions, check out their website: http://seasol.net/

[24] Independent: French fuel blockades force thousands to call off their holidays, 21/10/2010

In other posts, both here and over at Truth, Reason & Liberty, I have strongly advocated anarcho-syndicalist participation within trade unions. I still believe that, and still for the same reasons. Namely, that “mainstream trade unions, despite their flaws, have all the apparatus at hand to deal with the majority of day-to-day workers’ issues – disciplinary procedures, heath and safety, sickness / absence, and so forth – as well as a committed core of activists hampered in their potential only by the union leadership.” Thus, “there is no reason that we can’t reject the hierarchy and bureaucracy of the mainstream [union movement] whilst recognising those workers who agitate and struggle within those parameters as comrades.”

The only question, then, is one of limitations. In the post cited above, I said that “As well as building up [specifically anarchist] groups, we need to recognise the great potential of ordinary unions if only their members can reclaim them.” This was perhaps the wrong turn of phrase, as it implies that I believe trade unions can be reformed, and emerge as the kind of revolutionary unions that anarcho-syndicalists advocate. This isn’t the case, for a number of reasons.

Revolutionary unions, such as the German FAU, cannot be created from the reformation of traditional trade unions

The role of the trade unions within capitalism

The main limitation of trade unions was summed up by Anton Pannekoek in his essay Trade Unionism;

Certainly, trade union action is class struggle. There is a class antagonism in capitalism — capitalists and workers have opposing interests. Not only on the question of conservation of capitalism, but also within capitalism itself, with regard to the division of the total product. The capitalists attempt to increase their profits, the surplus value, as much as possible, by cutting down wages and increasing the hours or the intensity of labour. On the other hand, the workers attempt to increase their wages and to shorten their hours of work.

The price of labour power is not a fixed quantity, though it must exceed a certain hunger minimum; and it is not paid by the capitalists of their own free will. Thus this antagonism becomes the object of a contest, the real class struggle. It is the task, the function of the trade unions to carry on this fight.

Trade unionism was the first training school in proletarian virtue, in solidarity as the spirit of organised fighting. It embodied the first form of proletarian organised power. In the early English and American trade unions this virtue often petrified and degenerated into a narrow craft-corporation, a true capitalistic state of mind. It was different, however, where the workers had to fight for their very existence, where the utmost efforts of their unions could hardly uphold their standard of living, where the full force of an energetic, fighting, and expanding capitalism attacked them. There they had to learn the wisdom that only the revolution could definitely save them.

So there comes a disparity between the working class and trade unionism. The working class has to look beyond capitalism. Trade unionism lives entirely within capitalism and cannot look beyond it. Trade unionism can only represent a part, a necessary but narrow part, in the class struggle. And it develops aspects which bring it into conflict with the greater aims of the working class.

Thus, the key flaw of trade unionism is the flaw of all representative politics. A top-down structure develops almost of necessity, and the leaders “sit in conferences with the capitalists, bargaining over wages and hours, pitting interests against interests, just as the opposing interests of the capitalist corporations are weighed one against another.” As such, “they learn to understand the capitalist’s position just as well as the worker’s position; they have an eye for “the needs of industry”; they try to mediate.” That mediation means that they are not the voice of organised labour, but have the duty “to regulate class conflicts and to secure industrial peace.”

Brendan Barber, head of the British Trade Union Congress, is just one of many prominent bureaucrats whose role is to regulate class struggle and defuse the antagonism between the working class and the ruling class

Beyond the interests of the working class, labour leaders “own existence is indissolubly connected with the existence of the unions.” Thus, when “class conflicts become sharper,” they risk losing “the only source of security and power” in “the financial power of the union, perhaps its existence.” Thus, “they must act as spokesmen of the employers to force the capitalists’ terms upon the workers.” And “when the workers insist on fighting in opposition to the decision of the unions,” we reach the point where “the union’ s power must be used as a weapon to subdue the workers.”

For proof of this, you can examine innumerable sell-outs of the rank-and-file by trade union leaders. The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) is a case study in the tensions between member militancy and leadership sell-out. But perhaps most revealing is the situation many trade unionists look to with nostalgia and longing – the closed shop.

In a closed shop, workers must join the union within a particular workplace in order to gain and keep employment. Its compulsory nature alone would raise objections amongst anarcho-syndicalists, who argue for voluntary workers’ organisation – not only on the basis of free choice, but also because such organisations have no requirement to respond to the interests of those with no choice but to be a member. It is also the partnership with capital taken to its extreme, the bureaucracy of the union essentially taking on the role of maintaining worker discipline and managing expectations in lieu of the bosses having to do it. The union is thus not just a mediator but middle management.

Returning to the broader question of trade unions, it is evident that they are not – and cannot be – revolutionary organisations. For one thing, if union leaders are willing to betray their members when they are simply pushing a more militant agenda, this will go ten-fold if they are seeking to restructure the organisation for rank-and-file control. It would perhaps even unite the right and left of the union in their efforts to extinguish the threat of self-organisation. Other approaches are needed.

The limits of trade union activity

So what, if trade unions will always be dependent upon the prevalence of capitalism to exist and thrive, is the point of having anything to do with them?

The answer, simply, is the rank-and-file. In Pannekoek’s words, the union “is not simply an assembly of single workers; it becomes an organised body, like a living organism, with its own policy, its own character, its own mentality, its own traditions, its own functions.” Thus, turning a trade union into a revolutionary union is a near-impossibility, given the interests it develops as an entity.

However, it is those “single workers” who are important. For they are part of the wider working class, whose interests lie not in a better managed, “nicer” capitalism, but beyond it – in a free, classless society. As such, within workplaces already organised by mainstream trade unions, an anarcho-syndicalist would seek to promote mass participation and collective decision-making.

This is done as a member or a rep of such unions for a number of reasons. As well as the protection being a union member affords in the immediate term, and the infrastructure already in place to deal with individual member issues (as mentioned earlier), there is the fact that trying to build a breakaway union could have detrimental effects such as splitting the workforce during a dispute, or union scabbing. Whilst we advocate rank-and-file independence from the bureaucracy, but this means nothing if done to the cost of class unity.

The limits of such activity are, ultimately, up to individual discretion. As an arbitrary measure, I would say that they correspond to the limits of rank-and-file influence within the unions.

So, quite obviously, a full-time official who is answerable to the bureaucracy and who makes decisions with no democratic mandate is beyond these limits. This goes for those appointed to their positions by an employer, but also those (such as general secretaries) who are elected. After all, their election is parliamentary in style – they are representatives, chosen to make decisions on behalf of the members, rather than delegates chosen to voice decisions made directly by the members.

Beyond that, I think it’s a case of what roles within the union structure you give credit to. Personally, I’m off the opinion that going beyond a branch level puts you in murky waters. This is not to say that it should be avoided at all costs, and certainly you should look to make connections beyond your own locale. But this should be with a recognition that, even if you still hold the same job and wage as other workers, the further you get from the grass roots, the closer you get to “becom[ing] the slave of [the] capitalistic task of securing industrial peace — now at the cost of the workers, though [you] meant to serve them as best [you] could.”

During the recent student protests, Aaron Porter became the epitome of the union bureaucrat trying to contain discontent, whilst the rank-and-file of his National Union of Students showed it was possibly to break away from - rather than just replace - the official leadership fulfilling that role

Revolutionary unions

From an anarcho-syndicalist perspective, the alternative to this approach is revolutionary unionism. A rank-and-file movement, across communities as well as workplaces, based on self-organisation, direct democracy, and a decentralised, federal structure.

I have explained this idea in depth in the series What is anarcho-syndicalism? But, if trade unions cannot be transformed – as it is political alchemy – into revolutionary unions, how do we reach that point?

Within communities, and unorganised workplaces, they can of course emerge from scratch. But where there is already a union presence, and particularly a strong one, trying to form a separate grouping and asking people to join will only cause splits, as already stated. That is why anarcho-syndicalists agitate within the trade unions. And it is precisely from that agitation that such new forms of organisation can emerge.

Making the arguments for a bottom-up structure, and for collective decision-making on the basis of workers assembly is only the start. Ultimately, we want to put that into practice.

This starts to emerge when we reach a point where we are able to call such mass assemblies, with all of those in the workplace – barring obviously scabs and management – taking part. Once this happens, we can see the rank-and-file of the union break away from the chains of top-down bureaucracy and act autonomously.

This will undoubtedly incur the wrath of management and union bosses alike, from which we will see union power attempt to pacify worker militancy. But, by organising in this way, workers gain a glimpse of their true collective strength and the confidence to combine and stand up for themselves without having to look to leaders or “representatives.” From which, the first spark of revolutionary union flares up.

This is by no means a guaranteed formula for creating such a spark. By definition, no such thing can exist for the creation of anarcho-syndicalist structures. But there are basic principles and ideas, which people can build upon, and in doing so stretch the limits of workers’ ambitions beyond the capital-partnership of trade unionism.

Since the May General Election, we have been witnessing the slow demise of British fascism as we know it. The British National Party’s spectacular failure tore open divisions and animosities that had been long brewing below the surface. Resignations, sackings, splits, and general disorder have turned the party in on itself. At the same time, the new government’s austerity measures and the fight back they have provoked has pushed racial politics to the sidelines, as people once more awaken to the realities of class war.

And yet, the English Defence League continues to grow. Part of this is down to the unique position it finds itself in. Not being a political party, it cannot suffer a decline in electoral fortune. Not being a social movement, they needn’t worry about grassroots organising. All they have to do is call demonstrations, and people will come. They offer an outlet for neo-Nazis, football hooligans, loyalists, and others just looking for a fight and a flash point, and as long as that is the limit of their ambitions they remain immune to the political factors which brought down the BNP.

The other side of the EDL’s success is down to political Islam.

I was tempted to say the “rise” of political Islam, but that wouldn’t be strictly true. Being an extreme minority position whose ideals are alien to most people on this island, it has no base with which to build a broad-based movement for political reform, nor to galvanise the populace into revolution. It will remain the preserve of a tiny band of lunatics espousing abhorrent views, and all that will change is how much attention they are given.

Cross-radicalisation

Unfortunately, at the moment, the answer to that is “a lot.” With stunts such as burning poppies on Armistice Day, and threatening to march through Wootton Bassett, groups such as Islam4UK and Muslims Against Crusades can stir up more than enough public outrage to make themselves seem important. The government’s use of the SAS to protect shopping centres, and the continual playing up of the terror threat, likewise adds fear to that outrage. And this feeds the atmosphere and sentiments that keep the EDL going.

Despite what it says, the EDL does not exist merely to “peacefully protest against militant Islam.” Chants such as “we hate Pakis more than you” and stunts like throwing pigs heads at mosques tell of overt racism and deliberate provocation. At its demos, supporters who break police lines regularly invade and attack Asian communities. For the EDL, the distinction between ordinary Muslims and militant Islamists does not exist.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that the message of clerics such as Anjem Choudary played a part in their rapid expansion. Founder Stephen Lennon has spoken before of how “preachers of hate such as Anjem Choudary have been recruiting for radical Islamist groups in Luton for years” whilst “our government does nothing.” This led to him and others “decided we’d start protesting against radical Islam, and it grew from there.”

But this isn’t just one-way process. It has been noted on more than one occasion that the EDL attacking Muslims provides “constituent parts” for those who would radicalise vulnerable people to encourage them to “go through the gateway towards being radicalised.”

The role of class is not insignificant in this process. Fascism grows by feeding off anger and feelings of marginalisation amongst the working class, and offering a solution that turns one section of the working class against another. Islamism is no different. The only difference is that one ideology is appealing to the white working class with patriotic and nationalist sentiments, whilst the other is appealing to the Muslim working class with religious sentiments. The antagonism between the two strands actually helps to form a symbiotic relationship. The two opposing ideologies feed off one another.

The failures of the left

Unfortunately, the anti-fascist movement has failed to recognise the implications of this. In particular, groups such as Unite Against Fascism have adopted a very black-and-white approach to this issue which has played into the EDL’s view that all those who oppose them are “in bed with radical Islam.” It has also resulted in accusations of “Islamophobia” being hurled about in a way that made the entire movement look ridiculous.

For example, back in June the EDL announced plans to march on the Tower Hamlets in opposition against what UAF called “a peace conference, organised by a Muslim charitable foundation and aimed at building understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.” It emerged that this was in fact an event being organised by the Islamic Forum of Europe, “a virulent form of political Islam that is fascistic in nature like Jaamat Islam and verges on the anti-Semitic and is very exclusivist and undemocratic.”

That description comes from a statement issued by a number of local groups, including Muslim and Bangladeshi organisations, in opposition to the EDL’s “demonstration.” However, in taking such a  position – “against fascism in all its colours” – the groups behind the statement were accused of being racist and in league with fascists.

Such an attitude will be familiar to anybody who has dealt for long enough with UAF and the Socialist Workers’ Party for whom they operate as a front group. Five years ago, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell criticised UAF for inviting Sir Iqbal Sacranie, then head of the Muslim Council of Britain, to speak at one of its events. He dubbed it “a sad betrayal of liberal, non-homophobic Muslims,” saying that “Sir Iqbal’s homophobic views, and the MCB’s opposition to gay equality, echo the prejudice and discrimination of the BNP.” For these comments, he was accused of “claim[ing] the role of liberator and expert about Muslim gays and lesbians” and of being “part of the Islamophobia industry.” Clearly, absurdity knows no bounds.

The problem is that those afflicted by such a narrow perspective are currently the most influential in the broader anti-fascist movement. UAF is able to draw in the support of students and young people on the sole basis of vague, anti-racist politics, whilst keeping class analysis out of the worldview keeps funding from mainstream organisations coming in. Thus, they are able to simply marginalise and ignore tricky debates such as this when it suits them.

Hope not Hate have, especially of late, shown a lot more political savvy in this regard. They recognise that “hate breeds hate,” and that “the EDL breeds Islamic extremism and Islamic extremism breeds the EDL.” This is certainly a better position than UAF’s. However, ever the statists, they delegate responsibility for “mak[ing] a stand against extremism on both sides of the divide” to “the Government.”

They, too, ignore class issues and reduce the matter to one of “extremism.” In essence, that those who diverge too far from the narrow spectrum of mainstream politics must be taken care of by the state.

The problem with this, as the left should be all too aware, is that under such auspices the definition on “extremism” goes beyond violent fascists and religious lunatics espousing holy war. Forward Intelligence Teams and police “evidence gatherers” are becoming ever more commonplace on demonstrations of all kinds, particularly those in opposition to the cuts. Their job is to gather footage of “domestic extremists” – that is, those who take to the streets to protest, picket, and make their voices heard.

By this definition, trade unionists, environmentalists, anti-war activists, and anti-fascists are extremists as much as the EDL and Muslims Against Crusades. As such, asking the government to “make a stand against extremism” sets a very dangerous precedent indeed.

Militant working class self-defence

Even if the English Defence League wasn’t a fascist organisation grounded in loyalism and hooliganism, it wouldn’t be an effective vehicle to challenge political Islam. It is a purely reactionary movement, more concerned with feeding right-wing anger than challenging the radicalisation of Muslims.

They don’t organise within Muslim communities. They don’t counteract the religious arguments of the Islamists with a class argument to address the real issues that affect and concern Muslims and non-Muslims alike. They don’t stand in solidarity with those who oppose the extremists in their own midst. And they don’t distinguish between issues of religious bigotry from those of religious freedom in order to distance themselves from the far-right and racism.

This is the approach taken by militant anti-fascists, who counter the propaganda of the BNP and EDL with a working class perspective. We argue from this point of view precisely because it is this argument that both the far-right and the mainstream media have worked to obscure, and to twist in favour of a racial or national interpretation of the world.

Likewise, for working class Muslims there is an enormous effort to paint the world around them as defined by religion. The Islamic far-right talks of holy war in the Middle East, ignoring the fact that capitalism and the control of markets is the root of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to mention the fact that it is poor Arabs and Muslims who are dying and being oppressed, whilst the wealthy are able to serve or integrate into the class of people who benefit from the war. They certainly don’t mention how the regimes they seek to implement are, elsewhere, crushing workers’ movements as readily as those for women’s and LGBT equality.

The aggressive ultra-nationalism of the EDL only pushes class further off the agenda. Their approach allows community “leaders” – “moderate” as well as Islamist – to shore up their own position with the threat of outside invaders. It creates a sense of defiance that only exacerbates the division of the working class into supposedly homogenous “communities” based on race or religion, allowing the ruling class and various other interests to continue playing us off against one another.

Not only does such a situation make it harder for militant organisation against the various shades of far-right, it also thus makes it harder to organise around attacks on our class. The current climate of austerity is just one example, and questions of race and religion don’t merely distract from the matter at hand but turn us against one another whilst the ruling class wreaks havoc above. This is how fascist regimes came to power in Europe in the 1930’s, but it is also how the totalitarian regimes of the Middle East keep class antagonism crushed under-foot. A populace mobilised in the cause of holy war, or contained by a climate of fear instilled by strict religious laws, necessarily finds it difficult to see anything other than faith as the prime mover of world affairs.

In response, what we need is militant working class self-organisation. Grassroots mobilisation across all sectors of the working class, in the first instance, galvanises people to take a stand against threats such as fascism and Islamism.

But it is not just about defending the areas we live in from the forces of reaction. By organising in this way, we see the power that ordinary people can have, collectively, to make a difference. This helps to rebuild a genuine sense of community – based on vicinity, rather than faith or ethnicity – and the further organisational strength that this brings. Not only does this make anti-fascism far more effective, but it shores up our position in the broader class struggle.

Phil Dickens is an anarchist, anti-fascist, and trade unionist from Liverpool, England. He writes regularly about class struggle, racism, fascism, and imperialism, and his blogs can be found at http://truth-reason-liberty.blogspot.com and http://propertyistheft.wordpress.com