NEW FOR APRIL 2013 (minor revision of MARCH 2010 original). The main text lays out the
fundamental ideas of anarchist communism. It is a really good overview of the politics of
the Anarchist Federation. Various insets throughout the text give examples from history to
illustrate the ideas described in the main section. Free download. ----
http://www.afed.org.uk/ace/afed_introduction_anarchist_communism.pdf ---- CONTENTS ---- 1.
Introduction ---- 2. What We're Fighting: Capitalism and Hierarchy ---- 3. Who We Are and
What We Believe: Revolution and Anarchist Communism ---- 4. How We Fight: Building a
Culture of Resistance ---- 5. There is no Conclusion ---- 1. Introduction ---- There?s a
lot to be angry about. The massacre of thousands every year in wars around the world. The
starvation of yet more thousands every day while food rots in warehouses across the globe.
The extinction of species after species as our environment is slowly wrecked. The millions
of people abused in sweatshops until their bodies and spirits are broken and they?re
thrown on the scrapheap. The countless women subjected to emotional, physical and sexual
violence as a result of their gender. The vast numbers facing discrimination and
oppression based purely on the colour of their skin.
And these are just the shocking headlines. The main story is what happens to each and
every one of us day after day. If we work we give up our time and our energy to the whims
of some company and its managers. We have no stake in what we produce, no control over
what we do day in, day out. If we don?t work, we rely on inadequate benefits doled out by
people trained to hate us as work-shy and lazy. Our lives are controlled by what we can
and can?t afford and by whatever pointless schemes the government insists we go on to
prove that we?re not ?scrounging?. As housewives we get no credit for the hours of work we
do. As unemployed people we?re punished for something that is not our fault. As workers we
are ordered around, watched every second we?re on the job and left too tired at the end of
the day to really enjoy any time we have for ourselves.
On the one hand, death and destruction on a grand scale. On the other, the crushing
boredom and alienation of everyday life. All of these various horrors are tied together,
different faces of a single system. It?s a system designed from the ground up to set us at
each others? throats. It exploits and exaggerates every tiny little difference between us,
making us compete for scraps and hate each other as we fight while a tiny minority enjoy
all the benefits. This system is global capitalism, a pattern of economic and political
exploitation that reaches into every aspect of our lives. It uses sexism, racism,
homophobia and many other hatreds and prejudices around us to protect itself. It creates
hierarchies of power and wealth to divide all the people it exploits and turn us on ourselves.
Capitalism is the problem. All of us that it exploits and degrades are the solution. As we
unite through our common exploitation we can become a force that capitalism cannot
control, cannot crush. We can create a whole new society that serves the needs of all of
us, not a minority.
In the Anarchist Federation we believe that we can be one part of this fight. We see
ourselves as part of a tradition that stretches back throughout the history of resistance
to capitalism, a tradition that can be called anarchist communist although not everyone
involved in it would have seen themselves that way. We believe that this set of ideas and
ways of organising is our best hope of destroying capitalism and creating something better.
As the first of our aims and principles says, we are 'an organisation of revolutionary
class struggle anarchists. We aim for the abolition of all hierarchy, and work for the
creation of a world-wide classless society: anarchist communism.' This pamphlet sets out
to explain what all this means and how we think we can do it.
2. What We're Fighting: Capitalism and Hierarchy
Capitalism
Many influential people, from newspaper editors to economics professors, will tell you
that capitalism is 'natural'. Human beings are greedy, selfish and competitive and so any
economic system must be based on greed, selfishness and competition. According to them,
capitalism is a system that uses our natural urge to compete and dominate to benefit
everyone, even the 'losers' in the competition. The economy grows because ruthless
competition between firms forces them to innovate and expand, creating wealth out of
nothing which then 'trickles down' through society.
These propagandists, because that's what they are, disagree with each other over whether
this can happen completely 'naturally' or whether governments should intervene to smooth
the process. Some argue that everything should be open to competition ? hospitals,
schools, the lot ? so that the benefits of growth can spread everywhere. Others, sometimes
even calling themselves socialists, argue that some things like health care and education
should be run by the government. This creates a healthier and better educated workforce
for the capitalist firms and so makes them more competitive.
These arguments are sometimes fierce, but in the end the two sides agree about everything
that is important. Some people should own and control the factories, services and land
that are the basis of the economy. These people should make all the decisions and should
get most of the wealth that these businesses create. Other people should work in these
places under the control of the managers. They should take orders, not make decisions and
should get a wage for what they do.
This is the essence of capitalism. One small group of people controls the places that we
work in, the land that produces our food, the factories that make our clothes and
everything that makes life possible. These people are the ruling class and their power
comes from their control over the means of production, the resources and equipment that
are needed to produce the things we need to live. Everyone else must work in the fields
and the factories, the call centres and the office blocks. We are the working class and in
this system we operate the means of production. We provide the labour that allows these
fields and factories, call centres and offices to produce goods and services, commodities,
for the ruling class to sell at a profit.
Capitalism, then, is a system of exploitation. It is a class system where a majority, the
working class, is exploited by a minority, the ruling class. The ruling class are the
people who own or control the places where we work. They make the decisions about what
kinds of products the factories make or what kinds of services are provided, and they make
the decisions about how this work is organised. The working class are all the people who
are forced to work in these places in order to get the money that they need to live. We,
the working class, build and provide everything society needs to function. They, the
ruling class, suck profit out of our work. We are the body of society; they are parasites
sucking us dry.
Class Struggle
In the capitalist system the interests of the ruling class and the working class are
always opposed. The ruling class seek to tighten their grip on us, to gain more control,
to get more profit. The working class seek to get out from under our bosses and our
governments, to gain control over our own lives. There will always be conflict between
these groups, whether on a small or a mass scale.
This conflict takes many forms. Most obviously it happens in the places where we work.
Strikes over wages and working practices clearly pit the interests of a group of bosses
against a group of workers. However, class struggle is much more than this. Capitalism
seeks to control and profit from all aspects of life. Our homes are bought, sold and
rented for profit. The food we eat and the water we drink is privately owned and
controlled. Our environment becomes a vast dumping ground for industry, valued only for
profit not for the way it enables and enriches our lives. Whenever we struggle for control
over some aspect of our lives, we are engaging in class struggle. When we fight for our
communities or our environment we are fighting the class struggle.
It follows from this that we don't use the idea of class in the same way as many people,
particularly in the press. Class is not about the fact that some people earn more money
than others or that some people go to different kinds of schools. These basically
sociological definitions of class, definitions loved by advertisers, managers and other
assorted scum, are used to hide the real nature of class. We don't just see the working
class as being people with traditional manual or industrial jobs ? if someone is not
currently working, but dependent on meagre state benefits (and so under continual pressure
to find work), in education (training for work) or living on their pension (deferred
wages), then their situation is obviously very different from that of the 'idle rich' who
are able to live a comfortable life off the backs of others, such as landlords. Equally,
many people in jobs that are traditionally seen as 'middle class,' such as teachers, have
no real control over their lives or the work they do and are forced to struggle against
their employers just like the rest of the working class.
This confusion about the idea of class is part of a wider set of tactics that the ruling
class use to disguise the reality of class from the people that it exploits. Capitalism
needs workers in a way workers simply do not need capitalism. If the working class unites
around its common interests then it can do away with the ruling class and run society
itself. We don't need them, but they need us. Because of this, the ruling class works hard
to divide us against each other. It does this in two ways ? partly through trying to
control ideas and the way we think about ourselves, and partly through creating small
differences in power and wealth that set working class people against each other.
Things like nationalism, the idea that we should be loyal to the state in one country
simply because we were born there, or a 'work ethic', the idea that we owe a 'fair day's
work' to the boss that's exploiting us, are used by the ruling class to divide the working
class and make some of us feel more loyal to the bosses than to the people around us.
Nationalism splits workers in one country off from workers in another and lies at the root
of racism that splits workers along lines of skin colour. The work ethic ties us to the
boss instead of each other and makes people despise the 'lazy' unemployed rather than
putting the blame where it really belongs.
The use of these ideas to split the working class is reinforced by creating differences in
power and wealth to back them up. On a large scale, workers in the West are made to
compete with workers in the global South for jobs as factories move in search of the
cheapest labour costs. On smaller scales, individual workers are given a little bit more
pay to become supervisors and end up screwing over those around them just to keep that
little bit extra. This kind of thing happens in many different ways but the end result is
always the same. Working class people compete for scraps while the ruling class skims vast
profits off the top and throws us a few leftovers to keep us fighting each other rather
than them.
To fight the class struggle, then, is to try and overcome the false differences that the
ruling class creates and unite as one class against the people that exploit us. This is a
process that goes on all the time. Sometimes we become strong and united as a class and
are able to get concessions like shorter working days, healthcare and so on. The ruling
class fights back and exploits our divisions to break this unity, weakening the class and
undoing what gains we have made, or even worse, turning them against us. This push and
pull between the ruling class and the working class will go on until capitalism is overcome.
The State
One of the things that makes exploitation possible, and one of the major tools in keeping
the working class divided, is the state. The state is made up of all the institutions of
government. Parliament, the civil service, the courts, tax collectors and so on are all
parts of the state. These are institutions that regulate and control the lives of
'citizens' - that is you and me ? for the benefit of capitalism. The state is the
organised face of capitalism. It is the political representation of the economic power of
the capitalist ruling class. When the so-called free market can't achieve something that
capital needs to grow, the state steps in and makes it happen.
There are many ways it can do this. Parliament passes laws that protect the property of
the rich whilst restricting the ability of the poor to fight back. It acts as umpire in
disputes between different capitalist firms, setting rules for trade so that different
companies can trust each other. Tax money is used to create the services that business
relies upon but can't build for itself ? road and transport systems, schools to train
workers, electricity grids and sewage systems (which can be sold off later for private
profit) ? all the things that make business possible. It can destroy the economies of
developing countries using the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank so
that firms have a ready pool of new resources and workers to exploit. From building the
legal and physical infrastructure that capitalism needs to directly attacking workers
seeking to improve their position, the state is an essential tool of the capitalist class.
Importantly, the state controls organisations that directly control and coerce working
class people. The army and the police most obviously use direct force to keep people in
line, with the police breaking strikes and heads at home and the army enforcing capitalism
abroad. Schools, whilst providing an important service, also indoctrinate children and
prepare them for a life as workers rather than as human beings. Prisons, immigration
authorities, dole offices and on and on and on, all intrude into our lives and control our
actions. Some of these things, like schools, hospitals and welfare benefits, we sometimes
depend on for our lives. It is often this very dependence that these organisations use to
control us. Benefits come with conditions that dictate what you can and can't do. Schools
give us the knowledge we need to understand the world but also train us to accept
discipline and being bored all day because some authority figure tells us we have to be.
Some people argue that the state behaves in this way because it is under the control of
capitalists. They argue that if the state were under the control of a group that
represented the working class, usually a revolutionary party of some kind, then it would
behave differently. This ignores one important aspect of the state that can be seen in all
of the organisations that it controls. The state is designed to govern from above ? it is,
by its very nature, hierarchical. This means that it always concentrates power in the
hands of a minority. A small number of people give orders and a large number obey. We can
see this in the army and in the police with the huge differences in power between ranks
and orders that must be obeyed absolutely and without question. But this is also true in
all the other arms of the state.
For this reason any group taking over the state will automatically find itself ruling
instead of freeing the people they claim to represent. That is what states do. A state is
a machine for controlling people and can never be anything else. This is not just because
of the repressive and manipulative organisations it controls, although these are far more
important to the state than some would have us believe. It is because the state is always
hierarchical and as a result will end up furthering rather than destroying all the other
hierarchies in society.
Governing Ourselves: The Spanish Revolution
The revolution in Spain between 1936 and 1939 was contradictory, under constant attack,
and ultimately defeated, not just by the fascists but also by the 'anti-fascists' within
its own ranks. Despite all of this, however, for a short space of time the Spanish working
class, under the influence of anarchist communist ideas, was able to achieve the most
far-reaching revolution of the 20th century.
In the face of an attempted fascist military coup the workers and peasants of Spain went
on strike and took up arms. In many working class urban areas, such as Barcelona and
Madrid, and in rural areas with an anarchist-influenced peasantry, such as Aragon,
Castille and the Levant, the attempted coup was put down. The people controlled the
streets and the fields.
In the republican zone, the influence of anarchism through the anarcho-syndicalist CNT,
the largest Spanish union federation, led the workers' movement to spontaneously
collectivise industry under workers' control, in many cases making it more efficient. The
woodworking and carpentry industry was completely socialised, as was the baking industry
in Barcelona. The same was true of the railways, while workers' control was won in
telecommunications, utilities, cinemas, the buses and trams and factories and workshops of
all kinds. In the countryside the revolution was even more wide-ranging, with rural
collectives doing away with private property and in many cases declaring libertarian
communism. Up to 7 million peasants were involved in the social upheaval. In both the
towns and cities a wide range of forms of collectivisation existed ? in some instances
money was abolished, in others it was kept, in others still labour tokens were introduced
in exchange for work.
All this was too much for the more conservative elements in the Republican government and
certainly too much for their Soviet backers. Laws were passed attacking collectivisation
and the centralised republican army was used against anarchist militias and more radical
sections of the working class. Many in the anarchist movement, seeing no alternative,
supported joining the government. This mistake was to no avail, and many fine militants
died in Stalinist prison cells. The revolution in Spain was defeated before the fascists
managed to militarily defeat the republicans.
Hierarchy
Hierarchy is one of the key tools that the state and capitalism use to control people. It
is implicated in both the repressive and the manipulative arms of the state, but it is
most destructive when it is used to manipulate people. A hierarchy is any system where
power over others is concentrated in the hands of a minority. All capitalist workplaces,
for example, are hierarchies, with bosses at the top and everyone else below. Often there
are tiny differences in responsibility that give some people just a tiny bit of power over
others. Board members control managers, who control more managers, who control
supervisors, who control more supervisors, who eventually end up 'managing' six people for
an extra 10p an hour.
This is one important way that capitalism creates and uses hierarchy to divide working
class people. We are given a small amount of power over each other so that we end up
fighting each other rather than fighting the bosses.
However, there are hierarchies in society that were not created by capitalism and which
have their own separate existence and history. The oppression of women is thousands of
years old and has shown up in different ways in hundreds of different societies. This is
known as patriarchy, a system of oppression and exploitation that sees women placed under
the control of men in a variety of different ways. The oppression of LGBTQ people, indeed
of anyone who doesn't fit a straight, monogamous, gendered norm, is age old. It's often
even more brutal than patriarchy, seeking not just to control but to exterminate people
who don't fit. Racism and ideas of white supremacy are younger but no less vicious, with a
legacy of slavery and exploitation that has destroyed the lives of millions.
All of these systems of oppression and exploitation, and the many others that hang off
them, must be fought on their own terms by the people that suffer them. Just as only the
working class can fight capitalism because we are the ones being directly exploited, so
only women, LGBTQ people and those attacked by racism (which can change from place to
place and period to period) can destroy patriarchy, heterosexism and white supremacy. We
can all support each other in these different fights, but it is vital that those directly
attacked chose the form and structure of their own response. Organisations of women, gay
people and of black and ethic minority people (who are often, in reality, majorities) are
absolutely vital in resisting and destroying various systems of hierarchy.
However, we should also remember that all of these systems of oppression work together to
create the world as we know it. Capitalism is propped up by patriarchy which divides the
working class (men against women), gives some workers power over others (men are more
likely to get higher paid and supervisory jobs), and forces people to do untold hours of
unpaid but essential work (housework and the raising of children are essential to the
economy but mostly done for free by women). Patriarchy is propped up by capitalism as the
media pump out stereotypes of women to sell cosmetics and perfumes and businesses create
the role of the housewife to force unwanted women out of the workplace and create a new
market for consumer goods. Racism allows capitalist states to justify invading and
pillaging different countries for raw materials and new markets and divides the working
class at home between black and white, immigrant and native. All these forms of
exploitation and oppression, all these hierarchies, reinforce and amplify each other,
until they are impossible to untangle from each other.
For this reason it is impossible to just fight capitalism or racism or sexism and so on
and so on. Gains made against one system will be eaten up by another. For example, women's
fight for equal rights at work has often ended up with women working a 'double day', with
housework at home and long hours at work. The rebellion of black people in the 1960s won
political equality, but also created a new black leadership who became part of the ruling
class while everyone else was left to rot.
Capitalism, then, is more than just a class system. The power of the ruling class comes
from their control of the means of production, but they keep that control by manipulating
a whole series of different systems of oppression and exploitation, different hierarchies.
These systems give some of the working class more power than others, they make us
complicit in our own exploitation. Back in the 19th century there was a slogan: 'workers
of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.' The way that capitalism,
patriarchy, white supremacy and other systems of hierarchy work together means that this
is not true. These systems give large sections of the working class just a little bit of
privilege. This is enough to turn them against the people they should be uniting with,
enough to make them defend the ruling class against the claims of women, LGBTQ people,
black and ethnic minority/majority people and on and on and on.
To get past this we need a revolutionary movement made up of many different organisations.
We need many different ways in which people can take control of their own lives and fight
the different oppressions that push them down. We need to completely transform society and
ourselves. In the Anarchist Federation we believe that the ideas of anarchist communism
offer the best chance of doing this. The next section lays out what these ideas are.
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