Southern Africa, Zabalaza #14 - The Anarchist Road To
Revolution by Bongani Maponyane (ZACF) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
We, anarchists, are committed to building a society based on self-management and equality.
We identify with the analyses and experiences of Mikhail Bakunin, who stated the need for
freedom beyond the limited confines of "democracy" - where you are only free to vote on
who is next to govern you. Bakunin argued that freedom comes responsibility: this included
responsibility to others in the maintenance of this freedom. We need a society based on
these principles; an anarchist society which expects from each according to their ability,
and provides to each according to their needs. ---- How do we achieve this? The anarchist
society is achieved through a revolutionary strategy based on mass organization to
overthrow systems and relationships of hierarchical (or top-down) political, economic and
social power. These organisations - trade unions and community movements - we refer to as
counter-power.
We need to build syndicalist trade unions - revolutionary anarchist trade unions - which
fight alongside working class and poor community organisations. These syndicalist
movements will be the battering ram which smashes down capitalism. In South Africa that
would mean a specific focus on black organisation, but in time this would be broadened to
the entire working class population regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender,
sexuality, etc. Along with counter-power, we need to build a revolutionary working class
consciousness - or counter-culture - based on emancipatory education.
However, these institutions of peoples' power do not just arise out of nothing. People
need to be presented with the ideas of anarchism, and the influence of anarchism needs to
be maintained within these organisations. This is one of the primary responsibilities, we
argue, of an anarchist political organization. This kind of organization does not seek
power on behalf of, or over movements, but acts within these movements to influence
opinions in an open, honest, democratic way.
We aim to build counter-power and counter-culture as the nucleus of the future society
based on community and worker councils that control production, distribution, education
and decision-making. Anarchism, therefore, is a prefigurative socialist political ideology
and practice that seeks to build the new world of freedom within the shell of this
decaying world of capitalist and state oppression and domination.
Many decisions will be based on scientific research and debate and their implementation
coordinated by these future councils. Therefore, life will be organized by the very people
who work and contribute to society for their own benefit and the benefit of others around
them. When decisions affecting larger groups of people need to be coordinated, delegates
can be chosen on specific mandates to represent the decisions of their councils. These
delegates, however, will have no power to alter the decisions of their communities without
the approval of those they are representing. This is the major difference between
anarchist direct democracy and the current system of representative democracy - a system
that centralizes the power of decision-making in the hands of a small group, the ruling
class. We seek to make decisions with people, not over people! Grassroots decision-making
and peoples' power can only exist if the power of political and economic systems is
situated in grassroots structures. We hold council delegates to account through a system
of mandates, report-backs and the principle of immediate recall: if a delegate does not
fulfill a mandate and acts outside the wishes of the council, that individual is
immediately replaced with someone who will.
Industry will be controlled by workers and land equitably shared for the benefit of all to
meet social and individual need. To achieve this, our revolutionary counter-culture must
also take into account the influence and impact of other, competing, ideas influencing the
working class and poor, such as nationalism, patriotism and Marxism. We need to educate
ourselves away from these authoritarian ideologies that, when put into practice, have only
replicated hierarchical domination, despite the good intentions of some of those
exclaiming their ideas. These ideologies promote the necessity of political parties and
the need to capture the state for the implementation of programmes. But the state can
never be used to create an equal and free society - as it is itself a hierarchical
institution promoting power over people.
Building counter-power and counter-culture requires an new, alternative working class
political education, one that assists to build peoples' understandings of the world around
them and that provides a way-forward for organization building. The anarchist political
organization, then, must play a central role to this end. Unlike the Marxist "vanguard"
party that claims to speak on behalf of all working class people, or the nationalist
"Peoples" party that claims to speak for all the people of a particular nation, the
anarchist organization acts as educators, agitators and organisers within the working and
poor class, not above it. Insofar as we are leaders it is because we aim at a leadership
of ideas, not individuals nor political parties, and not a leadership over the masses.
With anarchism as the leading idea, we can build our strength towards victory against
oppression and domination.
http://zabalaza.net/2015/11/18/the-anarchist-road-to-revolution/
