Letter: Alternative to market (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In your review of David Ramsay Steele's book From Marx to Mises (June issue), you mention his citation of a non-market, anti-centralist model of society, that is “anarcho-communism". You seem to accept his view that lack of central planning leads to local autarky and that anarchist communists advocate this. This is certainly not the case. We believe that much can be decided on a local level through a system of neighbourhood and workplace councils, but that there is a need for coordination of areas on a regional basis, right on up to a global level—to determine what is produced and how much, for example, to satisfy the needs of the population of the whole world.

In the same issue you ask if “anarcho-communists feel comfortable being grouped with these people” (that is people like Ayn Rand etc). Well, the answer is, we do not. We in the Anarchist Communist Federation have consistently argued that anarchism is based on class-struggle, and as a movement had its origins in the First International, a working class organisation. We have always dismissed descriptions of Ayn Rand. Tolstoy. Stirner and so on as “anarchist” (descriptions which they never used themselves) as inaccurate and misleading.

Ron Allen

London E1

Reply:

Glad to see you agree with us that the alternative to the market is not some impossible return to local self-sufficiency but common ownership with real democracy local to global. Not that we did any more than record, without discussing its accuracy, Steele's claim that Kropotkin stood for “local autarky”—Editors.

Authoritarian (1997)

Pamphlet Review from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where There’s Brass There’s Muck: Ecology and Anarchism. Anarchist Communist Federation pamphlet.

An interesting short survey of anarchist thinking on ecology. It reveals that Murray Bookchin, founder of the Social Ecology movement, has become even more reformist in adopting "Confederal Municipalism":". . .  a belief in taking state power at a local level and using that power to transform society from the bottom up."

The ACF itself advocates using Direct Action to bring about a classless society in harmony with the environment. The anti-roads movement, they say, "has a fine record of sabotage". They admit that their road to social transformation will lead to violence, as indeed it must. It is also a dead end. Apart from the people involved, they have no way of establishing that they represent the majority view, nor is there any way of democratically assessing their argument. This is the paradox of anarchism: the method for bringing about the society they want is inherently authoritarian.

Lew Higgins

Recipe for disaster? (2006)

Pamphlet Review from the May 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Work. Anarchist Federation. £1.00.

It might be thought that a pamphlet on work would begin by setting out what is going to be meant by the word. But this pamphlet does not do so. Instead, it uses the word in two different, even contradictory, senses. Work “must be destroyed before it destroys us”, proclaims the front cover. “Work is a disease” says an illustration. “Arguments against work” is one chapter heading.

But another chapter is headed “Work in a free society” though even this has the subtitle “freedom begins where work ends”. So, after all, work is not going to be destroyed? It is not a disease (or, if it is, it’s still going to exist in a “free society”?). So, in a free society, we are not going to be free when we work?

In physics work is the expenditure of energy. For humans, it is the exercise of a person’s physical and material energies to produce something that has some use, an unavoidable feature of human existence which has to take place in all societies and so cannot be abolished or destroyed. Under capitalism most work takes the form of employment, which is the things the pamphlets says: boring, meaningless, done for the benefit of an employer. It is employment – working for wages – , not work as such, that is a “disease” that can be abolished. What is required is the transformation of work, not its impossible abolition.

The authors of Work make some strong and valid criticisms of the human consequences of capitalist employment. For many workers it means physical and nervous exhaustion, illness, often anti-social laws, damaged family relationships, the intensification and lengthening of the working week, job insecurity, the switch from long-term employment to sub-contracting and self-employment, usually with worse pay and conditions. Even the unemployed, they say, are now engaged in the “work” of “looking for work”.

We agree that in “a society without ‘employment’, without bosses and wage labour”, the work of producing what society needs will be quite different: it will be “freely chosen”, “not measured at all” and an “expression of a person’s pleasure in what they are doing”.

Where we disagree is over how the Anarchist Federation envisage such a society coming into being – by a general refusal to work:

   “We will take our hands from the plough and the loom, rise up from our desks, cast off our boots and overalls, walk out of the hotels and restaurants, leave the factory and office, meeting with others to join in their refusal to work as they celebrate ours”.

This is a recipe for disaster. If (as this scenario assumes) people had reached the stage of wanting to abolish capitalism and its employment and wage labour, then a more sensible option would surely be to organise, not to stop working, i.e. to stop producing with all the consequences this would have on social life, but to keep production going under worker control while the transfer through political action of social control from the capitalist class to the community as a whole takes place.

Adam Buick

Distortion (1997)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In ALB’s review (Socialist Standard, April) of the Anarchist Communist Federation’s pamphlet Beyond Resistance—A Revolutionary Manifesto for the Millenium he states that the “ . . . ACF proposes punishment beatings". Nowhere in the pamphlet is there such an advocacy of such an appalling tactic (interestingly, you failed to quote, because you could not find such a quote). Nowhere in its magazine Organise!, in its pamphlets, at its public meetings, indeed anywhere in its propaganda is there a single mention of such action and no member of the ACF has ever advocated such actions. It would be like saying that the Socialist Party advocates shaving heads of people who fail to vote for you. Similarly where in our description of building a culture of resistance does the ACF exclude any section of the working class. What we advocate is a situation where all sections of the working class can take part in a vibrant culture of resistance where peoples self-confidence, self-organisation and creativity are built up. We have always argued against lifestyle anarchism, and it is devious and crass of ALB to attempt to identify us as lifestylists. Obviously your reviewer failed to read our pamphlet closely enough. Let people decide for themselves by reading our Manifesto.

RON ALLEN (ACF member), London E1

Reply:

Our claim was based on the following passage from page 13 of the pamphlet:

"... we are involved as working class people in struggling for better community facilities, for resistance to police presence on our streets, and for working doss self-activity in dealing both with the authorities and with anti-social elements in our communities. But at the same time we point out that the enemy is the capitalist state, and so we oppose putting faith in soft-cop community leaders or self-appointed community controllers, such as gangsters or paramilitaries" (emphasis added).

Correct us if were wrong, but this is saying that “anti-social" elements (presumably, burglars, muggers, joy-riders, drug-pushers, child molesters and the like?) should not be dealt with by the police but by working people living in the same area where these "elements" live and operate. The pamphlet doesn't actually say how they are to be "dealt with" but things such as beatings, head- shavings. tarring-and-feathering, tying to posts, sticking notices on front doors, curfews and chasing out of town come to mind. Or was it "soft-cop measures such as counselling, supervision and community work that was being envisaged?

You say. as an individual member of the ACF, that punishment beatings are out. Other ACF members

don't appear to agree with you. such as the author of the article "Yobs and Boot-Boys" that appeared in the Oct-Dec 1994 issue of Organise! who wrote.

"None should cry over the odd hospitalised copper: they had it coming. And if Kenneth Clarke were found stabbed to death one day, we’d feel the same sense of elation we did when Ian Gow and Louis Mountbatten got their comeuppance”

The writer then went on:

" . . .  we should support each other in our communities against anti-social crime . . .  we should take inspiration from Derry in the ‘60s, the mining villages and Brixton frontline in the ‘80s and the bailiff busters in the ‘90s and build a real neighbourhood watch which will keep the yobs out even if they are in uniform. Then the only people who will ring the police will really be grasses and not frightened pensioners.”

The reference to Derry frightens us—and most of us are not even pensioners. This letter page is open for you to reply but don’t forget to specify how the ACF proposes to deal with persistent offenders and those who refuse to accept what is decided should be done with them.— Editors

'The reign of images and Spectacles' (1997)

Book Review from the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond Resistance—A Revolutionary Manifesto for the Millennium by the Anarchist Communist Federation. £2

Socialists can agree with the first half of this pamphlet in which capitalism is criticised and the alternative society to it outlined. On the other hand, we can't agree with the second half where the ACF sets out how they think the alternative society will come about and what they think revolutionaries should be doing today.

The crisis of capitalism is correctly analysed not just as an economic and an ecological crisis, but also as a crisis of civilization whose features are a “collapse of community spirit and solidarity; the false cult of individualism as opposed to individuality; law of the jungle as the rule of life; poverty of real thought; the reign of images and of the Spectacle (e.g. consumerism, wars and famines as televised 'entertainment', the whole of life as a commercialised show); crisis of artistic creation and recycling of old recipes in the market of culture and entertainment; disenchantment and melancholy; cynicism".

The alternative to capitalism is seen as a society in which "all forms of exchange and money will be abolished and all land and property will be taken into the control of the community".

So far, so good. But how to get to such a society which we call "socialist" but they call "anarcho-communist"? The ACF see violence as the only way and we are offered a nightmare vision of the revolution as a re-run of the Spanish Civil War on a world scale but in which, this time, the good guys win.

There is nothing appealing or inspiring about this. Just the opposite in fact. The prospect of the next century being one in which a world civil war will break out, with all the death and destruction this would involve, is positively off-putting.

Fortunately, this is not the way to socialism. Certainly, the ruling class in all countries will have to be forced to give up their power and privileges but by mass popular pressure, including voting out their political representatives.

As to their strategy for today, the ACF want to build up a "Culture of Resistance" amongst the working class, but their conception of the working class seems to be restricted to young male workers who live on council estates or in inner-city areas. At least, it is to this section of the working class that their appeal is directed, with its emphasis on resistance to "police presence on our streets” and on dealing with "anti-social elements in our communities” (for whom the ACF proposes punishment beatings).

But what about the rest of the working class: those (most of us) who have a fairly steady job and are buying our homes from some building society? Ignoring the more representative majority of workers means that the ACF’s particular strategy for building a "culture of resistance" differs little in practice from "lifestyle anarchism" which sees anarchism not as an alternative society but as an alternative way of surviving under capitalism.

Adam Buick

For the Anarchist Communist Federation's reply, see here.

Anti-parliamentary dogmatism (2001)

Book Review from the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Against Parliament. For Anarchism. Anarchist Federation.

This latest offering from the Anarchist Federation (formally known as the Anarchist Communist Federation) once again re-affirms their position that the revolutionary process towards “anarchist communism” can and must in no way involve the use of parliament. Indeed, the pamphlet itself is comprised of a discussion of the main political parties in Britain (including a chapter on the far left and right), all of whom advocate the use of parliament to advance their political programmes.

Unfortunately, the AF did not feel it necessary to mention the Socialist Party which is a shame as we are well-known to the AF and although not part of the same milieu, members of both organisations have been able to strike up cordial relations on occasion. The reason for this is that the AF's definition of “anarchist communist” society is almost indistinguishable from our view of socialism, i.e. moneyless, stateless with free access to goods and services. Perhaps, the main bone of contention is how we get there and here there are some real differences.

Whereas we emphasis mass democratic political action by a majority of the global working class (which may well involve socialist delegates being sent to parliaments) as the best means for attaining world socialism, the AF see the revolutionary process more in terms of community/worker resistance and mass action through strikes and riots and the like. However, some of their views seem remarkably similar to those of the Socialist Party's:

 “Anarchist communism would depend on mass involvement. This is both to release everyone's inventiveness and ideas and to prevent the formation of some sort of elite. Two forms of organisation are crucial in this context. The first is regular mass meetings of communities and workers, to ensure that full discussion and participation in matters affecting a locality could be achieved. The second is federation, as many issues need a broader perspective than the local. Federalism would run through successive bands—local, district, regional, international—to take decisions appropriate to that band” (p.54).

Needless to say that the AF's vision of a new society is far more edifying than the oxymoronic Trotskyist notion of a “workers' state” (state capitalist nightmare), but their anti-parliamentary dogmatism means that the question of the state in a revolutionary situation is effectively ignored.

No-one can be exactly sure which form the revolutionary process will take and it may well involve some of the things the AF point to. However, we in the Socialist Party believe that the potential use of parliament as part of a revolutionary process may prove vitally important in neutralising the ruling class's hold on state power. For us, this is the most effective way of abolishing the state and thus ushering in the revolutionary society.

The pamphlet itself is not a bad read (for a quid) and is especially interesting for budding political anoraks who wish to differentiate between the “National Democrats” and the National Front or the Scottish Socialist Party from the Socialist Workers Party. This said, it is more descriptive than analytical and the AF are wrong—even slightly disingenuous—to mix up the parliamentary reformism of the Trotskyists without reference to the revolutionary approach of the Socialist Party.

Dave Flynn

Film and the Anarchist Imagination

Book Review from issue 54 of Organise, theoretical journal of the Anarchist Federation

Film and the anarchist imagination by Richard Porton (Verso 1999)

It's quite rare to come across an academic work with anarchism as its subject matter. It is rarer still to find an academic work that exhibits any in-depth understanding of the authentic history and developing theory of anarchism. Most academics don't get past calling the IWW the International Workers of the World. Those who do are usually happy to repeat the lies of the ruling class and to maintain the 'anarchist' caricatures that serve to maintain a false image of what we actually are.

This book, however, written by a teacher of cinema studies at the College of Staten Island in New York, exhibits an unusually deep understanding and wide knowledge of the historic movement and the political arguments within anarchism. The author in fact sets out to consciously deconstruct the stereotypes of anarchism and anarchists that have appeared in both mainstream and 'alternative' cinema.

Extremely readable, the text rarely uses pretentious-git-speak to intentionally, or otherwise, obscure the core meanings of the arguments. The introduction gives a good historical background to the development to anarchist ideas during "¼ more than a hundred years of labour agitation and revolutionary struggles" (p2), and offers the reader who has not come across anarchism before an informative background to the subject matter of the book. It is obvious from the beginning that the author actually knows what he's talking about!

There are five sections: Anarchism and Cinema: Representation and Self-Representation; Cinema, Anarchism, and Revolution: Heroes, Martyrs, and Utopian Moments; Anarcho-syndicalism versus the 'Revolt against Work'; Film and Anarchist Pedagogy and The Elusive Anarchist Aesthetic. Each section can be read independently which makes it a great book to dip in and out of.

This reviewer must admit to not having heard of, never mind having seen, many of the films mentioned and it is fascinating to learn that Malatesta, for example, has been the subject of a highly sympathetic movie (Peter Lilienthal's Malatesta, 1971) or that Alexander Berkman unsuccessfully hawked a 'swashbuckling' screenplay based upon Nestor Makhno's life around Hollywood! It's also interesting to see how some film makers who consider themselves 'sympathetic' to anarchism have played a role in reinforcing the stereotype of the anarchist as irrational and impulsive, if not slightly mad (Wertmuller's Love and Anarchy, 1973 for example).

But far from merely being an encyclopaedia of anarchists in the cinema, the book discusses the contradictions within anarchist film-making and anarchists/anarchism as subject matter. Few perspectives aren't tackled intelligently and the research is exhaustive. Critics might suggest that this is a simply an academic exercise and that the cinema is Spectacular representation at its worst. However, to have such a clued-up and sympathetic text in circulation which may bring revolutionary ideas into areas where they don't usually see the light of day, can only be useful.

Try and get it into your local public or college library.

Anarchism in Britain Today (2006)

From the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

We review a new book by an anarchist on what anarchists in Britain think and do today.

There are anarchists and anarchists. Bomb-throwers and pacifists, syndicalists and communists, primitivists and egoists, even anarcho-capitalists. Knowing to our cost that the same can be said of "socialists", we must be careful not to use what one group who call themselves anarchists think as typical of what anyone who calls themself one does.

Benjamin Franks's book, Rebel Alliances: The means and ends of contemporary British anarchists (AK Press,), deals with anarchist groups today who he calls "class struggle anarchists". Which means we can ignore here the individualists and the anarcho-capitalists, but even so the groups left still have different approaches, especially as, for some reason, Franks includes "council communists" and "autonomist Marxists" among them.

He lists four criteria for being considered a "class struggle anarchist".

1. "A complete rejection of capitalism and the market economy".
2. "An egalitarian concern for the interests and freedoms of others as part of creating non-hierarchical social relations."
3. "A complete rejection of state power and other quasi-state mediating forces".
4. "A recognition that means have to prefigure ends".

Franks places emphasis on the fourth and uses it to judge the principles, organisational forms and activities of "contemporary British anarchists", in particular Class War, the Anarchist (formerly Anarchist Communist) Federation and the Solidarity Federation (direct descendant of the old Syndicalist Workers Federation). The people around the best known anarchist publication, Freedom, are excluded as "liberal anarchists".

Prefiguring future society
We, too, hold that the means have to prefigure the end but reached this conclusion from a quite different starting point: that of democracy in the proper sense. Democracy means, literally, the rule or power of the people, i.e. popular participation in decision-making. It allows various ways of reaching a decision but, in the end, if consensus cannot be obtained, it has to come to a vote; in which case the majority view prevails. Democracy does not mean that all decisions have to made at general assemblies of all concerned or by referendum; it is compatible with certain decisions being delegated to committees and councils as long as the members of these bodies are responsible to those who (s)elected them.

Socialism is a society based on the common ownership of the means of life but, since something cannot be said to be commonly owned if some have a privileged or exclusive say in how it is used, common ownership means that every member of society has to have an equal say. If there wasn't such democratic control there wouldn't be common ownership, so there wouldn't be socialism.

Democratic control is not an optional extra of socialism. It is its very essence. This being so, socialism cannot be imposed against the will or without the consent and participation of the (vast) majority. It simply cannot be established for the majority by some vanguard or enlightened minority. That is our case against all forms of Leninism. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action. No minority revolution can lead to socialism, not even one that destroys the state (our case against certain anarchists) - and of course socialism will involve the disappearance of the state as a coercive institution serving the interests of a minority. Hence our conclusion that the movement to establish socialism, and the methods it employs, must "prefigure" the democratic nature of socialism.

Traditionally, anarchists have rejected democracy as an organising principle (not just the democratic state but any form of democratic organisation). The early British anarchists that William Morris met in the Socialist League in the 1880s denounced democracy as "the tyranny of the majority" (which Morris regarded as an absurd position). The anarchists who controlled the pre-WWI CGT union federation in France favoured the activities of an "active minority". Emma Goldman in Anarchism and Other Essays declared, in an essay entitled "Minorities versus Majorities", that "the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass". As the Socialist Standard commented on this in September 1924: "such views mean that the great body of the people will depend upon the kindness and wisdom of the Anarchist intellectuals to guide and mother us".

It is only in recent years that some anarchists have come to embrace democracy as an organising principle, mainly under the influence of industrial unionists and council communists (who claimed rather to be Marxists). Still, better late than never. But even now most anarchists have difficulty in justifying why someone should conform to a majority decision that he or she doesn't agree with; they still seem to think that no external decision can bind the "sovereign individual" of individualist anarchism (and bourgeois ideology). One group which did accept binding majority decisions - the now defunct Anarchist Workers Group in the late 80s - was denounced by the others, and again by Franks in this book, as crypto-Leninists.

This same ideology is reflected in the difficulty anarchist groups have with the concept of "representation". What they call "representative democracy" (whether in the state or generally) is rejected on the grounds that no group can be "represented" by anyone and that any "representative" inevitably stands in a hierarchical relationship with the group they claim to represent. But why can't a group (s)elect some of their number to represent them - unless you think that the supposed "sovereign individuals" who make up the group cannot sign away their right to speak and act for themselves?

Since even anarchists admit that not all decisions can be made by general assemblies or referendum, they get round this by saying that "delegation" is acceptable. But any attempted distinction between "representative" (bad) and "delegate" (good) is just playing with words.

This is not to say that what is called "representative democracy" in relation to the capitalist state is ideal. Far from it, even in the Swiss cantons and US States and cities where it is supplemented by the right of initiative (of a certain number of citizens to propose laws and call referendums) and the right to recall (unelect) a representative.

State elections
Capitalist democracy is not a participatory democracy, which a genuine democracy has to be. In practice the people generally elect to central legislative assemblies and local councils professional politicians who they merely vote for and then let them get on with the job. In other words, the electors abdicate their responsibility to keep any eye on their representatives, giving them a free hand to do what the operation of capitalism demands. But that's as much the fault of the electors as of their representatives, or rather it is a reflection of their low level of democratic consciousness. It can't be blamed on the principle of representation as such.

There is no reason in principle why, with a heightened democratic consciousness (such as would accompany the spread of socialist ideas), even representatives sent to state bodies could not be subject - while the state lasts - to democratic control by those who sent them there. The only arguments that anarchists have ever been able to put against this are that "power corrupts" and that this practice is not allowed by the constitution. But if power inevitability corrupts why does this not apply also in non-parliamentary elected bodies such as syndicalist union committees or workers councils?

Somewhat surprisingly, Franks does not condemn out of hand anarchist participation in state elections. Discussing Class War's standing of a candidate in a parliamentary by-election in 1988 he says that there could be occasions when this could be done as long it is done in a way that doesn't "reaffirm representative democracy", as he claims we do when we stand candidates. We would reply that when we stand candidates we do "prefigure" the genuinely democratic nature of future socialist society in that our candidates do not stand as leaders or offering to do anything for people but merely as potential delegates of those who want socialism, as mere "messenger boys (and girls)" pledged, if elected, to submit to the democratic control of those who voted them in. We suspect, however, that in not completely ruling out any participation in state elections Franks will be regarded by other anarchists as having conceded far too much.

The book - despite the drawback of having been originally written as a university thesis - does give a useful and comprehensive view of the discussions that have gone on in anarchist circles in recent years. It is interesting to note that some of these have been paralleled by discussions within our party, for instance, whether the revolution is to be a class or a non-class affair, and to what extent can community struggles outside the workplace be assimilated to struggles at the point of production. (For the record, our view is that the revolution has to be the work of the working class, but as the working class understood not as just manual industrial workers but as anyone forced to work for a wage or salary irrespective of the job they do, i.e. most people today; and that non-workplace struggles such as tenants associations and claimants' unions are as legitimate defensive struggles as the trade union struggle over wages and working conditions.)

On the other subjects which divide contemporary anarchists, we would side with the syndicalists in saying that economic exploitation is primary, but with the anarcho-communists in saying that future society will involve community-based administrative councils and not exclusively industry-based ones. We oppose the blanket rejection of the existing trade unions as proposed by the ACF (and the council communists). And we would agree with statements quoted by Franks (and have said the same thing many times ourselves) that "we exist not as something separate from the working class, not as some leadership for others to follow, but as part of the working class working for our own liberation" (Subversion) and "to the Left the working class are there to be ordered about because we are too thick to think for ourselves" (Class War).

In Franks's scheme, we would be classified as a group practising "propaganda by word" with occasional forays into "constitutional activity" in the form of participation in elections. What we don't do - and which all the anarchist groups engage in - is to participate, as a group, in "micropolitics", local single-issue campaigns. We don't necessarily dismiss all such campaigns as entirely useless but think it best to leave them up to the people directly concerned, merely advising them (if asked) to organise and conduct themselves democratically, without leaders and without outside interference from Leninist (and, indeed, anarchist) groups. As a group composed of people who have come together because we want socialism, we see our group's task as to concentrate on spreading socialist ideas.

Adam Buick