First, the aim of libertarian socialism isthat the masses themselves shouldachieve power, through mass directdemocracy, not that a leadership groupshould do so through a party gaining con-trol of a state. Reflecting this, the aim ofthe libertarian Left activists should be toencourage self-management of move-ments/organisations.

After the October 1917 revolution inRussia, most of the worlds libertariansyndicalist labour organisations... whichthen had a membership of 3 to 4 million...affiliated tentatively to the new labourinternational initiated by the RussianCommunist Party. However, at the actualfounding conference the libertarian syndi-calists were confronted by CommunistParty officials insisting that the unionorganisations should be mere transmis-sion belts of the Communist Parties intheir respective countries. This led the lib-ertarian syndicalist unions to withdraw.Autonomy of the mass movements is itselfa libertarian socialist principle.

Second, we shouldnt take for grantedthe unequal distribution of human capi-tal crafted by a highly inegalitarian andoppressive society. Although We Are AllLeaders is maybe not always an accuratedescription of what is, it should be theideal that we strive towards.

We need methods of working against therelative monopolization of skills andknowledge and organisational resourcesin the hands of a minority. Historicallywhen some activists and organisers gainknowledge through practical experience, itoften happens that members of that

organisation become dependent on them.This was part of the process that led tobureaucratization of unions in the USA.

Thus working to make rank and fileself-management effective requires thatwe have conscious programs and methodsfor democratizing knowledge, doing popu-lar education, nurturing people as organ-isers, developing skills from writing topublic speaking to theorizing ones experi-ence. For example, local worker schoolsthat draw on the experience of activistsand organisers who teach, or share theirexperiences with, classes.

In the 30s in Spain the Mujeres Libresactivists talked about a process of capac-itacion developing the capacities ofordinary people. This was the focus oftheir organising of working class women.They created literacy classes, publicspeaking classes, and circles to studysocial theory, created child care pro-grams, and worked with the anarcho-syn-dicalist unions to develop apprentice pro-grams for women. These were all part oftheir efforts at developing the capacitiesof women for effective participation inthe unions and other organisations andcontrol over their lives.

Direct democracy is necessary but notsufficient for effective self-management ofmovements. People are better able to par-ticipate effectively as knowledge isdemocratized and skills are more widelydeveloped. This prefigures the more equalsharing of resources to develop peoplespotential in a libertarian socialist society.

Zabalaza Books AgitProp Series #1

Anarchism, ClassStruggle and Political

Organisation

by Tom Wetzel

Knowledge is the key to be free!

[BCBMB[B CPPLTw w w . z a b a l a z a b o o k s . n e t

Knowledge is the key to be free!

As Cindy Milstein points out in heressay Anarchisms Promise forAnti-capitalist Resistance, anarchistshave been involved in numerous visibleprotest actions, such as the variousprotests at meetings promoting corporateglobalization from the 1999 Battle ofSeattle on, or the Direct Action to Stopthe War protests in San Francisco in 2002.Activists who are already radicalized con-verge in such actions. Of course a varietyof organisations mobilize to participate insome of these protests, from environmen-tal groups to the unions who mobilized forthe 1999 World Trade organisation meet-ings. But what is the relationship of theanarchists to the other social movementsand mass organisations?

Anarchists are a part of the layer ofalready-radicalized activists. But this is avery thin layer in American society. Whatabout the majority of the population whomake up the exploited and oppressed insociety? What is the relationship betweenanarchism and anarchist activists and themass of the population?

The slogan the emancipation of theworking class must be the work of theworkers themselves was included byMarx in the principles of the FirstInternational in the 1860s-70s and anar-cho-syndicalists and other social anar-chists have always strongly supported thisprinciple. But what is the relationshipbetween anarchism and anarchists, on theone hand, and the masses who are sup-posed to be, in libertarian Left thinking,the agency of social transformation?

Cindy Milstein writes:

Anarchism has valiantly tried to meld theuniversalistic aims of the Left and itsexpansive understanding of freedom withthe particularistic goals of the new socialmovements in areas such as gender, sexu-ality, ethnicity, and ableism.

This is a reasonable summary of muchof the discussion and thinking amonganarchists, but it doesnt quite answer myquestion about the relationship betweenanarchism and the mass of the populationand their potential for self-liberation.

During the past decade a number ofanarchists have developed a critique ofvarious weaknesses in American anar-chism, such as anti-organisational preju-dices, fragmentation, tyranny of struc-turelessness and excessive focus onactions without relating this to ongoingmass organising in workplaces and com-munities. Some of the influences on anar-chism mentioned by Cindy Milstein... suchas European autonomism, Situationismand the model of the small informal affin-ity group... have contributed to theseweaknesses. Some anarchists believe thatany sort of formal or large organisation isinevitably authoritarian.

Some of the anarchists who had beeninvolved in protest hopping have, inmore recent years, become more interest-ed in workplace and community organis-ing, building a more long-term presence inworking class communities, and buildinga social base for libertarian Left ideas.

Last year about a hundred activists (fromthe USA and Canada) attended a ClassStruggle Anarchist Conference in New YorkCity. To ensure a productive and friendlyexperience, the conference was invitation-only. There were panels on Anarchists inthe workplace, Anarchism andFeminism, Anarchists in Communities ofColour, Anarchists in Anti-fascist/Anti-racist Movements, and a variety of othersubjects. According to the report in issue 14of Northeastern Anarchist:

One comrade said that The discussionwent beyond all regional differences, andcommonality was emphasized. The pre-senters were not afraid to learn from fail-ures, and there was a lack of posturing.There was an overall broad class focus,

its line on the mass organisation.Rather, through their long term involve-ment and personable relations with othersthey can gain an influence and be a voicefor self-management of organisations andfor militant collective action. The develop-ment of the working class is an organicprocess but the activists and rank-and-fileorganisers can play a role.

Dual organisational anarchists oftensay that the role of the anarchist politicalorganisation is to win the battle of ideas,that is, to gain influence within move-ments and among the mass of the popula-tion by countering authoritarian or liberalor conservative ideas. Bakunin had saidthat the role of anarchist activists was aleadership of ideas.

But disseminating ideas isnt the onlyform of influence. Working with others ofdiverse views in mass organisations andstruggles, exhibiting a genuine commit-ment, and being a personable and sup-portive person in this context also buildspersonal connections, and makes it morelikely ones ideas will be taken seriously.

How does this conception of the anar-chist political organisation differ fromvanguardism?

To answer this question we need to startwith some idea of what the vanguard is.I think there are two aspects to this. Bothanarchists and Marxists in the past havetalked about uneven consciousness with-in the working class population. Peoplevary in terms of how far they aspire tochange society for example or to theknowledge they gained about how capital-ism works, and so on. But also there aresome people who exhibit more leadershipskills than others... speaking ability, self-confidence, a disposition to take initiative,ability to articulate a viewpoint or rallyothers behind them, ability to write, self-education about various aspects of society,knowledge about how to organise.

This is shaped by various things, includ-ing past experience, being involved in

organisations, and the kinds of differencesin skills, confidence and education thatreflect a society that is unequal alongclass, gender, and race/nationality lines.

To put it another way, some people havemore human capital as far as beingeffective in, and disposed to, activism andorganising.

Thus understood, the vanguard withinthe working class consists of the layer ofpeople who are active, do organising, havesome influence through the sorts of lead-ership qualities Ive referred to, take onleadership positions in organisations, canarticulate and theorize situations and dothings like publishing leaflets andnewsletters. The vanguard in this senseis extremely various in its ideas but mostright now may not be anti-capitalist intheir thinking.

The idea of a vanguard party is that apolitical organisation is to try to draw to itthe layer of the working class that hasthese sorts of leadership qualities and touse this human capital to achieve ahegemonic position within mass move-ments. Its aim is to use this position ofdominant influence to eventually achievepower for its party. And along the way italso thinks in terms of achieving powerwithin the various union or mass move-ment organisations. This means congeal-ing the partys power through variousmethods of hierarchical control. This isformal leadership power and not justinfluence.

Moreover, the idea is that the partysdominant position would flow from its rel-ative monopolization over a certain kindof theoretical knowledge its absorptionof Marxist theory which is supposed toprovide effective guidance for the successof a revolutionary movement.

Putting aside the question of the valueof Marxist-Leninist theory, a libertarianLeft approach to this question should dif-fer from the vanguard party concept intwo ways.

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ly important, aspects of social liberation. And, third, class struggle was viewed as

occurring not only in workplaces but alsoin the community. In the mid-20s anar-cho-syndicalist union activists had begunto worry about being boxed in through col-lective bargaining with employers.Catalan syndicalist theoretician JoanPeiro recommended building neighbour-hood organisations and developing abroad discussion over issues of importanceto workers outside the workplace. Thisorganising eventually led to the massiverent strike in Barcelona in 1931, whichbrought into action new sectors of the pop-ulation... for example, women played adominant role in the rent strike.

It was because of this experience withcommunity struggle that the anarcho-syn-dicalist movement in Spain modified itsvision at its congress in May 1936,adding neighbourhood assemblies andresident-based councils as an equal build-ing block of governance in a libertariansocialist society along with workplaceassemblies and worker councils. Bookchinalso drew on this concept of libertarianmunicipality rooted in assemblies.

But this was not separate from classstruggle. Most of the actual free munici-palities formed in the revolution of 1936were in rural villages and towns inAragon. But it was the CNT rural unions,who took the initiative to overthrow theold municipal councils, invoke an assem-bly of the residents, elect a new revolu-tionary committee, and collectivize land.The collectivization of land was directedin particular against the Spanish kulakclass... wealthy farmers who employedfarm hands. The aim of both the Socialistand anarchist rural unions in Spain wasdestruction of wage-slavery in the coun-tryside. This is why the rural unionsinsisted that no farmer could privatelycontrol more land than he could farmthrough his own labour.

During the Spanish revolution in

1936 the FAI moved away from the veryaffinity group model that Bookchin rec-ommended. To have a more effective organ-isation to counter the growing influence ofthe Communist Party, the FAI moved tolarge geographic chapters. After thischange the FAI grew to 140,000 members.

In recent years many dual organisation-al working class-oriented anarchists inthe USA have moved away from the oldermodel of an anarchist federation formedas a link among pre-existing collectives.Through various experiences with suchformations, from the 70s to more recentyears, it was found that this tends to getin the way of the level of theoretical andpractical unity needed to work effectivelytogether. Thus many dual organisationalanarchists these days tend to think interms of a unitary organisation based on acommon program and individual member-ship, with local branches and a federalcouncil of delegates of some sort.

Dual organisational class struggle-ori-ented anarchism continued to have asocial base in some countries after WorldWar 2... particularly in South America. Inthe decades leading up to the militarytakeover in Uruguay, the UruguayanAnarchist Federation (FAU) had a signifi-cant influence in the CNT labour federa-tion and in the housing movement, andalso played a role in the resistance(including armed struggle) to the dictator-ship. The legacy of the FAU in that eraand the ideas it developed from its experi-ence are still an important influence onSouth American anarchism.

I will mention one of the FAUs ideasthat I agree with... the idea of socialinsertion. They believed it was necessaryfor the anarchist activists to be committedto long-term involvement in organisationsand struggles in workplaces and neigh-bourhoods. The role of the organised anar-chist minority is not to try to gain top-down control through bodies such as exec-utive committees or manipulate to impose

said another.... On the panels themselves,one person said the panels on feminismand communities of colour were for every-one, not... just by those interested in thesubjects. Another comrade said the focusof the workshops was experiential, not the-oretical, but the two... were merged inmany instances.

Since then two inter-organisational dis-cussion bulletins have been produced andanother Class Struggle AnarchistConference is scheduled for later this year.The purpose of this process is to see whatlevel of agreement we have, share experi-ences, and develop a better-organised andmore co-ordinated movement.

This process has involved three regionalfederations (on the Atlantic and Pacificcoasts), five local groups (in the GreatLakes area), and one continent-wideorganisation. I would estimate that theseorganisations include between three andfour hundred activists... overwhelminglypeople in their 20s and 30s. I haventobtained permission to name all thegroups, but I can say that North EasternFederation of Anarchist Communists,Workers Solidarity Alliance andSolidarity & Defense have played a role ininitiating and organising this process.

Except for the continent-wide group(Workers Solidarity Alliance), which wasfounded 25 years ago, all the groups havebeen formed within the last decade.Activists in these groups are involved inanti-racist organising, support for immi-grant rights, for reproductive freedom,tenant organising, workplace organisingand support for worker struggles, radicalpopular education, and dissemination ofanarchist ideas, among other things.

I would estimate that pro-organisation-al anarchism with a class struggle per-spective in the USA has reached its high-est point since World War 2.

In what follows Im giving my own inter-pretation of this sector of anarchism.

Anarchism with a class-struggle per-spective doesnt mean it is class reduc-tionist but that it disagrees withBookchin and others who fail to see thecontinued reality and importance of theclass structure that is at the heart of capi-talism and the struggle that grows out ofthis. To change society, its not adequate toappeal to humanity or citizens in gen-eral, as Bookchin proposed. The capitalistand co-ordinator classes are also part ofhumanity but they are entrenched inmaintaining their power and privilege. Atthe same time, the division of society alongthe various lines of oppression generatesmovements and struggles in opposition.

In the years after World War 2, seeingthe increasing co-optation and bureaucra-tization of unionism in the industrialcountries, Bookchin adopted the view thatthere was, somehow, an epochal change inwhich struggles in workplaces were nolonger relevant to popular empowermentand the struggle for social transformation.Other anarchists in that era, such as PaulGoodman and Colin Ward, followed a sim-ilar path. In the period of the Cold War,talk of class struggle was also readilyassociated with Communism.

At its heart, capitalism is a system ofexploitation of people who are subordinat-ed in the work process, and a continualresistance or tug of war ensues because ofthis... sometimes on a small scale, some-times breaking out in large social eventssuch as general strikes. Ultimately thereis no liberatory replacement for capital-ism unless workers are able to gain con-trol over their own productive activitiesand potentials. If we take seriously theprinciple that the emancipation of theworking class is the work of the workersthemselves, its hard to see how thisemancipatory result is going to happenwithout a movement actively developed byworkers themselves.

That said, class isnt just about strug-gles in workplaces between workers

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and bosses. The power of the dominatingclasses spreads outward throughout socie-ty, in their control over the state andmedia. Class struggles occur at the pointof consumption, among tenants and publictransit riders for example.

The working class is highly heteroge-neous. Workers are women, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, skilled andless skilled, and so on.

Many anarchists who work with a classstruggle perspective these days operatewith an intersectional analysis ofoppression. Structural racism and struc-tural gender inequality (patriarchy) orhomophobia/transphobia have their ownsources though they are also exploited bycapitalism, to weaken the working class.It is equally important to fight all of them.They intersect in the lives of actual work-ing class people. An African-Americanwoman working as a postal clerk at thepost office is subject to the gender, raceand class systems, but she lives her life asa totality... these oppressions arent inseparate worlds.

How does this large and heterogeneouspopulation acquire the ability to changethe society? Here it is useful to considerthe process that Marxists call class for-mation. Class formation is the more orless protracted process by which the work-ing class develops from an objectivelyoppressed group... a class in itself... intoa group with the consciousness and capac-ity to liberate itself... a class for itself, inMarxs words. People are shaped by thepower relations and oppressive systemsthey face within the current society.Workers are in a relatively powerless posi-tion and, if they are isolated, may have lit-tle sense of having an ability to changethings. The social relations of productionmay develop a conflicted consciousness...both resentment and also going along ordeference, or even accepting the idea thatthe bosses must be the right people to

make the decisions because they have

more formal education. These same socialrelations in the work process also encour-age the managers and professionals andowners to have a bloated sense of theirentitlement to make the decisions.

Much of the working class is forced intodead-end or de-skilled jobs where theyhave few opportunities to develop them-selves, their knowledge or sense of self-esteem. Working class people are also lesslikely to have access to resources to helpthem develop their knowledge, such as col-lege education or better schools.

There are effects of this we need to con-sider. First, this tends to generate passiv-ity and inaction, if a person doesnt seecollective struggle as an avenue forenhancement of their circumstances. And,second, it also generates inequality inskills and knowledge that can effect theway organisations or movements are run.Gender and race/national oppression alsoshape this inequality.

This also tells us why a liberatory socialtransformation is unlikely to occur spon-taneously... contrary to the thinking ofautonomists and some anarchists. AsMarx pointed out, it is through theprocess of mass struggle and buildingtheir own movements that the workingclass... the oppressed and exploited in gen-eral... develop themselves... their knowl-edge and capacities to effectively self-manage their own movements and createthe conditions for their social liberation.Because collective action can be a sourceof power... as when workers shut down aworkplace, it encourages a belief in theability of the participants to make change.

Developing a unity of social movementsthat develop in opposition to the variousforms of oppression that working class peo-ple are subject to is an essential part of thisprocess. I believe this presupposes that peo-ple from a variety of backgrounds and situ-ations and movements have an opportunityto come together to explore their concernsand achieve mutual understanding.

To have the power to transform the soci-ety, the various social movements andstrands of struggle have to come together,to forge a unity through alliance. To be anauthentic alliance, it must take seriouslyand incorporate the concerns of the variousmovements.

In my own essay in the ReimaginingSociety discussion I referred to this as alabour/social movement alliance. That is,the mass organisations created by work-ers in the struggles with the employersdevelop an alliance with other socialmovements that emerge in the strugglesagainst the various forms of oppression insociety. In a period of fundamental chal-lenge to the dominating classes, thisalliance might be expressed through thekind of decision-making body that EzekielAdamovsky calls an assembly of thesocial movements.

Thus I think anarchists who emphasizeorganisation and a class struggle perspec-tive see mass struggles and mass organis-ing as the process for changing society...because it is through the active participa-tion of growing numbers of ordinary peo-ple, building and controlling their ownmovements, that they develop the capaci-ty and aspirations for changing society.

From the point of view of organisedanarchism with a class-struggle perspec-tive, two kinds of organisation are need-ed: (1) forms of mass organisation throughwhich ordinary people can grow anddevelop their collective strength, and (2)political organisations of the anarchist orlibertarian socialist minority, to have amore effective means to co-ordinate ouractivities, gain influence in working classcommunities, and disseminate our ideas.In the World War I era, Italian anarchistscoined the term dual organisation forthis perspective.

An organisation does not have to belarge to be a mass organisation as Imusing this term. If 30 tenants in a buildingget together and have meetings and form

a tenants union, this is a mass organisa-tion. A mass organisation is put togetherto fight in some area and people joinbecause they support the aims... such ashaving a union at work to oppose manage-ment or an organisation at a college tofight tuition hikes. Membership in a polit-ical organisation, on the other hand, isbased on agreement with a particular ide-ology or political perspective.

A political organisation is desirable for avariety of reasons. To pool resources forprojects, to provide each other feedbackand support, to achieve greater public vis-ibility for social anarchism, to co-ordinateorganising. We learn from trying to putour ideas into practice, and politicalorganisations enable activists to discusslessons of practical experience and developtheir ideas.

Of course, a major historical example ofdual organisational anarchism with aclass-struggle perspective was in theSpanish revolution in the 30s. TheIberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) wasformed as a loose federation of groupsactive in the National Confederation ofLabour (CNT). It was formed originally tobetter co-ordinate responses to efforts by aLeninist organisation (a predecessor ofthe POUM) to gain control of CNT unions,also opposition to tendencies of someunion officials to become less accountableto the rank and file.

Spanish anarchism of that era wasdual in three ways.

First, there was the distinction betweenthe political organisation (FAI) and themass organisations - both neighbourhoodcentres and CNT unions. Second, in addi-tion to the FAI there was another anar-chist political organisation MujeresLibres. This was an organisation dedicat-ed to the organising of poor peasant andurban working class women. The activistsin this organisation were anarcho-syndi-calists but they viewed womens liberationand class liberation as distinct, equal-

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