BOOTLICKER

ASF-Perth

Anarchism is the social movement for the advocacy for and creation of a non-coercive and non-hierarchical society.

We anarchists distinguish ourselves from other movements and political organisations by holding to a concept of social and political freedom that is radically different—and for that reason far more authentic—than any other. Where virtually every other political tendency seeks to capture or win power through the state—be it merely some rung or portion of it, or its entire structure—anarchists argue that we should do away with it.

We seek the formation of a society where there are no large masses of people, such as ourselves, who are Governed and coerced by small numbers of rulers—be they in Parliaments, Centrelink offices, Courts, or law firms. Our picture of the future imagines a Western Australia where people are, both individually and through our communities, the deciders of their own fates. We anarchists have good reason to say that States and Governments are the places where culture and creativity go to die.

Even at the height of their popularity, and definitely despite it, Governments and political parties are there to control and coerce.

They may come for you in the form of fines, police officers or disciplinarian teachers. They may be mortgagors or landlords. Whatever form social and political domination takes, anarchists call it out as what it is: unnatural, and unhappy.

We would much rather the construction of society along the lines of Democracy in practice—rather than in name only, as is the case here in Perth and Western Australia.

Every kind of social power and social domination of a minority over a majority comes with its own type of slavery. The boss over the worker. The principal of the State school over a student. The landlord over the renter. The Centrelink bureaucrat over the unemployed and impoverished, and so on. We say that when you look at social organisation this way, you see life in our communities for what it is—the suffering of the commanded by those who wield command.

Society should be, so we say, directly democratic. That is, the people who are affected by decisions should be the ones making them. People in houses should be the ones controlling them. People who work should should be the ones who decide how and why that work is done.

Anarchists stand resolutely against any and all kinds of slavery.

Would you like to join us?

asfperth@riseup.net

Dear comrades,

Today, I want to convince you of something else. I think some of my other letters and emails have been well received, and it is my hope that this one will be as well. I am, however, somewhat conscious of the fact that what I am about to say will probably not be as easy to digest as before:

I believe we here in the West—Australia most perceptibly—are undergoing a process of political, economic—societal—collapse.

Some of the most obvious signs that this is so is the social and and individual atomisation that is continuing to accelerate in our communities. To put myself—for example—to productive use in our city, I have had to engage various forms of state and non-governmental (read: privatised) organisations in order to navigate my way through mental health rehabilitation. Each interaction I have with a person who represents these bodies is more faceless than the next. I have no idea what relationship each Centrelink officer bears with the others. The whole process is as mysterious to me as it is harrowing.

Another prominent example I have to evince for my argument that our society is collapsing is to point to a factor that is even more baldly situated in materialist analysis: the cost of living.

We—and I mean each of us concretely and locally—are not merely a generation relatively more impoverished than the last. We are many times more impoverished. Somehow, I think the reality that we, us youngsters, may be just as, if not less wealthy than our great grandparents may be difficult to accept. But I think it is true. Whatever social equality that was reached in the late-1970s and early-1980s here in Australia has more than completely been undone.

If you need me to provide some numeric data on the issue, I believe I can. Just look at the graphs recently calculated that illustrate the share of GDP that returns to capital as opposed to the people: ‌

[Source] https://newmatilda.com/2014/02/06/ambition-comes-first-paul-howes/

This is enough for myself alone to remain convinced that we are undergoing a societal collapse. We, the workers, the people, have not really gotten any wealthier than we were in 1972.

What Is To Be Done?

The silver lining in these dark clouds I predict—certainly the trend is going to continue, and things will degenerate further—is that Anarchy has, perhaps for the first time in a long while, a chance for a beautiful flourishing. Nobody but the anarchists has the correct analysis, and most effective remedy to State and Capital. The Bureaucratisation of human social relations, and abject plundering of our human energies and creative essence by State Capital does not have to continue.

Many I talk to—either somewhat educated on the topic, or otherwise—on the radical left who do not identify with anarchism seem completely unable to grasp the nuance that Anarchy does not represent “Chaos”, and “Hyper-individualism”. It lead me, for a time, to believe that anarchists must be a somewhat fanatical and impulsive bunch.

I suppose I find this instructive. Along with my observation that “Anarchy” is on the lips of many youngsters these days,* I think we may be able to identify three lessons about the perennial fact that anarchism is a philosophy that is misunderstood due, in large part, to ignorance.

These lessons are that we can:

  • #0 –> Appeal to the natural impulse people exhibit against the all-looming, and, now steadily encroaching power of State Authority.
  • #1 –> Trust in the idea that mutual aid builds communities of anarchists better than any other method aids the Authoritarian.
  • #2 –> Celebrate the fact that Anarchy doesn't exclude interpersonal relations and activities as a key component of organising, but actively embraces and includes it.

In the interest of brevity, I will only say one thing in support of each of these points.

We should, in the case of point #0, never forget that anarchists have the clearest and most solid biological argument for our vision of a new society. Let us hold our comrade Peter Kropotkin in high esteem. Over and over again it has been demonstrated that organisms that become organised into societies of cooperative and socially interdependent patterns are the ones that best 'succeed' in adapting to their environmental selection pressures.

Further, when I turn to address #2, I cannot help but be reminded of the practice of anarchism we undertake here in Perth. The reason anarchy remains a live undertaking here, I feel, is the solid cadre of comrades that have coalesced around our collective practice. It is our interpersonal practice here, our interrelated and intersubjective understanding of the tradition that allows us to be strong. If anarchy didn't begin with the concept of Free Association, we would be no-where near as deep and firmly committed here in Perth as we are. We would be battered leaves in the wind.

I feel this naturally leads me to conclude with the second lesson that we will be able to impart on others in the context of our societal collapse here in the West. The precept of mutual aid unlocks the anarchist secret to the abolition of Capital and the State. Not only does anarchy demands that consumption be ethical—that is, free from power relations; those of domination. It also insists that production and distribution become transformed into processes free of hierarchy as well. Somehow, Marxists believe that while production can be solely relied upon to exculpate any immoralities within distribution and consumption. Let this, too, be not forgotten.

I hope deeply in my heart that each of you are doing and surviving as happily as you presently can,

~vidak. ‌ ‌

* Indeed it may be that, if social forces where mechanical ones, the equal and opposite reaction to the massive speeding reach of the State in the wake of the Covid Pandemic is causing an increase in the popularity of Anarchy.

ASF-Perth. Version 2021-02-20.

Anarchy, Not Chaos

Anarchy, contrary to what is often thought, is not where everyone simply does what they want and gets along. It is a directly democratic form of society based upon the abolition of private property, complete equality of opportunity for all, and it based around self-organised and locally-run communities. In order to achieve this, anarchism advocates for the abolition of capitalism and the state.

Democracy

Anarchists propose a far more direct, and, simply more democratic version than the supposed 'democracy' we have today.

When it comes to politics in this day and age, the vast majority of people in our society are never given the opportunity to decide. The best we are given are representatives that we must trust to follow election promises. Even then, the bureaucracy which the capitalist state possesses frequently stalls any progress to be made; like we saw with the Australian government being pushed, kicking and screaming, to finally allow same sex marriage.

Communities should be able to directly decide on legislation, policies and implementation procedures. This would ensure a larger portion of the interests of all people, rather than just the elite, are accounted for. This does not mean that professional opinion cannot be consulted, but that the masses of people in our society do not have to rely on bureaucrats to represent them.

On issues which require organisation at a larger scale, voluntary confederations of communities would be the best plan of action. Communities would send delegates, which would be able to be recalled and replaced at any time, to represent them and work with other communities to achieve a shared goal. These delegates would only represent their community and also be directly held accountable by their community; this is an effective method of helping to ensure no bureaucratic class develops.

Private Property

How did a king own a whole nation? How did a slave master own people? How does an owner of a business, who may never step foot within it, own a shop? The answer is that society was organised to allow individuals to hold such power.

Anarchists engage in practices which end all exploitative property relations. Ending all exploitative property would entail the end of private property. Private property does not include your personal belongings (the house you live in, your clothing, etcetera). Rather, it means to have property be owned and managed by those who use and occupy it.

This would entail the end of houses being rented out, factories not being managed democratically; and, instead, the means of subsistence, and the means of production would be owned and managed by those living and working there.

The Community

We are aiming to build a society made up of confederated communities, each of which democratically decides how to run and organise their own community. This would mean each community would be free to organise how they see fit.

This would be optimal as who else knows a community's needs more than the community itself? Confederation is when multiple communities voluntarily come together and work with one another to advance both of their situations. This would be different to the State as with the abolition of capital and hierarchy this confederation would not only have the people's interests first and foremost but also be directly controlled by it.

Capitalism and the State

Capitalism and the state are by their very nature intertwined. Capitalism is the economic system based upon wage slavery and private property. The state, as it is understood by anarchists, is any hierarchy which dominates the mass of people.

We work for the abolition of capitalism. It is a necessarily oppressive and coercive system based upon the exploitation of the workers, and is driven, primarily, by the motive to accumulate economic profit. Capitalism has no interest in meeting and servicing people's needs. A society organised around fulfilling people's needs, and not what is simply profitable would not only be better than the current system but is also attainable in our lifetime if we organise.

Many communists and socialists advocate, and some practice, for the replacement of a capitalist state with a 'socialist state'; a state where the economy is organised around people's needs and not profits. We however find this 'solution' to the crisis of capitalism to be nothing but ludicrous. To replace capitalists with bureaucrats would be nothing but catastrophic (as seen with the USSR) as these bureaucrats develop into a new ruling elite with interests in preserving the state which works against the interests of the majority of people.

Both capitalism and the state need to be abolished to ensure the freedom of all.

https://asf-iwa.org.au, asfperth@riseup.net

To my comrades in the Asia Pacific region.

Quite a bit stands on how anarchists are supposed to relate to Marxists—the kind of socialists who believe there is to be a worker's state, after the social revolution.

I have had many conversations with you all over the years about the approach our organising takes with respect to Statism. I agree with our resolute stance against any form of hierarchy. In other circles this might be verbalised as a slight—“sectarianism”. But what does this actually mean? Does it mean we are excluding legitimate comrades from our cause? I always took it this way. In reality, what such criticism amounts to is a disagreement over the aims, principles, and methods of revolution.

Marxists are the ones who have—historically—excluded our ideas from the cause of worker's struggle. So too in their attempts to re-animate their conception of the social revolution. It is not that they turned-back the argument for Free Association on itself; this is absurd. Because, intolerance cannot be met with tolerance.

A Statist Socialist—be they a Trotskyist, a Stalinist, any kind of Bolshevik, and academic, or a measly social democrat—has not parted ways with the current social and political epoch. They still hold fast to the idea of there still existing or operating some form of Government; some form of hierarchy existing and percolating through every section of the planet's social ecology.

The Monopolistic Party

Let us imagine we are to form a political party—and through some, or any means, form the state-within-the-capitalist state, that either conquers, assumes, dissolves, or takes over the existing social order. What is left? We are—on all accounts from the Bolsheviks—left with the epoch of Socialism.* But, so we understand in the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation, we have not advanced one iota towards Communism. We have replaced one form of Government with another.

I am not so interested in whether this Socialist State is of a cosmopolitan political composition, because, whether any state is a multi-party monopoly on power, it still remains some monopoly over the social affairs of our ecology. Emma Goldman was clear on this topic: in the same way that Religion is a monopolistic tyranny on the beliefs of humanity, so too the State is a tyranny over the social behaviours of our complex social and natural environment. The kind of “unity” that State Socialism—in any of its forms—is a trick. Really all a Statist is saying to you when they discuss “unity” amongst the workers is the “unity” of the State. Co-operate with the State!

No.

The terms of the question have not been properly posed by the Orthodox Marxists. Engels did say that he considered Anarchism to have the strategy of revolution the “wrong way around”:

One must not allow oneself to be misled by the cry for “unity.” Those who have this word most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension, just as at present the Jura Bakuninists in Switzerland, who have provoked all the splits, scream for nothing so much as for unity.*

This is because he was the one with the solution sagging upside down on its head!

'Turtles All The Way Down'

This brings me to the other topic I wanted to discuss with you all. This is to ask you: what is it when anarchists are advocating for a “social revolution”? The Marxists were once the animals of the “Social Democratic” parties. Look at what the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were called before their parties split: the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). But, a Marxist revolution is just a reorganisation of social life under a State. It is a substitute of one form of Government for yet another.The anarchist conception of revolution demands that human, as well as the rest of planet Earth's ecology, must undergo a radical restructuring. The collectivisation of Property is still a monopoly over the means of subsistence and the instruments of production.

Consider, for instance, the following thought experiment: Socialist Alternative seizes power. This unorthodox Trotskyist party who follow the teachings of Tony Cliff achieve their wildest phantasies. The revolution goes as well as it possibly could have: completely according to their plan.* The party assumes the name of the Communist Party, and they, following the tradition of the Bolsheviks, assume control of the 'former' Australian Capitalist State. Whether it be a multi-party State matters not. They dutifully replicate in reality Marx's dictum that the Executive and Legislative arms of their imagined Soviets are to be fused.*

Now—watch carefully: in the same way as the Sophist speaks of there being no foundation to truth, it is “turtles all the way down”:

50% + 1 member of their Soviets awards the 'Alternatives' their control of the State apparatus. 50% + 1 member of their National Council (NC) awards control of the Party to their National Executive (NE). Power over the whole clockwork of the State is now collected in the same number of people at a board-room meeting.

So much for unity! This is the substitution of the letters “U-N-I-T-Y” for the letters “T-Y-R-A-N-N-Y”. Indeed where Statists such as Socialist Alternative enjoy collection, anarchists enjoy dissolution.

This is the foundation of the Anarchist conception of Democracy—“Democracy Without State Characteristics”, if I am allowed to speak so cheekily. Anarchism wants nothing of that. Our conception of Democracy, the 'true one' so as we regard planet Earth's social ecology, still involves bodies of assemblies of humans, but nowise involving political parties, and, similarly, we eliminate the need for the permanence and everlastingness of these social bodies. Perhaps once the purpose of a collective communal body has achieved its aims, it can be unwound and dissolved.

Engels attempted to frame his rejection of anarchism in terms of the necessity of Authority,* but really, what he was describing is what Anarchists would verbalise as 'Discipline'. There is, in a distorted way, a conception of free co-operation and mutual aid in Marxism, but too often these Statists will confuse—or, perhaps, conspire—to replace the meaning of 'SOLIDARITY' with 'COERCION'.

I hope this letter finds you all well. I have been thinking about this topic for a while now, as I had been wondering about this question of the relationship between unity, coercion, and the state.

To health and anarchy,

~vidak.