The following article is adapted from a talk given at a public meeting, co-hosted by NEA and Teesside Solidarity Movement in Middlebrough on 25/1/14.
With the exception of a couple of well-known instances - Spain and Argentina - anarchism has tended to be the minority current in the Left. Despite this, anarchists have had an influence which is out of all proportion to our numbers. I don't want to linger too long on the influence anarchism has had on various counter-culture movements like Dadaism, Situationism, punk and so on. Class war anarchists like ourselves tend to disparage that strand as "lifestylist". Personally, I think there is some value in its ability to spread ideas and values to places more conventional politics seldom reach. But my primary interest here is with how anarchism relates to the Left and to wider social movements.
I think it is inarguable that although organised anarchist groups tend to be small - certainly in Britain - we manage to punch above our weight. Anarchism has a broad and profound influence that is often unacknowledged, but always felt. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that although national - and even international - anarchist organisations do exist, most anarchists prefer to organise in small, localised affinity groups, and consequently there's generally no large and visible presence, no group with its name and logo splattered across all the placards. Secondly, I think most anarchists tend towards social activism rather than political activism, in the narrow sense of engaging with the government through protests, lobbying, electioneering or whatever. As a result, the political sphere is largely left to the various Marxist groups and parties. One of the reasons NEA exists is to try and ensure that anarchists have a visible presence in the political arena. Outside of the narrow political field, in the world of community organising and various grassroots "single-issue" campaigns which the Left generally takes little interest in, anarchists are very active and in some areas, arguably the dominant influence. Anarchists have often been the conduit through which issues like animal rights and ecology filter through to the mainstream Left, which has traditionally had a more "workerist" focus. Anarchists tend to be more focused on providing practical solidarity and mutual aid rather than on building organisations to engineer a social revolution. Where social activist groups are created by anarchists, the anarchism tends to be implicit in the structure and methods rather than explicit in the name or constitutional documents. Let's briefly look at a few examples.
We've heard a good deal recently about food banks. One anarchist initiative in this area is Food Not Bombs. This was formed back in 1980, and today has more than 500 affiliated groups around the world, which function autonomously on a basis of direct action and direct democracy. They gather and distribute vegetarian food to the poor and homeless for free. They recently gained some prominence during the relief efforts following Hurricane Sandy. Alongside the practical aid they provide is a mass of propaganda material highlighting the waste and inefficiency of capitalism, the environmental destruction it causes, and especially the obscenity of the vast sums states spend on war while neglecting basics like food, shelter and education for the people.
Staying with welfare, there's also LCAP (London Coalition Against Poverty). Like Food Not Bombs, LCAP works on the basis of "Mutual Aid, Not Charity" in providing help for people having problems with benefits and housing. However, unlike say, the Citizens Advice Bureau, LCAP does this by means of direct action and by encouraging people to take an active rather than passive role in their own struggles to improve access to welfare provisions. They are very keen to stress that they provide solidarity, not a service. Previous actions have included occupying jobcentres in support of claimants who have been sanctioned and changing locks to prevents tenants from being evicted.
And speaking of preventing evictions, the No Borders Network has made a habit of intervening to disrupt, and if possible, prevent the deportations of migrants. Alongside the regular migrant and refugee support, since 2010, No Borders have run a shelter for homeless migrants around Calais called the "Kronstadt Hangar". The purpose of it is to combine practical solidarity with migrants against the racism and exploitation they frequently face with an active critique of capitalism and the control mechanisms of the state.
In each of these cases, it's the decentralised networks, non-hierarchical structures, commitments to mutual aid, direct action and real internal democracy which mark these as implicitly anarchist initiatives. Although they could superficially be understood as "single-issue" campaigns, there is generally an accompanying critique of the wider capitalist and statist system, though the practical aid isn't conditional on accepting it. People can get involved with a simple desire to do something to help without needing to swallow any formal ideology. The practical value of anarchist organising methods is proven in action.
Anarchists have also tended to be at the forefront of tactical innovations, as the fixation with direct action encourages tactical creativity. These have included attempts at physically shutting down the financial district in London on the Stop The City demos of 1983/84 (and again in 1999 with the Carnival Against Capital and similarly on the many demos against the IMF, WTO, G8, etc, during the globalisation movement). Anarchists also pioneered the creative use of Temporary Autonomous Zones, as with, for example, the wildly popular and influential Reclaim The Streets, with it's lively mixture of protest, party, street theatre and direct action. Anarchists have also made innovations at the more militant edge of protests, introducing Wombles, Book Blocs and Black Blocs, which have livened up many a dull A-to-B protest march.
The common thread in all of this is a commitment to confrontation rather than symbolic gesture politics. The point is to directly attack the enemy, the source of the problems we face. That doesn't necessarily imply violence, as the famous instance of Reclaim The Streets digging up a motorway and planting trees on it shows. It does, however, generally mean a willingness to ignore the law and risk arrest and police violence. Anarchist attitudes towards violence vary enormously, with many being pacifist, others supporting targeted destruction of property, while others advocate, shall we say, active self-defence. Class War infamously celebrated riots and the spectacle of cops getting a kicking on the grounds that it demonstrated people's ability to stand up and fight back against state repression, rather than meekly accept victim status. Personally, I'm not too comfortable with the "riot-porn" fixation of many anarchists, though I accept that some level of revolutionary violence is perhaps necessary and certainly inevitable. We have to fight to win. I'm not interested in seeing yet another generation of revolutionary martyrs and glorious failures. Still, I digress. The point is, much as liberals and the soft Left may hate and fear it, confrontation is absolutely necessary. The commitment to strictly legal methods is a dead-end, because the means to change the law is in our opponents' hands. It means playing by their rules. It will get us nowhere.
Still, lest anarchists should be accused of destroying and not building, it is also worth noting the various ways in which anarchists contribute to the infrastructure of activism. Anarchists have been heavily involved in projects like Corporate Watch, providing research and intelligence to activists, and Indymedia, providing open, decentralised news publication. More overtly anarchist is the Rise Up Collective which has been providing secure email services to thousands of activist groups around the world for the past 15 years. Anarchists are also prolific in opening squats and social centres which provide safe and secure organising spaces. Then there are groups like the Green & Black Cross which organises legal observers, medics and arrestee support on demonstrations.
Finally, it should be noted that the last great movement of the Left, the globalisation movement, was essentially anarchist in character. Certainly the globalisation movement was the immediate cause of my own politicisation, and the thing which drew me specifically to anarchism was the perception that it was anarchism which was at the heart of it all. Recall that the immediate inspiration for it was the Zapatistas (who've recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of their own revolution in Chiapas), who initiated the conference which produced the Second Declaration of Realidad, back in August 1996, leading to the creation of a decentralised network of social movements and groups which became the globalisation movement. I've already referred earlier to some of the anarchist contributions to that movement, and will now merely observe that by its very nature, this global movement had to adopt a decentralised, horizontal structure that revelled in its diversity of aims, perspectives and tactics. And hovering over all of this was the inspiring ethos of the first great social revolution of the post-Soviet world: the Zapatistas.
Now although the Zapatistas don't claim to be anarchists, the anarchist influence on them is unmistakable, going right back to Zapata himself. One of the major influences on him was a book called "Land and Freedom" by the Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon. Not only did it inform his politics, but the title of it also gave his movement its most famous slogan. The libertarian nature of the Zapatista revolution is plainly evident, not only in the EZLN's use of the black flag and the various utterances of Subcommandante Marcos ("I shit on all revolutionary vanguards!"), but more importantly, in the political structures the Zapatistas have formed, which are entirely in line with anarchist theory and practice: a decentralised federation of autonomous communes, each using direct democracy, with the decision-making process open to everyone over the age of twelve, using recallable delegates with strictly limited mandates, regular rotation of all public offices and executive power being strictly retained at the grassroots level. It is anarchism in action, regardless of what they chose to call it.
That is one of the true strengths of anarchism: our methods and principles keep re-emerging again and again, even without any significant "conscious" anarchist presence. People spontaneously adopt them because they seem the most fair and practical.
Still, let's move on. The central premise of this article is that where protest movements have taken off and given cause for hope recently, it has been where they have, consciously or unconsciously, adopted anarchist methods and principles. Let's take a few recent examples.
Although we can quibble with the "1% / 99%" model it has promoted, the Occupy movement has clearly been successful in that it has inspired and mobilised many thousands of people all over the world. The original Occupy Wall St was initiated by anarchists, and the tell-tale hoof-prints are all over it, in the decentralised networks, direct action and democracy and the use of consensus decision-making. We could, perhaps, even argue that the 99% narrative is another tactical innovation aimed at breaking through the stale rhetoric of class politics. Of course, being decentralised and autonomous, there was significant variation in the political make-up of each Occupy camp, with many having internal struggles against liberals and conspiracy cranks. Some like Oakland had a large anarchist presence and consequently were among the most militant (recall the Oakland general strike and the street battles with police). It is often said that the lack of a clear, solid ideology was a weakness of Occupy, but that merely reflects a petulant authoritarian disdain for democracy. Given an open and level playing field, the radical Left should be able to argue the case for their ideas, as happened in Newcastle, for example, where anarchist comrades successfully overturned a camp commitment to non-violence proposed by the more fluffy liberal elements. The democratic process is not a nuisance but is a crucial part of the world we want to create, as I'll discuss later.
A similar story can be told about the student movement in which an essentially anarchist decision-making process and structure was able to weld together diverse groups of student activists - even those belonging to Trotskyist and Leninist groups which usually adhere to "democratic centralism" - and I'd argue the experience has had an inspiring and radicalising effect on a lot of people. Actually, I think the defection of so many SWP student groups recently has been a consequence of that experience breeding dissatisfaction with the authoritarianism of the party's Central Committee. Further, I think the direct action of campus occupations has spread and inspired the occupations and pickets by UK Uncut (which is, incidentally, another example of the success of decentralised networks of autonomous groups). It's worth noting as well the widespread hostility among students to the official leadership of the NUS and how that has encouraged bottom-up, non-hierarchical organising. I'll also note how anarchist principles - specifically that of anti-parliamentarianism - have been proven in practice in the impressively militant student protests of Quebec, where a huge movement has been squandered by the liberal elements persuading people to support a politician who got elected on a promise to stop tuition fee rises and who, once in power, then broke that promise.
Lastly, there has been the Sparks - electricians working for eight of the biggest construction companies, all members of Unite the Union - and their campaign of industrial action over new contracts pushing de-skilling and 35% pay cuts, which is again a testament to the way in which anarchist methods crop up without an anarchist in sight. The victory they won is all the more impressive as the union officials were regularly obstructive and unsupportive (it took months for the Newcastle branch to provide official flags, banners and leaflets, moving the rank and file to ask us to make a leaflet for them asking pointedly where the hell the regional organiser was, as no-one had seen him in months). The campaign was a triumph of grassroots organisation and militant direct action, including the use of mass pickets to shut down the Tyne Tunnel and sections of the A19 outside Hartlepool, as well as central London on several memorable occasions.
It should be stressed that with the possible exception of Occupy, the direct involvement of anarchists has been minimal, and yet anarchist principles and methods were rediscovered in action and were adopted for practical reasons rather than ideological ones, and in each case, they've been integral to the successes achieved.
Now my purpose in all of this isn't to convince everyone to become an anarchist or that NEA or any other anarchist group are any sort of vanguard. My point is that for the Left to start moving forward again, it needs to systematically adopt and absorb a few anarchist principles, which I think can be reasonably described as a "progressive minimum".
The first and most fundamental of these is prefiguration. I like to think of prefiguration as being a refutation of the Machiavellian notion of the ends justifying the means - a sordid and wrong-headed principle that is tragically prevalent on the Left. I say it is wrong-headed because I think it is utterly at odds with reality in that history and the social processes that drive it are fluid, dynamic and never static. There is never a point at which society reaches some perfect state and then all development ceases. It's not that the Revolution, the "Glorious Day", is some one-off cataclysmic event which divides the history neatly into a Before and After and then everything stops. It's a constant ongoing process in which the much-lauded "Ends" are essentially a myth, and consequently the means are all that actually matter. To put this in less abstract terms, it's not merely that the means determine the ends, it's that the means essentially are the ends. Socialism isn't something to aim for, but something to actively practice. It's not just about practising what you preach, it is the means to actually construct a socialist society. Propaganda by the deed. If we want a democratic society, we must build and use democratic organisations. If we want an egalitarian society, we must eradicate all sources of inequality. We achieve socialism by doing it, right here, right now. It is impossible to achieve equality by authoritarian methods, because authority implies hierarchy, which flatly defeats the whole point of socialism. It is therefore obvious that the idea of "dictatorship of the proleteriat" is a dead-end, or to be more accurate, an infinite feedback loop in which the fact of dictatorship generates the hostility and opposition which justifies the continued existence of the dictatorship. Subsequently, the state never withers away and all we are left with is the dictatorship. Our methods have to prefigure our aims. There are no shortcuts.
The second principle is a commitment to direct democracy and bottom-up organisation. Partly this is to avoid violating the principle of prefiguration, as genuine democracy is a key component of socialism. But it is also a practical matter, because the experience of autonomy inspires and motivates people. It is the source of that revolutionary joy that drives everything forward and gives energy and hope to people. That's what inspires people to risk everything at the barricades. It is crucial that people have a sense that their active participation matters. Top-down structures disempower and alienate people, and groups organising in that fashion really have no business calling themselves socialist.
The third principle is a commitment to direct action. It is, in fact, really inseparable from direct democracy. It is the living embodiment of it, the guarantee and proof that power is in the hands of the people. Any moves to stifle or divert the ability of people to take action for themselves will tend to undermine their autonomy and will therefore destroy their revolutionary enthusiasm. Executive power must be retained at the grassroots. Again, there is a practical advantage to this as well in that direct action helps to cut through abstraction and mystification by encouraging people to view problems and their solutions in concrete, practical ways.
I don't know to what extent the Left at large would be willing to undertake this progressive minimum. I see reasons for optimism in some parts of it, and a hope that the reactionary Left can be sidelined and left to fade into irrelevance. I do know that the Left must reform itself if people are to be persuaded that socialism is something worth fighting for. We can't go on with the same old sad song.