On Saturday, February 6th, 2009 at least 300, and by some estimates possibly as many as 500, people turned out in the city of Riverside California to demand an end to the raids, harassment, and racial profiling increasingly being conducted by US Border Patrol agents against the residents of our local communities and workplaces.*(ED)

Participating were organizers, spokes people, and protesters from a number of local immigrant rights organizations, student groups, local churches, human rights organizations, labor organizations, concerned residents and others. In all, at least 8 organizations participated in making this event possible.(1)

The majority of those in attendance seemed to be residents of the IE (Riverside and San Bernardino counties), but I spoke to at least one individual that had had made the trip all the way from Los Angeles to demonstrate his support and solidarity. The ethnic demographics of the protesters was mainly Chicano/Mexicano, but a good number of people of other ethnicities also took part in the march in the best spirit of inter-ethnic solidarity. The protesters ranged in age from very young children accompanying their parents, to the elderly, and every age in between.

At the initial staging point of the demonstration, which was located at the City hall in downtown Riverside, presentations and speeches were given by several speakers from the community and various participating organizations. These described the dire situation that immigrants, and suspected immigrants (I.e. basically anyone with brown-skin), face due to the daily workplace and community raids conducted throughout the IE by armed Border Patrol agents. Mention was also made of the recent discovery of a unmarked and hidden Border Patrol facility in the city of Riverside and of the official policy regarding monthly arrest quotas on the part of the Border Patrol . These two discoveries are what initially prompted the organizers, the community and it’s supporters to come together for Saturdays demonstration.

After the speeches at the Riverside City Hall had concluded, the participants then marched together in a large peaceful procession for several miles to the final rallying point across the street from the once clandestine Border Patrol facility. While marching the protesters displayed colorful signs and banners in support of those persecuted by the system of national frontiers and xenophobic laws. The protesters also sung songs and occasionally chanted slogans in support of those oppressed by the raids and deportations that have divided and separated so many families. In the best spirit of solidarity the participants in the march were considerate and respectful towards one another, and also towards pedestrians, motorists, and the community at large.

At one point, about half-way to the march destination, it begin to rain, but the marchers remained unfazed and covered themselves from the downpour as best they could, shared umbrellas when possible, and continued on to the rallying point while a few well prepared and considerate organizers handed out free plastic rain ponchos to those participating in the march. Along the way we received many cheers as signs of solidarity and goodwill from passing motorists and pedestrians. On a more ominous note, a friend was later to inform me that a resident had unfurled a large confederate flag from a second story apartment window as our procession had passed by. However, this display of bigotry was the only negative incident that I was to be made aware of involving those living along the march route during the protest.

When the procession arrived at the final rallying point, which was located immediately across the street from the once clandestine Border Patrol facility, we were confronted by the sight of a group of about 30 or so members of the Minutemen organization. This group appeared to consist mainly of middle aged and elderly folks, by appearances mostly white, but with a couple conspicuous people of color among their small isolated group. The self-proclaimed ‘minutemen’ busied themselves waving about banners with pro-Migra and anti-immigrant slogans on them. One of them carried a sign that stated, “I Support American Workers”, apparently the concept of international solidarity among the working class has escaped the members of this xenophobic and nativist organization. Unfazed, the protesters refused to engage the Minutemen in acts of confrontation, this even after a few of the Minutemen crossed into the street to yell and berate the pro-immigrant rights protesters and their cause.

At the final rallying point more speeches were given. An Aztec dance troupe and bands provided entertainment. People joined together in dancing and in the singing of songs. And the participants gathered in a circle and joined hands as a display of solidarity with those persecuted by our nations unjust immigration policy.

Demonstrations such as this, and other actions in support of immigrants, are more vital then ever as police departments in the IE, and beyond, are apparently showing an ever greater willingness to work with Border Patrol agents in the processing of those arrested for even minor offenses who are also suspected of being undocumented immigrants based upon their appearance, which amounts to an unofficial, but active policy, of racial profiling on the part of local police departments (3). Add to this the recent discovery of the clandestine Border Patrol detention facility in the city of Riverside, the monthly arrest quotas on the part of Border Patrol , and the urgency of the situation takes on a new dimension.

Needed more then ever is the solidarity and support of all who are against the Criminalization of workers simply because of what part of the earth they happened to be born on, the color of their skin, or language that they speak. If its not possible for you to join us in fighting for immigrant rights, and the rights of all workers, due to your distance from the IE please note that this is a nationwide problem, with raids being conducted on a daily basis throughout the country. In fact this is an international problem, with working class immigrants often facing brutal persecution and severe exploitation by authorities, xenophobic groups, multinationals, and employers around the world (3). In consideration of this we need to take the steps necessary to begin organizing in our communities in solidarity with those around the world who are struggling against the immigration laws and quotas that serve to keep the international working class dehumanized, divided, and marginalized for the benefit of capitalism and the ambitions of its ruling class.

Siempre en lucha!

T.E. Rios
Worker Solidarity Alliance WSA (personal capacity)
http://workersolidarity.org

1. Participating organizations included, Warehouse Workers United, LiUNA, the National Day Labor Organizing Network, Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, the Inland Empire Rapid Response Network, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and other churches, student groups from UC Riverside and the Claremont Colleges, the Mexica Movement, and the Brown Berets. Courtesy of Rockero: http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/02/224529.php

2. Riverside Police: Border Patrol offered help identifying immigrants
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_N_raid08.494cd98.html

3. ZACF: Workers, Bosses and the 2008 Pogroms
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/9781

* Editors Note:This essay was written in February of 2009 and originally published on Anarkismo and LA Indymedia by a WSA member residing in Southern California. However, despite the passage of over a year since the original publication of this article it should be noted that the situation for migrant labor throughout much of inland Southern California remains virtually the same as that described in the article, and that daily raids and deportations against migrant labor by armed agents of the Homeland Security Department continue virtually unabated, though certainly not unopposed, in many areas of Southern California.

The following statement was adopted at the recent WSA Continental Conference, May 2010.
W.S.A. Inter-organizational relations Statement

The Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) reaffirms our commitment to fostering mutual respect and building good, solid and cooperative inter-organizational relations between North American and international class struggle anarchists.

WSA is mindful and respectful of the autonomy of each of our North American allies. While recognizing this autonomy, differences in history and traditions, WSA seeks to engage our allies in the most constructive and meaningful manner while maintaining our own organizational integrity. WSA affirms our commitment to building the Class Struggle Anarchist Conference and other such forums for dialogue and cooperation. We seek to further respectful and comradely dialogue and discussion between the various groups and organizations which make up the diverse North American class struggle anarchist tendency that exists today.

We are further committed to seeking to build on the initial work of the Inter-Organizational Labor/Labour Working Group and other area specific Working Groups (such as housing & anti-eviction). By working together in areas where we have similar activity or interests, we can share experiences, use limited resources wisely, create greater opportunities for solidarity and to build an autonomous workers movement.

WSA looks forward to another year at inter-organizational cooperation and relationship building based on mutual respect and comradeship.

Workers Solidarity Alliance
339 Lafayette Street-Room 202
New York, NY 10012

http://www.workersolidarity.org
http://ideasandaction.info

Libertarian statement of solidarity with the comrades in Oaxaca, Mexico

In light of the tragic events of 27 April 2010, when a solidarity caravan of observers bound for the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala (Oaxaca, Mexico) was subjected to a cowardly attack by paramilitaries linked to governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, resulting in the death of comrade Beatriz Alberta Cariño Trujillo and Finnish comrade Jyri Jaakkola, we, the undersigned organizations, declare:

1. Our total solidarity with the families of these dear comrades murdered in such a vile way. Our thoughts are with those who today suffer the irreparable loss of their loved ones.
2. Our political support for the grassroots organizational processes of the people of Oaxaca which, despite State terrorism, are making progress in this struggle for the autonomy and liberation of the peoples of Oaxaca. Our political support goes especially to those organizations that were the direct victims of this attack: the Center for Community Support Working Together (CACTUS - Centro de Apoyo Comunitario Trabajando Unidos) and Oaxacan Voices Building Autonomy and Freedom (VOCAL - Voces Oaxaqueñas Construyendo Autonomía y Libertad).
3. Our sympathy and support for the Autonomous Municipality San Juan Copala, which is now surrounded by UBISORT paramilitaries, who have cut off electricity, are preventing food supplies to the population with roadblocks and have been killing and harassing the population with impunity for several years.
4. That the paramilitaries act with the full complicity of local bosses, in the political service of the corrupt PRI’s mafias, the party of the current tyrant of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
5. That this is not an isolated event, merely the latest in a long series of threats and attacks by the State against the peoples of Oaxaca and the resistance organizations that are part of the social fabric of this essentially libertarian struggle. Since 2006 the repression has been escalating, and the authorities have amply demonstrated their brutality - this crime is part of the process of State terrorism, and has been a harsh blow, though hardly a surprising one.

In consequence of the above, the signatories of this statement demand:

1. Clarification of the events that led to the murder of our comrades, followed by the trial and punishment of those materially responsible and the politicians morally responsible for this crime.
2. An end to the criminal siege of the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala by the paramilitaries.

We have no illusions about the authorities cooperating in these demands, since we know that in the end they are the ones who are responsible for the murders, with the paramilitaries simply doing the dirty work.

Satisfaction of these demands will only come through the struggle of the people, through the pressure that the popular organizations can exercise and through their capacity for mobilization from below. We take this opportunity, therefore, to express our solidarity with this people, and express our readiness to support and assist future efforts to break the siege and to defeat the alliance of political gangsterism, the mafia-like paramilitarism and oligarchic despotism. The struggle of the people of Oaxaca is our struggle too.

Our eyes are on Oaxaca! We extend one hand to our comrades, the other raised in a defiant fist against the tyranny!

May 08, 2010

Organización Revolucionaria Anarquista–Voz Negra (Chile)
Estrategia Libertaria (Chile)
Revista Hombre y Sociedad (Chile)
Unión Socialista Libertaria (Peru)
Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Italy)
Red Libertaria Popular Mateo Kramer (Colombia)
Workers Solidarity Alliance (USA-Canada)
Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland)
Cruz Negra Anarquista, DF (Mexico)
Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (USA)
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (South Africa)
Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (Switzerland)
Common Action (USA)
Alternative Libertaire (France)
Union communiste libertaire (Québec)
Czechoslovak Anarchist Federation (Czech Republic)
Miami Autonomy & Solidarity (USA)

Greece is a test case for the social dismantling that awaits us all. This policy is being enacted by all the institutional parties, by every government and by all of globalised capitalism’s institutions. There is only one way to hold back this policy of barbaric capitalism: popular direct action, to widen the strike movement and increase the number of demonstrations all across Europe.

SOLIDARITY WITH THE GREEK WORKERS’ STRUGGLE!

The Greek working class is angry, and with good reason, with the attempt to load responsibility for the bankruptcy of the Greek State onto their shoulders. We maintain instead that it is the international financial institutions and the European Union who are responsible. The financial institutions have plunged the world, and Greece in particular, into an economic and social crisis of historical proportions, forcing countries into debt, and now these same institutions are complaining that certain States risk not being able to repay their debts. We denounce this hypocrisy and say that even if Greece - and all the other countries - can repay the debt, they should not do so: it is up to those responsible for the crisis - the financial institutions, not the workers - to pay for the damage caused by this crisis. The Greek workers are right to refuse to pay back their country’s debt. We refuse to pay for their crisis!

Instead, let us shift the capitalists into the firing line: Greek capital generates some of the biggest profit margins in Europe due to its investments in the poorer Balkan countries, the absence of social protections, collective guarantees and a minimum wage for Greek workers, not to mention the country’s gigantic black economy in labour and an even greater exploitation of immigrant work. Greek capital is also very lightly taxed, due to the weakness of the State (with regard to the rich) and major corruption which permits fraud and tax evasion on a massive scale. So it is equally up to Greek capitalists to pay for this crisis.

We also denounce the attitude of the European Union. The EU was presented to us as a supposed guarantee of peace and solidarity between the peoples, but now it is showing its true face - that of acting as an unconditional prop for neoliberalism, in a complete denial of the notion of democracy. As soon as an economy becomes mired in difficulties, all pretence of solidarity evaporates. So we see Greece being scolded and accused of laxity, with insulting language bordering on racism. The “Europe which protects us” that liberals and social-democrats extolled at the time of the scandalous forced adoption of the Lisbon Treaty (particularly in France and Ireland) now seems a long way away.

As far as actual protection goes, the EU and the financial institutions have combined their efforts to frog-march Greece towards the forced dismantling of public services, through austerity plans that recall the “Stuctural Adjustment Plans” of the IMF: the non-replacement of staff, wage freezes, privatisations and VAT increases. Today the EU is demanding that the retirement age be moved back to 67, not only in Greece but also in other countries, and is also threatening to dismantle the social welfare system. In this way they are opening new markets for investors, while guaranteeing the assets of rich investors, to the detriment of the basic interests of the working class. It is a Europe of the ruling class, and one which we must all work together to oppose.

This is why we call for participation throughout Europe in solidarity initiatives with the Greek working class and with future victims of the onslaught of the banks.

Against the values of greed and rapacity that the European Union is based on, let us respond with class solidarity! Greece is a test case for the social dismantling that awaits us all. This policy is being enacted by all the institutional parties, from out-and-out bourgeois to liberals and social democrats, by every government and by all of globalised capitalism’s institutions. There is only one way to hold back this policy of barbaric capitalism: popular direct action, to widen the strike movement and increase the number of demonstrations all across Europe.

Solidarity with the Greek workers’ struggle!

Workers Solidarity Alliance (USA-Canada)

Alternative Libertaire(France)

Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland)

Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Italy)

Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (Switzerland)

Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (South Africa)

Unión Socialista Libertaria (Peru)

Common Action (USA)

Union communiste libertaire (Québec)

Revista Hombre y Sociedad (Chile)

Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (Australia)

Miami Autonomy & Solidarity (USA)

6 May 2010

01/14/09- A natural disaster has descended upon Haiti whose scope we only are seeing the surface of at this time. The Haitian people will be struggling to rebuild their lives and their home possibly for decades in light of unprecedented collapse, both physical and social. Yet despite the unpredictability of earthquakes, this disaster is unnatural, a monstrosity of our time. The extent of the damage of the earthquake is part of the cost of unrestrained exploitation which at every step put profit above the health, safety, and well being of the Haitian people. While the world watches on ready to help, power is being dealt an opportunity. The Haitian workers and peasants have been fighting for their rights to even the most basic level of existence for decades, while the UN-occupying force, the state, and the ruling elites maintain the social misery without relenting. Now as Port-Au-Prince is in rubble, new opportunities arise for rulers to rebuild Haiti in their own interests, and likewise for the Haitian workers and peasants to assert their right to their own Haiti, one where they will be not be forced to live in dangerous buildings, and work merely to fill the pockets of elites, foreign or domestic.

As we move from watching in horror to taking decisive action, progressives can offer an alternative. There is a strong and beautiful desire to do something, to help others in this time of need. Our actions are strongest when we organize ourselves, and make a concerted effort in unity. Right now we can have the deepest impact by committing ourselves to act in solidarity with the autonomous social movements of Haiti directly. They present the best possible option for the Haitian people, and are in the greatest need. At the same time, we are in the best position to help them out our common interest as people engaged in struggling against a system that works to exploit us all. We are calling for solidarity people-to-people engaged in common struggle. It is not only a question of money for AID but also an autonomous and independent act of international solidarity that illuminates the bankruptcy of the occupying forces, multinational corporations, and Haitian elites that are primarily responsible for the decayed state of Haiti. There will be aid flowing and money given as a form of charity until the next disaster. Our act of solidarity should, in no shape or form, be solely an act of humanitarian aid. It should not be an apolitical act, and we shouldn’t give the green light to those that wish to capitalize on the suffering of others. It should be an act of solidarity to the struggling people of Haiti and their organizations while at the same time rejecting the totally inept Haitian elites and their state apparatus for bankrupting Haiti. The earthquake is a natural disaster, but the state of Haiti, the abject poverty of the masses and the vile injustice of the social order, are unnatural.

We have a relationship with one organization, Batay Ouvriye, and are putting our resources and time into helping Batay Ouvriye to help rebuild from the catastrophe and maintain the struggle for a better Haiti and a better world. Batay Ouvriye is a combative grassroots worker and peasant’s organization in Haiti with workers organized all over Haiti, especially in the Industrial sweatshops and Free Trade Zones.

We have set up a means to send money to Batay Ourviye.
If others wish to send money to Batay Ouvriye, please email
miamiautonomyandsolidarity@yahoo.com

Miami Autonomy & Solidarity

and Batay Ouvriye Haiti Solidarity Network

Should you or your organization wish to make a donation to the Miami Autonomy & Solidarity/ BO Haiti Solidarity Network fund, you may do so as follows:

Obama and his cohorts have lured many sincere working people into supporting the war in Afghanistan by promises that it will curb terrorist attacks against the US and bring freedom, democracy and women’s rights to Afghanistan. The real facts in Afghanistan show such “humanitarian” concerns to be nothing but lies:

* US/NATO aerial bombardments relentlessly murder thousands of Afghan civilians in their homes, villages and cities; in fact, air bombings in Afghanistan have significantly escalated under President Obama
* US/NATO forces have allied since day one, and remain allied, with the “Northern Alliance” warlords responsible for mass atrocities against civilians in 1992 and who now dominate the corrupt regime in Kabul, through which they secure immunity for their past and present crimes
* Afghani women activists—to whose cause the occupiers pay lip service—have consistently denounced the US-led occupation and puppet regime, demanding that foreign troops leave and calling for prosecution of both Taliban and pro-US war criminals

The escalation of the war is a disaster for the oppressed poor and working people of Afghanistan. As such, the “surge” will inevitably fuel more terrorist attacks against civilians in the US and elsewhere, attacks which elites will then use to justify the far bloodier terrorism of “Western” military powers against cities and villages in the Middle East. US elites will then seek to manipulate workers’ fear of terrorist attacks into support for the so-called “War on Terror,” increased defense spending and decreased funding of education, welfare, healthcare and social services, increased militarization of the domestic police, and increased spying and repression of workers organizations and anti-capitalist political organizations in the United States. All in the guise of “fighting terrorism.”

It is our stance that authentic peace and security can only be achieved through worldwide working-class solidarity against all forms of oppression. The Workers Solidarity Alliance firmly stands with the oppressed people of Afghanistan and with progressive organizations such as the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and others, who we know are risking their lives at this moment to defy imperialists, warlords and fundamentalists alike. The WSA unequivocally supports the aspirations of all oppressed Afghanis for a free, democratic and peaceful life.

There can be no hope for liberation of Afghanistan by foreign occupiers—only the struggle of oppressed Afghanis and authentic solidarity from struggling people around the world offers any such hope. American workers who wish to stand up for oppressed Afghanis should stand against the war-mongering of “our” government.

It is heartening to see the anti-war movement stirring in the US and internationally against the troop surge in Afghanistan. However, the movement as it stands now suffers grave limitations. It is telling that many liberals and Democrats who have spoken out against the war in Iraq are willing to compromise with the Afghan war. This fact alone speaks to the dire lack of coherent social principles in the broadly defined anti-war movement. Many who criticize it do so (as with Iraq) out of “strategic” or “pragmatic” reasons—that the war is a “mistake” or “cannot be won.” Such reasoning is not anti-war. These reasons imply that the war would be just fine if the US could achieve its aims.

That is but a flip-side argument to those now clamoring for “victory.” On the other hand, in our experience, many in the protest movement seem more concerned to prove their moral righteousness, while neglecting to build an anti-war movement that can actually defeat wars. We find both the “pragmatic” and “moral” arguments against the war unsatisfactory.

The WSA proposes a different orientation for the anti-war movement. As an organization of working-class militants rooted in the traditions of anarcho-syndicalism, libertarian socialism and class struggle, we are convinced that militarism can only be defeated by the rank and file of working people, in common struggle against the class of bureaucrats, politicians and capitalists who profit from the slaughter of war. Only through a mass struggle against all bosses and the overthrow of capitalism and its supporting political structure will war and imperialism ever be definitively ended. While we firmly support anti-war protesters, we know full well that news-grabbing marches by a small crew of professional activists are no substitute for the kind of mass working-class resistance that wreaked havoc on the US war effort in Vietnam: rank-and-file refusal, sabotage and mutiny, social upheaval in the ghettos and working-class communities from which the soldiers are recruited, and so on.

Here we find the Achilles heel of US imperialism. The US military is an army made up of recruits largely from working-class backgrounds. With rampant unemployment and underemployment in precarious service industry jobs, many workers increasingly see military service as their only viable career option. Many immigrants join the US military in exchange for US citizenship, interpreted as a path to a decent job and a better life. Frontline GIs are enlisted largely from working-class neighborhoods, towns and ghettos suffering economic hardship. The rank and file of the US military do not simply enlist because of blind patriotic loyalty to the ruling elite. They often enlist out of the economic hardship inherent for working-class people forced to live under an economic system in which basic necessities such as shelter and health care are treated as luxuries for those who can pay rather then necessities that all people are in need of and have a right to, in a word—capitalism. Already we have seen the first stirrings of resistance in the military’s rank and file, from soldiers who have refused to serve in Iraq. We deeply respect the courage of those soldiers and technicians who have taken a stand against the madness of war, asserting the value of working-class lives. Their brave example serves as the clearest manifestation of the fact that US soldiers do not fight simply out of ideological faith in the objectives of US imperialism.

The anti-war movement, if it is to have a chance at success, must encourage the growing resistance in the lower ranks of capitalism’s armed forces. The rank-and-file soldiers of capitalist empire, recruited from the working class, could turn against the brass to become a true workers’ army dedicated to fighting the real enemy at home: the ruling class of capitalists, politicians and the middle managers who do their bidding.

We pledge our support for rank-and-file soldiers who refuse the orders of their commanders. We extend our support in particular to the Iraq Veterans Against the War, an organized grouping of veterans and active-duty soldiers that seeks to undermine support for imperialist war in Iraq and Afghanistan from within the US military. We also encourage efforts to establish solidarity across battle lines with the rank-and-file of state militaries around the world.

While supporting anti-militarist resistance within the armed forces of the US, NATO, and other imperialist states, we also acknowledge the right of oppressed Afghanis to resist all forms of aggression and despotism at home, whether it be in the form of foreign imperialism or homegrown autocracy. Thus the Workers Solidarity Alliance extends its solidarity to all who struggle to build a truly democratic Afghanistan that respects the humanistic aspirations and needs of all working-class Afghanis, male and female alike. We affirm again our internationalist, anti-authoritarian principles and our solidarity with oppressed and struggling people everywhere.

The Workers Solidarity Alliance
workersolidarity.org

A struggle by the workers at the New Babylon Cinema in Berlin — a relatively small firm — has now blown up into a fight with much larger legal consequences for German workers. A December 11, 2009 court edict in Berlin now poses some serious questions: Will German workers have the legal right to a union of their own choosing? Will they have the legal right to form grassroots alternative unions?

For some time now a large proportion of the workers at the New Babylon Cinema (Neue Babylon GmbH) have been working together as a grassroots union as a part of the Freie Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter Union (Free Workers Union — FAU). Back in February the workers at the cinema organized in FAU picketed the cinema for higher wages. Wages at the cinema are abysmally low. Since June they have been engaged in a struggle with the cinema’s management to obtain a labor contract.

As part of this struggle the FAU mounted a boycott of the cinema. This boycott and worker struggle has been widely covered in the media. The FAU struggle has been built on the direct participation of the workers — something that is rarely seen in Germany. Workers have participated in developing innovative demands and methods of struggle.

However, on December 11, the Berlin Regional Court (Landgericht Berlin) banned the Freie Arbeterinnen und Arbeiter Union (Free Workers Union) from acting as a union. The court even banned the FAU from calling itself a union. Moreover, this court edict was issued without holding a public hearing and without even notifying the FAU of a legal action against them. This type of secretive court action is called a “star chamber” proceeding in the Anglo-American legal tradition…and is regarded as an abuse of legal authority.

New Babylon Cinema receives funding from the government in Berlin which is controlled by a coalition of Die Linke and the Social Democratic Party. Apparently a deal was worked out between New Babylon management, their political friends, and the large national union ver.di — part of the bureaucratic German Trade Union Federation (DGB)…known for its “partnership” deals with management and corporatist participation on boards of directors of German companies. With virtually no support among staff at New Babylon, and without notifying the workers, ver.di entered the fray to negotiate a sweetheart deal with the New Babylon management. In September Die Linke — a socialist political party in Germany — intervened on behalf of this dirty deal, distributing leaflets claiming that ver.di was “mediating” the dispute.
The workers at the cinema were surprised by this action…and were excluded from any participation in the negotiations. If this kind of action stands, it means the bosses can choose which union its employees belong to and what it looks like.

In court ver.di also attacked the FAU on the grounds that its lack of existing union contracts shows it has no ability to enter into contracts. This is important because, under German labor law, no organization can  legally take collective action if it doesn’t have the ability to negotiate a contract. On two occasions the Berlin FAU has been threatened with 250,000 euros fine or jail sentences.

The ver.di argument, if upheld, presents a Catch-22 for German workers. If not already being a union with contracts shows an organization can’t be a union, how could German workers have the right to form independent unions or new autonomous labor organizations? If this holds up, it amounts to granting a legal union monopoly to DGB.

This is all about efforts of the employers, DGB bureaucrats and their political friends trying to block the emergence of alternative unions — an increasing threat as rank and file disenchantment with the DBG has grown in recent years. The ver.di union has already stated that they see the FAU as a threat and want to nip it in the bud.

The Berlin court ruling has far-reaching implications. There has been little tradition of militant or grassroots unionism in Germany since the Nazis came to power in 1933. Within the official DGB, decentralization (local autonomy) and worker self-organization are not encouraged. Thus the New Babylon Cinema struggle is important in that the freedom of German workers to form autonomous labor organizations — grassroots organizations they control — is at stake here.

Some years back I spent some time in the Rhine region (my father’s ancestors were from that part of Germany) and had an opportunity to talk with members of the Koeln and Frankfurt am Main branches of the FAU. This left me with an impression of a well-organized group with serious and committed activists.

The FAU itself is roughly the German equivalent of the American IWW. The FAU derives from a tradition that goes back to the decentralist unions of the late 1800s and early 1900s, which separated from the main centralist labor federation (predecessor of the present DGB) over the issue of local autonomy. After World War 1, the autonomous unions came together to form the Freie Arbeiter Union Deutchlands (FAUD). With the collapse of the German monarchy, revolution was in the air. The FAUD was part of the radical grassroots unionism in Germany in those years,  growing to 200,000 members. Famous German anarcho-syndicalists like Rudolph Rocker and Augustin Souchy participated in the FAUD in the years after World War 1.

By the early ’30s the FAUD still had about 30,000 members. The FAUD was  banned after the Nazis came to power in 1933, and many of its members ended up in concentration camps. Kersten, my Frankfurt FAU contact, told me that during World War 2, the German SS rounded up thousands of FAUD members and formed them into an armed battalion and stuck them out on the eastern front, facing the Red Army. An SS division was behind them, armed with machine guns. The FAUD people were told, “You fight the Russians or we kill you.” Few FAUD members survived to tell about that.

In the late ’70s a new generation of German anarcho-syndicalists decided to rebuild the FAU. In more recent years the FAU has gradually grown to more than 300 members and has finally reached a stage where it has been able to organize a number of worker union groups in some workplaces.

If the FAU is banned now, this will be the third time the syndicalists have been banned in Germany. They were banned in 1914 due to their opposition to the German war effort, and again by the Nazis in 1933.

However, the FAU believes that the court order can be overturned, if there is sufficient public outcry and solidarity. They are suggesting actions such as protests at German embassies or consulates, sending protest letters to German embassies, and sending protest faxes to the German court.

The FAU has set up a webpage in English for information on how to contact German diplomatic embassies and the management of New Babylon Cinema, to express opposition to the banning of FAU and support for the right of the New Babylon Cinema employees to a union of their own choosing:

http://www.fau.org/verbot/art_091216-010818

The FAU has an article in English explaining their struggle at:

http://www.fau.org/verbot/art_091216-010818/fau_berlin_en.pdf

The campuses of California have been occupied. Last week, the California Board of Regents decided to impose a 32% tuition increase across the University of California system. Forced to quit school or go even deeper into debt, workers and students across the state have responded by launching widespread protests against the new austerity measures in the best tradition of working class resistance - with pickets, barricades, and occupations. The Workers Solidarity Alliance extends its full support and encouragement to the students and workers across the state of California in their struggle against astronomical tuition increases and other measures intended to make workers pay for a crisis deliberately manufactured by the state’s governing elite.

We take inspiration from your fight and the militancy of your struggle and wish to offer any support and solidarity we are able. We are not directly present in your struggle, and as such, we do not have the understanding of what is happening that you do. However, as an organization of working class militants engaged in struggles across North America over the last 25 years, we would like to humbly offer not only support, but also analysis based on our own experiences as you move forward in your fight. We welcome communication from you about ways we can support you, about lessons you suggest we take away from your struggle, and above all about how to extend this struggle further.

As news reaches us, we find it encouraging to hear that the struggle so far has been waged in a largely libertarian and confrontational manner - through general assemblies and direct actions, such as occupying buildings or physically preventing the departure of the UC Regents from their meetings. We believe that it is vital to avoid efforts by politicians and other opportunists to mislead the students and workers into narrow reformism or accommodation into existing channels for dissent that demobilize social movements, such as lobbying, waiting for the next election cycle, or waiting for a bailout from the federal government. Your time is now.

While we applaud the bravery of those who risk life and limb confronting the forces of the capitalist state on the picket lines and behind barricaded doors, we also feel we must soberly acknowledge that this is a defensive struggle. Unless the struggle rapidly grows, it will succumb to repression and dissipate in the face of meager concessions.

In discussions among ourselves based on your struggles and our own experiences, we brainstormed a few possible ways to expand the struggle to other sectors of the class. Some of the ideas we discussed are for working students to mobilize their coworkers around workplace demands, for masses of students to shut down businesses in areas around the universities that depend on students as customers, or for workers to stage job actions in workplaces that employ large numbers of students. You could also seek out workers currently on strike in other sectors of the economy, or ask your parents to participate by coming to campus or organizing their coworkers in support of your demands. Another option would be to bring non-student coworkers to assemblies on occupied campuses, as was common in the 1968 uprising in France. You might also look for inspiration to the 2004 Quebec student strike, in which student unions shut down university campuses and then went on the offensive by creating “economic perturbances”- student occupations of critical sections of the highway system, the port, and the stock exchange. The Quebec students won their demands with broad support from unions and workers across Canada.

The protests and occupations of the students and workers in the UC system have captured the attention of the nation. Such actions speak louder than our words ever could. We hope that your example will find its echo on campuses and workplaces around the world as university managements and governments seek to further immiserate workers and students in the wake of the economic crisis. Furthermore, we hope that your fight in turn inspires workers in other sectors across the world to organize and fight their own bosses, building the unity and strength of the workers movement in preparation for the long years of struggle ahead, and setting the stage for the eventual global workers revolution.

The Workers Solidarity Alliance
workersolidarity.org

"Capitalism: A Love Story"

Michael Moore’s latest documentary is a critique of capitalism- in mainstream theaters- pretty big deal. “Capitalism: A Love Story” starts off comparing the US to the Roman Empire- a fairly easy task. In addition to other commentary, the documentary seems to be focused on the anti-capitalist stance of various Catholic priests, the consequences of the housing crisis, corporate bailouts and, finally, some alternatives in the form of worker-run workplaces.

Where the documentary is lacking, in my opinion, is in the omission of a simple explanation of what, exactly, capitalism is and how it’s maintained. As well, Moore does not counter how the Right has defined Socialism, so therefore continues to let them define it. His alternative to capitalism is a democratically run economy…ie: socialism. This would’ve been an opportune time to reclaim the word, but I can understand choosing not to go down that route if he’s trying to speak to a majority of Americans, many of whom probably have misconceptions of what socialism is and can be, or the differences between all the different tendencies within the socialist movement.

Nevertheless, in the United States, there is this continual red-baiting and anti-socialist hysteria right now. Pundits like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the like, drop the “S” bomb to describe anything Left of the center-Right (which is populated by the USA’s “liberal” party, the Democrats). Not only is their constant misuse of the term a testament to their willful ignorance (honestly, you’d think the “news” stations these wealthy, pale males work for would ask them to read a book every once in a while), it muddies the political water here so much that the American public seems bent on keeping these spurious definitions alive. This should be no surprise to actual Leftists considering the US’s long history of red-baiting and ideological policing, but Moore missed an opportunity to succinctly and quickly clear things up with audiences large enough that even the most widely-read socialist periodical has no chance of attracting such a crowd in the foreseeable future.

Something else I found odd was juxtaposing the moral positions of various Catholic priests with capitalism. His point, which was made rather well, was that Jesus was an anti-capitalist, and many folks within the Catholic Church’s hierarchy are also anti-capitalist. At first this bothered me, but after discussing it with some comrades, I realize that this is an opportunity to make a connection for people of faith, or perhaps more accurately, Christians – which is a huge part of the American citizenry. However, I do think we need to reflect on these kinds of populist tactics and recognize their limitations. After all, if capitalism is “bad” because it’s “unchristian”, then anarchism isn’t that far behind as a condemnable idea!

Further, as awesome as it is to show examples of worker-run factories, as Moore briefly mentioned, he didn’t explain how these factories could give us an example of how to organize ourselves outside of capitalism and the state. In fact, there wasn’t much critique of the state at all –rather he provides a critique of the corporatization of US politics since Reagan. As well, electoral politics were highlighted as a viable way to get ourselves out of this mess. As Moore states, if the bottom 95% of Americans own less combined than the top 1%, that doesn’t change the fact that those 95% still own 95% of the votes. So, to Moore, we can and should out-vote the rich. Decades of experience with “worker’s parties” running for election, however, tell a different story about the efficacy of electoralism as a strategy to replace capitalism.

His focus on the housing crisis was super informative and really laid out how ridiculous, and violent I would add, this crisis has been for folks. As well, Moore did a great job at showing the mysticism and fantasy inherent in capitalism…on things like derivatives- intangible and made up guesses of what other guesses are worth. He compared the stock market to a casino- and a crazy one at that. And to think that we allow our world’s economy to be organized within this fantasy-world that was built so that hardly anyone understands how it works! I suppose that’s the only way they can get common people to buy that capitalism is a decent idea–by mystifying it!

At any rate, I would recommend the film. It is informative and well done. But it was heavy on critique and light on solutions. Here’s to hoping that one day, in theaters everywhere, we can see a film that rightly criticizes capitalism, but also brings to bear revolutionary, socialist alternatives!

I was prompted to write this by Paul D’Amato’s two recent articles in Socialist Worker criticizing anarchism
(http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/27/refusing-to-be-ruled-over), and
(http://socialistworker.org/2009/03/06/marxist-view-of-the-state) but this will also give me the
opportunity to provide an explanation of some basic social anarchist ideas. I take it that
social or Left-anarchism and libertarian socialism are the same thing. Thus I use the
phrases “social anarchism” and “libertarian socialism” interchangeably.

I believe there is, as Murray Bookchin said, an “unbridgeable chasm” between social anarchism and
individualist or “lifestylist” forms of anarchism. Ideas often thought characteristic of anarchism, such
as anti-organizational bias or an obsession for “consensus decision-making” are in fact features of
individualist anarchism, not social anarchism.

Libertarian socialists would also agree there is an unbridgeable chasm between Leninism and libertarian
socialism. The International Socialist Organization (ISO) is a Leninist organization in that it defends the political legacy of
the Bolshevik party’s role in the Russian revolution, looks to Bolshevik leaders like Lenin and
Trotsky for inspiration, and defends characteristic Leninist ideas such as the theory of a “vanguard party”
to manage the transition to socialism, and the idea of building a hierarchical “proletarian state”
in the period of social transformation away from capitalism.

D’Amato’s criticisms of those who think of social change in terms of one’s personal lifestyle choices
make it clear he is taking aim at lifestyle or individualist anarchism. But D’Amato presents his
criticisms as if they apply to anarchism in general. Leninist polemics have a long history of using
individualist anarchism as a club to beat up on libertarian socialism…a kind of bait and switch
fallacy. This method of argument would be analogous to me suggesting that there is no distinction
between the form of Leninism advocated by the ISO and the despotic regime of Joseph Stalin. In fact I
won’t do this because I’m aware that the ISO has a long history of critiquing existing (and formerly
existing) Communist systems. I would suggest that Paul D’Amato and the ISO need to offer the same
courtesy to social anarchism, by not confusing it with hyper-individualism or lifestyleism.

Self-emancipation and Direct Democracy

Social anarchism is a socialist political viewpoint, and emerged originally as a tendency in the first
International Working Men’s Association (called the “First International”) of the 1860s-70s. People like
Anselmo Lorenzo and Michael Bakunin were prominent figures in that initial libertarian socialist current.
Thus social anarchism or libertarian socialism — I use these phrases interchangeably — was a
product of radical working class politics.

The libertarian socialists in the First International agreed with Marx that “the emancipation of the
working class must be the work of the workers themselves.”

This slogan was first annunciated by Flora Tristan y Moscoso — a pioneer socialist-feminist of the
1830s-40s. Tristan made her living as a printer. She had originally been a follower of socialists like
Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, who advocated building alternative communities, and they relied on
philanthropy from wealth people for funding — an approach that suffered from both paternalism and
lack of realism. This was the approach that Engels later called “utopian socialism.” By the early 1840s
Tristan had repudiated utopian socialism. She came to the view that the working class could only rely on
its own efforts. In 1843 she embarked on a nation-wide speaking tour to persuade French workers to form a
national workers union, and her statement about working class self-emanipcation dates from that campaign.

Libertarian socialists in the First International thus agreed with Marx in rejecting the approach of the
utopian socialists.
From the time of the First International to the 1930s, the main movement-building or mass organizing
expression of social anarchism was in the labor movement…an approach to labor politics callled
anarcho-syndicalism. Anarchosyndicalists take Flora Tristan’s slogan about working class self-liberation
quite literally. Anarchosyndicalists believe that the working class can liberate itself from structures of
oppression and exploitation by developing, “from below,” its own mass social movement based on a
wide-spread solidarity in the course of struggles with the dominating classes.

That working class liberation develops out of the class struggle is thus an assumption shared by both
Marxism and anarchosyndicalism — and most social anarchists.

Through self-organization and their own collective action, working people people can develop a sense of
having some collective power to change things, develop deeper insights into the nature of the system, and
develop skills useful in advancing the struggle further. Through collective action and self-organization
people can develop a greater sense of possibilities for change. The practical need for unity also helps
in developing an understanding of the connections between captalism and things like racism and sexism and
imperialism. A mass organization is also a site where radicals with ambitious ideas about social change
can connect to the aspirations and grievances of of broader numbers of people.

The anarchosyndicalist advocacy of the direct democracy of worker assemblies comes from this idea of
workers controlling and shaping — self-managing — their own collective struggles. This
conception of a movement of workers “in union” with each other is opposed to bureaucratic business
unionism, where a hierarchical structure of paid officials and staff becomes entrenched, and routine
top-down bargaining narrows the issues and scope of the union’s aims and diminishes the ability of the
union to address the concerns of workers on and off the job. A paid union hierarchy who don’t share the
conditions of the job and often have incomes more akin to management are likely to “see management’s
point of view” and will tend to see direct struggle as a risk to the union they would rather avoid.

The point to direct democracy comes from the fact it is the opposite of top-down control. The six-month
fight of the Barcelona bus drivers to reduce their work week from six to five days in 2007-2008 illustrates
this.

The bureaucratic unions at the Barcelona transit authority — the social-democratic UGT and
Communist-influenced Workers Commissions — had sold out the workers on this demand for a shorter
workweek in 2005 by signing a contract without a well-advertised contract ratification meeting.

In the fall of 2007 the anarcho-syndicalist CGT (www.cgt.org.es), which has a large section among the bus
drivers, was able to persuade another independent bus drivers union (Spain has a system of “competitive
unionism” that allows multiple unions in a workplace) to join it in sponsoring an open workers assembly
“independent of the trade unions,” to discuss the issues and plan a course of action.

Workers welcomed the rank and file of the UGT and Workers Commissions to attend, but not the paid
officials. The assembly elected a rank and file committee to coordinate the struggle and publish a free
newspaper for people in the city to explain their struggle. Over a period of six months the assembly
conducted three strikes of several days duration, various demonstrations and marches, and gained the
participation of a majority of the workers. After the third strike, the Socialist Party politicians who
control the city government and transit authority in Barcelona finally capitulated to the workers’ demand.

The direct democracy of the workers assembly was crucial because it placed power over the struggle directly
in the hands of the ranks, and gave bus drivers a real sense this was their movement. It gave them the
power to decide if a management proposal was acceptable or not.

Direct democracy does not mean all decisions have to be made in meetings. It doesn’t mean there can be no
delegation of tasks. But the idea is to avoid the development of a bureaucracy that has its own interests
apart from the workers. Thus in the CGT Transport Union there are no paid officials and there is term
limits for the executive committees.

Anarchosyndicalists have almost never advocated “consensus decision-making” for the mass organizations
they have helped to organize or participate it — and this is true of most social anarchists in general.
The interminable meetings and difficulty coming to clear decisions in a reasonable time — invariably a
feature of consensus decision-making in settings with large numbers of people — would not be effective
for working class people who have limited amounts of free time and are often exhausted from work. It’s
particularly unlikely to work for working women who often have a “double day” — working for employers
and also doing most housework for their families.

Part of the problem here, I think, is that people may confuse what works for a small, informal circle of
like-minded friends and what is needed in a larger and more heterogeneous group of people. A small
informal group of friends can make decisions through talking things out. But a social movement is not
the same thing as a small group of like-minded friends.

Building consensus in a mass organization or movement is important. The more unified a movement is,
the stronger it will be. This suggests that there does need to be an open discussion where people can
air their views. But if discussion doesn’t end disagreement, then libertarian socialists propose a
vote, and the majority carries the decision. Thus it is majoritarian direct democracy that social
anarchists advocate, not “consensus decision-making.” D’Amato ignores this distinction between different
concepts of direct democracy.

The problem with “consensus decision-making” is its requirement of complete unanimity, and opposition to
voting. I agree with Paul D’Amato’s criticism of consensus decision-making of the sort that existed in
the ’70s/’80s period in anti-nuke groups like the Livermore Action Group or the Clamshell Alliance.
Howard Ryan’s pamphlet “Blocking Progress” (http://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/CX6187.htm) is good
account of how destructive and elitist this was in the Livermore Action Group in the ’80s. But consensus
decision making in those groups did not have its origins in social anarchism, but in Quakers and other
radical pacifists, radical feminists, and individualist anarchists. Jo Freeman’s famous essay “The Tyranny
of Structurelessness” was a critique of this approach to decision-making in radical feminist groups of
that era.

Consensus decision-making tends to lead to minority rule and empowers people who are better at
talking…who are usually more educated. In any movement there is always a minority who agrees with the
original aims and character of an organization. So even if this is proven disfunctional from experience,
the group can’t evolve through learning from experience because changes can be blocked by small minorities.
This is why consensus decision-making is essentially conservative.

Persons and Social Groups

Why is there this difference between individualist anarchism and social anarchism in the interpretation
of direct democracy? I believe the explanation for this lines in a theoretical difference about the
concept of the person.

Individualist anarchism was influenced by the classical liberal conception of the person as a kind of
atom whose core personality or identity is separate from social groups. The idea of absolute personal
autonomy, which is a feature of hyper-individualism, is built on this.

Individuals are viewed as prior to society because society and social groups are viewed as akin to
associations that a person joins, such as a club or church or a union. This picture was influenced
by the classical liberal concept of society being formed as a “social contract” among individuals. This
is the source of individualist anarchist talk of society being based on “free agreement” or “voluntary
association”. Because the individual is conceived as an atom prior to society, the individual is seen as
requiring an absolute autonomy apart from the social collectivity…and this is expressed in the
requirement of unanimity in collective decisions that person participates in. The individual ego thus
asserts its claim to veto the collectivity on its own. William Godwin expresses this thus: “There is
but one power to which I can yield a heartfelt obedience, the decision of my own understanding, the
dictates of my own conscience.”(1)

The individualist conception comes close to agreeing with Margaret Thatcher’s slogan, “Society doesn’t
exist, only individuals exist.” The individualist concept of the person is an assumption that
individualist anarchism shares in common with right-wing “free market” “libertarianism”.

But in fact society — and many social groups — are not like an association. When you’re born
into a particular social class, or a particular racial or ethnic group, or a family, or you’re a
particular sex raised in a particular gender system, this shapes who you become. Many of your abilities,
expectations in life, tastes, way of talking and other things are shaped by being a part of a social group.
Social groups become part of your identity. The social group is part of you. And this also means that
people will often have a tendency to agree or sympathize with needs of a group they are a part of.

This view of the person as shaped by groups he or she is a part of is called the social concept of
the person. The social concept of the person is another assumption shared in common by Marx and social
anarchism.

Bakunin is expressing his agreement with this view of the person in this passage:

“Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the
cumulative social efforts of countless generations. Thus the individual, his freedom and reason, are
the products of society, and not the vice versa: society is not the product of individuals comprising it;
and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed, the greater his freedom — and the more he
is the product of society, the more does he receive from society and the greater his debt to it.”(1)

This doesn’t mean each individual isn’t also unique, with his or her own aspirations and ability to make
up one’s own mind.

It might help to contrast the social concept of the person with another view that I’ll call the
totalitarian concept of the person. This is a view that is very far out of fashion these days.
But in the ’20s and ’30s, in both fascist and Stalinist rhetoric, there was a tendency to reduce
the needs and interests and aspirations of the person to some larger entity such as a class, the
nation or the state. The person was seen as a mere expression of some collectivity. The social
concept of the person stands mid-way between the two extremes of individualism and totalitarianism,
acknowledging both an individual and collective aspect to people.

Because our lives occur in various group contexts, there are always situations where our will will be
limited by the wills of others, and by our obligations to others. Thus the slogan “refusing to be
ruled over” (the title of one of D’Amato’s articles) is ambiguous. It could express an opposition to
being subordinate to bosses, to oppressive hierarchies…or it could express the idea of individual
autonomy, of not being subject to any limitation by others. This second interpretation is the
individualist anarchist idea of absolute individual autonomy. But a person is not oppressed simply
because they lose a vote in a meeting.

Direct Democracy and Self-management

For anarchosyndicalism, self-management and direct democracy are aspects of both the strategy for social
change and also part of the program for a self-managed socialist society. The direct self-activity and
self-organization of the working class, in running their own struggles and mass organizations,
“prefigures” a society where workers will directly govern their own work and the industries they work in.
“Prefigurative politics” thus had its origins in the libertarian syndicalist wing of labor radicalism.

In the social anarchist view, self-managment is an innate human capacity and need. Humans have the
ability to discuss among themselves, develop plans for what they want to achieve, for themselves and
jointly with others, and have the ability to develop skills and tools and coordination needed to realize
their purposes in real time. Self-management is part of the idea of “positive” freedom. The liberal
concept of freedom as absence of external coercion or constraint, which is what right-wing “libertarians”
mean by “freedom,” is viewed by social anarchists as only part of what real freedom is. “Positive”
freedom requires also that people have roughly equal access to the means to participate effectively
in the spheres of decision-making that affect their lives.

We can think of self-management of industry as a layered or nested structure of spheres of decision-making.
Where groups of people are mainly affected by some sphere of decision-making, there are assemblies there
that institutionalize collective control. Some decisions affect an entire plant in a roughly equal way,
and there are general assemblies of the whole plant to control those decisions. Other decisions affect
mainly one department or a small work group, and they have their separate meetings. Some decisions affect
only one person and that person gets to “call the shots” in that area. Collective self-management doesn’t
mean that all decisions are made in meetings or that delegation of tasks doesn’t occur. The point to the
direct democracy of the assemblies is that it acts as the control for collective self-management.

Nor is self-management simply equivalent to a system of formal democracy. Existing corporate capitalism
generates hierarchies where expertise and decision-making authority is concentrated…hierarchies of
managers and high-end professionals who work closely with them, such as engineers and lawyers. This
hierarchy is part of how class oppression strips from workers their ability to control their lives. The
ability of people to effectively participate in decisions that affect them requires also a change in the
educational system and the design of work, so that conceptual and decision-making tasks in work are
re-integrated with the physical doing of the work. Thus Kropotkin advocated “integration of labor”: “A
society where each individual is a producer of both manual and intellectual work.”

But the point to the direct democracy of the assemblies is that they are needed as a replacement for the
formal hierarchical power of dominating classes, the formal subordination of workers in social production.

I need to make three additional points about workers self-management of industry as this occurs in the
thinking of most social anarchists.

First: The anarchosyndicalist view of workers self-management is that it arises in the transformation of
society, out of the conflict between classes.

It’s hard to see how an end to the oppression and exploitation of people as workers could come to an
end except through a general takeover of the management of social production and distribution by the
people who work in these industries. This doesn’t mean, however, that anarchosyndicalism conceives of
a socialized economy as the same as the existing economy, but with workers running the workplaces. Rather,
the idea is that an entirely different logic of development would ensue, and the technologies used and
mix of products and services would change.

The syndicalist strategy is different than the Proudhonian idea of forming worker cooperatives within
the cracks of the present capitalist framework. Most social anarchists support altnernative institutions
such as worker and housing cooperatives and social centers and so on, both because they are useful for
the social movements at the present time, and because they illustrate that workers’ management is an
idea that works. However, forming cooperatives in the cracks of capitalism is not the same as the
syndicalist strategy, which is rooted in the class struggle.(2)

Second: Most social anarchists and anarchosyndicalists do not advocate an ideal of workers self-management
in the form of competing cooperatives in a market-driven economy, but as part of a socialized economy in
which the land and means of production would be owned in common by the whole society. In 1936, during the
Spanish revolution, the anarchosyndicalist theorist Diego Abad de Santillan wrote that the worker
organizations controlling the various industries are not “proprietors” of the industries but are “only
administrators at the service of the entire society.”(3)

Third: Although most social anarchists still advocate workers self-management of industry as part of a
larger program for social transformation and social empowerment, workers self-management of industry was
not all there is to what anarchosyndicalism advocated historically for social transformation nor is it
all that social anarchists advocate today, far from it.

The power of the dominating classes isn’t limited to the workplaces, and struggles that affect working
class people spread out in other areas of society — struggles of tenants, for immigrant rights, against
police brutality, and so on. To develop its power the working class needs to address the issues of the
day and counter its own solutions to those of the dominating classes.

Also, struggles of working people are not just around class because working class people are women,
immigrants, people of color. Various forms of oppression and exploitation overlap in a society built
on a complex forms of structural inequality.

Thus the overwhelming focus on class oppression and exploitation, which was characteristic of both
Marxism and social anarchism in the 19th century and early 1900s, has evolved into an understanding of
oppression and exploitation as more multifaceted. The workplace is only one site of conflict and
movement-building.

Thus, for example, in its response to the present global capitalist crisis, the CGT — the Spanish
anarchosyndicalist union — proposes to tighten and deepen its relationships with the various social
movements in Spain — women’s groups, ecologists, the housing movement, immigrants rights, and so on.
Thus they see the struggle against the elite imposing the costs of the crisis on the working class as built
on the basis of a labor/social movement alliance.

The idea of self-emancipation applies in general to all oppressed and exploited people, and the various
forms of oppression also generate forms of self-activity and movements in opposition. Thus the picture of
the agent of social transformation becomes more complex, as it requires an alliance among the various
oppressed and exploited groups, as they confront the power of the dominating classes. The framework
for this conflict is a class framework, but the working class movement itself requires a mass alliance
in the spirit of “An injury to one is the concern of all,” if it is to have the unity and social
strength to push aside extremely powerful and entrenched elites.

The Class Character of the State

D’Amato claims that Marxism aims at a stateless society in the future, and this is a fair statement of
Marx’s view.

But the disagreement between Leninism and social anarchism isn’t over some statement about a far-off state
of society but about the means to social change, and in particular the means to liberation of the mass of
the people from oppression and exploitation.

The state, as Engels wrote, is a territorial power, “standing above society”, equipped with an armed
“public force” that is not simply “a self-acting armed organization of the people”. Engels viewed the
state as an institution of a dominating class: “As the state arose from the need to keep class
antagonisms in check, but also arose in the thick of the fight between the classes, it is normally the
state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which by its means becomes also the politically
dominant class and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class.”(4)

Thus far, the social anarchist current in the late 19th century who emerged out of the First International
agreed with Engels on this view of the state. Thus Bakunin wrote:

“The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: the priesthood, the nobility, the
bourgeoisie, and finally, after every other class has been exhausted, the bureaucratic class.”

But if a state is separated from effective control of the mass of the people, how could there be a
“proletarian state”, as Leninists maintain?

Although extreme individualists also oppose the state, they do so far different reasons than social
anarchists. Both Bakunin and Kropotkin were scornful of the opposition to the state by 19th century
free market capitalist ideologues. They saw this as simply expressing the wish of the capitalist to
avoid social constraints on profit making. Their talk of “freedom” was about the freedom of the
capitalists to exploit the working class.

Social anarchists oppose the state for two main reasons: because it is an institution of class domination,
and because it is a structure of hierarchical power, a structure of domination in its own right.

The characteristic feature of the modern state is its separation from effective control by the mass of
the people. The state is built on hierarchical chain of command structures, similar to the private
corporations, with a concentration of expertise and decision-making authority into a minority.

In corporate capitalism there is a social layer that is the systems’ control bureaucracy. Their class
position isn’t based on capital ownership but on relative monopoly of decision-making authority and
expertise in managing state agencies or corporations. If we wish to use Bakunin’s language, We could
call this the bureaucratic class, or, following Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, the coordinator class.

The state is an important locus of power for this class, as Bakunin pointed out.

Libertarian socialism historically has been open to a different conception of class from Marxism. Marx
operated with a simple bipolar division of capitalist society into the capitalist class and working class,
based on his analysis of exploitation in terms of the labor theory of value. Thus the capitalists are the
class who pump their private wealth out of the labor of the working class.

But there are more forms of monopolization of economic resources than just ownership of means of
production or money power in a context of a society where there are propertyless people to be exploited.
The bureaucratic control layer in the system is based on a relative monopolization of decision-making
authority and forms of expertise important to management, in both the private and public sectors.

(Nonetheless, not all social anarchists accept the three-class analysis of capitalism into capitalist,
coordinator/bureaucratic and working classes. Some hold that the bureaucratic control layer are a part of
the capitalist class. But this agrees with the majority social anarchist view that private ownership of
wealth isn’t the only basis of class domination and exploitation.)

Although defending the interests of dominating classes is an essential feature of the state, this isn’t
all there is to the state. Because the state acts to hold the existing social arrangement together, it
also tends to support the various structures of inequality and oppression in the prevailing society.
Here we can think of the ways the American state has supported forms of structural racism such as southern
segregation or pursued the marginalization and expropriation of the native American Indian population.
Or the race as well as class bias inherent in the current “War on Drugs” or the history of racist
immigration policies.

Because the state must be able to govern and maintain social peace, it has also been the means through
which popular protest and class struggle have gained concessions. This includes various limitations or
restraints on private economic power such as the Pure Food and Drug Act, environmental protection, OSHA,
etc. This also includes various systems of benefits…free public education, comprehensive health insurance
(in affluent capitalist countries other than the USA), and other components of the “social
wage”…affordable housing, public transit subsidies, welfare rights, and so on. The existence of systems
of civil liberties and popular election… gains from previous eras of struggle…also place limits on
capitalist control.

From a social anarchist point of view, the social wage and social services and civil liberties…as gains
of past struggles…are things to be defended, through social movements independent of the state and
political parties.

The Marxist bipolar class analysis tends to favor the view that class oppression is done away with if the
means of production are made public property. Thus in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels advocated
concentration of the means of production, distribution, communications and finance in the hands of the
state.

But this view ignores the internal class structure of the state itself. In the Russian revolution the
Bolsheviks adopted the rather Orwellian term “workers state” for the hierarchical Soviet state that
emerged under Bolshevik Party auspices. The empirical reality was that ordinary workers lacked any
effective means to control what that state did. The Bolsheviks described the Soviet state as a “workers
state” on the basis of an apriori argument: Because the state was controlled by the Bolshevik party and
the Bolshevik party represents the true interests of the working class, it is a “workers state.”

D’Amato quotes Lenin to the effect that “temporary use must be made of the instruments, means and methods
of the state power against the exploiters.” Social anarchists disagree with this Leninist advocacy of a
“proletarian state” — an “authoritarian state” as D’Amato calls it — during a period of transition
to socialism. No such “state power” will have any tendency to “wither away” as Leninists assume.
However, it doesn’t follow that social anarchism is opposed to political power. Here it is necessary to
distinguish the state and government or political governance.

We can think of the polity or governance system of a society as the institution that sets the basic rules
and enforces those rules, and holds the society together as the ultimate arbiter of disputes.

From the social anarchist point of view, the state is only one type of polity or governance system. As
Kropotkin wrote:

“The State has…been confused with government. As there can be no State without government, it is
sometimes said that it is the absence of government, and not the abolition of the State, that should
be the aim….However, the State implies quite a different idea to that of government. It…includes
the existence of a power placed above society but also a territorial concentration and a concentration
of many functions of the life of society in the hands of a few…”(5)

Most libertarian socialists agree that some sort of polity or system of self-government is necessary in
society. Libertarian socialists believe it is possible for institutions of popular power — a form of
polity built up from the direct democracy of assemblies in workplaces and neighborhoods — to replace
the hierarchical state in a self-managed socialist society, or such a society in the process of being
built, without the hierarchical state apparatus.

Marxists sometimes argue that if the working class creates a new polity to replace the state and uses this
polity to engage in coercion, such as against armed attacks on the new social arrangement, this makes the
new governance system necessarily a “state.” But any polity or governance system enforces its rules,
and needs to be able to use coercion, if necessary, against anti-social criminality. Even tribal
societies in ancient times could some times use coercion against wayward individuals. The ability of a
society to defend itself does not require a hierarchical state apparatus rather than a form of
democratic self-governance under direct popular control.

A Tale of Two Soviets

To defend the view that the October 1917 revolution in Russia ushered in a period of “working class power,”
Leninist groups like the ISO often refer to the worker democracy expressed through the soviets, and the fact that
government authority was transferred to the Congress of Soviets in the Russian revolution.

But the main soviets in St. Petersburg (Petrograd) and Moscow were not effectively controlled by workers.
The key St. Petersburg soviet was formed in February 1917 by a group of social-democratic intellectuals,
including three members of the Duma (Russia’s parliament), such as Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer. The
soviet was formed top-down when these members of the “intelligentsia” constituted themselves as the
soviet’s executive committee and sent out a call for election of delegates. Power in the key big city
soviets was concentrated in the executive committee where the real decisions were made. Some decisions
were submitted to the assembled delegates for ratification, but the executive quickly came to treat the
plenaries of delegates as just a rubber stamp. The meetings of the delegates tended to be just an open
space for making speeches, not the real decision-making body.

As Pete Rachleff explains in “Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution6″, the development of
a strong independent shop committee movement in the Russian revolution arose partly due to the inability
of workers to control either the soviets or the highly centralized Russian trade unions. The shop
committees were elected by mass assemblies of workers in the workplaces, and the various workplace
takeovers that happened in the 1917 revolution and into early 1918 were the product of this shop
committee movement, not the soviets.(6)

The soviets set up in this highly top-down manner were established mainly by the Mensheviks, a
social-democratic Marxist party. But when the Bolsheviks gained majorities in these soviets in the fall
of 1917, they simply took over the same top-down structure. They didn’t try to democratize these soviets.
They were concerned about the use of the soviets as a base of party power…a trampoline to jump
themselves into control of the state…not as centers of decision-making by the working class.
Various steps taken by the Bolsheviks in the early months of their government power further weakened
rank and file worker control. For example, a peasant based populist party, the Left Social
Revolutionaries (Left SRs), emerged as the main political tendency supported by the peasantry. The
Russian peasantry were 80 percent of the population. To prevent the Left SRs from gaining a majority
in the Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks “packed” the congress with scores of representatives of
union bureaucracies and other officials…thus violating the soviet principle of direct election of
delegates by the rank and file.

Not all soviets were set up in the highly top-down fashion of the St. Petersburg soviet. Another key
soviet in the Russian revolution was created in early March 1917 in Kronstadt, located on an island
about 20 miles west of St. Petersburg. Kronstadt was (and still is) the home base of the Russian navy’s
Baltic fleet.

The Kronstadt soviet differed from the one in St. Petersburg in that the rank and file delegates were
firmly in control. The deliberation in the plenaries of delegates was real as this was where the real
decisions were made. Power was not centralized in the executive committee, which was there to ensure
decisions of the soviet were carried out.

The Kronstadt soviet was grounded in a system of assemblies in all the workplaces and military units and
warships in Kronstadt. The assemblies met weekly, and elected their own administrative committees.
Workplace assemblies also directly managed their work…the running of the drydock, a sawmill, the
island’s electric power plant, factories making torpedos and dive equipment and so on. Unlike in St.
Petersburg, there was no split between a shop committee movement, rooted in workplace meetings, and the
soviet. Although they controlled their own work, the assemblies had to adhere to the rules decided by
the soviet, but the assemblies also followed debates in the soviet and controlled their delegates, who
were kept on a tight leash…they were elected for only 3-month terms.

In January 1918 the soviet dissolved the old city council in Kronstadt, took over all municipal functions,
and also expropriated all buildings and businesses in Kronstadt….a move that was opposed by the
Bolsheviks, who voted “no.” The Bolsheviks lost this vote because they were a minority in Kronstadt
throughout 1917 and into 1918.

The grassroots democracy in Kronstadt was protected by the political dominance of an alliance of two
libertarian socialist tendencies… the Union of Social Revolutionaries-Maximalists (called “maximalists”)
and the Russian anarchosyndicalists. The maximalists and syndicalists generally worked together in an6
alliance in the Russian revolution…for example the syndicalist/ maximalist alliance was dominant in6
much of the Russian baker’s union.

The libertarian socialists in Kronstadt viewed their form of grassroots government as a model for6
Russia…a model of governance they called a “Toiler’s Republic.” Because this was clearly a form of
government and worker power, it thus refutes the Leninist claim that libertarian socialists are
“against the working class taking political power.”(7)

A variety of conservative and liberal historians say the October 1917 revolution was merely a
“Bolshevik coup d’etat”. This is not accurate. Kerensky’s “provisional government” was never elected
and was very unpopular by October 1917. The transfer of power to the Congress of Soviets was supported
by the Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, syndicalists, maximalists, and most anarchists, as well as the
Bolsheviks. The majority of the Russian population supported this move. Although the libertarian Left
had criticisms of the top down soviets and trade unions, they supported the October revolution because
they believed they would be able to continue to organize for their viewpoint within the workplaces,
unions and soviets. They didn’t anticipate the authoritarian direction of the regime that would begin
to gather force in the spring of 1918.

The top down structure of the soviets reflected the fact that both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks tended to
understand democracy as election of representatives to make decisions for you…a view they took over
from pre-World War 1 social-democracy. The Bolsheviks never advocated for direct, participatory
democracy as a means of working class social empowerment. This is closely related to the unwillingness of
the Bolsheviks to advocate or support workers’ self-management of industry.

Lenin’s November 1917 decree for “workers control” did not advocate workers’ management. The word
“kontrol” in Russian has a weaker meaning that “control” in English. Lenin’s “worker control” decree
merely legalized practices of worker surveillance and restraint on management…vetos on hiring and
firing, forcing management to “open the books” and so on. These were things the workers had already
achieved through direct action.

After Lenin’s decree was published, a regional organization of factory committees in St. Petersburg did
advocate formation of a national congress of the factory committee movement to take over coordination and
planning for the whole national economy. Isaac Deutscher explains what then happened:

“The Factory Committees attempted to form their own national organization, which was to secure their
virtual economic dictatorship. The Bolsheviks now called upon the trade unions to render a special
service to the nascent Soviet State and to discipline the Factory Committees. The unions came out
firmly against the attempt of the Factory Committees to form a national organization of their own.
They prevented the convocation of the planned All-Russian Congress of Factory Committees and demanded
total subordination on the part of the Committees.”(8)

This question was fought out at the first All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions in January 1918. Only the
syndicalist/maximalist alliance defended the idea of using the factory committee movement as a basis for
worker management of the economy. They were defeated by the Bolshevik majority, who were supported on
this point by the Mensheviks.

I have run into members of the ISO who insist that Lenin and Trotsky were advocates of workers’
self-management. In fact the evidence says otherwise. The Bolshevik leaders worked consistently
against direct worker management from October 1917 on. This whole story is laid out in well-researched
detail in Maurice Brinton’s book The Bolsheviks and Workers Control.

Lenin famously wrote in The State and Revolution that “every cook can govern” but that book has very
little information about institutions that would enable the cooks to govern. He says little about
economic management but points to the German post office as a model for socialism. Thus it seems
that the all the cooks and other food service workers are not expected to govern their workplaces…not
if the German post office is the model.

Marxist sociologist Sam Farber writes:

“After October…Lenin’s perspective for the growing self-management movement in Russian factories never
went beyond his…usual emphasis on accounting and inspection ["worker's control"]…The underlying cause
here was not, as some have claimed that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were cynically manipulating the factory
committees and that once the party leaders ‘got power’ they had no more use for them…The key problem
was that Lenin and the mainstream of the Bolshevik Party, or for that matter the Mensheviks, paid little
if any attention to the need for a transformation and democratization of the daily life of the working
class on the shopfloor and community…For Lenin the central problem and concern continued to be the
revolutionary transformation of the central state.”(9)

What was innovative about the Bolshevik party’s role in the Russian revolution is that through their
capture of the state their followed a series of institutional moves and practices that led inexorably to
the consolidation of a coordinator or bureaucratic class, and the continued oppression and exploitation of
the working population.

Centralized state planning for the Soviet economy was begun in November 1917 with the creation of the
Supreme Council of National Economy, which became the Soviet planning agency Gosplan in the late ’20s.
The people on this council were various Bolshevik party members and trade union officials and experts,
all appointed from above.

By 1918 Lenin and Trotsky were beating the drum for the adoption of Taylorist methods in industry and
“one-man management”…appointment of bosses from above. Appointment of bosses from above is consistent
with the logic of central planning. The central planners will want to have people on site in workplaces
that can ensure adherence to the plans handed down from above.

Even election of industry management boards by workers was intensely opposed by Lenin and Trotsky. A
large faction of rank and file Bolshevik trade union members had proposed election of management
boards in early 1921, after the end of the Russian civil war, and this was fought out at the March 1921
party congress. Trotsky argued against it, saying “the party’s birth right to rule takes precedence over
the passing whims of the worker democracy.”

If the party’s “right to rule” isn’t based on the “worker democracy” where does it come from? I think here
the concept of the “vanguard party” comes into play. If you view control by the “vanguard party” as
essential for constructing socialism, then this can become a rationalization for abrogating worker
democracy.

From the libertarian socialist view, what is essential for constructing authentic socialism is the direct
social empowerment of the oppressed and exploited population. This falls directly out of the idea that
the “emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves.” How can this social
empowerment happen if workers are still subordinate to a hierarchical managerial regime?

The idea of the “vanguard party” is that it concentrates certain key kinds of expertise…such as a
correct Marxist theoretical understanding…and is to act as the manager of the process of change. This
concept is a kind of meritocratic ideology, and seems quite consistent with the kind of concentration of
decision-making authority and expertise characteristic of a coordinator class.

The activists in the mainstream of the Bolshevik Party may have been well-intended but often human actions
have unintended consequences. The point here is to see the consequences of the institutional moves and
decisions that fell out of of Bolshevik politics in that situation. This helps us to understand the real
meaning of that politics.

I think an empowered coordinator elite is prefigured by various features of Leninism…hierarchical state
authority, nationalization of the economy, centralized state planning, the ideology of the “vanguard
party.” The consolidation of dominant coordinator class through the Russian revolutionary process is
best explained as the result of these assumptions in Leninist politics.

In The Case for Socialism, Alan Maass — an ISO writer — advocates “democratic planning.” This
is a vague phrase. Most libertarian socialists also advocate something that could be called “democratic
planning.” But is this to be a planning process that is controlled from below, starting in the workplace
and neighborhood assemblies, or is to be central planning, planning through a statist hierarchy? Maass
doesn’t say, but his highlighting Bolshevik practice in the Russian revolution as a model suggests that
“democratic planning” is a euphemism for statist central planning. Perhaps he would say this would be
planning through a “democratic state.” But what is “democratic”? Do working class people in the USA
feel we’re empowered because we can vote every few years for politicians who ignore our concerns?
Democracy is a contested concept and the kind of “democracy” one has in mind is crucial.

Leninists seem to imagine that you can consolidate decision-making power in a state administrative layer
and then expect that they will easily give up power later. But any group that acquires the position of
a dominating class is likely to work to keep their power and privilege and to also develop an ideology
to justify their position…and they can easily call it “socialism”. We have the former Communist regimes
to remind us of this.

Leninist Myths About the Spanish Revolution

D’Amato repeats the usual Trotskyist myth-making about the Friends of Durruti Group in the Spanish
revolution who he describes as follows: “They were a group of revolutionary anarchists who became
critical of the main anarchist trade union group, the CNT, for refusing to take state power even though
they had control in the streets of some of Spain’s biggest cities after a workers’ uprising in 1936 had
successfully thwarted a fascist coup, leaving the bourgeois government still clinging to power.” Of
course, the Spanish anarchosyndicalists would say they were not for “state power.” But, again, this comes
back to the point I made earlier, about how libertarian socialists advocate a form of political power
that isn’t a state.

The CNT (National Confederation of Labor) was Spain’s largest union federation, a massive
anarchosyndicalist organization with more than 2 million members.

Usually Trotskyists say that the anarchosyndicalists didn’t believe in the working class acquiring political
power at all. Thus Geoff Bailey, in the ISO’s journal International Socialist Review, writes: “If
the government were overthrown, however, it would have to be replaced by a workers’ government led by the
CNT-FAI. The anarchists believed such a state would be a dictatorship, a mortal blow to their antistatist
principles.”(10)

In fact the CNT did propose the creation of a working class government (as I will describe shortly).
Moreover, as CNT historian Jose Peirats points out, it was always the view of the Spanish
anarchosyndicalists that “all social power should be in the hands of the proletariat.” The Friends of\
Durruti Group advocated the formation of a workers government, a “Revolutionary Junta.” Trotskyists like
D’Amato and Bailey see this as a break from the position of the CNT.

This is quite wrong. In fact the Friends of Durruti Group were advocating within the rank and file for a
return to the official position of the CNT before it joined the Popular Front government in November 1936.
From the time of the initial defeat of the army in July of 1936 through August there was an intense debate
inside the CNT’s unions in Catalonia on the way forward.

By August the Spanish Communist Party was beating the drum for the construction of a conventional
hierarchical army…the sort of army Trotsky had put together in the spring of 1918 during the Russian
revolution. The Communists had a two-stage strategy of revolution: first gain control of a rebuilt
hierarchical army and police, and later use that to seize power and create a nationalized economy.
In late August revolutionaries in the CNT unions in Catalonia developed a counter-strategy to head off
the Communist Party plan. They got the CNT national union to agree to their plan at a national conference
on September 3, 1936. So what was the September program of the anarchosyndicalists? They had been
calling for a “revolutionary workers alliance” with the UGT for some time. In September the CNT’s program
consisted of essentially three pieces:

• Replacement of the separate party and union militias with a unified people’s militia controlled through a
  National Defense Council made up of CNT and UGT union delegates. This would replace the Republican central
  government. The parliament would be replaced by national and regional worker congresses. The
  Defense Council would not have power over the economy but would be limited to military, police and judicial
  functions.(11)
• Direct management of all industries by the workers in a socialized economy. Seizure of the banks.
  Coordinated planning through the worker congresses.
• Replacement of hierarchical municipal governments by “free municipalities”, based on neighborhood and
  village assemblies, and delegate councils elected from the assemblies for larger towns and cities.
  The CNT proposal for a National Defense Council is the origin of the Friends of Durruti Group proposal
  which they sometimes called a “revolutionary junta.” Junta is just the Spanish word meaning “council” —
  it doesn’t have any authoritarian connotations in Spanish. The executive committees of CNT unions were
  called juntas.

The CNT’s program for a self-managed socialist structure is based on what I would call the “dual
governance” model. This is the idea that decision-making and popular self-management should be rooted
in both the workplace and the community. The “free municipalities” were intended to be both the local
governance body as well as the channel for consumer input, particularly around public goods like housing,
education and health care. At the same time, there would also be worker assemblies in the workplaces
and self-management of industries by the people who work in them.

Now it should be obvious that a structure that can make rules for the society and has enforcement powers
is a polity or government. From the Spanish anarchist point of view, this would not be a state because
of the direct control over the armed militia — the main armed body in society — by the organized
working class, and also because of the transfer of legislative power to the grassroots congresses and
the direct worker management of the economy. The people’s militia would be close to what Engels called a
“self-acting armed body of the population.”

A leading advocate of the National Defense Council program was Buenaventura Durruti, the most popular
elected militia leader in Aragon. Durruti and others in the CNT had been advocating a “revolutionary
workers alliance” with the UGT unions for several years. Geoff Bailey quotes Durruti on the workers’
alliance this way:

“The alliance, to be revolutionary, must be genuinely working class. It must be the result of an
agreement between the workers’ organizations, and those alone. No party, however socialist it may be,
can belong to the workers’ alliance.”

Then, Bailey interprets this as follows:

“Essentially the CNT’s message was, ‘We refuse to unite in struggle with workers who have yet to march
under our banner.”

Now, in fact this is the opposite of what the “workers alliance” proposal was about. It was, after all, a
proposal for an alliance with the socialist UGT unions. And it’s also true that the CNT proposal for
a national defense council was a proposal for representation only of worker organizations, not political
parties.

The character of the government they were proposing is clear if you look at what happened in Aragon, the
one region where they did carry this out. In September of 1936 more than 400 collectivized villages formed
a regional federation and held a congress where they elected an Aragon Regional Defense
Council…essentially a workers’ government. Initially all the elected representatives were members of the
CNT, which had 80 percent of the union members in that region, but later some UGT members were added to
the Council. Although the CNT was dominant in most of the collectivized villages, there were some villages
where the UGT was the majority.

A prominent supporter of the CNT National Defense Council proposal at the time was Eduardo de Guzman,
editor of the CNT’s daily newspaper in Madrid, Castilla Libre. De Guzman described the proposal as

“a proletarian government — total working-class democracy in which all sectors of the proletariat —
but of the proletariat alone — would be represented.”(12)

By excluding the Basque Nationalist Party and the Republican parties, the parties representing Spanish
small business and the professional/managerial classes would be excluded from the government. The various
Marxist parties would be represented through their working class members in the UGT union.

Another prominent supporter of the National Defense Council proposal was Liberto Callejas, managing
editor of the CNT’s big daily paper in Barcelona,Solidaridad Obrera. Most of the journalists on that
paper supported this program, including a disabled journalist named Jaime Balius. Throughout September
and October the writers at Solidaridad Obrera carried out a vigorous campaign in support of the National
Defense Council proposal.

The main group the anarchosyndicalists were hoping to ally with were the left wing of the Socialist
Party — the largest Marxist tendency in Spain to the left of the Communist Party. In the summer of
1936 the Left Socialists were in the leadership of the massive UGT farm workers union and controlled the
national executive committee of the UGT union federation. In months leading up to the onset of the
revolution in Spain in 1936, the Left Socialists had called for a “proletarian revolution” and a
“workers’ government.”

There was already a strong alliance in the countryside between UGT and CNT farm worker unions. The UGT
and CNT railway and public utility unions had jointly seized and expropriated the country’s railway and
utility systems.

At the beginning of September the leading figure among the Left Socialists, Largo Caballero, had just been
made Prime Minister. The UGT union federation incorporated only slightly less than half the organized
working class in Spain. Agreement of the UGT and the Prime Minister to the CNT proposal would have added
greatly to its legitimacy. The two union federations together had the power to implement this change in
the governance structure of Spain. Knowing that Caballero was something of a prima donna, the CNT proposed that
Caballero be made President of the proposed revolutionary government.

But Caballero and the Left Socialist leadership of the UGT refused the CNT proposal. Caballero described
the CNT proposal as a “leap outside the constitution.” Caballero had been strongly warned against the
proposal by the Soviet ambassador in Spain.

This created an internal crisis for the CNT in Catalonia. What would be their solution? According to
Durruti’s biographer, Abel Paz, Durruti proposed a strategy of the CNT unions taking power in the
regions where the CNT was the majority — Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia (the east coast
region of Spain). By creating facts on the ground, Durruti believed it was possible to force Caballero
and the UGT to go along.

Many of the FAI activists among the rank and file leadership level of the CNT in Catalonia apparently
began to waver. Perhaps some thought Durruti’s strategy was too risky. Perhaps others thought being
in control of the industries gave them enough power to pressure the government. Others were worried
about being frozen out of government decisions that would affect their militias and expropriated
industries.

Thus, the CNT union finally joined the Popular Front government in November. Because the CNT
journalists Liberto Callejas and Jaime Balius were totally opposed to joining the Popular Front
government, they were fired.

Callejas and Balius then decided on a strategy of appealing to the rank and file of the CNT, to
re-assert the original anarcho-syndicalist program. This led them to help organize the Friends of Durruti
Group in March 1937. Balius was the main theorist and writer for the Friends of Durruti.

Thus the Friends of Durruti group was not formed to abandon or break with the anarchosyndicalist program
of the CNT, but to organize for its revival among the ranks of the union. The Friends’ program had
three planks:

• A National Defense Junta to run a unified militia.
• Worker self-management of industry
• Control of local governance by the “free municipalities.”(13)

All of these planks were part of the national CNT program in September 1936.

It’s worth noting that the CNT resisted going along with the strategy of uniting through the Popular
Front government longer than any other Left tendency in Spain. The POUM — another Left Marxist
group — was already part of the Popular Front government in Catalonia in July of 1936, the Communist
Party were the strongest advocates for the Popular Front strategy, and the various Socialist Party
factions were onboard the Popular Front by August 1936 at least. Thus the Marxist groups were actually
the main backers of exactly the strategy that the ISO criticizes…rebuilding the Republican state through
the Popular Front. If mistakes by anarchists in the Spanish revolution is an argument against
anarchosyndicalism, why aren’t mistakes of Marxists an argument against Marxism? In fact I would suggest
that the orientation of Marxism to the politics of parties and elections best explains their agreement
to a Popular Front alliance that favored retaining hierarchical state power and protection for the
privileges and position of the Spanish “middle classes.”

But my main point here is to show that the ISO is simply wrong when they say the anarchosyndicalists were
not for working class political power in the Spanish revolution. Again, it’s a question of what working
class empowerment means. For libertarian socialists it does’t mean a political party capturing control
of a state, and then building up an administrative apparatus controlling the economy.

Bailey claims that anarchosyndicalist “apoliticism” meant they abandoned “political struggle.” The word
“apolitical” was used by some syndicalists to refer to the opposition to electoral politics and the
politics of parties and states. It doesn’t mean opposition to direct social governance by the people
themselves or popular politicization or the politics of mass struggle. The revolutionary politics of
the CNT was also a form of politics. Thus the label “apolitical” is misleading…and this is why
social anarchists and anarchosyndicalists no longer use it.

The CNT unions were run through the direct democracy of worker assemblies, and elected committees of
delegados (shop stewards). But the Spanish anarchists also emphasized capacitacion — building among
ordinary people the skills and knowledge needed to participate effectively. Thus the Spanish anarchists
also built a network of neighborhood social centers where a variety of activities took place — study
groups, debates, cultural events, Mujeres Libres (the anarchist women’s organizzation) groups, and so on.
The Spanish anarchists were oriented to organizing in the community and around areas of consumption as
well as in the workplace — as shown by the huge rent strike in Barcelona in 1931. The CNT’s program
of empowering residents of communities through the “free municipalities” falls out of this aspect of
Spanish anarchosyndicalism.

If the anarchosyndicalists had merely organized the unions, various conservative or authoritarian or
bureaucratic tendencies in the working class would tend to gain dominance in the unions over time. The
libertarian socialists could only sustain their influence through popular education and politicization.

Bailey’s article quotes various anarchists about “not wanting to create an anarchist dictatorship” as the
explanation for not overthrowing the government. But this was a justification that was concocted later,
after they had joined the Popular Front government. As a result of that action the CNT was criticized
by anarchosyndicalists in other countries. It was only at this time that the CNT started talking about
“not wanting to create a dictatorship”. It was an after-the-fact justification tailored to appeal to
anarchist sentiments.

Now, it’s true that the CNT in Catalonia could have destroyed the regional Generalitat government of
Catalonia in July, at the time of the defeat of the army takeover attempt. And in his memoir Joan Garcia
Oliver…who argued in July 1936 for overthrowing the Generalitat…mentions that Federica Montseny
argued that trying to carry out the CNT’s libertarian socialist program right then would require an
“anarchist dictatorship.”

First of all, it should be pointed out that Montseny was a Stirnerite individualist whcih would be
likely to prejudice her against any proposal of constructing a social governing power. Secondly,
Garcia Oliver responded to her in the union debate at the time that a takeover of authority in the region
by highly democratic mass union organizations with the backing of a majority of the working class cannot
reasonably be called a “dictatorship.” This debate took place before the widespread seizures of
industry by Spain’s workers, which strengthened the working class sense of potential power.

The debate was argued in front of a union regional plenary of over 500 delegates. At that moment the
outcome of the initial struggle with the army was unclear. And anarchists opposed to overthrowing the
Genreralitat appealed to fear and uncertainty. Friends of Durruti argued later that the success of these
appeals to fear and doubt show insufficient preparation within the CNT movement in thinking about how
to respond to this situation as well as lack of appreciation of the importance of taking advantage of
opportunities. This may be true, but it doesn’t show that their anarchosyndicalist ideology was the
explanation of the failure. Nor did Friends of Durruti believe that it was even though they were
critical of confusions in the thinking of some anarchists.

Moreover, by August Garcia Oliver and other revolutionaries in the CNT had worked out the National
Defense Council proposal, which answered the “anarchist dictatorship” charge by proposing a government
of the entire organized working class, not just the CNT.

Like most libertarian socialists nowadays, I think the CNT’s failure to overthrow the Generalitat when it
had the opportunity was a mistake. And it’s quite possible that a number of the Spanish
anarchosyndicalists were unclear in their thinking, or swayed by fears and risks. Thus the Friends
of Durruti later criticized the CNT for being unable to work up the audacity to make the most of the
opportunities. But, again, this doesn’t show that anarchosyndicalism or libertarian socialism are
opposed to political power, as the ISO maintains. The real issue is about the nature of political
power, the state, and mass empowerment.

Nowadays there are those like John Holloway — a libertarian Marxist writer — who argue it is
possible “to change the world without taking power.” I think this is best understood as a reaction
against the failure of various forms of statist socialism — both social-democracy and Leninism.
But as long as power remains in the hands of the dominating classes, the majority of the population
won’t be free, but will continue to be dominated and exploited. It’s hard to see how the
self-emanicpation of the oppressed and exploited can take place except through gaining control over
the decisions that affect them. And this needs to happen not only in workplaces but through figuring
out a way to evolve goverance of public affairs from the hierarchical state to a form of popular power,
directly controlled by the population. But precisely because liberation requires social empowerment of
the majority, capturing the state isn’t a plausible route as the state is the wrong kind of institution
for popular self-management of public affairs. A different form of polity is needed.

Notes

(1) Quoted in Murray Bookchin, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism, 5-6.

(2) Marxists are often confused on this point. For example, in his new book Envisioning Real Utopias, Erik Olin Wright identifies the Proudhonian strategy as “the anarchist strategy.”

(3) Abad Diego de Santillan, statement from December, 1936, appended to the 1937 addition of After the Revolution, 121.

(4) Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 229-230.

(5) Quoted in Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom, 97.

(6) http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/raclef.htm

(7) Israel Getzler’s book Kronstadt, 1917-21 provides a detailed and concrete history of the Kronstadt soviet.

(8) Quoted in Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, 320.

(9) Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy, 72.

(10) Geoff Bailey, “Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War”, International Socialist Review, July-August 2002. Bailey’s article contains many distortions and errors other than those I mention.

(11) The September 3 Defense Council proposal is discussed in Cesar M. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas y el poder.

(12) Interview with Eduardo de Guzmán, early 1970s, in Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, 186 and 335-336.

(13) Towards a fresh revolution