In Britain, during the recent protests over taxes on petrol it was interesting to see how papers such as the Sun and Daily Mail became quite keen on the ‘direct action’ undertaken by hauliers, farmers, and cab drivers. When a man appeared on TV saying, "I’ve never been on a picket line before, mind you, I’ve driven through plenty", there was a hint as to why the right-wing press liked such ‘militancy’, and why Tory leader, William Hague saluted them as "fine, upstanding citizens."

Workers always foot the bill

As with any other social question, the fuel protests can only be understood in the framework of the struggle between different classes trying to defend their different interests. When it comes to the fuel blockade, the first idea to knock on the head is that those involved were ‘workers’ (an idea most notably put forward by the Sun). Although engaged in different parts of the economy, the one thing that the protesters had in common was that they did not depend on waged labour but were self-employed, the owners of small businesses, what marxists call the petit-bourgeoisie. They are not part of the ruling bourgeoisie, not part of the exploited proletariat, but also not capable of acting independently of the two main classes in capitalist society, except for impotent actions such as terrorism.

It has been well established that the oil companies made no effort to distribute petrol. This is despite their past records where they have made every effort to keep petrol stations supplied during any circumstances, particularly during workers’ struggles. The example of the miners’ strike of 1984-5 is the best known of many. In the present case the refinery bosses didn’t seek police help; they didn’t sue or press injunctions against anyone. On the contrary, the fuel protesters were actually allowed to use buildings in refineries to hold meetings. Such courtesy is, of course, never extended to workers in struggle!

The reason that the oil companies were happy for the protests to take place is that a reduction in duty on petrol would potentially be a boost for their profits, either through increases in sales at a lower price, or sales at the same price where a higher proportion goes to the oil company.

Fuel protests have taken place in many parts of Europe, regardless of the different levels of petrol tax. There have also been a variety of different responses by the different governments. Some have made concessions, some delayed taking action and some refused to acknowledge any demands. For workers it is important to recognise that there is no government response that can be in workers interests. Every government wants revenue. If it cuts one tax it will either have to find the funds elsewhere, or cut services somewhere. Either way it is the working class that will suffer, either through the loss of a state-funded service, or through a new tax arrangement that will fall on workers one way or another. It’s the same with oil prices. Small businesses might complain at their fuel costs, but increases always get passed onto the consumer, most of whom are workers. As with taxes, when prices fluctuate, it is always the working class, which has to play the bill, as capitalists, big or small, defend their interests.

The working class still exists

The fuel crisis has brought to the surface some real tensions between different parts of the bourgeoisie, but what they all have in common is the desire to mystify the working class.

In opposition to all the propaganda about the ‘fine upstanding’ protesters, some of the unions and the left have all but labelled them as agents of fascism. John Monks of the TUC gave the example of the truckers in Chile in 1973 who, as he saw it, had played their role in ushering in the Pinochet regime. The reason for such talk of ‘right wing plots’ is to try and get workers to rally round the Labour government and the British capitalist state. Bill Morris of the TGWU gave valid examples of collusion between fuel protesters and the oil companies, and then proceeded to complain that the police hadn’t done enough to break up blockades or prevent slow moving convoys. Again, here is the attempt to get workers to identify with the repressive capitalist state of their class enemies.

Also participating in the hymns of praise for the state have been the various leftist groups. Typically demanding that the oil companies be nationalised, so that the profits of the oil companies can be used for cheap, decent transport, they are asking workers to put their confidence in the capitalist state that is the central instrument of the ruling class’s domination.

What all the elements in the fuel protests campaign had in common was the way they attempted to convince the working class that it doesn’t exist. The farmers and hauliers were presented as heroic figures that could bring the country to a halt, and maybe even get cheaper petrol for everyone. The protests were put forward as though they were a real force, in comparison to the workers’ strikes in the past that had ‘never achieved anything’. The working class was asked to see itself as just a lot of consumers, who take their place in queues for petrol, as individuals alongside members of the petit-bourgeoisie and other social strata.

While the right champions the petit-bourgeoisie, as a way of hiding the role of the oil companies, the left champions the state, whether Bill Morris and its repressive arm, or the leftists and their proposals for an increased role for the state in the economy. While divided in their rhetoric, they are united in their concern that workers should never have a consciousness of their class position within capitalism, and that the working class can only advance its interests with a struggle that is independent of other classes. When workers fight they will find that hauliers will try to get through workers’ picket lines, and that the capitalist state has police and an army to defend the interests of the exploiters against the struggle of the working class.

Car, 25/09/00.

What is a marxist party like the German Communist Workers Party of the 1920s (the KAPD), a sympathising party of the Third International, doing on an anarchist family tree? "The positive legacy of the left/council communists must be their theoretical breakthroughs in their analysis of the Trade Unions and parliamentary democracy and in their understanding of the centrality of working class self-organisation in the revolutionary project." ('In the tradition, Part 1', Organise 52, Winter '99/'00)

We read this in a continuing history by an English anarchist group, the Anarchist Federation, which includes the Communist Left (1), amongst others, in an attempt to trace its roots. It may seem strange that anarchists, who, particularly over the last ten years, have been joining in the deafening media chorus that equates Stalinism with communism, and marxism with the gulag, are now finding marxists to identify with. But anarchist attempts to associate itself with marxism, or, claims to have married marxism with the eternal ideals of anarchism have been going on for the past 150 years of the workers movement. When Bakunin declared himself a disciple of Marx and the Ist International (before stabbing both in the back), he was not the last of an ignoble tradition.

More recently, with the current vogue for a ‘new revolutionary movement’, syntheses of anarchism and marxism are being proclaimed anew (see International Review 102 [2] ‘Is it possible to reconcile anarchism and marxism?’) Some might say that we left communists should be grateful for these anarchist compliments to our political ancestors, and encourage reconciliation between all those who are against the capitalist system.

Without wanting to seem bad mannered, we don’t believe it is possible to defend the political positions and activity of left communism within an anarchist perspective.

Without marxism left communism is impossible

Of course these anarchists don’t defend the left communists as part of the marxist tradition, within which the left communists saw and still see themselves. Nor do they defend all of the left communists (no mention is made of the Italian Communist Party led by the left around Amadeo Bordiga in the 1920s). They rather defend the minority of ‘good’ marxists against the majority of ‘bad’ ones: "The vast majority of marxists (social democrats, Leninists) have paid lip service to the motto of the First International." (Organise, 52).

In fact the conviction that communism is the self-liberation of the working class emerges with marxism, not with anarchism. While Marx and Engels and the Communist League were elaborating the historical and economic existence and objectives of the working class in the 1840s, one of the forefathers of anarchism, Max Stirner, would only recognise the self-liberation of the ego. Pierre Joseph Proudhon, another early figure of anarchism, counselled against strikes and political action by workers. While Bakunin declared himself for collective action and class struggle, his real level of adherence to the motto of the Ist International was limited as, in practice, he fostered a conspiracy of a hierarchical elite, and tried to destroy the International.

The AF follow in these illustrious footsteps, because, for them, in reality, the working class as a historic class with common political aims doesn’t exist, it is instead a vehicle along with others of the eternal principles of anarchism: "If we as Anarchist Communists still see the working class movement as decisive it is not because of its supposed capacities as an emancipatory class but because workers are those who produce the wealth and are at the heart of the mechanism of production of capital." How can the working class emancipate itself if it is not an ‘emancipatory class’: a class with brawn but no brain?

We can agree with AF that the anarchists have never betrayed the motto of the 1st International, because they only ever understood it as a code for the unlimited freedom of the individual. Loyalty to this abstraction poses no problem because it can never have any contact with reality. Kropotkin, the ‘anarcho-trenchist’, or the French anarchist CGT could support the proletarian slaughter in the First World War, the Spanish CNT could join a capitalist government in 1936, but the principles remain inviolate.

Anarchism can’t defend the left communist legacy

The political positions that the AF supposedly admire in the left communists therefore could only come from the marxist movement, its acquisitions and the lessons of its mistakes.

Dictatorship of the proletariat

The AF say that they prefer the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ to the dictatorship of the party. But, seeing as this fundamental understanding of the workers’ movement does not appear in the AF’s ‘Aims and Principles’ or in their ‘Manifesto for the Millennium’, it is reasonable to suppose that this is ‘lip service’ and that, in reality, they retain basic anarchist prejudices against this essential political action. The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is an expression that encapsulates the main objective of the working class on its road to liberation: the seizing of political power and the smashing of the old state machine and the political suppression of the bourgeoisie.

Substitutionism and parliamentarism

The KAPD made a critique of the substitutionist conception of the party. If they criticised ‘leadership politics’ it wasn’t out of anti-authoritarianism, but because at the time in the early 1920s this phrase meant the parliamentarism of the Social Democracy and the subjection of the membership and the workers to the opportunism of the parliamentary caucus. The KAPD were for the proletarian political party acting as a vanguard of the working class. Not in parliament: but in the workers’ councils. They argued that the historical conditions and the experience of the working class demanded a revision of the social democratic conception of the party, and a rejection of the fight for reforms through parliament that in an earlier time could strengthen the proletariat (which anarchists abstained from).

The anarchist objection to parliament and substitutionism is a moral and eternal one, related to their anxiety over ‘authority’, although in practice, as we will see below, anarchists have often fallen into electoralism. But they are also against any party, which includes the KAPD, that intends to be the vanguard of the working class.

But if, according to the AF, the working class is not ‘emancipatory’ by itself, then revolutionary consciousness must of necessity come from outside this class and act in its place. Anarchism is no stranger to substitutionism as the history of ‘propaganda by the deed’ demonstrates.

Trade unions

Nor have the AF based themselves on the theoretical breakthroughs of the KAPD on the unions. After stating that the unions can’t be revolutionary organs, the seventh AF principle of its ‘Aims and Principles’ reads: "....we do not argue for people to leave unions until they are made irrelevant by the revolutionary event. The union is a common point of departure for many workers. Rank and file initiatives may strengthen us in the battle for anarchist-communism. What’s important is that we organise ourselves collectively, arguing for workers to control struggles themselves."

The KAPD was implacably opposed to the existing unions (and called for workers to leave them) not because they were non-revolutionary, which was true in the 19th century, but because the decadence of capitalism had turned them into counter-revolutionary weapons of the state against working class struggle. The trade unions could say of AF’s ‘opposition’ to them: ‘who needs friends when you have ‘enemies’ like this?’.

Organisation

The theoretical coherence of left communism can only be defended by a coherent unified organisation. In contrast this is the anarchist view of organisation taken from a statement by the ACF (forerunner of the AF) in a dispute with others about prisoner support: "as a non-hierarchical federation of anarchist communists we work together in solidarity but we cannot order what our members do like a Leninist party would. So, if on the one hand an individual member wants to give unconditional support to a prisoner while another gives other prisoners higher priority or refuses to support a particular prisoner that is up to them....[x]’s fight for freedom ....and neither you nor we can compel them to say why. Freedom not to speak is as much a basic tenet of the free society as intimidation and coercion to tell all is of the police state." (Organise, 51).

On that basis a member of the ACF is free to state that they are not supporting. In other words every one does what they want. Not only that: everyone has the right not to justify it to their comrades. No solidarity can be constructed in such an organisation, no one can rely on anyone else: there are no obligatory rules that everyone voluntarily adheres to. The abstract principle of individual freedom is used against the collective solidarity that unity demands. The demand for transparency, without which real common action and clarity is impossible, is equated with the repression of the police state.

The only glue that can keep such an organisation together is that of friendship, which creates an informal hierarchy of its own and reduces the platform to window dressing.

Roots in leftism

AF’s real roots are not in left communism, or even partially in it, but in leftism, the radical wing of the capitalist left. They describe it themselves in an earlier history of the origins of their organisation. (Organise! No. 42, Spring 1996). They emerged from the debacle of the various anarchist communist organisations of the 1970s, who entered almost en masse into Trotskyist groups. In 1974 most of the Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists "ended up in the horrific authoritarian Healyite outfit, the Workers Revolutionary Party, whilst others joined IS (the precursor of the Socialist Workers Party)" (p17).

The remains of the ORA then formed the Anarchist Workers Association in 1975, but in 1977 an overtly leftist tendency expelled the others and reformed as the Libertarian Communist Group which later entered an electoral front with the Trotskyist International Marxist Group called Socialist Unity. The latter put forward the slogan: ‘Vote Labour, but Build a Socialist Alternative’. Eventually the LCG fused with another leftist group Big Flame in 1980, which dissolved when its members entered the Labour Party. The AF was formed from veterans of the ORA/AWA/LCG and a split from the SWP that produced the magazine ‘Virus’.

The degree to which the AF has broken with its leftist past can be measured by their position on the trade unions that is virtually indistinguishable from the typical leftist approach.

The degree to which it really adheres to left communist traditions, and the sincerity of its motives for claiming to do so, can be understood by its implacable hostility to left communist organisations. In the case of the ICC, for example, the ACF once wrote to us to say that we were not ‘welcome’ at their meetings. So while they claim that "theoretical diversity has been a strength in our movement" and "we believe debate is vital" (Beyond Resistance) (2), this does not include the threat of left communists intervening at their meetings.

Anarchism doesn’t have any independent history. Its eternal principles - liberty, equality, fraternity - originally borrowed from the bourgeoisie, recognise no historical context, and no grounding in the maturation of an historic class. It originally expresses the instability of the radical petit-bourgeoisie that looks uncertainly to an imaginary future, while harking back to a nostalgic golden age.

The history of the twentieth century shows that anarchism is quite capable of reconciling itself with the left wing of capital, but organically incapable of recognising the theoretical acquisitions of the workers’ movement that are defended by the marxists of the communist left. The AF tries to claim the KAPD as part of the heritage of anarchism. This attempt at misrepresenting the contribution of part of the communist left marks out the parasitism of the AF in relation to the revolutionary political organisations of the working class.

Como

Note

1) The term Communist Left comes from the 1920s when this trend was part of a larger movement: the Communist International. Today the rest of this movement has long since passed into the camp of capital, but the historical name remains to identify our current.

2) Beyond Resistance, a Revolutionary Manifesto for the Millennium. "The emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself.", whilst acting to negate it in practice. "Despite all manner of confusions, tactical dead-ends and betrayals, the revolutionary anarchists have remained loyal to it...[the KAPD] rejected the idea of ‘leadership politics’, called for the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the party, and opposed the idea of ‘injecting’ consciousness into the working class from the outside...." (Organise! No. 52)

The crisis of capitalism is making living conditions worse for virtually everyone, causing a great deal of anger among workers and other sections of the population. This growing discontent has been channelled into a number of protest demonstrations. In particular we have seen the ‘anti-capitalist’ demonstrations outside the World Economic Forum in Melbourne and the World Bank and IMF in Prague; the opposition protests against Milosevic in Serbia; and the blockades of oil refineries in Britain and various European countries.

These are the images of struggle presented to the working class for the 21st century. Socialist Worker, other Trotskyist organisations and some left wing Labour figures are particularly enthusiastic about the Prague anti-globalisation protests. But how do they measure up to the real needs of the class struggle in the coming period?

‘Anti-globalisation’: an ideology that serves national capitalism

The Melbourne and Prague protests, with their echo in cities around the world, claim to be internationalist and anti-capitalist. The rationale of these demonstrations is the myth of globalisation, which blames multinational companies and organisations such as the IMF for all the effects of the capitalist crisis today. The truth is that capitalism - which actually became a global system around a hundred years ago - is fundamentally based on competition between national units. The strongest economic powers, particularly the US, but also Japan and the most industrialised European states, are able to impose trade tariffs on imports and demand free trade for their exports, getting the best for themselves and pushing the worst effects of the crisis onto their weaker competitors. The IMF and WTO are among the forums in which this takes place, functioning either as tools of the most powerful capitalist states or as battle grounds for their rivalries.

To focus anger at the effects of capitalism onto the IMF, WTO and World Bank, or onto the multinational companies, inevitably means turning to the nation state for protection, in other words turning to the most important weapon of capitalist rule. For instance when Naomi Klein, author of ‘No Logo’ told the counter-summit in Prague "the directors of the IMF want governments to slash taxes, to privatise and to deregulate in the interests of the multinational corporations" (Socialist Worker 30 Sept) she was asking us to support national government and nationalised industry against foreign private capital. But all capitalist bosses, local or multinational, private or state, exploit the working class. And they all do so according to the conditions imposed by the world market.

Support for bourgeois democracy

Last November, the running battles with the police in Seattle were held up as the example of ‘anti-capitalist’ struggle. This time there has been much more concentration on the need for democracy.

The power of the multinationals and of the IMF and World Bank comes in for much criticism because these bodies are unelected. We even read denunciations of "corporate tyrannies" (Socialist Review October 2000).

The implication of this is that we should rely on our elected governments to protect us from these expressions of global capitalism. But government policy is based on the needs of national capital, not ‘public opinion’.

Democracy is also the main issue in the Serb opposition demonstrations for Milosevic to go, after Kostunica won the majority of votes in the election. After ten years of war and crisis the reasons for the discontent are obvious, but the situation of the working class in Serbia will not be determined by the removal of one man, but by the development of the world crisis and particularly of the imperialist conflicts in the Balkans.

In other words, whether in a ‘democracy’, like Britain, or an ‘authoritarian’ regime like Serbia, government policy cannot depend on ‘public opinion’ and the result of elections. In the sophisticated democracies the state has many means of manipulating public opinion through media, polls and focus groups in order not to leave the results of elections to chance. This is much more effective than Milosevic’s crude vote-rigging.

The issue of democracy is key to the integration of ‘anti-globalisation’ and ‘anti-capitalism’ into the service of the capitalist state. Tony Benn, is worried that "people who looked to the Labour and trade union movement for an alternative now find there is no alternative offered through the party system." He goes on to make globalisation an alibi for this: "The leaders of all parties have recognised that the power of international capital is so great that if you are going to be re-elected you have to come to terms with it." (Socialist Review October 2000). Anti-globalisation can revitalise the democratic mystification, for instance in the activities of Ralph Nader, a former consumer spokesman, in the current US elections, or the ‘Socialist Alliances’ of various leftist groups: "the protest movement must acquire an electoral dimension. That has begun to happen - with the Nader campaign in the US and Socialist Alliances in Britain" (Mike Marqusee of the London Socialist Alliance, Socialist Review October 2000).

The attempt to pull the working class into this campaign

The campaigns about globalisation and reviving democracy are also aimed at dissolving the working class into atomised citizens, divorced from their position as a class collectively exploited at the heart of production. This is where the working class is strongest, and where its struggles can never be eradicated. Even today, when the working class struggle is in an extremely difficult situation, the ruling class knows the imp ruling class knows the importance of developing campaigns that try to weaken that struggle.

It is making every effort to confuse the working class with campaigns about the various ‘popular protests’ going on, and where possible to associate workers to them.

The media thus portrayed the fuel blockades, really a protest by small bosses, as part of the tradition of British protest, mixing everything up from the peasants’ revolt to the miners’ strike (see p.3). Socialist Worker had already called on workers in Britain to follow the example set by the French fishermen.

Various leftist writers are portraying the struggle of the working class as some sort of appendage to the anti-globalisation protests, with Socialist Worker enthusing about support for the Prague demonstrations by a UNISON delegation and various local union branches. Workers’ Liberty explicitly wants campaigns "geared to specific workers’ struggles" and welcomes the American union federation, the AFL-CIO, jumping on the bandwagon (July 2000).

Yet despite all these attempts to tie the working class to these campaigns, ‘popular protests’ do not express the interests of the working class. They leave it on the side-lines, create confusion and decrease its confidence in itself and in its ability to struggle.

The working class can only become a real force when it stands up for its own independent interests, distinct from those of other classes. And this is the only way it can provide a perspective for all the social layers which are oppressed by capitalism, but which cannot wage an autonomous struggle against it.

Above all, the workers, who, as Marx said, have no country, can have no interest whatever in defending ‘our’ country’s national interests against a supposedly ‘supranational’ capitalism. On the contrary, the struggle against capitalism begins with the struggle against ‘our own’ bosses; it develops as a struggle for workers’ interests against the sacrifices demanded by the ‘national interest’; and it ends in the overthrow of the nation state and the creation of a world wide communist society.

WR, 30/9/00.