Anti Organizational Anarchism vs. Effective Insurrections

 

 

It was the organizationalist Love and Rage Federation that popularized the Black Bloc tactic in the United States. The German Autonomist movement originally used the Black Bloc tactic hand in hand with defending squats that were organized in some kind of directly democratic way. The ZAD, even though it is championed by many anti-organizational anarchists, has its own alternative organizations and infrastructure organized through direct assembly. However important clashes with the police have been to defending the ZAD, the ZAD is not reducible to fighting the cops. The most insurrectionary battles in the USA–and throughout the planet– were in large part mediated by alternative institutions.

 

Horizontalist forms of organization have been used in every major libertarian revolutionary movement: from the Paris Commune, to The Free Territory, to anarchosyndicalist Spain, to anarchocommunist Shinmin, to EZLN, to Rojava. There is no historical evidence for an effective revolutionary movement devoid of organizations nor is there evidence for an effective revolutionary movement reducible to the affinity group model of organizing. Libertarian socialism and the organizationalist branch of anarchism are able to show concrete examples of real world victories– however limited such victories are, and however much they made internal mistakes. The relatively new post-left–and the relatively ancient anti-organizational anarchism–have so far been unable to show any kind of comparable victories.

 

Anti-organizationalists tend to demonstrate hubris about the effectiveness of purely anti-organizational approaches to changing the world and the ineffectiveness (or even immorality!) of any kind of formal organizing. If anti-organizationalists want to make such arguments about abolishing the means and ends of all formal organizations, then they better come up with some sufficiently relevant variables that warrant such claims. Given the lack of historical evidence on the anti-organizationalist side, and given the breadth and depth of historical evidence on the side of organizationalism, it is fair to say that the organizational wing of anti statism has more evidence to support its strategy and its vision of a good society.

Formal horizontalist organizations allow people to pool needs, abilities, tools, resources, and action plans on a variety of scales while keeping decision making power within the hands of people directly. Such organizations can interface with the public and advocate for their programs and reach out to people. By reaching out to people, anarchistic practices can become common and popular which helps against state repression. When anti-authoritarian movements are small in size and purely informal, then anarchists become separated from ordinary people, the working class, the dispossessed, and the oppressed and gain less capacity to do actions while being easier to repress by state powers.

Informal organizations and informal relations are necessary but insufficient for exhaustively encompassing a coherent revolutionary strategy. It is not the organizationalists who claim that formal and informal organization are incompatible. The anti-organizational wing of anti statism makes arguments for abolishing all formal organizations, whereas the organizational wing of anti statism do not make arguments for abolishing all informal organizations. Rather than adding some new strategy to anarchism, anti-organizationalism subtracts organizational and socialist dimensions of anarchism. Anti-organizational anarchism reduces a coherent diversity of tactics to informality, periodic actions, and perpetual unpopularity.

 

The affinity group is the preferred model of organizing for the informalists. Yet the affinity group model has shown to be most resilient when it interfaces with a broader movement that involves formal organization and when affinity groups themselves tend towards a degree formality, spokescouncils, and collective decisions. Furthermore, it has often been the libertarian socialist wing of anti statism that has utilized affinity groups in the most insurrectionary ways; just look at the Iberian Anarchist Federation. The anti-democratic wing of anarchism contradict their own principles when they support affinity groups given that most every anarchistic affinity group involves collective decisions without ruling classes and therefore operates via democracy of some kind or another.

Towards Leadership without Rulership

05/02/18

Leninists and anarchists often conflate leadership with rulership. Leninists want leadership in the mode of rulership. Anarchists often want a lack of leadership altogether. Rulership is a form of authoritarian or arbitrary rule rooted in centralized forms and/or content of decisions that violate what should be minimal rights that people have.

 

Marxist-Leninists often conflate any kind of leadership with authoritarianism. Marxists-Leninists point out with precision that anarchists often refuse any kind of leadership in an attempt at purity. Even though Marxist-Leninists correctly diagnose a problem of leaderlessness in some anarchistic movements, they propose a kind of leadership rooted in centralized forms–from political parties to political economic bodies–that make policy over and above (and rule over and above) people and workers as an attempted transition towards common ownership of the means of production and a moneyless, stateless, classless society (a development that such means have no once developed). Such a centralist move functions more as a way of quashing ideals/practices/revolutions worth fighting for–and prescribing leadership to do so–rather than bringing forward principled leadership to principled movements. Such a Marxist-Leninist move sidesteps how leadership can work without rulership in favor of a form of political economic rulership that is not worth fighting for–and is at best a lesser evil compared to something even worse.

 

As we can see in the philosophical anarchist approach–found in the philosophies of Godwin, Rocker, and Chomsky–not all authority is justified, the burden of proof is on authority to be justified, authority can rarely meet such a burden of proof, and when it cannot meet such a burden of proof it should be dismantled. Bakunin has a similar but different conception of justified authority; Bakunin advocates for respecting expertise, going to multiple experts, and making up one’s own mind for oneself about who to agree with. These classic anarchist notions point towards a flexible yet skeptical take on leadership which differs drastically from advocates of structurelessness.

 

The most coherent praxes of classical anarchism focused on various formal organizations such as communes, cooperatives, trade unions, and affinity groups in the mode of struggle towards creating common ownership of the means of production and social freedom more broadly. In such horizontalist forms people make decisions together–in free association bounded by non hierarchical limits–and participatory implementation is done by individuals and collectives. We ought to find forms of leadership that are in harmony–and conducive to– non hierarchical relations. Leadership can take the form of taking initiative. Leadership can take the form of proposing ideas. Leadership can take the form of being the first to deliberate. Leadership can take the form of dissenting. Leadership can take the form of implementing decisions made by the base. Leadership can take the form of going first. Leadership can the form of mandated and recallable non-authoritarian roles (such as secretary, facilitator, notetaker, treasurer etc). Leadership can take the form of expertise. Libertarian socialists should create a form, content, and strategy for different kinds of leadership in harmony with their values rather than let leadership be the monopoly of hierarchs.