Anarchism on the periphery: struggle under emigration and war

Nov

11

2024

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From Pramen

This text was written by a small group of Russian anarchists. We are not in Russia and are actively engaged in revolutionary struggle in another country.In this article we examine the current situation of the anarchist movement in the Russian Federation and in emigration, draw conclusions about its readiness for revolutionary events, and share our thoughts on what should be done now.

Today Russian anarchist movement is in bad situation. But this is not a reason to give up, quite the contrary. There are advantageous circumstances in all difficult situations, and we must use them. Right now the Russian emigration has such an opportunity.We are convinced that revolution in Russia is possible and necessary. The anarchist movement must participate in taking down the regime and join processes of social changes under political regimes that will come after.

Without a strong movement we won’t be able to act in a coherent and organized way in upcoming revolutionary events. We do not consider success of anarchism in the post Soviet countries possible without anarchist organizations – above-ground and social, combat and underground. That’s why in this text we are calling for creation of organizations, making it possible to shape a united and coherent movement that can rise to the challenge of our times.

We consider it necessary to analyse Russian political emigration and seek to draw useful lessons from it. Our analyses are not complete and focus on only a few aspects that are important to us specifically. In the process of these reflections we make critical remarks, with the aim of motivating those people who will find what is expressed in this text interesting and important. We are writing primarily for people from Russia. We see the need for greater unity in the anarchist movement, the need for organised struggle and internationalism as a revolutionary tradition. This text aims to share this vision.

We realise that the idea of “revolutionary struggle”, as well as many of the other formulations we use, may be unclear and seem unrelatable to everyday reality for many of the readers of this text, our close friends, and even for those with whom we share this very struggle. We believe that it is essential to define for ourselves this idea, its concept and meaning. We need to envision ourselves in it and draw conclusions for our lives and priorities. This is a basic component and a first step for personal and collective orientation in current events if we are to not only understand them, but actively participate in them as an anarchist movement. So despite any discomfort you may have in reading this, we ask you to focus on the essence of what’s written, and encourage you to engage in discussion about it.

Another important concept for us is BUR (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia). Although this abbreviation may seem outdated or even problematic, we find it quite appropriate in view of the Russian Federation’s imperial project and its implications for Belarus and Ukraine.

Anarchism and the global crisis

The third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is just around the corner, and it has been 10 years since the war began. This war is shaking up geopolitical maps, changing military doctrines, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, bringing to the fore the crimes of the Putin regime and the bravery of the Ukrainian people in the face of such a threat. At the same time, Israel is wiping Gaza off the face of the Earth, invading Lebanon, while other long-smouldering military conflicts in the Middle East and beyond are escalating. The current state of affairs on the peripheries of empires and former colonies gives us clear clues about possible future scenarios. The number of wars will increase, militarisation will grow, and more and more people will be pushed out of their lands, doomed to dehumanisation, to the position of a migrant labour force, banging against the deaf walls of the visa fortresses of first-world countries in an attempt to gain legal status for their families.

In the dystopian future thus envisioned, anarchist ideas grow more relevant, not less. Other ideas of social organisation that do not strive for radical direct democracy, equality, the elimination of human oppression and the cessation of the destruction of the planet have already proven to be untenable and disastrous. Nevertheless, the current of projects for a free society are not in their strongest at the moment.

Where are we, anarchists, in this global picture? A significant part of the anarchist movement in Belarus and Russia is currently in exile. In trying to generalise and understand its situation, we can outline some thoughts that we hope can help us to overcome the current state of the anarchist movement. Since we ourselves have come out of the context of internal Russian colonialism, our understanding of Belarusian emigration is based only on our comrades’ retelling of experiences and observation of their external work, so we will concentrate on what we have seen with our own eyes and about which we have a better understanding.

Challenges, losses and hopes

Confrontation at the Bolotnaya square in Moscow. May 6th 2012

The situation in which anarchism in BUR finds itself is a difficult one. Over the last fifteen years the movement has experienced a series of defeats: the failure of the protests in Russia in the early 2010s; the ousting of the organised anarchist force from the Maidan in Ukraine and the rise to power of a new elite; the effective repression of the anarchist movement in Russia and Belarus that put dozens of people behind bars; the defeat of the protests and uprising in Belarus in 2020; the failure of the anti-war resistance in Russia in 2022 that led to the exodus of thousands of politically active people and the imprisonment of hundreds. As a movement we have lost and continue to lose comrades: deaths in battle or on the streets, suicides, imprisonment. But internal factors also play a role, for example, disillusionment: with many leaving in search of another way of fulfilment in life, or with the many crises of relationships within the movement, including interpersonal violence, incidents of which often remain unresolved. However, these problems are not unique to our context; they are found in all human communities. At the same time, one can clearly see hope and the will to change: lessons from the past are analysed and discussed, mistakes are worked on, comrades in prison are supported, and the memory of those who died in battle is cherished. Prisoners and the fallen remind us of the need to continue the struggle and to strive for the development of the movement.

Anarchist partisans. Ihar Alinevich, Dmitry Dubovsky, Dmitry Rezanovich, Sergey Romanov

Azat Mikhtakhov, an anarchist and a mathematician from Moscow

We want to particularly emphasise the significance of the Russian war in Ukraine for anarchist movements in BUR, because it is an event that has disrupted the usual order. The diversity of views on Ukrainian comrades’ participation in the war exposed many problems in the understanding of anarchism. Narrow ideological views and dogmatism of some parts of the international movement has led to criticism of the Ukrainian movement and the groups that support it in the struggle while real war is taking place in Ukraine, in which thousands of people, including our comrades, are dying. The Ukrainian experience is extremely important and relevant: the work of the Solidarity Collectives, the organisation of the Anti-Authoritarian Platoon https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ilya-leshiy-four-months-in-an-an..., the continuation of activities under the conditions of military invasion should serve as examples for us, and not become occasions for attacks.

Now the anarchist movement in BUR is small in number and is represented in several spheres: political prisoners and their support in Belarus ABC-Belarus and Russia Solidarity Zone, armed resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) under the emblem of the Resistance Committee and the activities of Solidarity Collectives, the partisan movement (Combat Organisation of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK), and the anarcho-partisans now in detention and Black Nightingales), collectives and projects engaged in diverse work (Antijob, Akrateia, DIAna, Black Square, Only Ourselves, as well as emigration (Pramen, Egalite), book publishing and media Avtonom.org. There are also many people who sympathise with anarchist ideas but for one reason or another do not find a place in existing organised activity.

Anarchists at the front of resistance to Russian invasion

It is also worth noting that the position of the anarchist movement in Russia is of key importance not only for Russian anarchists, but also for Belarusian and Ukrainian comrades. Lukashenko’s dictatorial regime is completely dependent on Putin’s regime, and the stability of the latter guarantees the preservation of the former, just as the continuation of the war in Ukraine is directly connected with the unleashed ambitions of the Russian top brass. The failures and setbacks of the Russian anarchist movement, the inability to organise the struggle in such a way as to significantly destabilise the influence of the empire in Belarus and Ukraine, constrain the potential actions of comrades there. There is a good article about this relationship by Pramen.

A moment from uprising in Belarus. 2020

The problem and potential of emigration

Anarchists from BUR found themselves quite often in European countries before 2022: they escaped repression, went away to study or work, crossed the borders of states through mountains and forests to establish connections and organize activities in foreign countries. Now it is a more mass phenomenon. The main waves of emigration from Russia took place in the spring and autumn of 2022, with the overwhelming majority of those who left going to nearby Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan. The first two countries became havens for the majority of anarchists, leftists, liberals and less politically determined people. Over time, various projects and initiatives came to be realised there, and the community itself formed enclaves of sorts, without building strong ties with local movements. Unfortunately, this emigration can most easily be characterised as problematic from an economic, political and cultural point of view. The former Soviet republics are still bearing the consequences of colonisation by the Russian Empire and the USSR, a tradition which Russia continues today by maintaining its influence in these countries. The waves of Russian emigration brought with them not only political dissidents who were unable to continue living under the regime’s already open aggression and repression. With them came unexamined colonial culture, metropolitan consumerism in the service sector, rising prices and other problems affecting the places that received them. This could be described as a new spontaneous and often unconscious colonisation of territories already occupied by Russian culture and economy. This is important to keep in mind when talking about the new Russian emigration, which in scale and meaning has been compared to the emigration of Soviet dissidents during and after the Russian Revolution. Back then, the routes were mainly to Western Europe and the United States, and the emigrants were in a different position in relation to the local cultures of the “first world” countries.

Anarchists at the demonstration in support of Ukraine in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Approaching the scale to a more familiar reality and taking a closer look, we can say that the mood in emigrant anarchist circles and projects in Georgia and Armenia seems ambiguous and the general situation is precarious. In all of this we can note a tendency: many people are feeling rather depressed. Apart from despondency and a lack of will to act, there are cases of suicide and many people struggle with mental health. This is influenced by the difficult financial situation, problems with addictions and irresponsible drug use, a constant search for funds, lack of confidence in the future and lack of any prospects. These factors are further aggravated by the serious problem of interpersonal violence and frequent conflicts within small communities. It should be noted that these problems existed and were quite widespread in the anarchist milieu even before emigration. Expectedly, these problems came along with the people from this milieu, and were further complicated by the insularity of emigrant groups in the new environments of unfamiliar countries. However, there is also a constructive tendency in these communities, for example, to explore conflict resolution mechanisms and approaches to justice. Some parts of the expatriate anarchist community work hard in this direction, and devote a lot of energy to supporting friends in difficult situations. This work often coincides with the labour of reflecting on the influence of patriarchy in the community and dealing with its various consequences.

The instability is also seen in the frequent movement of people from one project to another, as they try to find something that gives meaning, but at the same time does not encroach on personal comfort. Nevertheless, there is no idea what to do with life. Usually communities provide stability, collectivity and some kind of support. Not finding this, people naturally follow learned individualistic and atomised modes of existence. In this case, values such as struggle, comradeship and organisation are not readily understood. In our movement right now it is even hard to talk about a strong ethical foundation as an expected minimum for everyone. But if this is so, then what are the defining values now? Personal financial success, a certain level of comfort and an excessive focus on partnerships come to the fore. Because of this, one often sees resistance to anything that requires giving up much of this comfort to which the capitalist system has accustomed us. The core value in this context is individualism. It allows us to think of ourself as an independent unit, separate from other people and the world around us. This thinking orientates a person first of all to organise his or her own life in isolation from other people and to be unwilling to see themself as a part of something bigger in a global perspective.

Here we see one of the tasks of any revolutionary movement: to give reason and motivation to voluntarily sacrifice comfort and belief that it is not for nothing. Because we see that even with the full-scale war in Ukraine and the deaths of hundreds of thousands, relatively few people in the politically conscious part of the Russian population found reasons to sacrifice their comfort and fight against the regime.

A particular phenomenon felt in Georgia and Armenia, but also present in European emigration, is the artistic milieu from Moscow and St. Petersburg, which discovered political struggle and anarchist principles after Navalny’s imprisonment and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Given the deplorable state of the anarchist movement, it is somewhat disconnected from anarchist ideology itself and the history of the movement in Russia. This example highlights the need for ideological discussion that can support a high level of ideological training. Such training is very important because it provides the foundation for the anarchist struggle, without which it will be impossible to engage in it effectively. In our view, [Belarusian School of Anarchism, https://pramen.io/ru/shkola-anarhizma/]] has been moving in the right direction and can serve as an example and inspiration in this endeavour.

Lesson at the Belarusian School of Anarchism.

Another reason for the need for ideological training is that the political imagination of Russian anarchist emigration has been undermined by collapsed organisations and collectives, Soviet and post-Soviet experiences, repression, isolation and failure. These factors should not be taken as excuses, but as a reality that we have had to face and which have much to teach us. Nowadays, however, post-irony is often the main ideological approach to the challenges of emigration, war and the need for revolution. This attitude prevents us from taking events seriously and giving them meaning. Post-irony helps to deal with difficulties and stress on a personal level through distancing and mocking the big and difficult questions which, nevertheless, require answers. For example: Russia has fully revealed its authoritarianism, started a full-scale war, and we are in exile. What do we do about it? How to act honourably? Most of us cannot give a concrete answer to this question, because many of us think and answer as individual people who do not see themselves in such large-scale categories as resistance or a revolutionary movement. But we need to start thinking in these terms. Although there is no revolutionary movement at the moment, there is certainly resistance to the regime and the necessary preconditions for the rise of such a force.

Nevertheless, emigration has great potential. For example, it can bring new people in. We see material mutual aid and educational projects as good channels for opening the doors of the anarchist movement to people in emigration who want to contribute to the destruction of Putin’s regime. It is possible and necessary to enter the non-anarchist Russian emigrant environment with clearly formulated ideas, concrete proposals and ways of realising them.

All of the above is often not a problem of emigrants alone. For the last 10 years there has not been a united organised movement in Russia. Therefore, we realise that we cannot expect that anarchist emigration, with all its difficulties, will suddenly have concrete ideas and a direction of action. Nevertheless, we cannot but mention the experience of the Belarusian comrades who have been in emigration for many years and who have been active. Unfortunately, the Russian emigration has scarcely looked to this experience, and direct co-operation and common struggle have not been established. The absence of an organised movement makes these tasks difficult. Yet, in our opinion, existing collectives and projects could devote more time and effort to this kind of co-operation. The same can be said about the links with the Ukrainian anarchist movement: we consider criticism from Ukrainian comrades about insufficient or ambiguous support and weak attempts at contact to be very important and serious. The conclusion from this criticism is not that we are bad and guilty. The main conclusion we see is this: we need a cohesive and effective movement, for which we need organisations. Then we can develop not only a worthy struggle against the regime, but also prepare for what comes after.

Belarusian anarchists at the demonstration in Poland.

Events of the Arab Spring became an inspiration for the anarchist movement.

10 years without an organisation

There is much to think about and discuss, and this is already being done – for example, the Dogma podcast, which has collected many relevant and important contemporary experiences, critiques and voices from the anarchist movement. Yet the necessary analysis of the condition of contemporary anarchism in the BUR has yet to be done, as a holistic view is not yet available. It is necessary for the realisation of the ideas of a free society after the fall of the Russian regime. This analysis would allow the anarchist movement to understand its history, its shortcomings and advantages, to unite and act as a strong movement that can realise its proposals for society. At the moment we are not such a movement, and it is particularly painful and frustrating to realise this while comrades are dying in Ukraine and a desperate struggle lies ahead.

Let’s take a look at the event that only few of those currently active in the anarchist movement have witnessed: split and demise of Autonomous Action (AA). Ten years have passed since that event. This federative interregional organization had chapters in many cities accross the whole country and existed since 2002. This organization had many shortcomings and problems, but also AA as such was needed and had meaning. For that reason its loss, signifying the ongoing decline of the organized movement in Russia, became a massive set back for the subsequent generations of anarchists. It was not the first organisation in the RF to disintegrate, but this case is particularly memorable because it had cross-regional implications. Deep reflection, work on mistakes and reorganisation were needed and could have prevented the decline of anarchism in Russia that had already begun at that time. Instead, with the collapse of Autonomous Action we arrived at disillusionment, lack of ideological principle and hostility that fragmented the anarchist movement in Russia and undermined its potential for years to come. We moved on to isolated projects and less formal types of organisation: collectives, affinity groups, personal projects. In and of themselves, these things are not bad at all. However, if that’s all we have, it becomes a problem. Despite the excellent examples of ABC-Belarus, Solidarity Zone, Antijob, Solidarity Collectives – they are only a fraction of the strength that could be realized by a more organised movement.

Visiually the Autonomous Action was most known thanks to its recognizable banners and slogans in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

One of the most organized long-term groups was Irkutsk chapter of the Autonomous Action. At the picture we see a street protest organized by the Movement of Irkutsk Anarchists, its successor. 2017

Projects and people are scattered around the world and often poorly connected to one another. Non-constructive conflict and, more importantly, a lack of global vision and willingness to join forces beyond a small group of people contibute to this weakness of connection. This leads to a lack of shared and accessible movement infrastructure and resources: from finance, transport and housing to people, knowledge, skills and the ability to mobilise the movement as a coordinated force. This deficiency is crowned by the lack of formal anarchist organisations with a long-term perspective, a political programme, clear goals and committed people.

We are already experiencing the consequences of this shortcoming today, with each new round of global events. We are generally not keeping up with their development and are not adequately preparing for the challenges and opportunities ahead of us in the near and distant future. As we have already written, there will be more and more wars and invasions, regimes will lose stability, and emerging crises may again lead people to self-organise and confront the state. The general problem anarchists are facing is that our readiness for such turns of events is low. If the movement fails to seize these opportunities, they will be seized by other forces, or quickly slammed shut. The result then is likely to be the opposite of what we want: instead of uprisings against the regime, we are likely to see people rallying under its flag. This problem keeps us in a position from which the most we can do is react symbolically to what is happening, without the ability to take initiative and develop our own vision on a more global level. There is no doubt that those of us who have observed this process several times over the past decades in different countries have experienced much pain and frustration, and are prepared to go to great lengths to prevent this picture from unfolding before our eyes again.

Our brief assessment of the position, resources and readiness for action of anarchist movements in BUR paints a complex picture. It is not surprising that talk of a coherent and organised anarchist movement in BUR often provokes either incomprehension or rejection and ironic bitter chuckles. And yet these thoughts are already being voiced – both by anarchist Alexei Makarov, who participates in the armed resistance to the Russian invasion, and by BOAK, which conducts partisan warfare in the Russian Federation. Moreover, these thoughts slip into private conversations among people in exile. The idea is not new; it is in the air, waiting to be put into practice.

Alexey Makarov: It’s time to put our efforts on forming a united, organized anarchist movement everywhere.

In summary, we can say that in its current situation the anarchist movement is not living as an organism capable of combining diversity and unity, spontaneity and organisation, idea and reflection, form and content, high standards and accessibility – the common characteristics of a strong revolutionary movement. In our view, without this capacity, the anarchist project has no chance of being successfully realised in BUR and beyond. We believe that the best version of our future lies in the direction of organised anarchism and an international movement.

How do we move forward?

From all of the above we can derive what the movement is lacking and what it should focus on. We see a direction for action in the following five areas.

Infrastructure and resources
There is a need for infrastructure that makes possible both organised mutual assistance in emigration and preparation for returning home – technical, financial, tactical, ideological. Now is a good time to build such infrastructure and find resources without attracting attention, given the choice of good locations and distance from Russian law enforcement.

Political analysis
We need a detailed analysis of the current political and social situation in Russia and the world, study of history, to gain a better understanding of our place in it. All this will allow us not only to familiarise ourselves with what has happened, but also to think strategically, to anticipate probable scenarios of events, to develop plans for each of them and to be flexible. A possible programme for an anarchist movement also requires this analysis. It is not a question of academic work: it should be the tool of all ideologically prepared anarchists. Every comrade needs to be able to analyse the situation, draw conclusions about it and make decisions accordingly.

Studying the anarchist emigration of the past is a useful work that could help us draw lessons from previous century. A good example can be Italian anarchist emigration in time period between 1874 and 1930. Even though fascism in Italy triumphed for some time, Italian anarchists and anti-fascists from other political currents succeeded in defeating fascism in their community and contributed to revolutionary struggle in other countries. Perhaps today we could learn something from their experience and strategies.

Another example can be the influence of emigré activities on political situation in Russia – starting with “The Bell” newspaper published by Alexander Herzen all the way through many anarchist circles who began organizing long before the revolutions of the start of 20th century.

We should look to the experience and stories of the anarchists of the past, who were paved the path we are walking today.

Organisation
There needs to be a clear organisational structure and an understanding of its purpose. We now have time to prepare a clear and strong framework consisting of objectives, strategy, working methods and principles, networks, resource base, programme, common standards. We need to move beyond closed affinity groups and see the benefits that a more structured approach brings. This will also help to bring people back into the movement who have left because of its lack of seriousness and unresolved problems. An important part of this process is the transfer of experience from the “older” anarchist generation to the newcomers, to prevent repeated stepping on a rake.

Revolutionary personality
Participation in an organisation requires the development of certain qualities. It is necessary to develop a personality that combines discipline, dedication, faith, responsibility to the organisation, comradeship, political imagination, the desire to work on mistakes and self-criticism. It is very difficult to develop such a personality without an organisation, but it is also impossible to develop a revolutionary organisation without such a personality.

Not only the already mentioned ideological training, but also tactical training can help us in this. The Russian aggression has once again shown the need to acquire military skills that most anarchists do not have. However, to become militarised and take up arms is not only about physical self-defense, but also about developing a mindset that is based on discipline and responsibility.

Ideological and tactical training constitute a complex knowledge that requires training. It can only be learnt in specific contexts and with the appropriate infrastructure.

Revolutionary personality and organisation have been already well written about by BOAK.

Coordination

Establishing and re-establishing links with Belarusian and Ukrainian comrades is necessary both to better understand the regional context and to join forces. We should also look beyond the capitals Moscow and St. Petersburg, because there are struggles in the regions of the Russian Federation and abroad that could be the starting point for big events that will shape the course of events. To fight the regime, we will need the support of like-minded people from all over the world. We need aid of the organizations with already existing organizations and communities in the countries where we are ending up as emigrants. In them we can find ideological and resource base for creation of our own collectives and organizations.

Conclusion

This article is not the final truth, but an invitation to dialogue. The more voices are heard in our movement, the more different opinions and reflections, the more debates and search for solutions, the better we will understand our prospects and the necessary steps to achieve our goals. Obviously, there is a lot of hard work to be done to rebuild an anarchist movement that will be capable of real action and of support for its members, but if we really want to get to the level where we can give our contribution in overthrowing the Putin regime and Russian imperialism, this work must be our priority.

 

“Should Anarchists Vote?” is the Wrong Question

Aug

09

2024

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by Wayne Price

As I write this, we are moving ever closer to U.S. Election Day November 2024. (Although if this is read after that election, the issues discussed should still be relevant.) The small number of people who regard themselves as anarchists are discussing whether to vote. From Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin in the late 19th century onward, revolutionary anarchists have rejected participation in elections.

In the words of Kropotkin, “The anarchists refuse to be a party to the present state organization and to support it by infusing fresh blood into it. They do not seek to constitute, and invite the workingmen not to to constitute, political parties in the parliaments….They have endeavored to promote their ideas directly among the labor organizations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against capital….” (2002; p. 287)

This is based on the central insight that the state is not neutral. By its nature, it serves the rich and powerful in their exploitation and oppression of the people. This state machinery cannot be used to peacefully and “democratically” create a free socialist democracy. Anarchists believe that capitalism and its state must be overturned, abolished, and replaced with cooperative, self-managed, alternate institutions. They should not be strengthened by joining in sham rituals of limited democracy.

Yet here we have a presidential election in which one candidate (the Republican Donald Trump) is arguably much more evil than the other (the Democrat Kamala Harris). Should anarchists vote for the lesser evil for once?

Many Marxists are also in a pickle. From Karl Marx on, their strategy has been to create a workers’ party in opposition to all capitalist parties, from liberal to conservative. Many Marxists, at least those influenced by Trotskyism, have opposed ever voting for capitalist parties. Yet here they are facing two capitalist parties, one which is in the bourgeois center and the other is quasi-fascist. Should they vote for the moderate capitalist candidate? (Also, libertarian-autonomist Marxists generally reject voting and are in a similar bind as the anarchists.)

However, when discussing this (and previous) elections with friends, co-workers, and family, I do not try to persuade them not to vote for the lesser evil Democrats. I don’t much care. One or a few individual votes does not make much difference. The votes of a small number of radicals do not have much of an impact. This is especially true for most U.S. citizens, due to the archaic and undemocratic Electoral College system. Only a minority live in the six or so “battleground states.” For everyone else, their votes are irrelevant; the fix is in. (For example, I live in New York State, whose electoral college votes will certainly go to the Democrats.)

Instead, I try to get others to agree that the lesser evil is indeed evil. Since it is hard for people to admit to themselves that they are supporting an evil, there is a tendency for liberals, after a while, to persuade themselves that the lesser evil, while not perfect, is really pretty good.

Liberals claim that there are various positive programs for which the Biden-Harris administration can take credit. True or not, these must be put alongside the mass murder being carried out in Gaza by the Israeli government, paid for and armed by the U.S. state. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been indiscriminently killed. This is only one activity of the enormous US military-industrial complex, endorsed by both parties, including hundreds of overseas military bases and enough nuclear bombs to exterminate humanity. Not to mention the immigration policies of the Democratic administration. It worked out a “bipartisan” immigration bill which accepted the most repressive aspects of the Republican program. The bill only failed when Trump denounced it, being unwilling to let the Democrats get credit. The extent of economic inequality and regional stagnation has increased—major factors in pushing white workers toward Trumpism. And the Biden-Harris government has presided over a vast expansion of US gas and oil production, further attacking the biosphere. The Democrats talk a good game about ending global warming, but their policies are inadequate and will eventually lead to the destruction of industrial civilization. The lesser evil is still plenty evil.

The Real Question is Mass Strategy

The important question is not what a small number of isolated radicals should do on election day. It is what revolutionary anarchists should advocate for the large organizations, communities, and movements: the unions, the African-American community, Latinx people, immigrants, Arab-Americans, organized women, LGBTQ people, environmentalists, anti-war activists, etc., etc. Overwhelmingly such forces follow a strategy of organizing for the Democratic Party, providing it with money and personnel. They are the “base” of the Democrats, without whom the party would collapse. (In the U.S. system, neither party has an actual membership.)

What anarchists and other radicals should advocate is that these groupings cease spending money and people on the Democrats and adopt an alternate, non-electoral, strategy of direct action.

Overall the liberal strategy (also carried out by democratic socialists and Communists) has not worked out very well. Since the end of World War II, conservative presidents and Congresses have been followed by more-or-less liberal/moderate presidents, to great rejoicing by progressives and reformists. But these have never resulted in stable progressive change. Time after time, these liberal/moderate administrations have been followed by ever-more reactionary governments.

Kennedy-Johnson was followed by Nixon. Carter was followed by Reagan and then the first Bush. Clinton was followed by the second Bush. Obama was followed by Trump, so far the worst of all. The election of Biden did not stop the growth of Trumpism and its complete takeover of the Republican Party. Even if Trump is defeated in November 2024, the far-right semi-fascist movement will continue to grow. It will threaten to come to power in the not-so-distant future. Over time, the greater evil cannot be defeated by a lesser evil. Only a radical alternative can do that.

The main policy of the “democratic socialists” (social democrats, reformist state socialists) has been to work in the Democratic Party. They hope to take it over, or at least to take over a section. This is the program of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and most of the Democratic Socialists of America. Instead, it is they who have been taken over, grumbling about the Biden-Harris genocide in Gaza but powerless to make real change in the government. They are stuck supporting a government of mass murder—as the lesser evil.

Some radicals criticize the Democratic Party, for good reasons. They wish to replace this party of capitalism, imperialism, racism, and ecological catastrophe with a new party. This might be called a labor party, or a progressive party, or a Green Party, or a people’s party. It might start from scratch or be broken off from the Democrats.

The implication is that the problem is the Democratic Party in itself, rather than the electoral system of the capitalist state. But building a new party in the U.S. would be extremely difficult—by no accident. The vast amount of money needed, the Electoral College, the gerrymandering of districts, the number of signatures to get on the ballot, the dirty tricks of the two established parties, the differing election cycles for different positions—all these and more make a successful new party virtually impossible. The last time it happened was the creation of the Republican Party over the slavery issue, as the country was on the verge of a civil war.

In any case, the various advocates of some kind of new party have rarely examined the history of socialist electoralism. There is a long history of independent socialist parties running in elections in Europe and elsewhere. As anarchists predicted, the elected socialist representatives invariably adapted to the political milieu of the government. They made deals and became chummy with their bourgeois counterparts, becoming bourgeois politicians themselves.

Whenever these parties came close to real power, the capitalists have squelched them. Businesses have gone on “capital strikes,” refusing to invest in the country and shutting down industry. They have spent large sums on conservative parties. They have subsidized fascist gangs. They have promoted military coups. Social democrats have been forced to capitulate or be overthrown. From the early social democrats to the rise of European fascism to the history of socialists in France, Chile, Greece (Syriza), Venezuela, and so on, electoral strategies have never worked to move toward a new society. Yet each time there is an upswing of the left, reformist socialists treat an electoral approach as a brand-new brilliant idea.

If Not Elections, Then What?

The liberals and democratic socialists asked: If not elections, then what? How will the people assert power against the ruling elites? Or are you waiting for the Great Day, the Final Revolution, which will solve all our problems? What do we do in the meantime?

Anarchists too are for improvements in the lives of ordinary people. Anarchists are not for waiting for the revolution, which is not around the corner. The fight for reforms may cause people to have better lives in the here and now. Even if such fights were to fail, at times, working people may learn lessons about who their real enemies are and how to fight them. But revolutionary anarchists do not advocate attempts to use elections and party politics to gain improvements. What then?

Errico Malatesta argued that “what little good…is done by elected bodies…is really the effect of popular pressure, to which the rulers concede what little they think is necessary to calm the people….[Electionists] compare what is done in the electoral struggle with what would happen if nothing were done; while instead they should compare the results obtained from…the ballot box with those obtained when other methods are followed, and with what might be achieved if all effort used to send representatives to power…were [instead] employed in the fight to directly achieve what is desired.” (Malatesta 2019; p. 179)

To repeat the previous quotation from Kropotkin, anarchists “have endeavored to promote their ideas directly among the labor organizations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against capital.”

Consider major movements in U.S. history: In the thirties and afterward, workers won union recognition in major industries. They did this through huge strikes, occupations of factories, and fighting with scabs, vigilantes, police, and the national guard. The New Deal instituted social security and other welfare benefits due to this mass pressure from below.

In the fifties and sixties, African-Americans won the end of legal Jim Crow and racist terror. They engaged in boycotts, mass “civil disobedience” (law breaking), demonstrations, and urban rebellions (“riots”). The right to vote, desegregation, anti-discrimination laws, and anti-poverty programs were achieved through these struggles from below.

The movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam included huge demonstrations, draft resistance, civil disobedience, university occupations and strikes, and a virtual mutiny in the military. (And, of course, the military fight of the Vietnamese people.)

Meanwhile there was an upsurge in labor, including organizing unions and strikes in health care and for public employees, as well as wildcat strikes in key industries (such as the post office).

The LGBTQ movement exploded with the Christopher Street rebellion. It included the later ACT-UP civil disobedience to fight against public inaction on AIDS. The women’s liberation movement developed in the context of these popular struggles and radicalization.

Periods of radicalization have died down. The unions became integrated into the system, heavily reliant on the Democratic Party. Legal segregation was ended—although African-Americans were still on the bottom of U.S. society. The U.S. state withdrew from Vietnam—although imperialism and war continue. The Black movement became co-opted by the Democrats and so were the remnants of the anti-war movement. The Democratic party served as the “graveyard of movements.”

However, the lessons remain, that real victories can be won through popular mass movements and direct action, outside of the electoral trap. The growth of union militancy in recent years and the pro-Palestinian movement on and off university campuses, give hope for the future. One general strike in a big city could change national politics. There is no road to anti-state socialism except through the mass action of the people.

Is It Fascism Yet?

Every election cycle, liberals are prone to shout that “fascism is coming!” unless the Republicans are defeated. Are they right this time? There is widespread fear, spread by liberals, and even not-so-liberal Democrats, that the election of Trump would be the replacement of U.S. democracy by a fascist-like dictatorship. On the other hand, among the far-left, there are those who argue that there really is no significant difference between the two capitalist parties. However there are other alternatives between overt fascism and there being no important differences.

In my opinion, there is little likelihood that a Trump victory would quickly install a regime on the model of classical European fascism. That would require declaring Trump president-for-life, cancelling all further elections, outlawing all other parties including the Democrats, suspending the Constitution, and arming a uniformed vigilante movement similar to Hitler’s Storm Troopers or Mussolini’s Black Shirts.

Business people do not want this; after all they are making a lot of money under the current arrangement. (Most of business—now called “the donor class”—backs the Democrats in recent elections.) There is widespread unrest but not enough to make the bosses feel threatened in their wealth. The rest of the establishment, in and out of government, does not want overt fascism—including the “intelligence community” (national police forces) and the top military brass. It is impossible to make a successful coup without the support of the people with money and the people with guns. And at least half of the population does not want this.
More likely is a creeping authoritarianism, keeping the forms of political democracy while emptying them of content. It will tend toward Victor Orban’s Hungary rather than Hitler’s Third Reich.

“What we are likely to see is a lingering fascism of less murderous intensity, which, when in power, does not necessarily do away with all the forms of bourgeois democracy, does not necessarily physically annihilate the opposition, and may even allow itself to get voted out of power occasionally. [As recently happened in Poland—WP] But since its successor government…will also be incapable of alleviating the crisis, the fascist elements are likely to return to power as well.” (Patnaik & Patnaik 2019; p. 29)

Some say that there is no cause for worry, since the U.S. has gone through periods of right-wing repression and came out okay. For example, in the ‘fifties, after World War II, the U.S. was swept by anti-communist hysteria. This was led by Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, the House Un-American Committee, and many more. The Democrats, from President Truman to the liberals, participated in it, instituting loyalty programs and political purges of government employees (including J. Robert Oppenheimer). People lost jobs in the civil service, schools, universities, unions, the entertainment industry, and elsewhere. Meanwhile the Southern states had legal racial segregation, violently enforced by the police and by the Ku Klux Klan. But eventually this repressive politics was cracked by the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement.

However, the fifties and sixties were the period of the “post-war boom,” a big upswing of prosperity, at least for many white people in the U.S. The improvement in living standards made it unnecessary for the rulers to give up the advantages of political democracy (advantages for them), despite the upheavals of “the sixties.”

Today the system confronts deeper crises. On a world scale capitalism is brittle and conflicted. There are wars raging in various places. The U.S. economy, while relatively stronger than the rest of the world for the moment, is in decline. Inequality is worse than ever, there is stagnation in large parts of the system, and it maintains profits by pumping out vast amounts of oil and gas—thus dooming industrial society. The unhappiness and discontent of large sections of the lower middle class and white working class has reached dangerous proportions. People are looking for solutions. Without a significant radical movement, these layers of the population look to the far-right. They are open to blaming Latinx and Muslim immigrants for their problems. They become willing to listen to demagogues such as Trump, who promise to lead them to a mythical land of white supremacy, Christian dominance, and patriotic greatness.

How a few radicals, of various persuasions, vote or do not vote in November is not the important issue. The question is whether it is possible to develop an independent movement of movements, of the working class and all those oppressed and threatened by this disastrous system, to oppose the capitalists, their establishment, their state, and all their systems of oppression. It is whether a revolutionary anti-authoritarian wing of these movements can be organized to fight for a free society.

References

Kropotkin, Peter (2002). “Anarchism” [from the Encyclopedia Britannica]. Anarchism; A Collection of Revolutionary Writings. (Roger Baldwin, ed.) Mineola NY: Dover Publications. Pp. 284—300.
Malatesta, Errico (2019). “Towards Anarchy” Malatesta in America 1899—1900. The Complete Works of Malatesta. Vol. IV. (Davide Turcato, ed.). Chico CA: AK Press.
Paitnaik, Utsa, & Paitnaik, Prabhat (2019). “Neoliberal Capitalism at a Dead End.” Monthly Review, vol. 71, no. 3. Pp. 20—31.

Palestine Has Mobilized a Global Movement. For It to Last We Must Get Organized.

By James Kilgore

August 12, 2024

Source: Truthout

Image by Wolfgang Berger



In the weeks after October 7, abolitionist and civil rights activist Angela Davis offered some pointed advice to people on the left during an Al Jazeera interview: “If we are not prepared to think critically about what’s happening in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem … we will not only be unprepared to understand and address the issues emanating from the current crisis; we won’t be able to understand the world around us [and] the many struggles for justice and freedom all over the globe.” She went on to add that, “Our relation to Palestine says a great deal about our capacity to respond to complex, contemporary issues, whether we’re talking about imperialism, settler colonialism, transphobia, homophobia, the climate crisis.”

For Palestine solidarity activists in the United States, it could be useful to look more deeply at the history of international solidarity in U.S. movements, particularly in the last three decades. At various points mass mobilizations on global issues have gained a high profile: the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle and beyond in 1999-2000, participation in the semi-annual World Social Forums beginning in 2001, the anti-Iraq war movement in the early 2000s, the support for the pro-democracy Arab Spring of 2010, and a series of international responses to austerity budgets and increasing inequality that eventually exploded into Occupy Wall Street in 2011.

Subsequently, the 2010s erupted in reaction to the police-perpetrated killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Samuel DuBose, and dozens of other Black people. Mobilizations in response to these murderous police actions precipitated the formation of Black Lives Matter and culminated in the global reaction to the murder of George Floyd, where 40 countries on every continent except Antarctica took to the streets.

All of this built networks of personal relationships at the grassroots level and left permanent marks in the consciousness of millions, in some cases impacting the agendas of elected officials like “The Squad.” Still, it left a remarkably small residue of organizational infrastructure on which to grow a movement informed by internationalism. Instead, without an organizational center, we face the rise of far right and fascist formations across the globe coupled with the spiritual withering of center-left parties in France, Germany, Britain and of course the Democratic Party in the U.S.

Even more disorienting has been the fall from grace of national liberation movements. The degeneration of the organized global majority countries, in particular the decline of the Non-Aligned Movement with its New International Economic Order, has left an enormous void. National movements and states that people on the left revered in the past, such as the Sandinistas of Nicaragua, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa have either descended into webs of corruption, eschewed progressive policies for neoliberal and repressive paradigms, or both.

But the present actions in support of Palestinian liberation have reestablished hope in the possibilities of global solidarity. The hundreds of thousands of people coming onto the streets and social media are a clearcut indicator of belief in the power of collective action and imagination to make change regardless of how overwhelming the odds. While college campuses have been on the forefront of these actions, they have also included a considerable nonstudent cohort, including many Black and Brown people. Moreover, unlike in most U.S.-based campaigns of international solidarity, those directly impacted, namely Palestinians living in the U.S., have played an important leadership role in crafting this movement.

As the struggle continues, we need to contemplate the obvious: “What next?” In doing so, several key questions emerge. The most urgent, of course, is how to bring a halt to the mass murder and, once there is a permanent ceasefire, how to rebuild Gaza, East Jerusalem, and other areas devastated by murderous Zionist offensives. But there is also a need to ask more strategic questions: What have we learned from this situation that can steer us down a liberatory path rather than simply resting until the next eruption? We need a strategy to avoid the decline of activism that has ensued after each of the previous mobilizations.

Over the past few months, I have interviewed several activists who have been involved in prior campaigns of international solidarity. The cohort was intergenerational, though the majority were involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement or the Black liberation struggle during the ‘60s and ‘70s. I asked them to focus on their own experiences and, in particular, offer explanations for the decline of international solidarity within left movements and the failure of more recent mobilizations to gain a permanent foothold.

In our discussions, organizers mentioned five main factors that affected the capacity to sustain internationalism in left movements. Perhaps most frequently noted were the organizational forms that emerged during these protests. These comments fell into two categories: the professionalization of political struggle and the lack of structure and leadership.

The movements of the 1960s and 1970s largely relied on building a grassroots political base. In some cases, members paid dues, while leaders typically received modest pay or none at all. Puerto Rican independence fighter Alfredo Lopez contended that foundations — Ford, Rockefeller, McArthur, Soros — entered the movement space, relabeled it “social justice” and put forward a more moderate agenda. In the words of Chicago activist leader and historian Barbara Ransby, “Social justice becomes a job … where people are under the surveillance of philanthropy.” According to Lopez, these foundations “steered us away from international consciousness.”

Illinois youth development practitioner Posey described this process to Truthout as a “movement capture” which stresses “navigating the 501(c)(3) bureaucracy, not looking at how we connect with others people’s battles against U.S. imperialism.”

Cory Greene is co-founder and healing justice/NTA organizer of H.O.L.L.A., a New York-based community specific and healing justice focused “grassroots youth/community” program. He professes that his organization “stands on the legacy of the Black liberation movement.” He stressed the need for “institutional memory, to know how to pull on your lineages to heal.” He argues that the state and the nonprofit industrial complex has colonized these precious legacies or seriously diluted them.

By the same token, several organizers also believed that the absence of a clear-cut structure often undermined the potential continuity of these movements. Vincent Bevins, in his overview of mass protests in the 2010s, If We Burn, argues that the model adopted by most organizations, based on nonhierarchy, consensus decision-making, spontaneity, and large meetings in public spaces such as Tahrir Square or Zuccotti Park, obstructed the pathway to creating the type of structures, relationship-building and planning required to sustain a movement. Historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz summed it up for Truthout like this: “For the last 30 years I get my hopes up that something is going to happen, and the only thing happening is a sort of anarchism but they didn’t have a program. [They] just talked about getting rid of the state.”

A second, frequently forgotten factor in the decline of international solidarity was the demise of the Soviet Union and the “communist bloc.” While the class nature and political practice of the Soviet Union were often controversial within the left, the existence of a counter pole to Western imperialism was a constant reminder that building a global political power with an anti-capitalist agenda was possible. The foreign policy of the Soviet Union and its allies included the building of a global solidarity network of nations, funding and political support for left-wing national liberation movements in southern Africa and Central America as well as backing for liberation support work in the U.S. and Europe.

Perhaps the most high-profile example of this was the continued Soviet backing of a Cuban Revolution that faced an intensive embargo by the U.S. Support from the USSR included $1.7 billion to retool Cuban industrial infrastructure from 1976-80 and military assistance of $4 billion in the mid-1980s. The Cubans themselves, with Soviet support, initiated their own solidarity efforts in southern Africa in the 1970s, sending thousands of troops to Angola to help successfully repel a major offensive of the South African military against Angolan freedom fighters.

Dunbar-Ortiz told Truthout she recalled that the fall of the Soviet Union “scared me to death.” She said some of her leftist friends were overjoyed, but she had worked in international structures like the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization where she saw the concrete assistance the Soviet Union was giving to freedom fighters in the global majority countries. In hindsight she added, “I think it had a bigger impact than any of us ever analyzed.”

Thirdly, the U.S. state restructured its domestic and international strategy. Through counterinsurgency programs like COINTELPRO, the government targeted key activists who advanced a radical internationalist agenda with a variety of tactics: assassinations such as the 1969 murder of Chicago Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, infiltration of movement organizations such as the American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society and the Puerto Rican independence movement, and the “legal” framing of political activists like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal.

They also shifted their strategy for imperialist intervention. As former political prisoner David Gilbert highlighted to Truthout, the U.S. opted for a “hybrid” model in which the U.S. supplied weapons and other hardware, but the bulk of the troops in places like Gaza or Iraq come from partner countries in the region. This reduced the extent to which the U.S. population felt the pain of war and quelled desires to protest its continuation. A byproduct of this was a shifting of the international political attention of the left away from the military-industrial complex and the quest for peace. The fall of the Soviet Union instilled false confidence among many activists that the threat of world war would disappear with the weakening of the U.S.’s main enemy.

The fourth issue mentioned was the ideological triumph of a technology driven culture of neoliberalism and individualism. We live in the age of the new robber barons — Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and private equity funds that control much of global society with capital flows, surveillance and consumerist technology. This is reinforced by narratives that encourage the worship of wealth and increased power for internationalized capitalist firms. The media and often our cultural icons promote the narratives of the rich and superrich. Collective and cooperative efforts are seen as unrealistic or futile.

Migrant rights activist Maru Mora-Villalpando stressed to Truthout that the development of free trade agreements and their institutionalization in global bodies like the World Trade Organization promoted and advanced this ideology. In Mexico, for example, the installation of a free market in land ownership via the North American Free Trade Agreement has opened up ownership of Mexican agribusiness to U.S. transnational corporations, undermining local power.

Intimately linked to the advance of the neoliberal model has been the demobilization of organized labor. While we are seeing a resurgence in quarters such as with Amazon, Starbucks and the United Auto Workers, the percent of the U.S. private sector labor force that is unionized plummeted from 20 percent in 1983 to just over 11 percent in 2023. Unions can become important vehicles of internationalism. Most belong to global federations, which in key industries can create structural links that facilitate solidarity actions around boycotts, sanctions and labor issues.

Though certainly all unions do not take such stances, these international ties were highly active during the anti-apartheid movement, with workers often refusing to unload goods coming from or going to South Africa. They also played an important role during Occupy and the general strike in Oakland, California, and even today we see the longshore unions refusing to load and unload ships connected to Israel.

Lastly, interviewees stressed the complexity of solidarity. Ransby noted the importance of asking what “a liberation movement is for, not just what it is against” as well as avoiding the liberal view that “it is their struggle.”

New York attorney and organizer Jindu Obiofuma noted the importance for activists in the U.S. to recognize their positionality. She stressed that solidarity “begins with humility.” For her, in the U.S. this means “decentering what it means to be in the belly of the beast.” She noted a tendency for folks in the West to act as if they are “telling people fighting for liberation in other countries how best to fight for their lives based on principles rooted in their own analyses and experiences.” She stressed that for Western activists, especially white people, solidarity requires setting aside notions of white supremacy and American exceptionalism and “stepping back from yourself, doing what it is that the people you’re in solidarity with tell you to do and understanding that might come with some risks.”

Ultimately, witnessing the genocide in Palestine has forced many on the left to view the global political economy through another set of lenses. Activists are connecting dots of the military-industrial and prison-industrial complex, white supremacy, U.S. imperialism, settler colonialism, patriarchy and toxic masculinity — connections that had often disappeared behind the pressure of the system to isolate struggles and sectors of the oppressed population into silos.

The powers that be strive to push all left history, including that of international solidarity, off the map and replace it with the triumphalist narrative of the “Google world.” Poet June Jordan once said that how we respond to the Palestinian struggle is a “litmus test for morality.” Learning from the past is key to passing that test.