By R.L. Chat
We undeniably are at a turning point of sorts—things are not fine, and this essay does not want to pretend they are. its goal is instead to provide a perspective for a hopeful future at a community level, a perspective beyond voting and party politics.
- maia crimew in Anarchism starts in the now: hope for a better future
Anarchism as an anti-capitalist tendency is as popular ever, clearly dominating the radical space of politics for the last decade or so. Maia crimew is a symptom of this domination, with the text "Anarchism starts in the now: hope for a better future", at least to me, exposing one of the core issues there is with it: The tendency for many people on the "Left" to expect crisis to arise and for people to magically organize into a revolutionary organ.
I reject this tendency, and any self serious person committed to the end of capitalism should as well. Marx, in his writings, reminds us often of an important object for revolution to be possible, an independent proletariat, and an organ that makes this possible. You can see in his and Engel's March 1850 address to the communist league, that this independence was most crucial, and that it should remain a primary goal of revolutionaries to achieve this.
The address is old, being well over a hundred years old, but I would argue that its contents remain relevant, what position was the communist left in 1850? It was on the backfoot, two years after the democratic revolutions of 1848, the proletariat was captured by bourgeois democratic parties, a massive reaction was underway and a regrouping was in order. Now, we do not have democratic revolutions anymore, however the proletariat remains captured by bourgeois organizations, on a mainstream stage by the liberal, social democratic and conservative parties of our day, however you would like to label them or which ones exist around you, and I would argue even in radical spaces by class-collaborationist and utopian movements such as anarchism.
You might want to stop me here, anarchism? Why is it being put in the same category as the social democrats and the liberals? Well certainly anarchism is not a mainstream movement, but neither is marxism. Currently, especially in the imperial core, we share the same politically marginal space of "Anti-Capitalism", and seem to find it impossible to escape the gravity of marginalization. There are many reasons for this, but I shall not cover them all as the scope of this text is not this wide; Rather the point is that since anarchists and marxists share this space, they find themselves in a struggle, and this struggle remains important. Why? Because anarchism holds no revolutionary potential. As outlined by crimew, the anarchist view is change and revolution can be personal, by building communities, friendships, polycules, having fun, etc. we are working towards a greater revolutionary goal. This escapist tendency is part of what makes anarchism detrimental to class struggle and revolutionary aims, removing us from the active struggle of rebuilding an independent proletariat, and towards self improvement as a cope for surviving the hardship of capitalism. Alongside this, anarchism holds no ideological spine, it embraces diversity in "ideology", with many splintered tendencies existing as small fractions with no reach beyond their specific sub-class interests. "Market Anarchists", "Nihilist Anarchists", "Communist Anarchists" (among many others), all represent different marginalized class interests: The cooperative and artisanal petty bourgeois, the students and slum-proletariat, as well as alienated fractions of the proletariat proper. Under this open wide umbrella approach that anarchism takes, those interests openly co-exist, and despite the conflict they often face internally, they all share the goal of "anarchist revolution", a vague goal that no one seems to be able to quite define. This class-collaborationist tendency leads to a reduction in the independence of the proletariat, rather the proletarians that find themselves engaged in anarchism become subjugated to the reactionary petty bourgeois pluralism of artisans and the cooperative "worker".
As stated before, the independence of the proletariat is of the utmost importance to the revolutionary struggle, and anarchism's stalwart belief in the rejection of organization and class struggle in favor of "community" and collaboration of the marginalized classes undermines that independence.
This rejection of organization makes it near impossible to participate in a wider project of emancipation, as anarchists such as Crimew would rather have parties than build a party. They rather remain disorganized in local book clubs, music scenes, black blocs, and coffee shops than start to think, "how may we begin to build an organization that will be able to capture momentum once times of crisis arises?" In the last section of anarchism starts in the now, crimew speaks of hope, of how as long as we can remain happy, stay together, make friends, things will be alright, and one day the phrophetized "revolutionary event" may occur and the people will automatically find consciousness in anarchism. Anarchism is not a response, it is a disorganized mess that has made organizing more and more difficult within the last few decades. The proletariat is not inherently conscious, neither is it going to inherently organize into anything, if anything, the last 200 years of struggle have shown us that without an organ dedicated to the political independence of the proletariat, the working class will fall into the trappings of bourgeois ideology.
crimew is in no way an ill intentioned individual, but as with many other anarchists, fails to see that its philosophy is detrimental to the very goal it hopes to achieve. If we want to truly hope to be able to capture the coming crisis, we must work towards our own independent organizations, we need to come together not as friends, but as a class, we must study the revolutions past, the writings of Marx, Engels, and those who studied them, of people who have fought for freedom elsewhere, and find a way to bring back the organizational independence of the proletariat that has been absent for the last hundred years and finally rid us of the utopian and class collaborationist spectre of anarchism.