19131913
People :
Author : Guy Aldred
Text :
There is no more virtue in the term “Anarchy" than in its companion, “Socialism." Readers should bear this fact in mind. And just as much fakirism is imposed on a long-suffering proletariat in the name of the one as the other. With its pretense to being “a movement" and not “a party," the Anarchist group federation can prove as narrow and as reactionary and sectarian an organization as any section of the social democracy, or pretensions signify nothing, and we live in a real, not an ideal world.
Socialists, so called, have degraded Marx's declaration of a political class struggle to mean something which it never did and never can mean, namely, parliamentary action. The Anarchist movement has thrived on this fact. It has rightly opposed parliamentary action only to applaud “direct action." But what is this “direct action," this “general strike" or “lock out of the master class" I urged for a short time as an Anarchist Communist? It is a pandering to the labor leader on the industrial plane. It breeds reformist action. It is a statement of policy which implies something less than the social revolution, or the latter permits neither of strikes nor yet of parliamentary humbug. It means one thing: the entire upheaval of society, the clear—cut revolt of the bottom dog, insurrection as a means to social ownership of the means of production and distribution.
I soon fell out with the Freedom Anarchists. Their anarchy was merely Trade Union activity, their god a labor fakir named John Turner, of the Shop Assistants’ Union. Direct Action meant striking and industrial palliation, commodity struggles that led nowhere. Their anti-parliamentarism was vigorous at times, but ill-informed. For it was founded on the assumption that the workers could better their conditions under capitalism. Which is a lie. The workers as a class cannot better their conditions under capitalism.
Whilst proclaiming that real action was economic action, never once did the Anarchists come out clear for definite economic action. Industrial Unionism was in the field. That was “direct action." So the Anarchists flirted with it, and thought the opportunity an excellent one for capturing a field of propaganda for Anarchism. The very effective criticism of Trade Union sectionalism which the industrialists put forward was not attended to, was never seriously considered. Whatever its faults, Industrial Unionism corresponded to the newer conditions of production, and was essentially a rank and file movement. It imperiled the jobs of the Trade Union leaders. Tom Mann returned here and entered upon his Syndicalist campaign, the object of which was to strengthen the Trade Unions, to centralize them, and to perpetuate their abuses. Mann's career is notorious, and his reason for not wishing to smash Trade Unionism is now apparent from his candidature for the A.S.E. secretaryship. As Industrial Unionism declined and the less advanced and purely official movement—“Syndicalism"—evolved to the front, the Anarchists applauded the latter. Always I refer to the Freedom Anarchists and its allies of like persuasion in the States. Recently, indeed, we have been told that Anarchists do take up a definite attitude towards Trade Unionism. They do not wish to smash it! Neither do they wish to perpetuate it! Neither are they indifferent to it!
Socialists in a bid for power tried to capture the Trade Unions and so created a Labor Party which has since become a side—wing of the Liberal Party. Anarchists, in a like bid for position, have degenerated into Trade Union officials, with decent salaries and a love for the capitalist system. But no true .Socialist could compromise with Trade Unionism and Parliamentarism. Anarchism is merely the attribute of revolutionary Socialism, its intellectual and political expression. It should take its stand on the education of the worker, not the capture of his organizations. Never, on the plea that organizations do not matter and solidarity does, should the Anarchist aim at perpetuating Trade Unionism since the latter can only flourish on the sectional division of labor and the negation of class solidarity. Realization of this fact has caused me, from the beginning of the Syndicalist activity in England, to oppose it, and to adopt a definite attitude of antagonism towards the cowardly compromise the "official" Anarchist movement was making for the sake of a “boom." We do not want “booms" in isms, we want material liberty. That can only come from revolutionary abandon.
From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.
Chronology :
November 30, 1912 : Chapter 7 -- Publication.
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