Part 1, Chapter 2

IS THIS REALLY LIVING?
How many times have you asked yourself that question?
Are you tired of work, consume, be silent, die?
WE ARE!
The DISTURBED CITIZENS for the REDISTRIBUTION of PUNISHMENT is combating the futility of everyday life; by mounting a campaign to promote VANDALISM...
Break up the barriers that separate your desires from reality To learn how to build; first we must learn how to destroy Even noticed how your good intentions seemed to be smashed on the reef of workaday routine?
Why not start the day off by hurling your clock through your TV set Then begin a festival of looting, burning and busting up the boredom!
Imagine your local shopping center, workplace, home.in ruins!
Can you think of a better way to spend the day?[2]

The leaflet encapsulated many of the strengths and weaknesses of the ‘pro-situ’ carnival anarchist milieu in Australasia in the 1970s. On the one hand, it captured their absurdist humor, imaginative if not inflammatory ludic sensibility, and opposition to lifeless routine. It highlighted how they borrowed some of the basic views of the councilist group, the Situationist International (SI) — namely, taking your desires for reality, refusing work, rejecting boredom and emphasizing the festival-like nature of riots, insurrections and revolutions.

Yet on the other hand, the leaflet highlighted how their politics could be crude and simplistic. In practice, they generally fetishized ineffective ‘illegal’ activity — in this case a fictitious vandalism campaign — carried out by those at the margins of society. Like their more well-known carnivalesque counterparts elsewhere in the world, such as the Dutch Provos, Kabouters and the Motherfuckers, they based their hopes on the ‘provotariat’ of disaffected sub-cultural youth. As a result, they often overlooked the workplace-based self-activity of the time, and this was a major reason why the provotariat’s challenge was easily repressed, isolated, recuperated or simply ignored. The carnival anarchists desired a total revolution, and when this did not occur, they turned inward and became self-destructive.

Besides the interaction between carnival anarchism and the Situationists, I also examine the crossover between ‘class struggle anarchism’ and councilism in Australasia. This was also an international trend. Walter has suggested that, during the 1960s and 1970s, “many groups...have developed from non-anarchist Marxism towards near-anarchist socialism — such as Solidarity in Britain or Socialisme ou Barbarie and ICO [Informations et Correspondances Ouvrieres] in France.”[3] These councilists, for the most part, took a distinct anti-bureaucratic turn in the 1960s and 1970s. Likewise many class struggle anarchist organizations, such as Noir et Rouge in France, took a distinct councilist turn. However, as this paper outlines, this did not mean there was a perfect synthesis between the two traditions (nor that this synthesis was new).[4]

I am interested in how anarchism and councilism interacted on the ground, rather the more common top-down approach of focusing on one or two personalities, thinkers or groups. Hence I examine the broader milieu that was influenced by anarchist and councilist / Situationist praxis, rather than limiting my study to the Australasian equivalent of a Daniel Cohn-Bendit or a Guy Debord (if there were equivalents, that is). This work is based on substantial research, including many interviews, into this milieu in New Zealand.[5] As that milieu had close links with Australia, I also include a few brief and no doubt very incomplete notes on the corresponding Australian ‘scene.’ Yet my primary focus is on New Zealand. In this paper, I address briefly how this milieu related to the broader class struggle of the time; due to lack of space, I have not examined how it related to other movements, such as the women’s liberation movement and the tino rangatiratanga movement (which can be roughly translated as Maori self-determination).

The small size and peripheral nature of New Zealand means that, for the most part, it reflects international trends. Anarchism and councilism in New Zealand in the 1970s often closely mirrored movements in the UK and Australia. Developments in the US, France and the Netherlands also had considerable, but lesser, influence. Therefore what occurred in New Zealand cannot be dismissed as a unique case, though some peculiarities might be acknowledged. Hence, to some extent, my research perhaps offers a picture, in microcosm, of what was happening elsewhere in “advanced” capitalist countries. While the New Zealand anarchist and councilist milieu was too small, fragmented and short-lived to develop a sophisticated theory or practice, nonetheless the size of this ‘movement’ was advantageous because it enabled a comprehensive degree of research that would be very difficult to achieve in a study of a large movement.

International Context: The Rise of ‘Councilism,’ Modern Class Struggle Anarchism, And Carnival Anarchism

Given a lack of space, I can only note in extreme brevity the economic, social and cultural context of the time. From 1968 until about the mid-1970s, there was an upturn in class struggle in Western countries across the globe. Broadly speaking, workers took direct action, sometimes (but not always) outside official organizational forms (union or party), to press their demands of more pay for less work. Their creative revolt generally rejected bureaucracy and the authority of the boss and manager, and especially the boredom and repetition of work.[6] This revolt was mutually interlinked with a wider community-based struggle against other forms of social control in society (such as patriarchy, racism and sex roles, for instance) and in particular, mass opposition to the Vietnam War.[7] Many youths revolted against authority, and attempted to create a subculture or counter-culture to the dominant culture.

As a result, a renewal of interest in anarchism and Marxism occurred, especially in the New Left. Many non-Leninist groupings emerged which were influenced loosely by a melange of left communism, situationism, council communism and anarchism.[8] As New Leftists sought an anti-bureaucratic alternative to Stalinism and social democracy, many became interested in council communism after the inspiring re-appearance of workers’ councils during the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the French ‘events’ of May-June 1968, as well as the resurgence in strike activity (including wildcats and occupations) following 1968.

Van der Linden neatly defines council communism, which arose during the working class uprising in Germany and the Netherlands following WWI, as having five starting points:

Firstly, capitalism is in decline and should be abolished immediately. Secondly, the only alternative to capitalism is a democracy of workers’ councils, based on an economy controlled by the working class. Thirdly, the bourgeoisie and its social-democratic allies are trying to save capitalism from its fate by means of ’democratic’ manipulation of the working class. Fourthly, in order to hasten the establishment of a democracy of councils, this manipulation must be consistently resisted. This means, on the one hand, boycotting all parliamentary elections and, on the other hand, systematically fighting against the old trade unions (which are organs for joint management of capitalism). Finally, Soviet-type societies are not an alternative to capitalism but, rather, a new form of capitalism.[9]

Bourrinet adds that council communists opposed nationalism and cross-class popular fronts, and rejected ‘substitutionism, which sees the communist party as the general staff and the proletariat as a passive mass blindly submitting to the orders of this general staff.’[10]

There is a dearth of histories about the revival of council communism and ‘councilism’ in the 1960s and 1970s, at least in English. Of the studies that have been made, most focus on one or two councilist groups, or individual thinkers, especially Socialisme ou Barbarie (SouB), the SI, Cornelius Castoriadis and Guy Debord.[11] Consequently, comparatively little is known about groups such as Solidarity in the UK, Root and Branch in the US, Forbundet Arbetarmakt (United Workers’ Power) in Sweden, Daad en Gedachte in the Netherlands, ICO, Echanges et Mouvement, Mouvement Communiste and Negation in France, and Die Soziale Revolution ist keine Parteisache! (Social revolution is not a party affair!) in Germany.[12] In addition, few studies have been published about the numerous ‘situ’ or ‘pro-situ’ groups of the period, such as Point Blank!, Diversion, For Ourselves, Contradiction and the Council for the Eruption of the Marvelous in the US, Heatwave, King Mob and the Infantile Disorders in the UK.[13] All of these can be considered as being part of the broad councilist milieu. Further, Detroit’s Red and Black (whose main figure was Fredy Perlman) could perhaps be included as part of the ‘situ’ current.[14]

Two main schools can be discerned about this revival. The first claims that this renewal was largely distinct from the historic council communist movement, and therefore represented a ‘councilist’ tendency.[15] The second school maintains that it represented the emergence of an updated form of council communism, which differed from the historic Dutch and German current, but was still recognizably council communist.[16]

Bourrinet, from a left communist viewpoint, considers that the historic council communists were Marxists, were much clearer on their key positions, and accepted the need for a revolutionary party. While the councilist milieu of the post-68 era rejected many core Marxist concepts and principles.[17] In terms of theory, they were loose and eclectic, often borrowing from anarchism. Organizationally, they were unstructured, ephemeral and informal: he likens them to a ‘nebulous cloud.’[18] Crucially, the councilists rejected the need for a revolutionary organization; for them, the workers’ councils were ‘the one and only crucible of revolutionary consciousness within the working class.’[19] As such, he argues that the councilists rejected Marxism in favor of ‘anarchism,’ which Bourrinet simplistically views as rejecting revolutionary organization in favor of spontaneity.[20]

In contrast, Gombin argues that French groups such as SouB (and its offshoots) and the SI were an innovative attempt to renew the council communist tradition for the changed conditions of the period, such as rising living standards and mass consumption/production. They expanded the narrow focus of the council communists on the workplace to include everyday life, and the struggle against modern bureaucratic welfare-state capitalism. While Gombin recognizes these groups differed from the historic council communist movement in many areas, he still believes that they were the French inheritors of that tradition.[21]

In this paper, I use the term ‘councilist’ to distinguish the new current (who were a product of post-WWII Keynesian class compromise and its dissolution from the late 1960s onwards), from that of the Dutch and German council communists (who were a product of the revolutionary upsurge following WWI). Hence, unlike Bourrinet, I do not use the term to imply an ‘anarchist’ degeneration of that tradition, nor do I use it in the same way as the SI, that is, to denote a frozen and dogmatic ideology ‘which restrains and reifies their [workers’ councils] total theory and practice.’[22]

Like councilism, there is a distinct lack of rigorous histories of the anarchist movement in ‘advanced’ capitalist countries during the l960s and 1970s. While there are many works published about the revival of anarchism during these years,[23] very few of them are based upon substantial primary research.[24] As with councilism, many authors focus on a few groups or journals, such as Anarchy (1961–70), the spectacular activities of armed struggle groups such as the Angry Brigade, or personalities and thinkers such as Murray Bookchin in the US.[25] Subsequently, few bottom-up perspectives have been published that examine the broader anarchist milieu.

Some assert that new forms of anarchism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s that made a fundamental break with the past.[26] Others claim there was a fundamental continuity between classical anarchism and the ‘new’ anarchism of the 1960s and 1970s.[27] I adopt an intermediary view.[28] While ‘new’ forms of anarchism became prominent, such as anarcha-feminism, ecoanarchism, liberal anarchism and what I call carnival anarchism, there was also an often overlooked renewal of traditional ‘class struggle anarchism.’[29]

This revival in anarchist communism and anarcho-syndicalism was hardly surprising given the upsurge in class struggle that occurred from the late 1960s onwards. To take Britain as an example, “Most of the new anarchist organizations formed during and after the revival of the 1960s have been of a traditional kind.”[30] Both Berman and Guerin see the revival as a reemergence of classical anarcho-syndicalism, namely the idea of workers’ self-management.[31] It is generally accepted that workers’ self-management was a key demand of the French general strike of May 1968,[32] and also a popular demand among New Leftists and several unorthodox trade unions of the late 1960s and 1970s, such as the Confederation Fran^aise Democratique du Travail (CFDT), DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) in Detroit and the New South Wales Builders’ Laborers Federation in Australia. Furthermore, many of these new class struggle anarchist groups were influenced somewhat by councilist/ situationist ideas.[33]

While there were continuities between the old and the new anarchists, undoubtedly much tension existed between them. Many of the younger anarchists saw “Old Left” anarchists as puritanical, dogmatic, sectarian, out of date, and lacking energy. While Old Left anarchists like Sam Dolgoff of New York saw 1960s ‘neo-anarchism’ as a revival of bourgeois influences on anarchism.[34] To cap it off, the neo-anarchists associated with Leninists, who Dolgoff considered to be anarchism’s mortal enemy.

Some of this tension centered on the newcomers’ eclectic borrowing from councilism, which the traditionalists saw as unnecessary. Traditionalists generally remained hostile and distrustful of all types of Marxism, which they tended to equate simplistically with Stalinism. Essentially, two types of anarchists who drew upon councilism can be discerned. The first were those seeking to rejuvenate traditional forms of class struggle anarchism by combining it with aspects of councilism. The second were carnival anarchists, who generally drew more upon the artistic, Situationist wing of councilism rather than its SouB/Solidarity strain.

A good example of the first tendency was the French group that produced the magazine Noir et Rouge (1956–70), which included the brothers Cohn-Bendit.[35] In 1968, the editorial of Noir et Rouge stated:

The real cleavage is not between ‘Marxism’ or what is described as such, and anarchism, but rather between the libertarian spirit and idea, and the Leninist, Bolshevik, bureaucratic conception of organization.We are not afraid to say.that we feel closer to ‘Marxists’ in the Council Communist movement of the past or to.many friends in the March 22 movement than we do to official ‘anarchists’ who have a semi-Leninist conception of party organization.[36]

Noir et Rouge drew upon the ideas of SouB in particular.[37] Daniel Cohn-Bendit declared he was an “anarchist.along the lines of ‘council socialism’” and claimed he was a Marxist in the same sense as Bakunin.[38] This ‘anarcho-councilism’ was possibly the most important explicit anarchist influence in the events of 1968.[39] In contrast, Gombin claims that the traditional French anarchist

groups had lost influence, and had become inward-looking and dogmatic defenders of an “inviolable [anarchist] ideology” that they presented as an ultimate truth, “a finished system to be rejected or accepted as a whole.”[40]

The other type of anarchism that drew upon councilism — or certain aspects of it — was carnival anarchism.[41] I define carnival anarchism as both a distinctive style and type of anarchism. Its major characteristic was its blend of the New Left’s protest politics with the anarchic elements of the counter-culture. Carnival anarchism was neither a purely counter-cultural type of anarchism, nor a purely traditional type of anarchism, but an invigorating mixture of the two. Carnival anarchists rejected not only the apolitical elements of the counterculture, but also the puritanical, self-sacrificial element within the New Left. Hence further defining characteristics of carnival anarchism were its mixture of absurdist, mocking humor with direct action, and its aim of combining the cultural revolution with a socio-economic one. Another important feature was its aggressive, disruptive and provocative style. In short, carnival anarchists wanted revolution and fun too.

The most well-known carnival anarchist groups or groupuscules were the Provos and the Kabouters in the Netherlands, and in the US, Black Mask, Up against the Wall Motherfucker! and The Rebel Worker.[42] These groups represented the explicitly anarchist wing of the playful, theatrical politics of the time that mixed radical art (dada, surrealism and so on) with revolutionary politics. This broader anti-authoritarian tendency has been variously called ‘antidisciplinarian,’ ‘cultural revolutionary,’ ‘playpower’ or ‘political freaks.’[43] It includes a number of groups that did not identify with anarchism, including the San Francisco Diggers, Kommune 1, King Mob and the Yippies, but nevertheless they were often called anarchists or anarchistic.[44]

Often the carnival anarchists had poor relations with traditional anarchists, who treated them with bemusement or bewilderment. Older Dutch anarchists, for instance, were skeptical of the Provos because they were unsure if they were serious, and because of their hostility towards the proletariat, their lack of intellectual content and their theoretical incoherence.[45]

Most importantly, the carnival anarchists attempted to put certain Situationist ideas into everyday practice. As Franklin Rosemont of The Rebel Worker, the official organ of the Chicago local of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) that was influenced by anarchism, syndicalism, Marxism, Situationist praxis, ‘working class counter culture’ and surrealism, noted:

At the time [in the 1960s] it always seemed to me that the Situationists wrote and talked and theorized about playing and having fun, while we [Rebel Worker and Heatwave] — still just kids, in a sense — were actually playing and having the fun, and trying to articulate it in a new revolutionary poetic /political language...That some of what we did and said was foolish doesn’t alter the fact that most of what we did and said was what was really to be said and done.[46]

Phase 1: The Era of ‘Great Radicalization’ (Late 1960s, Early 1970s)

I shall look at two phases of anarchism and councilism in Australasia. The first phase occurred during an era of ‘affluence’ for most working class people (although indigenous people often were still trapped in poverty), as well as a period of ‘great radicalization’ through the rise of extra-parliamentary protest — especially demonstrations against the Vietnam War (both the New Zealand and Australian governments sent troops to Vietnam), apartheid, and US military installations. The protest movement peaked in New Zealand during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Also, this period also saw the beginnings of a major upturn in class struggle following the successful strikes against the Arbitration Court’s ‘nil wage order’ of 1968. During this phase, the carnival anarchists were an optimistic, ebullient and energetic current that gleefully anticipated that ‘revolution was just around the corner.’

The second phase occurred once these extra-parliamentary movements had died down during the mid-1970s and a major economic recession had set in, as well as the election of an authoritarian government. Yet, at the same time, workplace based class struggle peaked. The carnival anarchists during this period tended to be more inward-looking, less optimistic and more focused on changing interpersonal relationships than in the earlier phase. In Australasia, it appears that carnival anarchism flourished the most in this phase, while it seems that it peaked in the US and the UK during the late 1960s.[47]

The legendary Bill Dwyer was perhaps the first carnival anarchist in New Zealand. Dwyer, a flamboyant Irishmen, was particularly renowned for harassing student and union bureaucrats, and carrying out ‘illegalist’ activity such as running a sly-grog business and shoplifting in the early to mid-1960s. His ‘illegalist’ streak took a new twist when he moved to Sydney and sold LSD to finance anarchist activity, as well as becoming an exponent of the alleged revolutionary potential of the drug. After being deported from Australia, he ended up in London, and became involved in the editorial collective of Anarchy (second series), which was more open to class struggle and councilism than it was under the editorship of Ward.[48] He was a major organizer of the Windsor Free Festivals, held in Windsor Park as an attempt to ‘reclaim the commons’ from royal enclosure, from 1972 to 1974.[49]

Carnival anarchism as a distinct tendency, rather than the practice of a few individuals, arose in New Zealand in the early 1970s. Specifically, it originated from the carnivalesque wing of the New Left. The cultural revolutionaries, such as the Friends of Brutus, were often at the center of direct action in the protests of the time. New forms of protest emerged that were more creative and theatrical. Many of these fun revolutionist groupings were influenced by their overseas counterparts. For example, Love Shops, based on the Free Shops of the San Francisco Diggers, were established in three New Zealand cities, and ‘Freestores’ were also established by carnival anarchists in two Australian cities. In New Zealand, the Dunedin Anarchist Army attempted to levitate the Dunedin Town Hall in 1972 after a dispute with the local mayor over permits for protests (in imitation of the Yippies attempted levitation of the Pentagon). The Christchurch Progressive Youth Movement (PYM), whose members were at that stage mainly anarchists, copied the white bikes scheme of the Provos in 1969.

Roger Cruickshank of the Wellington PYM and Anarchist Congress, a carnival anarchist grouping whose main activity seemed to be holding ‘feasts,’ was fond of quoting Yippie Abbie Hoffman that “ideology is a brain disease.”[50] This anti-theoretical streak ran deeply throughout the New Left. The New Left was based on an urgent moral outrage against issues such as the Vietnam War. What mattered was what you were doing, not thinking. Thus they often refused to clearly define their politics, because to Cruickshank ‘doctrinal bitching’ had bogged the left down and prevented them from taking direct action in the here and now.[51] Instead, they had a playful attitude towards theory. Author Chris Kraus of the Wellington PYM said that they thought ‘ideology was like a costume you could try on and parade around in.’[52]

As a result, the carnivalesque New Leftists often borrowed eclectically from many different sources, including Marxism. For example, Farrell Cleary, an anarchist and member of Auckland’s Living Theater street theater group and the Resistance bookshop, wrote that:

Resistance seemed to incarnate New Left Zeitgeist, owing as much to the American yippies as it did to Cohn-Bendit. We hoped to bypass the kind of doctrinal splits between Marxism and Anarchism which had riven the revolutionary left for a century.[53]

Consequently, this convergence between anarchism and Marxism was based upon struggling together against a common enemy. Yet their theory was often crude and incoherent. Some did not see a contradiction in mixing Trotskyism, Maoism and anarchism together. For example, the Christchurch PYM called for workers’ councils, the abolition of private property and money, as well as “worker control of industry, student-teacher control of schools and universities,” and yet claimed that “all land will be taken by the State.” It proclaimed it was internationalist while ‘fully supporting’ the nationalist, cross-class Vietnamese National Liberation Front. One or two returned from visits to China praising it as a libertarian socialist paradise. Given this confusion, it is thus unsurprising that some anarchists became Maoists or fellow travelers.[54] However, Kraus cautions that the ‘yahoo ideology’ of the Wellington PYM radicalized people in a much more permanent way than ‘orderly living Marxist-Leninists.’[55]

Little is known about the carnival anarchist wing of the Australian New Left and their relationship with Marxism.[56] However, at least three Melbourne-based groupings that have been described as carnival anarchist did draw upon councilism. They were TREASON (The Revolutionary Emancipists Against State Oppression and Nationalism) and the groupings that published the magazines Outlaw and Solidarity: For Workers’ Power. TREASON, a campus-based group, stated

Humor, of a surrealistic, bohemian or romantic strain, is the most valuable weapon in the struggle to reeducate the university...T.R.E.A.S.O.N. was close to the overseas developments of Situationism (France), Provoism (Holland) and neo-Wobblyism (U.S.A. and U.K.).[57]

Outlaw has been described as ‘a combination of poetry, color artwork and short texts on surrealism, anarchism, and situationism.’[58]

In the early 1970s some Sydney Libertarians, who were not carnival anarchists but instead were ‘anarcho-cynicalists’ who shared the humorous approach of the carnivalists, formed an Anarcho-Marxist Group based on integrating Marx and Bakunin.[59] The Sydney Libertarians were influenced by some Marxists, including Wilhelm Reich and Max Nomad. The latter cynically commented that the Anarcho-Marxist Group’s synthesis of Marx and Bakunin was quite appropriate because ‘they both wanted control over the First International and they both wanted to preside over a non-capitalist “classless” and hence “stateless” society.’[60]

In terms of their relationship to class struggle, it seems obvious that it was not the main focus of the carnival anarchists. Most of their exuberant energy went into the multi-class protest movement, and attempts to push that movement in a more radical direction by carrying out direct action against specific targets rather than just ‘counting asses’ in street protests. Specifically, they focused on anti-Vietnam War and anti-apartheid protest.

However, two attitudes to class struggle can be discerned among the carnivalesque New Leftists. The first was that class was something that the doctrinal Old Left held up as a sacred shibboleth, and thus it should be discarded as a dogmatic ideology from the past. Workers were seen as passive, while protesters, students, youth, hippies and the ‘lumpenproletariat’ were considered the new rebellious ‘classes.’ For example Tim Shadbolt, New Zealand’s anarchistic equivalent of Abbie Hoffman, exclaimed, “Stuff the workers! They will never do anything!”[61] This was the New Zealand equivalent of the Provo’s extolling of the ‘provotariat,’ and their subsequent dismissal of the proletariat. “The provotariat is the only rebel group left in the welfare countries. The proletariat has sold itself out to its leaders and its television. It has gone over to the old foe, the bourgeoisie, and together they form one great gray blob.”[62] As a result, the Provo leadership condemned workers’ self-activity such as an Amsterdam construction workers’ riot in 1966 which began as a demonstration against the workers’ union.[63]

The second attitude did see class struggle as important. Most carnival anarchists and carnivalesque New Leftists espoused workers’ self-management as a core aim. Many attempted to make links with other workers during a period of increasing class struggle. Consequently, they joined workers’ demonstrations and supported workers’ disputes. For example, the Christchurch PYM, which was an off-campus group largely comprising of young workers, had an alliance with the Lyttelton branch of the Seamen’s Union, then probably the most militant union in New Zealand. Some carnival anarchist groupuscules abroad like The Rebel Worker had a similar praxis towards workplace-based struggle.

It appears that councilism in Australasia during the late 1960s and early 1970s was highly influenced by Solidarity (UK) rather than by the SI, presumably because it was difficult to find translations of Situationist material at that time. Often councilism, with its strongly anti-bureaucratic bent, appealed to those who had left, or had been expelled from, the minibureaucracies of the Leninist parties. For example, in New Zealand, the only councilist group formed during this period was the awkwardly named “Revolutionary Committee of the CPNZ (Expelled).” It was a tiny Auckland-based group that had been expelled from the Maoist Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) in 1968 for questioning the lack of freedom and debate within the CPNZ, as well as the CPNZ’s participation in elections.

Originally, the Committee’s outlook was Maoist, and their criticism of the CPNZ was limited to a few issues. For the most part, they soon broke with Maoism, and adopted most aspects of councilism after they were introduced to the ideas of Solidarity, the ideas of council communist Herman Gorter and the anarchist communist/councilist Guy Aldred (through much correspondence with Aldred’s long-time associate, John Taylor Caldwell). In their magazine Compass they reprinted excerpts from Solidarity pamphlets. They also corresponded with a similar group in Brisbane called the Self-Management Group (SMG). Yet the Committee distanced themselves from the anarchist movement. Indeed, Steve Taylor of the Committee wrote to the Christchurch Anarchy Group that he had ‘no affiliation express or implicit’ with anarchism.[64]

The Committee was a discussion group, although they did take part in the ‘liberation of Albert Park,’ a festive-like and successful movement against the suppression of free assembly and free speech in that park. Taylor also went on a lengthy hunger strike in Albert Park against the Vietnam War in 1970.

While the Committee was highly critical of Leninism, and viewed the USSR and China as bourgeois class societies, it did not fully break with Maoism. Thus the Committee expressed conventional councilist views in its rejection of all political parties, parliament, and unions. Instead of unions, it called for independent shop committees to be formed. Instead of parliament, it called for soviets or workers’ councils.[65] Yet residues of Maoism remained in its espousal of ‘dialectical materialism’ and in its support for a “workers’ state” — although they believed that such a state would be composed of workers’ councils.

In contrast to the Revolutionary Committee, the Brisbane SMG, the most important councilist group in Australia, seemingly co-operated with the anarchist milieu. For example, they briefly took a formal part in the synthesist Federation of Australian Anarchists, but left it after they found it too contradictory and anti-organizational. According to Englart, the SMG was formed in 1971, and he describes them as ‘libertarian socialists’ and ‘councilists’ like Solidarity.[66] The SMG was highly influenced by Solidarity and SouB, and in turn it appears they had considerable influence within the Australian anarchist milieu. Indeed, a West Australian SMG was formed. The Brisbane SMG also operated a bookshop called Red and Black,[67] and a printshop. It has been claimed that the SMG ‘led Brisbane’s marches’ against the Vietnam War, apartheid, and the authoritarian Queensland state government headed by Joh Bjelke-Petersen.[68] The Brisbane SMG involved prominent activist Brian Laver, who has been described as a ‘fiery student radical.’[69]

Phase 2: The Mid-1970s

During this phase, a more fully-formed convergence between councilism and anarchism occurred in New Zealand. Overall, the councilist ideas of Solidarity and of the Situationist International were highly influential in the Australasian anarchist milieu. Australasian councilists tended to become allies with class struggle anarchists. Both the councilists and class struggle anarchists clashed with the carnival anarchists, particularly in Australia, where bitter schisms occurred over fundamental questions of organization and orientation. Nonetheless, carnival anarchists during this phase were not adverse to councilism (of the Situationist version in particular). Perhaps this was because the works of the SI did not become readily available in English until the early-mid 1970s. Or perhaps it was also because Australia, and New Zealand in particular, tended to be a few years behind international trends.

Carnival Anarchism

Many carnival anarchist groups were formed and reformed during this phase. In New Zealand, the Auckland Anarchist Activists (AAA), the Lumpen grouping in Auckland, and the Perth Street group in Christchurch were the major carnival anarchist groups. In Australia, the carnivalist groupuscules are too many to mention. In Sydney alone, they formed the Sydney Anarchist Group (which published Rising Free), Sydney Sewer Rats, Fruity Together, The Plague grouping, Bondi Vandals, and Panic Merchants. Frequently, the name of their group would change with each new action or stunt they took.

The characteristics of these groupuscules were manifold. They were affinity or friendship groups. They were ephemeral in nature. They revolved around a large house or flat, normally situated in an inner-city working class suburb that had a high proportion of bohemians and students;[70] often these houses were squatted, particularly in Sydney. They considered themselves activists, and sporadically took part in the protest movements of the time (in New Zealand this included pro-abortion rallies, anti-apartheid demonstrations, anti-secret police rallies, Maori land occupations and activity against the deportation of Pacific Island migrant workers). Yet at the same time there was a strong counter-cultural, druggist and artistic focus, and an emphasis on spontaneity, collective living, having fun in the here and now and on the political as the personal. Individual transformation and personal relationships were viewed as crucial.

One of their main activities was carrying out satirical and provocative stunts. In New Zealand, these included males dressing up as the Queen (complete with grotesque dark purple masks and dresses) to mock her during a ‘royal’ visit, and various anti-election stunts (such as creating a huge paper mache penis dubbed the ‘general erection,’ and the attempted stealing of a ballot box during the 1981 cliffhanger election, with the aim of demanding a 100% increase in wages for all workers during a wage freeze).[71] In Sydney and Melbourne, carnivalists formed the ‘Dairy Liberation Front’ which stole milk from rich suburbs and redistributed it to community organizations in working class suburbs. Sydney carnivalists penned a letter purported to be the Leichardt Town Council Mayor’s resignation letter. The letter advocated an anarchist revolution and encouraged the formation of workers’ and residents’ councils. At the time, corruption allegations had been made against Council officers about rezoning areas for high rise development. Both Australian stunts caused a furor in the press.[72]

The carnival anarchists were eclectic, and drew upon councilist ideas. Peter McGregor, a key figure in the Sydney carnival anarchist scene, writes ‘by the mid 70s I’d evolved to an anarchist position, under the influence of Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity (UK) and the Self Management Group (Brisbane).’[73] McGregor helped found the Sydney Anarchist Group in about 1974 along the lines of Brisbane SMG’s manifestos ‘As We See It’ and ‘As We Don’t See It’ as they ‘seemed to have the most coherent political position and McGregor wanted to set up a similar group in Sydney.’[74] As a result, the SAG reprinted articles by Situationist Rene Riesel and Carl Boggs on workers’ councils.[75] Likewise, the AAA, the major carnival anarchist group in New Zealand, was formed from the breakup of Auckland Solidarity, a class struggle anarchist group influenced by Solidarity (UK). The AAA declared it was for ‘a free socialist society’ and they stated:

Anarchism is a call to revolution...a revolution that will not only transform the means of production but will also radically change human relationships and build a society based on real equality and freedom. A real socialist society built from below. Built by working people who are directly involved, through workers councils, in making the decisions which affect their lives.[76]

They were very drawn to Situationist ideas, including carrying out provocative stunts and scandals. Often their publications employed Situationist style slogans, such as the ‘Win a cop competition’ leaflet, which was distributed at an anti-police march. It suggested a cop ‘is one who would gladly lay down his “life” to protect the power of things and their price,’ and then encouraged people to attach their answers to a brick, and throw it through the nearest police station window.[77] Incidentally, Auckland carnival anarchists firebombed the local police station. Grant McDonagh has commented that the Perth Street groupuscule was ‘in a very isolated headspace from society. It was all sort of fight the bastards!, you know, a real violent militant thing, everything that you did had to be really criminal.’[78] For example, they ran an organized shoplifting collective.

Yet their borrowing from the SI was haphaZard, and generally lacked depth and coherence. Overall, they were more attracted to the poetical ‘radical subjectivity’ of Raoul Vaneigem of the SI, rather than the SI’s ‘objectivist’ wing represented by Guy Debord. For example, Terry Leahy, an Australian carnival anarchist, stressed Vaneigem’s idea that revolution begins from everyday life by people fulfilling their own desires, rejecting rigid roles and playing games. Leahy wrote ‘spontaneous creativity and the sense of festivity are the keys to revolutionary practice.’[79] Drawing upon Reich, Vaneigem and Castoriadis, he asserted that the Spanish anarchist revolution largely failed because the anarchist rank and file were possessed by a self-sacrificing spirit of obedience to their leaders. In short, he argued that people’s acceptance of hierarchy and obedience is the main barrier to a successful revolution, rather than the say the traditional notion of focusing on how revolutionaries are organized.[80] The carnivalists attempted to live a creative life free from self-sacrifice by refusing to reproduce capital in everyday life. This perspective is captured in this article about McGregor:

McGregor embraced a purist position, of refusing to reproduce capitalist daily life — commodity, exchange relationships — by abolishing the limits imposed upon people by wage-labor & private property...In the purist spirit of Charles Fourier’s Some Advice Concerning the Next Social Metamorphosis: “Never sacrifice a present good to a future good. Enjoy the moment; don’t get into anything which doesn’t satisfy your passions right away....”So, since property was theft, why not squat; and since work was wage-slavery, then don’t.[81]

McGregor saw interpersonal relations as the primary site of politics, rather than self-sacrifcing activism for an external cause.[82] For Graeme Minchin, a key figure in both the Auckland and Sydney carnival anarchist scenes, an essential part of anarchism was ‘to become complete or whole human beings,’ and these anarchists with an ‘integral personality’ he considers are the people capable of making revolution. Consequently, in the mid-1970s, he said the Australasian carnival anarchists went inward and attempted to change themselves, while at the same time attempting getting a message across.[83]

While these views appear to be individualistic, Minchin stressed that they sought to synthesize individual and collective interests. They were aware of class, aimed for selfmanagement, and formed activist groups that had class-based content. For example, they formed unemployed groups in Auckland in 1976 and Christchurch in 1978. According to Prebble, the Auckland City Unemployed Group was an outward looking (involving about 30 people, including many Polynesians) and very active group. It went out to industrial working class South Auckland, and picketed racist capitalists. It had a strong anti-racist focus.[84]

For carnival anarchists, becoming involved in the unemployed movement was a response to the economic downturn of the mid-1970s, which caused mass unemployment to arrive after a long era of full employment. But it was also a product of the carnival anarchists’ rejection of the puritanical work ethic. Oliver Robb, of the Auckland anarchists and Auckland City Unemployed Group, wrote, “Why should a person work? Why should a person be forced to work at a dull, humiliating job.?”[85] As Aufheben notes, this represented a marginalization in the refusal of work:

The ‘refusal of work,’ a militant tendency which had developed in the workplaces in the 1960s and 70s, now became displaced onto the dole. With such displacement came a certain degree of marginalization, however. While the earlier ‘refusal of work’ threatened to spread across workplaces and thus form links between different workers and to those outside of the workplace, the new ‘dole autonomy’ too often entails forms of individualism and lifestylism.[86]

Their refusal of work did not just take the form of ‘dole autonomy.’ It also took the form of what Wildcat (Germany) later called ‘jobbing,’[87] that is, working sporadically for a few months at a time at various poorly paid menial jobs in order to save money, and then quitting to live off the proceeds. Then they would find another job once they had spent their savings.[88] Such a strategy worked during a time of near full employment, as people could find employment when they liked.

As with much of the New Left, carnival anarchists were hostile to formal organization. Instead, they championed the role of informal organization, especially in the form of small groups of friends or affinity groups.[89] As affinity groups were built upon mutual trust, they were highly dynamic and able to act quickly without being impeded by formal procedures. Yet they tended to be unstable. Friendship circles split up, and friends moved on to other pursuits. By late 1977, for instance, Auckland’s Napier Street groupuscule became inward-looking and self-destructive, and thus began to disband.[90] By the early 1980s, many anarchists had departed for Australia or London.

Affinity groups, because they were based upon close-knit friendships, could be clique-like in behavior and dominated by informal elites. In the absence of clear, transparent and democratic decision-making procedures, one or two personalities in the group were likely to dominate. For the more (formal) organizationally minded anarchists and councilists, the short-lived nature of affinity groups highlighted the need for such formal “on-going” or continuous organizations.

This difference of opinion led to bitter conflict in Australia. In New Zealand, while divisions over the value of activism, theory, workplace organizing and formal organization divided ‘anarcho-councilists’ like the Christchurch Anarchy Group from the carnival anarchists, these divisions did not produce splits. In Australia, an acrimonious split occurred between the carnival anarchists on the one hand, and the anarcho-syndicalists together with their libertarian socialist allies (such as the councilist SMG), on the other. The carnival anarchists lambasted formal organization and clearly defined aims and principles, which they saw as being sect-like and reminiscent of Leninism and Christianity. Furthermore, they accused the ‘serious anarchists’ as being ‘middle class university students,’ in contrast with the carnival anarchists, who were working class in composition.[91] The councilists and anarcho-syndicalists thought the ‘chaoticists’ were anti-organizational, disruptive, aimless and most importantly, opposed to workplace struggle:[92]

Those people who were arguing for the Anarchist movement to become involved in trade union and industrial work were accused of neglecting other forms of struggle. Wherever this position was advanced the people doing so were denounced [by carnival anarchists] for idolizing the working class, ignoring its conservatism, ’laying heavy moral views,’ and pressurizing others to become factory workers.[93]

The SMG defended the need for formal organization, planning, internal democracy and a coherent political program.[94]

The anarcho-situationist milieu

In New Zealand, no situationist groups were formed.[95] Grant McDonagh was the sole person who explicitly identified with the SI in the mid to late 1970s. He aimed to set up a small, closely-knit, “critically armed” situationist group which would undertake acts of subversion, playful deconditioning and “act in a series of increasingly radical interventions whereby the individuals involved will reverse back their own misery point-blank on the social organization that is destroying us.”[96] These subversions, McDonagh optimistically believed, would spark wider and deeper class confrontations until ultimately “generalized self-management” was realized. He attempted this in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, but had little success: “Nobody ever understood what the hell I was talking about, really.”[97] A “quasi-situationist” group was formed in Auckland, but it soon broke up.

Hence he operated as an individual on the periphery of the anarchist milieu. His main activity was publishing numerous publications. He believed that the situationist current in New Zealand was “only a minority current in the broader Anarchist milieu between 1975 and 1979, but potent in that context and beyond.”[98] The Situationist influence was significant, as there was often a loose crossover between anarchism and the ideas of the Situationists, as exemplified by Anarchy (1975) and KAT (1978) magazines. Yet the influence of the Situationists could be found more in the playful and aggressive adoption of Situationist slogans by many anarchist groupings (especially the carnival anarchists and later the anarchist punks), rather than in a coherent adherence to Situationist theory. Further, as McDonagh notes, anarchists often attempted to emulate the graphic style of King Mob Echo, the magazine produced by British ‘situ’ group King Mob.[99]

However, the Situationist influence was not potent, especially as many anarchists found situationist writing extremely difficult to comprehend. Indeed, Sue Lee, Cathy Quinn, Margaret Flaws and Frank Prebble all commented that, to them, situationist writing was at best obscure and at worst full of mystifying jargon.[100]

As with ‘situs’ like Charles Radcliffe and Ken Knabb, McDonagh was originally an anarchist.[101] He became involved in the Christchurch Anarchy Collective after it advertised that it was going to begin publishing a Solidarity type councilist magazine called Anarchy. After McDonagh became involved, Anarchy described itself as anarchist “with a leaning towards situationism.”[102] As such, it republished articles from the SI as well as voicing traditional anarchist criticisms of elections and social democracy.

He was attracted to anarchism initially because it ‘seemed to offer a cohesive worldview with a history and practice, [sic] that whatever its shortcomings, seemed more promising for the future than the incoherent remnants of Hippieism that were floating around.’[103] Yet he soon became a situationist after producing Anarchy. One of the reasons he was attracted to the SI was its fusion of art and politics, a combination which strongly resonated with him. Yet he still considered the Situationists to be part of the broad anti-authoritarian left, and hence spasmodically worked with anarchists.[104] Also, he believed that the

Situationists attempted more successfully than anyone else to supersede the split first occurring in the 1^st International between the Marxists and the Bakuninists, by reinventing revolution itself, with results well-known in the occupation movement of May and June ’68. [105]

Indeed, he saw the SI as being more anti-authoritarian than the vast majority of anarchists, and thought they had criticized authoritarian forms of Marxism far more effectively and coherently than anarchists had.[106]

McDonagh co-operated with anarchists in several projects. For example, with about half a dozen anarchists, he formed Wellington’s KAT magazine — standing for Kensington and Aro Street times, then a counter-cultural inner city suburb. KAT called itself an anti-authoritarian spasmodical of the “libertarian ultraleft (situationists, anarchists and libertarian socialists).”[107] KAT was irreverent and confrontational, full of attacks on bureaucrats and calls for an ecstatic and passionate praxis: “We want pleasure, Joy, celebration not sacrifice. General contestation makes the limited opposition of purely economic struggle a farce...Each of us owes him/herself a little life and merely needs to act decisively to obtain it.”[108] Anarchists also co-operated with McDonagh to run a free shop in Christchurch which he believes was in accord with the Situationist concept of the potlatch or a communist gift economy.[109]

This alliance was often uneasy, however. McDonagh was at times scathing towards the anarchist movement. For example, in true Situationist style, he declared the anarchist movement “dead”:

The farcical Easter unconvention [an anarchist conference in 1978]...resembled more closely a tableau in a morgue than a political gathering, for the good reason that so many attended were already dead. Twenty odd walking corpses, hacks, closet authoritarians, masochists, intellectual midgets & retarded reformists with no conception that the moment of revolution is now and that the dream must be constructed! Gathering together like moths at some sacrificial candle they provided excuses for their own and each other’s futility, immobility and stupidity. Supreme among the deadheads was the self-appointed pope of New Zealand anarchism, Parsons of Palmerston North, surrounded by his adoring retinue of cretins.In a word it was funereal.[110]

He continued:

The piecemeal and scattered practice [sic] of anarchists in the period 1975–77 was never historical, always reformist and often authoritarian. As such it was immediately recuperable, challenging and achieving nothing.The anarchist is a futile stupid little inverse authoritarian capable only of reacting. His/her ideology causes him/her to deal with power by choosing to believe that he/she is somehow immune to it. Perhaps by the magical talismanic qualities of the mere word anarchy. Neither individuality nor collectivity were either recognized or achieved anywhere. Similarly anarchists were neither spontaneous nor organized.[111]

McDonagh comments that his article “was just shit-stirring I guess really.the intention was to shock/shake people up so that they might try doing some more radical, effective and authentic things themselves. The effect, if any, seems to have been to stop them in their tracks.”[112] He also spraypainted ‘all anarchists are wankers’ in the Auckland suburbs in which anarchists resided.[113]

Unsurprisingly, bitter clashes with anarchists in both Auckland and Wellington resulted. Andrew Dodsworth, then an anarchist involved in KAT, writes: “Grant’s idea of dialectical writing, that you take something written by ‘the enemy’ and invert it.was mechanistic....And that spraypainting Situationist slogans on walls was not, in fact, going to lead to changes in society.”[114] Overseas, anarchists commonly viewed the SI, and its followers, as hopelessly sectarian, dogmatic, and hierarchical. What is more, situ groups were castigated for having ‘full time noninvolvement in real struggle.’[115] Indeed, it often appeared that their main activities were indulging in petty splits, vicious internal squabbles, and lengthy self-critiques.[116]

Dodsworth thought the major weakness of the KAT groupuscule was its almost complete isolation from the working class. He writes:

We were living in a world of our own. Hardly any of us had jobs, and those that did certainly didn’t see them as anything but peripheral to our lives. Our contact with, and understanding of, the workers who we were urging to seize power (Grant [McDonagh] was particularly fond of spraypainting the slogan ‘AH power to the workers’ councils,’ overlooking the trivial objection that there were no workers’ councils to seize power, even if any other of the preconditions for this had been met) was practically non-existent. Like the thirties poets, we wrote as if we were addressing an audience of thousands, when in fact we were speaking to each other.[117]

He continues that he thought that their activity was ineffective and incomprehensible:

We didn’t actually do anything except produce Kat...except put up a few posters and spraypaint a few walls, generally with slogans which would have been utterly incomprehensible, not merely to anyone without a good grasp of anarchist theory, but to anyone without detailed knowledge of the squabbles going on in the Wellington Left. As a program for building the New Jerusalem, or even clearing a bit of space prior to doing so, it wasn’t really a starter.[118]

While McDonagh importantly called for the construction of a coherent, complex, open and fluid proletarian theory and practice, he seemed to veer between extremes of pessimism and optimism in his writings. On the one hand, he despaired that the working-class was held in thrall by the spectacle. For example, he thought that television was sending ‘consumable banality’ into every home, ‘dulling, placating, controlling more efficiently than any regime of the past.’[119]

Yet on the other hand, he took signs of proletarian dissent to signify the possibility of the immediate establishment of the ‘total democracy’ of workers’ councils.[120] This was hardly a practical suggestion during a non-revolutionary period, and indeed, in a country without a revolutionary tradition where workers’ councils have never appeared. McDonagh remembers his writing of the period to be quite “apocalyptic...This has happened, therefore dah-de-dah-de-dah workers’ councils, viva the revolution kind of stuff.”[121] For instance, in a 1979 leaflet criticizing a ‘cover-up’ by the Prime Minister, McDonagh exuberantly thought that in response the proletariat would ‘unleash’ a ‘fury’ only hinted at in previous struggles and ‘storm the winter palace.’[122] Further,

None, except the imbeciles who write the leaders for the Post and the Dominion, can stomach Bosses or cops anymore. The fragmentary radicalism and the moments of poetry it stumbled hesitantly towards in 1978 must in 79 fuze into an insatiable lust for the totality if we are to gain everything.[123]

Of course, this ‘lust for the totality’ never materialized (although a one-day union-run general strike did occur in that year). This thinking showed just how marginalized the anarcho-councilist current was: the workers’ dissent of the time was confined to a minority of the workforce. Even in 1976, when the highest proportion of the workforce went on strike in New Zealand’s history, only 19% of the workforce participated in strikes.

The Christchurch Anarchy Group and Councilism

In New Zealand, Solidarity exerted a significant influence upon the mid-1970s anarchist milieu. Anarchist groups influenced explicitly by Solidarity included the People’s Revolutionary Movement (Wellington c.1973–4; it included Iris Mills and Graham Rua, who later became involved in the Persons Unknown trial in the UK in the late 1970s); Solidarity (Auckland, 1973-c.4);[124] Anarchy (Christchurch, 1975) magazine; and the Christchurch Anarchy Group (1975–8). Unlike Australia, no specifically councilist group existed during this period (after the Revolutionary Committee folded in c.1974). Englart claims that the Brisbane SMG split into two groups in 1977, the Libertarian Socialist Organization and the Self-Management Organization, over ‘essentially internal organization and allegations of cliques in the group.’[125] Other Australian groups were also influenced by Solidarity, such as the SAG (as previously noted).

Solidarity was influential for many reasons. Many anarchists were looking for a more indepth and relevant theory that addressed such developments as the rise of ‘affluence,’ leisure time (and its associated alienation), and bureaucratic management and planning (in both the state and private capitalism). Solidarity was heavily influenced by the theories of SouB and in particular by SouB’s major theoretician, Cornelius Castoriadis. For Solidarity, as with SouB, rising living standards had not fundamentally altered “the status of worker as worker,” nor given the “bulk of mankind [sic] much freedom outside of production.”[126]

Solidarity’s anti-bureaucratic views were compatible with class struggle anarchism. Their anti-capitalist and anti-hierarchical bent, as well as the central importance they placed on workers self-emancipation, were likewise highly compatible. Further, they rejected the Leninist concept of a vanguard party. Consequently, in Freedom it was claimed that “it is possible to move from the ‘class-struggle’ type of anarchism to Solidarity with no drastic change of principle.“126

Indeed, the Christchurch Anarchy Group (CAG) identified with Solidarity material to such an extent that they believed Solidarity was, for all intents and purposes, anarchist. CAG defined anarchism in councilist terms:

Anarchists propose a society based upon local and industrial peoples assemblies, federating with elected and revocable delegates in workers councils. History shows that such workers councils are developed by everyday people whenever they seek to take control of their life.[127]

Anarchism, to them, meant a dual ‘struggle against the state and for self-management.’[128] They claimed that Solidarity referred to themselves as “libertarian socialists” rather than “anarchists” only because

they do not wish to become identified with the more ‘individualistic’ faction of the anarchist movement. Solidarity do work closely with anarchist groups in Britain with whom they share a common theory and basis for action. Solidarity have had a considerable influence on the anarchist movement in Britain.[129]

Yet this overly rosy picture overlooks that Solidarity was often highly critical of anarchism, including the praxis of class struggle anarchists like Kropotkin and Bakunin. Maurice Brinton of Solidarity was dismissive of what he saw as the utopian, anti-intellectual, and moralistic trends within neo-anarchism, and their preoccupation with ‘personal salvation’ rather than class struggle.[130]

Another reason why Solidarity appealed was that class struggle anarchism seemed stuck in the past. In particular, it often focused the Spanish revolution of 1936–7. After the defeat of the Russian, Mexican and Spanish revolutions in the early part of the twentieth century, anarchist communism had declined as a movement and theory, and the texts that were produced “amounted to little more than a formal defense of principles, without any critical depth.”[131] Subsequently, Solidarity material, like that of the SI, seemed fresh and innovative.

Importantly, Solidarity offered an impressive series of up-to-date, well-produced pamphlets and analysis, as well as a series of valuable histories which uncovered little known episodes of workers’ self-organization against capitalism and bureaucracy.[132] Particularly attractive was their first-hand accounts of how proletarians were organizing against capitalism on the shop floor during strikes and occupations in the 1960s and 1970s.[133] They also published a pamphlet on the miners’ strike at Mount Isa in Australia in 1964–5.[134] Their focus upon workers’ self-organization, rather than the activities of party or union bureaucrats, seemed validated by events of the time, such as Hungary (1956), France (1968) and Portugal (1974). Richard Bolstad of the CAG also liked their well-thought out proposals for a future society:

I was kind of looking for something that was thought out enough to offer an explanation of what does a revolutionary group do?...What kind of society would succeed, and it seemed to me that Solidarity.could fit in really well...They had a huge scheme of setting up a country...[with a] central assembly of delegates that would run an area of a country.[135]

Bolstad compared his involvement in the carnivalesque Christchurch PYM in the early 1970s with the CAG of the mid-1970s. The latter group was “more thought out, more planned and focused upon how to build up support and links.”[136] He elaborated:

In 1970 if you had asked me I would have said that the point of being an anarchist is that revolution is around the corner kind of thing. By 1975 I would have said the point of being an anarchist is to offer support, for instance a sort of Solidarity model.and linking, and what they call the generalization of learning within people struggling for social change.A revolutionary organization.links people together and shares their experiences around so that they learn from each other, and trusting that, that will inevitably build a libertarian society rather than a dictatorship.[137]

Solidarity’s views were also attractive because they seemed less obscure than those of the Situationists. Andrew Dodsworth of the Wellington Resistance bookshop and KAT anarcho-situationist grouping noted, “On the whole Solidarity stuff seemed more connected with the ‘real world,’ insofar as I knew anything about it.The Situationist stuff was more exciting, though often incomprehensible.”[138] As a result, he distributed Solidarity publications nationwide, as did the Christchurch Anarchy Group.

Solidarity saw socialism as a many-sided struggle to change not only work but also everyday life. To them, socialism meant ‘a radical transformation in all human relations.’[139] They thus rejected authoritarianism, sexual repression, and supported the anti-nuclear movement and women’s liberation. Bolstad took this further, and suggested that primal therapy, a controversial form of psychotherapy, was pivotal for revolutionary struggle. In Arthur Janov’s words, changing the ‘inner state provides the basis for change in social outlook.’[140] Perhaps this hope placed on unconventional if not New Age psychology in part reflected the influence the commune movement had on the CAG (the group was based at an urban commune).

Yet, as with most councilist influenced Australasian anarchist groups, CAG was content to echo Solidarity’s views rather than to develop their own theory for somewhat unique Australasian conditions. Most of the group’s pamphlets bore the mark of Solidarity’s and SouB’s theories, including Bolstad’s The Industrial Front and his An Anarchist Analysis of the Chinese Revolution.[141] Indeed, part of The Industrial Front summarized Castoriadis’ pamphlet Workers’ Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society. However, Bolstad did make some preliminary attempts to address New Zealand conditions.[142]

Solidarity importantly formed a network of militant workers, and had many contacts in the shop stewards movement, as well as some influence in important disputes. Yet in New Zealand, anarcho-councilists organized no such network. While the CAG aimed to build a nationwide anarchist network, and produced the Christchurch Anarchy/Anarchists Newsletter to that end, their newsletter contained mainly news items of interest to anarchists rather than to workers.[143] For example, it did not contain any news or analysis of workplace disputes. The CAG, as far as I am aware, did not actually partake in workplace resistance. This represented a fundamental oversight.

Of all the Solidarity influenced groupings in New Zealand, only Auckland Solidarity became involved in workplace-based struggles. Auckland Solidarity members took employment in a glass factory to (unsuccessfully) encourage resistance.[144] Auckland Solidarity was involved in the “Auckland ferry dispute” of 1974, one of the more important workplace conflicts of the 1970s in New Zealand, which nearly resulted in a nationwide wildcat general strike. Sympathy stoppages and demonstrations throughout the country attracted 40,000 to 50,000 workers.[145]

Many criticisms have been made of Solidarity/SouB. Some anarchists criticized their proposed central council of delegates as too closely resembling a state. According to Adam Buick, under anarchist influence Solidarity revised its earlier support for a ‘workers’ council government’ to the ‘rule of workers’ councils.’[146] Some claim that Solidarity/SouB (and the SI, for that matter) went ‘beyond Marxism’ and rejected the class struggle in favor of the opposition between order-givers and order-takers, which they believed was the fundamental contradiction in society.[147] Solidarity seemed to focus more upon alienation, and the lack of control people had over their everyday lives in and outside the workplace, than material exploitation. They defined the proletariat in a-historical terms as those who do not possess power,[148] and assumed that the chief contradiction within capitalism is bureaucracy rather than exploitation. Yet while Solidarity overstated the importance of bureaucracy, they did recognize that an important part of class struggle is workers’ resistance to capitalist and managerial control over work. At their best, they recognized that managerial control and class exploitation are inextricably intertwined. Capital needs hierarchical authority to overcome workers’ resistance.[149]

For the CAG, self-management was “the only answer...Only when working people collectively manage society through organs which they completely control will our rights be safe.”[150] Against this viewpoint, Gilles Dauve and Francois Martin have argued, “Socialism is not the management, however ‘democratic’ it may be, of capital, but its complete destruction.”[151] Workers could run ‘their’ workplaces themselves, and yet still compete with other worker-owned enterprises in the market, thus forcing these enterprises to lessen costs (such as wages) and make workers work harder in order to stay competitive. Further, as with Castoriadis, Bolstad recommended the retention of money and equal wages for all.[152] As anarchist communists like Kropotkin argued, the retention of the wage-system, exchange and the market, even if the means of production were collectively owned, would most likely bring about the reappearance of classes and the state.[153] This danger of self-managed capitalism was recognized by Solidarity in 1978 when it merged with the group Social Revolution.[154]

Conclusion

Anarchists drew upon councilist ideas because they lacked an in-depth analytical understanding of society. Anarchist pamphlets tended to be either tired reprints of classics, or re-statements of basic principles. Their publications were full of denunciation, and lacked analysis. Councilists offered a more comprehensive, well-thought out and up-to-date analysis of modern bureaucratic capitalism, the mass alienation produced by mass production and mass consumption, and workers’ resistance (in various forms, including the ‘the refusal of work’ or urban rioting led by the ‘provotariat’) to the ‘spectacular commodity society.’ In Australasia, the councilists generally lacked a following and an audience. They were faced with the choice of either remaining in nearly complete obscurity, or gaining influence in the much larger anarchist milieu. In practice, the councilists tended to opt somewhat begrudgingly for the latter option, and thus operated on the fringes of the anarchist milieu, acting as critics of that milieu’s ‘mindless activism.’

Hence both councilism and anarchism loosely converged, but in New Zealand this convergence was too ephemeral and fleeting to offer a sophisticated synthesis between the two traditions. The basic form it took was the redevelopment of class struggle anarchism and councilism into a praxis that questioned not only the ownership of the means of production, but also capital’s colonization of everyday life. The concept of “generalized self-management” greatly deepened and broadened self-management to include every aspect of life, not just work.

Yet anarchists were content to merely republish the writings of councilists, and few attempts were made to develop their own theory. Councilists likewise grasped the essential views of the SI and Solidarity without really developing them further. The councilists tended to lack practice, while the anarchists lacked vigorous theory. As a result, the practice of anarchists lacked thought, and they jumped from activist single-issue to issue with little or no effect. Carnival anarchists uncritically supported any form of activism so long as it involved some degree of direct action, reminiscent of the later New Left. Looking back on Auckland carnival anarchism, Frank Prebble, a central figure in that group, said, “We were a fairly active sort of group. We never ran things like anarchist discussion groups or anything like that. We never really seriously looked at organization. It was always activism, doing things, getting things done.” Yet when asked what their strategy was, Prebble replied, “We didn’t have one really, we didn’t think much about what we were doing...You know, there was no thought put into it at all. That was the crazy thing about it.”[155] The theories of the councilists were often detached from where workers were actually at on the ground. Overall, a major shortcoming of both anarchism and councilism during this period was their near complete isolation from the rest of the working class and their detachment from struggles in the workplace in particular.

The emphasis upon a series of playful one-off stunts and scandals — such as the Wellington anarchists who stole a US General’s hat, filled it with assorted muck, and then returned it with an anti-Vietnam War message — can be seen as the product of frustration of tiny, largely ineffectual groups. The primary purpose of the stunts was inward looking: they were fun actions to boost the morale of the group and to give the impression that they were having some impact. Sometimes these acts could be bred of pure despair, such as when anarchist punk rocker Neil Roberts killed himself while trying to bomb the Wanganui police computer in 1982. He spraypainted ‘we have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity’ before he died.[156]

Yet the stunts of the mid to late 1970s had minimal, if any, impression on society. As Sean Sheehan has commented, capital can easily accommodate anarchic “pranks,” no matter how comical they are.[157] To Sheehan, they amount to little more than “chic subversions.”[158] Ken Knabb has noted that the Yippies entered “the spectacle as clowns to make it ridiculous,” yet, “they created diversions which, far from promoting the subversion of the spectacle, merely made passivity more interesting by offering a spectacle of refusal.”[159] Knabb’s argument is applicable to carnival anarchists, not just the Yippies. Point Blank! made similar arguments that the disruptions of the fun revolutionists were merely a harmless sideshow to the ‘movement.’ The movement recuperated their theatrical style for its spectacle of fragmentary, reformist opposition.[160] However, this is not to dismiss all stunts as being harmless. The antics of the PYM were more shocking and successful precisely because they were closely associated with the mass extra-parliamentary protests and class struggles of the late 1960s and 1970s. Their stunts were more effective because they were associated with popular issues or campaigns, such as the anti-Vietnam War movement.

The almost complete marginalization of the councilist and anarchist milieu during a nonrevolutionary period highlighted a classical dilemma that revolutionaries face. Should they water down their views to seek popularity and influence, or do they stick to their principles and thus remain isolated and unpopular? Do they withdraw inward, and focus on changing themselves? Or should they look outward, and focus on changing society? The carnival anarchists of the mid-1970s adopted a purist self-marginalizing approach whereby they attempted to live the most radical lifestyle possible in their everyday lives (by refusing to work, refusing to pay rent, living collectively, fusing art with politics and taking ultra-militant ‘illegalist’ direct action seemingly to make up for the lack of militancy in the rest of the population), but these loose experiments seemed to only last a few years before the affinity groups upon which they were based self-destructed. Gilles Dauve makes the pertinent point that the views expressed by Vaneigem in The Revolution of Everyday Life,[161] ideas which the carnival anarchists attempted to put into practice, ‘cannot be lived.either one huddles in the crevices of bourgeois society, or one ceaselessly opposes to it a different life which is impotent because only the revolution can make it a reality.’[162]

Like the SI, the carnival anarchists adopted a purist total revolution or nothing praxis. Situationists often dismissed dissent as lacking radical content, fragmentary and thus recuperable. Situationists tended to differentiate ‘a pure, autonomous class from the “external” institutions of the workers’ movement (unions, leftist parties), and in so doing, end up concluding that the class has been duped by the ideology of these external forces,’[163] or in the SI’s case, the spectacle. ‘Situs’ froze the high points of class struggle, in particular the emergence of workers’ councils, and used it as a principle to judge the present situation. Yet this position seems anachronistic in a situation, like that in Australasia, where workers’ councils were not even remotely possible. Their critique did not relate to the daily contradictory relationship that exists between capital and workers, where ‘both the acceptance and refusal of capitalist labor coexist, where workers’ passive objectification and subjective (collective) resistance coexist within the subsumption of labor-power to the productive process.’[164] Carnival anarchists often dismissed the potential of working class people with apparently conservative lifestyles, and at their worst seemed to blame workers for reproducing capital everyday. Their voluntarism assumed that revolution began with the individual de-conditioning him or herself; they stressed the role of changing consciousness and culture in producing revolution, rather than transforming material conditions. Their view that only people who had psychologically deconditioned themselves could make a revolution has elitist and vanguardist implications, and overlooks how people can change rapidly through the process of struggle. The carnival anarchists wanted a wild, riotous revolution, and could scorn anything less than this. Their impatient insurrectionary immediatism was also more suited to a period of intense class struggle.

Today the anti-bureaucratic theories of the councilists — in the context of a major global recession, and the return of old-fashioned exploitation since the imposition of neo-liberalism -seem out of place, and definitely a product of the ‘affluence’ of the 1960s. Indeed, a common criticism of SouB, Solidarity and the SI was that they tended to assume that capitalism had overcome its contradictions during the 1960s, and believed that the working-class in the “first world” would remain relatively “affluent.”[165] Likewise, the ‘never work’ politics of the situationists and carnival anarchists asserted that the major problem with everyday life under capital was boredom and routine, and not class exploitation.

Thus carnival anarchists overall had an ambiguous attitude towards class struggle. On the one hand, as exemplified by the Provos, carnival anarchists could see the struggle of the ‘provotariat’ as one against the rest of the population, who had been allegedly thoroughly brainwashed by the spectacle. This glorification of the radical wing of the ‘lumpenproletariat’ as harbingers of a libidinal, apocalyptic, total revolution, and subsequent elitism towards wage workers, has been taken up today by fashionable carnival anarchists CrimethInc.[166] Perhaps this shift in carnival anarchism towards a crude sub-cultural situationism without any notion of class struggle, let alone generalized self-management, indeed a rudimentary celebration of lumpen ‘dumpster-diving’ parasitism, can be explained by the different context of the times. The 1970s and 1980s were periods of relatively high working class dissent, while the 2000s was a period of very low working class activity, and therefore it has been easier to dismiss the potential of the waged working class.

On the other hand, they were not simply individualist bohemians, as their activity did not lack class content. They refused work, went jobbing, formed unemployed groups,[167] organized or supported many pickets against capitalists, supported workers’ self-management, and their stunts often were class-focused. However, as with their crude borrowing from councilism, their class war politics was often cartoon-like. This aspect of their politics, for good or worse, was a major influence on anarchist punk and especially on Class War in the UK, which also carried out class-based stunts, and also saw class as primarily a cultural construct.[168]

A great strength of the situationists and carnival anarchists of the 1960s and 1970s was their attempt to relate to new forms of working class resistance, namely that of young subcultural ‘hoods,’ delinquents, ethnic minorities, and the unwaged. The struggles of these groups were often riotous and explosive, and had much potential if they spread to, or linked with, other sectors of the working class. The carnival anarchists saw this potential, but they were unsuccessfully sought to extend this struggle by reveling in an image of being as radical, threatening and extreme as possible, thus hoping to ‘freak out’ and provoke authority. It is a pity that they did not attempt to link these new forms of resistance with the workplace based revolt of the 1970s.

From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.

Chronology :

January 27, 2021 : Part 1, Chapter 2 -- Added.

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