Chapter 13 : Carnival and Class: Anarchism and Councilism in Australasia during the 1970s

Anarchism and ‘councilism,’ a form of libertarian socialism that was influenced heavily by council communism, converged in Australasia during the 1970s. Many anarchists drew upon councilism in order to update anarchism. Councilists sought to rejuvenate socialism from below and to reevaluate Marx. In so doing, they took an anarchistic turn. Overall, two loose anarchist/councilist tendencies emerged. The first was that of ‘class-struggle anarchists’ and councilists. The second was a bohemian, anti-work current represented by ‘carnival anarchists’ and situationist groupings influenced by the Situationist International (SI).

This chapter examines the perspectives these currents held on class. Both tendencies, following the councilist analysis of ‘bureaucratic capitalism,’ asserted that the fundamental problem with society was the lack of control people had over their everyday lives. Consequently, they believed that the major division in society was between ‘order-givers’ and ‘order-takers’ rather than between the capitalist class and the working class. This analysis represented a shift away from seeing class exploitation as central to the everyday maintenance and reproduction of capital. As Greg George of the Brisbane Self-Management Group (SMG) suggested, it might be called a ‘hierarchical analysis’ based on power relationships of ‘dominance/submission’ rather than a ‘class analysis’ based on exploitative social relations derived from property.[965] Notwithstanding this convergent analysis, a lasting synthesis between anarchism and councilism did not develop in practice.

The tendencies’ broader relationship with the multifarious forms of class struggle of the 1970s is also explored. This relationship shaped their tensions, attempts at cooperation and their praxis. Placing the small revolutionary groups studied in this piece in their wider context is important because it shows how they were influenced (or not) by this context and offers a yardstick by which their relevance and effectiveness can roughly be judged. The councilist/class-struggle anarchist tendency attempted to relate to working-class revolts in the workplace and community against capitalist, state, union and leftist bureaucracies. In contrast, carnivalists and followers of the SI (or ‘situs’) generally attempted to relate imaginatively to working-class resistance by disaffected sub-cultural youth, ‘delinquents’ and the unwaged.

This chapter presents a case study of the relationship between anarchism and councilism in Australasia during the 1970s, outlining their attempts at cooperation and their clashes. It is based on extensive research, including many interviews, into this milieu in New Zealand,[966] and on a preliminary and incomplete investigation into the corresponding milieu in Australia. Furthermore, this piece aims to shed some light on little-known anarchist and libertarian socialist movements, as Anglophone studies of anarchism and unorthodox Marxism tend to neglect movements outside the UK, France and the USA. While much has been written about Solidarity in the UK and particularly Socialisme ou Barbarie (SouB) in France, nothing has been published about their Australian counterpart, the Brisbane SMG, even though the SMG had a comparable or probably larger membership than both.[967]

International context and definitions

While endeavoring to develop their own praxis, Australasian anarchists and councilists often took their main inspiration from movements in other ‘advanced’ capitalist countries, especially from the UK, France, the USA and the Netherlands. Given this level of influence, what occurred in Australasia cannot be dismissed as peculiarly Antipodean. To some extent this research offers a picture in microcosm of developments elsewhere. It is therefore important to outline the international context in which these currents arose. This shall be done briefly while defining councilism, class-struggle anarchism and carnival anarchism.

The coalescence between councilism and anarchism was shaped by two major developments in the class struggle. First, workers’ councils appeared during the Hungarian revolution of 1956, which created a surge of interest in council communism and anarchism among New Leftists searching for an anti-bureaucratic alternative to Stalinism and social democracy.

Second, the explosive global events of 1968, and particularly the massive revolt in France, sparked an astonishingly broad upturn in class struggle until about the mid-1970s. Broadly speaking, workers took direct action, sometimes outside official organizational forms (union or party), to press their demands. 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. As direct action in the community and workplace became commonplace, many non-Leninist revolutionary groupings emerged which were influenced loosely by a melange of left communism, situationism, council communism and anarchism.[968]

Defining councilism requires an outline of its Marxist antecedent, council communism. Marcel van der Linden defines council communism, which arose during the German revolution following the First World War, as aiming for the abolition of capitalism through workers establishing ‘a democracy of workers’ councils.’ To create these councils, the capitalist class was not the only group that had to be ‘consistently resisted.’ Parliamentary ‘democracy,’ unions, social democratic parties and Bolshevik parties needed to be treated similarly, as they were viewed as organs that manipulated the working class and promoted capitalism.[969] Philippe 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.’[970]

In the 1940s and 1950s, several Western European groups emerged which drew upon the legacy of council communism. Those with most influence in Australasia were Solidarity, SouB and the SI. Bourrinet maintains that Solidarity, SouB and other similar groups represented a new ‘councilist’ tendency that was largely distinct from the historic council communist movement.[971]

Councilists diverged from council communism predominantly due to their innovative attempt to transcend Marxism for the changed material conditions of the postwar era. As explored below, they believed that class struggle had taken a new form: the struggle of ‘order-takers’ against bureaucratic ‘order-givers.’ In this vein, the term ‘councilism’ is used in this chapter to distinguish it from council communism. Bourrinet also believes, when compared with council communism, the broader councilist milieu of the post-1968 era lacked coherent theoretical positions, was organizationally loose and ephemeral, and was theoretically eclectic, as they often borrowed from anarchism.[972] Yet unlike Bourrinet, the term councilism is not employed to imply an anarchist degeneration of council communism, nor theoretical or organizational looseness. Nor is it meant to suggest councilists deviated from council communism completely. Indeed, they accepted most of its core assumptions noted above.[973]

The SI can perhaps be considered part of this broad councilist current. While the SI began as an artistic movement, by the early 1960s it had adopted the fundamentals of councilist praxis.[974] For instance, as Challand shows in this volume, the SI redefined the proletariat as those who had no power over their lives, and understood revolution as a process through which it regained this control. However, the SI was influenced by an eclectic mixture of traditions, such as Western Marxism and radical artistic currents. With its analysis of commodity fetishism, it was more Marxist than SouB and Solidarity.

When anarchism revived in the 1960s and 1970s, it took many different forms. This chapter focuses upon the two main types that drew upon councilism. The first was ‘class-struggle anarchism,’ a term that was beginning to be used in the 1970s to denote anarchists who rejected liberal and individualist anarchism. The term encompasses forms of anarchism — especially anarchist communism and anarcho-syndicalism — that place emphasis on the centrality of class struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, hierarchy and the state.[975] This renewal of class-struggle anarchism has been mostly overlooked, yet as Nicolas Walter has noted ‘most of the new anarchist organizations formed during and after the revival of the 1960s have been of a traditional kind.’[976] By traditional, he meant anarchist communist or anarcho-syndicalist.

Nonetheless, this revival was far from traditional. Many of the new class-struggle anarchists drew eclectically from Marxism and especially from councilism to the dismay of traditional anarchists, many of whom simplistically equated all forms of Marxism with Stalinism. In France, councilism was highly influential. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, for instance, declared that he was an ‘anarchist … along the lines of “council socialism.”’[977] Noir et Rouge, which included Cohn-Bendit, stated in 1968 that:

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 feel closer to ‘Marxists’ in the Council Communist movement of the past … than we do to official ‘anarchists’ who have a semi-Leninist conception of party organization.[978]

The other type of anarchism that drew upon councilism was carnival anarchism. During the 1960s, the Dutch groups the Provos and Kabouters helped to popularize carnival anarchism globally.[979] Carnival anarchism was both a distinctive style and type of anarchism. It aimed to combine the cultural revolution with a socio-economic one, and synthesize personal transformation with collective transformation. Theoretically and organizationally, it valued eclecticism, creativity, informality and spontaneity. Carnivalists were provocative tactically, mixing absurdist humor with direct action. In brief, they wanted revolution and fun too. The term ‘carnival anarchist’ was first used in Australia. There ‘serious anarchists’ employed it largely as a derogatory term during the 1970s, but in this chapter it is not used to suggest that carnivalists were frivolous, disruptive ‘chaoticists.’[980] Today, the current is represented — albeit in a modified form — by groups such as the French insurrectionists Tiqqun and the Invisible Committee, and CrimethInc in the USA.[981]

The Australasian context

In the 1950s and 1960s, most working-class Australians and New Zealanders experienced rising living standards, full employment and widespread ‘affluence’ (although most indigenous people were still trapped in deprivation). In both countries, from about 1968, this Keynesian class compromise began to break down largely due to an upsurge in proletarian dissent. The percentage of the workforce participating in strike activity rose dramatically in the late 1960s, peaking in about the mid-1970s in Australia and during the late 1970s in New Zealand.[982]

However, this militancy was confined to a minority. During the 1970s, an average of 16.5 per cent of the New Zealand workforce went on strike.[983] The Australian working-class was much more combative than its New Zealand counterpart.[984] Yet in neither country did this upsurge reach the radical proportions of France 1968, Italy 1969, nor Britain 1974 when miners helped to bring down a government.

This workplace rebellion was interlinked with the ‘protest movement,’ which peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Vietnam War was a significant issue in Australasia, as both New Zealand and Australian troops fought in Vietnam, and conscription was introduced in Australia. The unwaged, such as students, played an important part in the protest movement. Furthermore, that movement contributed to the emergence of a broader youth rebellion, which concurrently helped to create the counterculture. Protest began to dissipate because of the election of mildly reforming social democratic governments during the early 1970s in both countries.

These workplace and community revolts seemingly challenged almost every form of authority in society. This upheaval also had an anti-bureaucratic aspect: many people pushed for greater control over their workplaces, educational institutions and communities, thus challenging the unprecedented growth of corporate and state — and sometimes union — bureaucracies that had occurred under the postwar Keynesian class compromise.

From the early to mid-1970s, economic decline set in. Living standards fell, mass unemployment arrived, and while workplace rebellion continued, it became more defensive in nature.[985] Yet women’s liberation, anti-apartheid, anti-racist, indigenous and ecology movements blossomed in both countries. During the late 1970s in Aotearoa/New Zealand, many Maori occupied land to protest against the ongoing alienation from the little of it that remained in their possession.

Belligerent governments attempted to counteract this generalized revolt, such as Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s state government in Queensland, Australia, and Robert Muldoon’s government in New Zealand. Both governments curtailed many civil liberties, were confrontational towards dissenters and increased police power. Bjelke-Petersen even banned street marches in 1977.

The Australasian left throughout this time was dominated by mass social democratic parties and unions. While militant workers, the New Left and various social movements challenged this orthodoxy, their contestation was gradually recuperated. In both countries, revolutionaries were few if not minuscule in number relative to overseas. Of these, Leninist parties were dominant. Anarchists and councilists had less impact, apart from in a few cities where Leninists had not gained ascendancy, such as Brisbane. They were often starting from scratch, particularly in New Zealand, which lacked both a continuous and notable anarchist tradition, and a council communist current whatsoever. The much smaller New Zealand anarchist and councilist milieu developed close links with its Australian counterpart, hence developments in New Zealand often closely mirrored those in Australia.

Class-struggle anarchist and councilist groups

This section examines the relevant views of three Australasian groups — the Christchurch Anarchy Group (CAG), the Brisbane Self-Management Group (SMG) and the Auckland-based Revolutionary Committee — to illustrate the relationship between class-struggle anarchists and councilists, and to appraise these organizations’ relationship with, and perspectives on, class.

Solidarity — and thus SouB, from whom Solidarity took much of its inspiration — exerted a significant influence upon the 1970s New Zealand anarchist milieu. While no specifically anarcho-syndicalist or anarchist communist groups were established, numerous anarchist groupings drew heavily from Solidarity. These included CAG, the People’s Revolutionary Movement (Wellington), Solidarity (Auckland), the anarchist wing of the anarcho-situationist magazine KAT (Wellington) and Anarchy magazine (Christchurch). All of these groups were tiny in size, with most numbering half a dozen members.

In Australia, an anarcho-syndicalist current was established that concentrated on restarting the Industrial Workers of the World from 1975, as well as building small anarcho-syndicalist propaganda groups. Even then, many anarchist organizations were also influenced by Solidarity, as can clearly be seen in the Melbourne publication Solidarity.

CAG’s relationship with councilism demonstrates well the crossover between anarchism and councilism that transpired in the 1970s. CAG, which existed from 1975 to c.1978, identified with Solidarity to such an extent that they believed Solidarity was, for all intents and purposes, anarchist. CAG defined anarchism as centrally involving workers’ councils:

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 in revolution … It is because our daily lives are increasingly unlivable that we must collectively take control of them.[986]

Anarchism meant a dual ‘struggle against the state and for self-management.’[987] 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.[988]

This overlooked Solidarity’s critical attitude towards anarchism, including class-struggle anarchists such as Kropotkin and Bakunin.[989] As with many anarchists, CAG assumed councilism was anarchist rather than engaging critically with it. For example, Richard Bolstad of CAG, in a pamphlet which summarized Cornelius Castoriadis’ Workers’ Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society, presumed that Castoriadis’ ‘central assembly of delegates’ which would run a future socialist society was anarchist in nature. He did not question whether such a proposal centralized too much power in a relatively small body.[990]

Solidarity made such an impression on CAG for numerous reasons. Solidarity publications, like those of the SI, seemed fresh and innovative. Solidarity published an impressive series of up-to-date and easy-to-read pamphlets, including histories which uncovered little-known episodes of workers’ self-management. Their focus upon workers’ self-organization, rather than the activities of party or union bureaucrats, seemed validated by the uprisings of the time, such as Hungary (1956), France (1968), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Portugal (1974–1975). In contrast, class-struggle anarchism seemed stuck in the past, constantly reliving the defeat of the Spanish revolution of 1936–1937. Class-struggle anarchist literature at the time consisted predominantly of either tired reprints of classics, or restatements of basic principles.

Solidarity and SouB’s anti-bureaucratic analysis of postwar ‘advanced’ capitalist society appealed to CAG because of its anarchistic nature. Castoriadis, perhaps the main theoretician of SouB, contended that society had become dominated by a complex pyramid-like hierarchical structure, one that affected all aspects of social life. People had become manipulated by bureaucrats at work, in consumption and in everyday life. The working class had become thoroughly alienated from any control over their lives. Yet they did not passively accept this. Class struggle had taken a new tendency: proletarians were attempting to assert some form of control over their daily lives, inside and outside the workplace.[991] Hence, to SouB and Solidarity, socialism meant the full realization of autogestion throughout society via workers’ councils. Both groups argued that working-class self-organization constantly transformed capital, and that this autonomy was the basis for social revolution.

Bolstad was also drawn to Solidarity because of its well-thought-out proposals for a future society based on a network of workers’ councils. He compared his involvement in the carnivalesque New Left group the Christchurch Progressive Youth Movement (PYM) during the early 1970s with his later involvement in CAG. In the PYM, it felt like ‘revolution is around the corner,’ while CAG was ‘more thought-out, more planned and focused upon how to build up support and links’ based on what he perceived to be Solidarity’s model of a revolutionary organization that shared people’s experiences and established mutual trust.[992]

Another reason why CAG was attracted to Solidarity was because of Solidarity’s trenchant critique of the traditional left, especially Leninism. Solidarity lambasted Leninist parties for being rigidly hierarchical and bureaucratic, and acting on behalf of the working class, instead of encouraging working-class self-emancipation.[993] This critique resonated with CAG because much of the Christchurch PYM shifted from anarchism to nonparty Maoism in the early 1970s.[994] Those PYMers were attracted to ‘direct action Maoism’ because they believed that China was a near paradise where no class divisions or state bureaucracy existed. CAG expended much energy criticizing this viewpoint, criticism which drew from a Solidarity pamphlet by Council Communist Cajo Brendel.[995]

In the early 1970s, two councilist groups strongly influenced by Solidarity and SouB emerged in Australasia. One was the Brisbane Self-Management Group (1971–1977). The other was the awkwardly named ‘Revolutionary Committee of the CPNZ (Expelled)’ (1968-c.1974), which was based in Auckland. Examining the two groups, who were in correspondence with each other, makes for an interesting contrast.

Both organizations emerged from conflict with Leninists, and hence placed paramount importance on rejecting vanguardism. Indeed, the Revolutionary Committee was formed after it was expelled from the Maoist Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ), for opposing the CPNZ’s lack of internal freedom and its participation in elections.[996] The SMG originated from the campus-based Brisbane New Left. Specifically, it emanated from the short-lived Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), a party which also contained a Trotskyist tendency. After the Trotskyists departed from the RSP, it was renamed the SMG.[997]

The SMG, which called itself ‘libertarian socialist’ and sometimes ‘libertarian communist’ in orientation,[998] was the largest and most influential councilist or anarchist organization in Australasia during the 1970s. It grew during a period of sharp decline in Brisbane street protest. Estimates of its size vary from less than 100 to 300 people involved in its cells, with a smaller core membership that attended general assemblies of somewhere between 30 and 70.[999] It had a mixed base of workers and students. It formed struggle-based cells where members lived, worked or studied, such as in high schools, universities and workplaces. These cells were formal sub-groups which then reported back to the SMG’s monthly general assembly. The SMG was activist in orientation: it has been claimed that the SMG ‘led Brisbane’s marches’ against the Vietnam War, apartheid and the repressive measures imposed by the Bjelke-Petersen government.[1000] The SMG involved many prominent and capable activists, such as Drew Hutton and especially Brian Laver. It agitated, with limited success, for struggles to be controlled by open assemblies.

In contrast, the Revolutionary Committee was a tiny non-student-based discussion group. They claimed ‘our expulsion from the C.P.N.Z. and our “splendid isolation” has its obverse side in that we have had unrestricted freedom to think and draw conclusions.’[1001] Subsequently, they mostly focused upon discussing theory and producing their magazine Compass.

However, the SMG was not anti-intellectual, and the Revolutionary Committee were not armchair revolutionaries. The former prolifically produced material (mainly leaflets, but also a few pamphlets) and operated their own printshop and bookshop (the Red and Black Bookshop); and members of the latter went on a hunger strike against the Vietnam War in a central city park.

The Revolutionary Committee distanced itself from the anarchist milieu. Indeed, Steve Taylor of the Committee wrote that he had ‘no affiliation express or implicit’ with anarchism.[1002] In contrast, after initially being hostile to anarchism on much the same grounds as Solidarity, the SMG developed contacts with local anarchists, and attempted to co-operate with them. SMG delegates attended a few Australian anarchist conferences in an effort to seek revolutionary allies, but soon they stopped participating in these gatherings after they found them fraught with internal contradictions, and after they clashed with carnival anarchists (see below). Greg George of the SMG said that they generally found anarchism more attractive in theory than in practice because the Australian anarchists seemed disorganized.[1003]

The SMG was drawn to certain aspects of anarchism because they thought they complemented councilism. In a pamphlet, George dismissed orthodox Marxist objections to anarchism. Instead, he praised anarchism for being practical and relevant to society:

It offers complexity and variety rather than bureaucratic narrowness … it offers self-activity, initiative and autonomy balanced by cooperation and responsibility, it offers real democracy and an end to alienation, it offers … equality between specialists and experts and others, and it offers equal sharing of our riches.[1004]

As the SMG looked towards working-class rebellions involving self-management as their historical legacy, they were especially attracted to anarchism because they viewed the Spanish revolution and the Makhnovist uprising as significant examples of self-management in action.[1005]

Yet they were not uncritical of anarchism. For example, George criticized individualist anarchism because he argued it was terrorist and elitist; anarchist communism because it fetishized the spontaneous, insurrectionary creativity of the working class; and anarcho-syndicalism because it was bureaucratic, vanguardist and overlooked the council form. Overall, he viewed anarchism as inadequate and in need of being superseded by council communism.[1006]

Anarchist influence on the SMG became more pronounced by the mid-1970s, and some members began to identify with anarchism. This development can be seen in several of its offshoots. In 1977, the SMG split into the Libertarian Socialist Organization (LSO), the Self-Management Organization (SMO) and the ‘Marxist tendency’ (many of whom joined the Trotskyist International Socialists). The first two groups, which were by far the largest, viewed anarchism positively. The SMO was explicitly anarchist, while the LSO was sympathetic to anarchism. The latter published You Can’t Blow up a Social Relationship: The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism with several other Australian libertarian socialist or anarchist groups.[1007] The pamphlet was a revised version of an earlier article written by George for the SMG’s publication Libertarian.[1008] It became an internationally recognized, perhaps classic, publication after it was republished by many anarchist groups outside Australia. When Joe Toscano of the SMG moved to Melbourne in about 1976, he helped found the councilist group the Libertarian Workers for a Self-Managed Society. Yet by 1978 that group had become anarchist in orientation under the influence of local anarchists. Toscano was drawn to anarchism because he considered it a more diverse, vibrant current with a richer history than councilism, which he contended had been formed only since 1968.[1009]

Relationship with and perspectives on class

In the UK, Solidarity formed a network of militant workers, developed many contacts in the shop stewards’ movement and had some influence in important disputes. In contrast, the New Zealand councilist-influenced milieu did not seemingly participate in, or support, workplace struggles. For instance, instead of building a workers’ network, CAG attempted to build a nationwide anarchist network, and as such their newsletter did not contain any items about domestic workplace disputes. Instead, it contained mainly news stories about anarchist groups abroad.

Of all the Solidarity-influenced groupings in New Zealand, only Solidarity (Auckland) became involved in workplace-based struggles, and even then its involvement was minimal. For example, its contribution to the Auckland ferry dispute of 1974, a significant workplace conflict which threatened briefly to mushroom into a nationwide wildcat general strike, was to distribute a leaflet at a union meeting.

In comparison, the SMG gained considerable influence in several workplaces. It tapped into the loose rank-and-file network that already existed within many Brisbane unions, and many militants joined the SMG. Part of the SMG’s appeal was their robust criticism of union bureaucrats, which they nicknamed ‘TUBs’ (Trade Union Bureaucrats). The SMG had many active industry-based cells, such as its health-care, teachers, white-collar and industrial cells. The industrial cell contained workers at Cairncross Dock and the Evans Deakin shipyards, among other worksites. At the shipyards, the SMG had a substantial presence that took part in numerous go-slows and strikes. The university cell participated heavily in a large-scale strike at the University of Queensland in 1971. The health-care cell contained workers at several worksites in both the public and private sectors. It did not act within unions or professional associations because it believed, like the rest of the SMG, that these organizations were undemocratic, bureaucratic and capitalist.[1010]

The SMG’s workplace strategy had its limitations, however. It was often based around propagandizing the abstract idea of workers’ self-management, idealistically presenting that idea as a panacea for all situations.[1011] They seemingly spent more energy on mass leafleting this ideal than attempting to build solidarity and self-organization within and across workplaces.

Importantly, the SMG — like other councilists — developed a broader view of class than orthodox Marxists. Workers without any real power in ‘industrial, agricultural, white-collar, service (including housewives) and intellectual labor’ were considered part of the proletariat.[1012] Furthermore, George argued that most people worked in non-industrial workplaces.[1013] As such, the SMG placed emphasis on agitating within white-collar workplaces, and distributed well-received propaganda criticizing the boredom and alienation of office work. They saw libertarian socialism as a many-sided struggle to change not only work, but also everyday life. The SMG adopted Solidarity’s manifesto ‘As We See It’ wherein it was stated that socialism meant ‘a radical transformation in all human relations.’[1014] Hence they pushed for increasing the ‘quality of life’ by overcoming sexism and racism, experimenting with communal living, creating a ‘broader cultural life,’ advocating the decentralization of cities, preventing ecological destruction and espousing equal wages for all (including wages for those performing domestic work, and the unwaged in general).[1015] The Revolutionary Committee likewise advocated wages for housework.[1016]

However, councilists questionably asserted that the chief problem with capitalism was the way it was managed. Controversially, they believed that the fundamental contradiction in society was between order-givers and order-takers. Subsequently, class was anarchistically seen as being produced by social relations of authority or hierarchy, rather than the more classical socialist view that class derives from social relations of exploitation.[1017] Councilists viewed capitalists as bosses whose main task was to order workers around — they maintained the chief problem with capitalists was their control of the workplace. This is problematic because it overlooks how the ownership of property and resultant extraction of surplus value from labor creates exploitative social relations. Workplace authority and management are necessary products of class exploitation in order to monitor, speed-up and control workers, rather than being the cause of this exploitation.

Gilles Dauvé and Francois Martin argue that ‘Socialism is not the management, however “democratic” it may be, of capital, but its complete destruction.’[1018] Workers could run their workplaces themselves, and yet be forced to compete with other worker-owned enterprises via the market, thus forcing these enterprises to lessen costs (such as by firing workers or reducing wages) and to make workers work harder in order to stay competitive, even if all workers were paid the same wage and had equal decision-making power. Consequently, fundamentally transforming the decision-making processes of society is not enough in itself; private property, the market and the wage system also need to be abolished.

Several other difficulties with the councilists’ conception of class can be noted. As was argued in an Australian anarchist magazine, their class analysis was unwieldy since many if not most workers were on some level both order-takers and order-givers.[1019] Moreover, self-management as an aim tends to appeal to a minority of workers: that of skilled technical workers who desire control over the production process, an aim that is generally not shared by Taylorised assembly-line workers nor casualized workers.[1020]

The danger of self-managed exploitation was not recognized by Australasian councilists or anarchists.[1021] Nor did everyone accept this reformulation of class. For instance, Steve Taylor of the Revolutionary Committee retained a Marxist definition of the proletariat as those ‘dependent for its support on the sale of its labor,’ while at the same time redefining it as ‘resting squarely’ on unpaid domestic labor performed mainly by women.[1022]

Bohemian councilism and carnival anarchism

This section presents a brief overview of the stormy relationship between situationist-influenced individuals and anarchists, especially the carnival anarchists. It then examines the ‘situ’ and carnivalist relationship with (or lack of relationship with) the broader class struggle, and their perspectives on class.

As the works of the SI became readily available in English during the early-mid 1970s, many revolutionaries were attracted to their ideas. A few formed ‘situ’ groups. In Australia, one such situationist grouping was founded in Perth and then migrated to Sydney. It produced many leaflets under different names. One such leaflet was their ‘vandal’s license,’ which was published under the name of the ‘Free Association of Australasian Shoplifters and the Disturbed Citizens for the Redistribution of Punishment.’ It read:

IS THIS REALLY LIVING? …

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

Ever 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?[1023]

This leaflet encapsulated the wishful insurrectionary immediatism of ‘situ’ groups and the carnival anarchists they influenced. In New Zealand, no situationist group was formed, despite the attempts of Grant McDonagh. Instead, McDonagh operated as an individual on the periphery of the anarchist milieu, co-operating with anarchists to publish several magazines, such as Anarchy and KAT. The latter called itself ‘an anti-authoritarian spasmodical’ of the ‘libertarian ultra-left (situationists, anarchists and libertarian socialists).’[1024] McDonagh argued that the situationist current was ‘only a minority current in the broader Anarchist milieu between 1975 and 1979, but potent in that context and beyond.’[1025] Undoubtedly this tendency had much impact on the anarchist milieu, but it was not ‘potent,’ as many anarchists found situationist writing impenetrable.[1026]

McDonagh was originally an anarchist, yet soon became a situationist. However, he viewed the SI as part of the broad anti-authoritarian left.[1027] 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 [French] occupation movement of May and June ’68.’[1028] Indeed, he thought that the SI was more anti-authoritarian than the vast majority of anarchists, and maintained that the SI had criticized authoritarian forms of Marxism far more effectively and coherently than anarchists had.[1029]

In practice, instead of overcoming the rigid division between anarchism and Marxism, bitter clashes occurred between anarchists and McDonagh. McDonagh critiqued the anarchist milieu for lacking radical and intellectual content, for an ‘anemic’ opportunistic involvement in various protest movements, and for being authoritarian. Anarchist ideology, he argued, causes anarchists ‘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.’[1030] He dismissed attendees to the 1978 anarchist ‘unconvention’ as ‘corpses, hacks, closet authoritarians, masochists, intellectual midgets & retarded reformists.’[1031]

Anarchists reciprocated with their own criticisms. For example, Andrew Dodsworth, who was involved in KAT, thought that McDonagh’s politics were incomprehensible to working-class people. Likewise, anarchists overseas commonly viewed the SI and its followers as hopelessly sectarian, dogmatic and hierarchical. For example, Franklin Rosemont of the Chicago-based anarchist publication The Rebel Worker castigated US ‘situ’ groups not only along these lines, but also for having ‘full time noninvolvement in real struggle.’[1032]

Hence the tension between ‘situs’ and anarchists resulted from anarchists dismissing ‘situs’ for being too intellectual and isolated, and ‘situs’ scolding anarchists for indulging in an easily co-optable mindless activism. Despite these clashes, of all the tendencies within anarchism, the SI and their followers exerted most influence over the carnival anarchists (who, interestingly enough, were very much activists).

Numerous carnival anarchist groupings were formed in Australasia. In New Zealand, they included the Auckland Anarchist Activists (AAA), the Lumpen grouping in Auckland and the Dunedin Anarchist Army. In Melbourne, according to Toscano, they included the Working People’s Association (which produced the paper Dingo) and the Collingwood Freestore (members of whom had earlier produced the magazine Solidarity).[1033] In Sydney, they included the Sydney Anarchist Group (members of whom produced Rising Free and The Plague), Fruity Together, Bondi Vandals and the Panic Merchants. Frequently, the name of their group would change with each new action they took. Most of these groups had a loose membership of half a dozen to a dozen people, with a much larger social group occasionally participating in their activities.

The carnival anarchists drew eclectically from many different tendencies, including councilism. For example, Peter McGregor, a central figure in the Sydney carnival anarchist scene, noted that he was influenced by SouB, Solidarity and the SMG.[1034] McGregor helped found the Sydney Anarchist Group (SAG) in about 1974 largely based on the SMG’s platform. As a result, SAG reprinted articles by Carl Boggs and Situationist Erné Riesel on workers’ councils.[1035] Likewise, the AAA, the major carnival anarchist grouping in New Zealand, defined anarchism as 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.’[1036]

Carnivalists were drawn to situationist praxis, including rejecting work and everyday boredom, and emphasizing the festival-like nature of riots and revolutions. This was because they generally saw the SI’s ideas as complementing and bolstering their attempts to fuze art with politics, and to fuze the counterculture with the revolutionary project.

Accordingly, they were more attracted to the SI’s ‘radical subjectivist’ wing represented poetically by Raoul Vaneigem, rather than the SI’s ‘objectivist’ wing represented by Guy Debord, whose writing was more analytical and Marxist. For example, Terry Leahy, an Australian carnivalist, 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.’[1037]

In this Vaneigemist vein, carnivalists such as McGregor attempted to live a creative lifestyle free from self-sacrifice by refusing to reproduce capital in everyday life:

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.[1038]

McGregor saw interpersonal relations as the primary site of politics, rather than self-sacrificing activism for an external cause.

Jean Barrot (Dauvé) perceptively argues that these Vaneigemist lifestyles ‘cannot be lived’. He continues: ‘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.’[1039] The carnivalists did not overcome this dilemma. Overall, the carnivalists’ borrowing from the SI was haphazard. Often they were more attracted to the aggressive style of the SI rather than its substance. They frequently reduced situationist ideas to slogans such as ‘everyday life has been reduced to a commodity.’[1040] What ultimately mattered to carnivalists was not careful analysis, or theoretical exposition, but what you were doing in the here and now.

Relationship with and perspectives on class

‘Situs’ like McDonagh unambiguously promoted working-class resistance. Yet McDonagh took signs of proletarian dissent to signify the possibility of the immediate revolutionary establishment of the ‘total democracy’ of workers’ councils.[1041] For example, in a leaflet criticizing a ‘cover-up’ by Prime Minister Muldoon, McDonagh wildly asserted that the proletariat would, in response, unleash a ‘fury’ only hinted at in previous struggles and storm the palace.[1042] Further, ‘None … 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.’[1043] Unsurprisingly, this ‘lust for the totality’ never materialized — although in 1979 a one-day general strike involving about one-third of the workforce occurred. This was the first genuinely nationwide general strike in New Zealand history. However, it did not produce radical class-wide confrontations with capital. In Australia, the working class was likewise non-insurrectionary, with a few notable exceptions, such as in 1973 when auto-workers rioted in Melbourne.[1044]

It was hardly a practical suggestion to call for the immediate formation of workers’ councils during a non-revolutionary period, and indeed, in a country without a revolutionary tradition where workers’ councils have never appeared, nor looked likely to appear. Dodsworth elaborates further:

Our contact with, and understanding of, the workers who we were urging to seize power (Grant [McDonagh] was particularly fond of spraypainting the slogan ‘All 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. […] We didn’t actually do anything except produce Kat […] put up a few posters and spraypaint a few walls [with] utterly incomprehensible [slogans].[1045]

Hence their idealistic immediatism was a product of their isolation from workers.

Carnival anarchists were much more ambiguous about class than the ‘situs.’ On the one hand, some declared that class was a dogmatic and outdated leftist belief. Workers were seen as passive, while protesters, students, youth, hippies and the ‘lumpenproletariat’ were considered the new rebellious ‘classes.’ For example, The Lunatic Fringe, a carnival anarchist group from Melbourne, wrote:

The basis of a revolution must be cultural as well as being political and social. Therefore, we urge all dropouts, alcoholics, lunatics, junkies, bludgers, neurotics, prisoners, inmates, schizophrenics, the unemployed, the insane, the psychologically unsound, the freaks, the lazy, and other assorted maniacs to … make the revolution.[1046]

Consequently, much of the exuberant energy of carnivalists went into somewhat random attempts to push the protest movement in a more radical direction (they participated in a wide variety of movements — in New Zealand, these included anti-Vietnam War marches, pro-abortion rallies, anti-apartheid demonstrations, land occupations by Maori and protests against the deportation of Pacific Island migrant labor), as well as building inner-city communities of largely ‘lumpenproletarian’ counter-cultural youth. While most of these movements can be considered expressions of class struggle to a large extent, carnivalists did not see them as such; indeed, they often saw them as something beyond and against class.

On the other hand, many carnival anarchists were supportive of class struggle. While their views appear to be individualistic, they sought to synthesize individual and collective interests.[1047] Most were from working-class backgrounds. Their activism included strike support, and a few were involved in rank-and-file workplace groups, although these attempts at workplace organizing were carried out on an individual, isolated and intermittent basis.[1048] Dingo and Rising Free covered workplace disputes. Most carnivalists espoused workers’ self-management as a core aim.

The stunts of the carnival anarchists were reminiscent of the group Class War in the UK. For example, in New Zealand, a carnivalist was caught while attempting to steal a ballot box during the 1981 cliffhanger election. His aim was to demand, in return for the votes, a 100 per cent increase in wages for all workers during the then wage-freeze. In Australia, 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 that 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 regarding the rezoning of areas for high rise development.[1049]

Furthermore, New Zealand carnivalists were heavily involved in helping to organize part of the unwaged wing of the working class, namely the unemployed. They formed several unemployed groups, such as the Auckland City Unemployed Group (ACUG), an energetic group that involved about 30 people, including many Polynesians. It distributed material in several different languages in industrial working-class South Auckland, and picketed racist capitalists.[1050]

For carnival anarchists, becoming involved in the unemployed movement was a class-based response to the economic downturn of the mid-1970s. It was also a product of their rejection of work and the work ethic. Oliver Robb, of the AAA and ACUG, wrote, ‘Why should a person work? Why should a person be forced to work at a dull, humiliating job?’[1051]

Yet paradoxically this ‘dole autonomy’ also represented a retreat from class. It led to self-marginalization from the waged working class, who could be looked down upon for having a job and not adopting a creative lifestyle on the dole.[1052] Urging workers to ‘drop-out’ was hardly a relevant suggestion for those who had to work in order to survive. Indeed, many carnivalists worked for a few months at a time at various menial jobs in order to save money, then quit to live off the proceeds. Like dole autonomy, such a practice did not challenge class exploitation; it was more a method of survival under capitalism.

In Australia, carnival anarchists clashed with anarchosyndicalists and councilists, such as the SMG, over the worth of workplace-based strategies, resulting in somewhat riotous scenes and bitter splits at anarchist conferences. The Libertarian Socialist Federation summed up the quarrel:

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 for idolizing the working class, ignoring its conservatism, ‘laying heavy moral views,’ and pressurizing others to become factory workers.[1053]

While some anarchosyndicalists and councilists unfairly demanded that people who refused to work become workplace militants, and some anarcho-syndicalists belittled ‘the revolutionary significance’ of students and the unemployed,[1054] the carnivalist assertion that the working class was conservative is dubious. In 1976, 38 per cent of the Australian workforce participated in strikes, including a general strike against the removal of universal health insurance.[1055] Many carnival anarchists, who could be quite inward-looking, seemed out of touch with dissent in broader Australian society. Additionally, the councilists and anarcho-syndicalists thought that the carnivalists were ‘chaoticist,’ individualist, anti-organizational and aimless. In response to the carnivalists, the SMG defended the need for formal organization, planning, internal democracy and a coherent political program.[1056] While similar tensions existed in New Zealand, they did not produce splits.

Conclusions

Councilism and anarchism loosely merged into ‘libertarian socialism,’ offering a non-dogmatic path by which both council communism and anarchism could be updated for the changed conditions of the time, and for the new forms of proletarian resistance to these new conditions.

It has been argued that 1970s anarchism was influenced predominantly by the New Left, ‘new social movements,’ the counter-culture and sometimes classical anarchism.[1057] Yet councilism arguably had just as much impact on anarchism as these movements did. There is much truth in George’s assessment that ‘since the Spanish revolution no major theoretical advances have been made by anarchism. Council Communists have provided most of the new energy and new analysis of modern society in the general libertarian movement.’[1058] Because anarchists generally lacked in-depth and up-to-date theoretical analysis, they were content to merely republish councilist literature. Councilism was considered just one more anti-authoritarian ingredient to be added uncritically into the anarchist melting pot.

In turn, councilists were much influenced by anarchism, to the extent that some claimed to be more anti-authoritarian than anarchists, and others became either anarchists or highly sympathetic to anarchism. Councilists were attracted by anarchism’s rich history of self-management, and because they were a new tendency that lacked support, and so needed revolutionary allies and sympathizers. Indeed, they often operated on the fringes of a larger anarchist milieu.

However, this synthesis between anarchism and councilism was undeveloped. Indeed, anarchists and councilists clashed over many issues. Instead of these tensions resulting in a healthy redevelopment of anarchist and councilist praxis, they caused acrimonious and personalized disputes.

The anarchist and councilist milieu was too small, youthful and ephemeral to develop a sophisticated synthesis or critical engagement. Differences between anarchists and councilists — for example, on the worth of anarcho-syndicalist unions versus workers’ councils and extra-union networks, and the worth of decentralization or centralization — were set aside because these currents were largely oppositional in nature. They were brought together more for what they were against (such as order-givers of any ideological hue, especially Leninist bureaucrats), rather than what they were for.

In terms of their relationship to class, councilism and class-struggle anarchism were helpfully redeveloped into a praxis that questioned not only the ownership of the means of production, but also capital’s colonization of everyday life. With their focus upon the alienation and boredom produced by ‘bureaucratic capitalism’ or by the ‘spectacle-commodity economy,’ they transcended vulgar economism. Additionally, in response to changes in class composition, they importantly considered non-managerial white-collar workers and the unwaged to be part of the working class.

Yet both tendencies anarchistically argued that the central problem with capital was its hierarchy. This is highly debatable, as the central contradiction within capital is still class exploitation, not bureaucratic or managerial control, or boredom. Councilism was developed during a time of expanding bureaucracy in both the capitalist West and ‘communist’ East, which produced an increased demand for skilled, technical labor. Since the imposition of neo-liberalism, class exploitation has intensified, labor has become more precarious and casualized, and bureaucracy has been arguably reduced. Consequently, councilist theories seem outdated.

The responses of the councilists and carnival anarchists to the upsurge in workplace struggle of the 1970s stand in contrast. Councilists such as the Revolutionary Committee urged the formation of extra-union shop committees. While their strategy was not influential, and they remained in ‘splendid isolation,’ the industrious SMG was more effective. Their grassroots strategy based on their network of cells had much potential to link community and workplace struggle together. Nevertheless, their contributions were transitory and often idealistic. The councilist milieu soon faded away by the late 1970s in New Zealand, and by the mid-1980s in Australia. Many Australian councilists became anarchists (some later became involved in the Institute for Social Ecology in Brisbane), community activists or Green Party members.

In contrast, the ‘situs’ and carnival anarchists believed impatiently that total revolution (social, economic, cultural and psychological) needed to occur immediately. Situationists dismissed the dissent of the time as being fragmentary and lacking radical content, hence making it easily recuperable. Certainly, this was largely true, but they tended to differentiate ‘a pure, autonomous class from the “external” institutions of the workers’ movement (unions, leftist parties), and in so doing, end[ed] up concluding that the class has been duped by the ideology of these external forces,’[1059] or by the spectacle. ‘Situs’ — as with other councilists — froze the high points of class struggle, in particular the emergence of workers’ councils, and used it as a principle to judge the present. 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.’[1060] It was thus unsurprising that the groups and projects of the ‘situs’ were highly ephemeral and ineffectual.

The carnival anarchists were ambiguous towards class. They were not simply individualist bohemians, nor lifestyle anarchists. They refused to work, formed unemployed groups, went on picket lines and supported workers’ self-management. Yet in their despair over the decline of the protest movement and the alleged conservatism of the working class, they turned inward. Their attempt to live the most radical lifestyle possible in their everyday lives was often elitist and self-marginalizing. Their experiments became self-destructive. Subsequently, their squats and affinity groups collapsed, often without trace.

Nonetheless, the carnivalists went beyond the SI in one respect. In their challenge to the solemn seriousness of leftists, they attempted to put certain Situationist ideas into everyday practice. This was well articulated by Franklin Rosemont: ‘At the time it always seemed to me that the Situationists wrote and talked and theorized about playing and having fun, while we – still just kids, in a sense — were actually playing and having the fun.’[1061]

Class-struggle anarchists and anti-Leninist revolutionary Marxists today continue to converge and clash. Yet there is still much untapped scope for a two-way synthesis, or at least for sustained critical engagement between the two currents. For example, councilists analyzed the importance of bureaucracy and managerial authority in class struggle, a factor that Marxists have tended to downplay. In this regard, a genuine synthesis could offer considerable insight into the heavily disputed subject of the ‘middle class’: that is, those ‘contradictory class locations’ where workers such as managers are exploited and yet also wield considerable power over other workers.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Viola Wilkins, Tim Briedis, Gavin Murray, Joe Toscano and Greg George for enlightening me about Australian councilism and anarchism. Thanks also to everyone who participated in my earlier New Zealand research, and to Steve Wright and the editors for their rigorous comments on earlier drafts.