Anarcho-Syndicalism 101: newswire/144

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Why Organise? An Anarcho-Syndicalist Perspective
by Ben Debney	02 Sep 2005
"Under the capitalist order we are denied the right to decide. Under the current social and economic order property is monopolised by a select few. These select few, the propertied classes, do not possess the material resources of society because they are in any way inherantly smarter or better than anyone else, because they are inherantly more capable than non-possessors of efficiently and effectively managing those resources. The propertied classes possess the matieral resources of society merely because the laws of inheritance and of private property, backed by the armed force of the state, allow them to. The propertied classes require the police to uphold their legal right to possess private property. They require that institution of organised, coordinated, systematic defence of material inequality�the state�simply because the institution of private property is unprincipled. If the state guarantees the right of some to have more than others merely by chance of birth, if it does not signify not a single standard of treatment for all, it is unjust. We may therefore assert our right as human beings to resist it. "
Poverty is slavery. Dependency pure and simple no less so. This is a simple and obvious fact of modern life. If I donºt possess the means of being materially independent, if I donºt manage businesses or own land or if I donºt own shares, I am forced to work for a boss. I am forced to submit my will to that of someone else, to the goals and purposes of the owner of property. What I want to do with my body, my brain and my time is of no significance. I am forced to become a robot, to repeat "yes, boss" and "thankyou, boss" automatically, as if I was born without the ability to think. Material dependence is the rule, rather than the exception, of the capitalist social order. Most people donºt have free access to the machines and raw materials needed to produce food to eat, to build the homes needed for shelter, to manufacture the clothes needed for staying warm. The only way they can get what they need to survive is to sell their time to the buyers of their labour, property-owners who rely on the labour of workers to fertilise their capital. Nobody submits to the whims of a boss because thatºs what theyºve been really desperately hoping to do all their lives, but because they have no choice. We are human beings. That means that we have the inborn capacity to think for ourselves and to decide our own fate, to do so as we see best and without anyone else making our decisions for us. It is this ability to decide for ourselves that enables us to have some impact on our social environment, so that our lives might have purpose and meaning. It is this ability to decide and so to think for ourselves that allows us to develop into unique individuals, with histories, skills and abilities and character traits particular only to us. It is this ability, in short, that makes us human. The right to decide for oneself is the right of humanity, the right of being human. To be denied this right is to be reduced to the level of a cog in the machine, to the level of a drone and a slave. Under the capitalist order we are denied the right to decide. Under the current social and economic order property is monopolised by a select few. These select few, the propertied classes, do not possess the material resources of society because they are in any way inherantly smarter or better than anyone else, because they are inherantly more capable than non-possessors of efficiently and effectively managing those resources. The propertied classes possess the matieral resources of society merely because the laws of inheritance and of private property, backed by the armed force of the state, allow them to. The propertied classes require the police to uphold their legal right to possess private property. They require that institution of organised, coordinated, systematic defence of material inequality“the state“simply because the institution of private property is unprincipled. If the state guarantees the right of some to have more than others merely by chance of birth, if it does not signify not a single standard of treatment for all, it is unjust. We may therefore assert our right as human beings to resist it. These select few, the propertied classes“meaning the rich“employ those amongst the people fit for work. Without the workers to fertilise the capital of the propertied classes with their labour, that capital is useless. Contary to what they would like us to believe, and contrary to the myths they delude no-one but themselves with, capital“meaning land, tools, machinery, factories, etc“is not by itself productive. Without workers to put inanimate resources into motion, there is no way known they can result in the production of anything new. There never has been, nor will there ever be, any such thing as the productivity of capital. The capitalists rely on the workers to fertilise their capital, and so they aspire to keep everyone else dependent on themselves, and therefore in their employment, forever, though perhaps not all at the same time. The private capitalist monopolies over material resources, and their desire to maintain some in a position of needing to work so as to fertilise their capital, destroys any possibility that the great mass of humanity might enjoy material independence under capitalism. If the right to decide is guaranteed by material independence, and material independence is guaranteed only by having control over the fruits of oneºs own labour, then the capitalist monopolies over private property are the direct enemy of justice and of the dignity of the mass of humanity. Most, if not all, products of human labour are produced collectively. One individual can not and does not build an office block, for example. If this is so, then not only justice, but the individual dignity and the very right of humanity of the producers dictates that they must also be owned collectively. If they are produced collectively, and if the producers must have control over the fruits of their labour in order to assert their human right to decide their own fates, then private property is incompatible with human rights. To appropriate the products of collective labour for private consumption, therefore, is simply criminal. Appropriating the products of collective labour for private consumption is the basic drive behind the entire capitalist system. It is, of course, not to help others, or to make sure everyone has enough, or to look after the environment, for example. The fundamental principle of capitalism is the profit-motive“profit before everything. Tomorrowºs profit is more important than respecting the dignity either of myself or of my fellow human beings, than whether we live in a civilised society or not, and it is even more important than whether we have a planet capable of supporting human life in, say, a hundred years or so. The capitalistºs profit is made by paying the workers she or he employs less in wages than the true value of their labour. I can work in a petrol station, for instance, and earn $12 an hour. In that hour I can sell between $500 or $1000 worth of petrol. Not knowing what the profit margin is, but assuming for the sake of argument that itºs outrageously low, say 10% (which is unlikely), I can make $25 to $50 for the company that employs me and be paid less than half of what my labour has produced for them. The right of the capitalist to appropriate social resources for her or himself, by means of purchase or inheritance, and by extension to exploit the labour of the workers for personal gain, is sanctified by the laws of the state, which are in turn defended by the armed forces“the police and the army in the case of internal repression, the army, the navy and the air force in the case of imperialist repression. The armed forces are just that“forces. There is nothing rational or egalitarian behind the principle of private property. It cannot be defended rationally, therefore it must be defended by force. If capitalism and the state are founded on fundamentally corrupt and anti-humanitarian principles, and if they exist on the forced labour and thus the wage-slavery of the vast mass of the Earthºs population, then the only way they will be improved will be by being gotten rid of. The only way they will be improved is by being overthrown by means of social revolution, and in their place put a social order based on individual freedom, material equality and economic and social solidarity“a social order of Self-Management. Direct Democracy and Self-Management By Self-Management is meant leaderless social organisation, or co-operation, the administration of things rather then the government of people, and association based on voluntary association and free agreement. Self-Management is the opposite of government and bossdom, which signify leaders and led or masters and slaves, and forced adherance to the laws of the state. Government and bossdom signify heirarchy. Heirarchy signifies the subordination of the mass of humanity to the monopolisers of wealth and power and therefore their reduction to the level of machines and cogs in the profit-making machine. Self-Management is the complete opposite of this. If democracy is supposed to mean self-government of the people, then Self-Management would appear to be a better expression of the spirit of democracy. Another way of describing Self-Management is as Direct Democracy, or everyday involvement of the mass of the population in decision making processes, through the taking of votes in workplace assemblies, the handling of administrative duties by rotated, instantly recallable delegates, and coordination of activities between workplaces, areas and regions by means of federalism. Self-Management also signifies the economic principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". In a fully developed self-managed society, every individual would give what they could, and would take what was necessary for survival and for enjoyment of life. Individuals incapable of contributing to the common pool of resources, such as the aged and the sick, would be supported by the community. Federalism signifies cooperation between autonomous groups, who act together on the basis of agreements reached without cooercion or manipulation of any kind. It can be practised between one set of groups, which makes a simple federation. It can also be practised by federations of federations, which in turn makes a confederation. Worker Solidarity is a confederal organisation. Means and Ends Means cannot be divorced from ends. Freedom cannot be achieved by employing slavery and obedience to authority as the defining principle of organisation. On the contrary, freedom must be employed as the means of organisation if one desires it as an end. If one practises slavery one only ever improves oneºs capacity to be a slave, not a free individual. The goal of Worker Solidarity is the establishment of a social order founded on the principles of Self-Management. For that reason, its form of organisation will mirror the society it was established in order to achieve. In the present society, in capitalist society, Worker Solidarity will adopt the organisational practises of the future Self-Managed social order“specifically, administration of union affairs by rotated, instantly recallable delegates (changed so as to avoid on onset of bureaucratic mentalities and tendencies within the union), decision-making by means of votes taken by general assemblies of workers in between workshifts, and coordination between unions and industry-wide federations on the basis of federalism. Its role will be to act as the "fact of the future", to borrow Bakuninºs phrase. This practise of connecting means and ends is contrasted with the practise of authoritarian socialist parties, whose aim is to sieze state power with the help of the people, and to then establish a so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat"“in practise, the dictatorship of the leader of the party. In reality, there is little need to try to discredit such organisations. One merely needs to refer to the history of Russia after 1917, and episodes such as the suppression of the sailorºs rebellion in Kronstadt in 1921 by Trotskyºs Red Army, after they made demands as tame as free elections to their local councils ("soviets"). A "workers' state" killing workers“a very revolutionary act indeed. Direct Action Worker Solidarity is an anti-political organisations; that is, it has no relations with political parties and do not appeal to parliament for social change. The result of this fact when it needs or wants to act, therefore, is Direct Action“the practise of undertaking whatever activities are seen to be necessary in order to achieve a certain goal without appealing to (continued from p. 1) governtment. Lobbying the government to abolish wage-slavery, obviously, is a waste of time, given the fact that their primary role is to uphold and defend class society and the exploitation of the working class. Direct Action exists in oppostion to the habit of reliance on authority, or of relying on others to do things that one can do oneself. Appealing to authority figures for action makes the individual concerned reliant on the decisions of someone else. It implies disempowerment, abdication or loss of responsibility for oneself and control over oneºs own movements, and the reduction of the individual to a machine, to the mere extension of the will of someone else. As against this, Direct Action signifies acting on oneºs own behalf, and going directly to the source of the problem. Whereas appeals to governmental authority put the individual at the mercy of a politicanºs whim, Direct Action signifies taking actively seeking to solve oneºs own problems. It is all activity undertaken without leaders, all interaction involving only expoited and exploiter, oppressed and oppressor. The forms Direct Action can take include sabotage, the go-slow, the work-to-rule, the strike, the general strike, and direct negotiations between worker and boss. The purpose of these tactics is to facilitate "revolutionary gymnastics", or training in the art of acting for oneself. "Revolutionary gymnastics" are necessary for each individual worker to develop more and more deeply within him or herself a sense of independence of thought and action and a belief in themselves of their capacity to influence their social environment. Without overcoming the habit of relying on leaders to achieve social change, no liberation from bossdom, wage-slavery and governmental oppression will ever be possible. The General Strike The soicial role of the state is to pit the isolated, unorganised individual against a united, organised force“the police and army (the army does exist to defend the country from outside invasion, but can be, and in many parts of the world is, used as a means of internal repression). It is, in the words of James Madison, a founding father of the United States of America, "to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority". The state is the domination of the weak by the strong“by the economic bosses of the people and by its political bosses. Individual revolt against this organised, systematic apparatus of repression is completely futile. The disorganisation and disunity of the workers, therefore, is by direct contrast the strength of state repression. Against this disorganisation, the tactic of the General Strike offers a means of collective revolt. It offers a negative collective focus against the owners of peoperty, the masters and slavedrivers of humanity, and it offers a positive programme of working class activity“social reorganisation of production, distribution and exchange on the basis of worker self-management. Internationalism This principle of collective action is expended by revolutionary unions to embrace the workers of the entire world. Capitalism, and therefore exploitation and state repression, is a global phenomenon. Furthermore, capitalism, by being organised internationally, is able to play off the workforces of one country against that of another. Resistance must therefore also be international. The practise of internationalism“liason and organisation with other revolutionary unions in other countries“is not only a means of uniting the strength of the workers of the world, but is also vital if Self-Management is to ever become anything approaching a plausible reality. For that reason, and although it is not formally a member section, Worker Solidarity aligns itself with the International Workersº Association (AIT/IWA). Social Issues The problem of bossdom and state oppression is exacerbated for half of the working class by the fact that they are women, and again even more so if they are, in Australia, non-anglo. Worker Solidarity does not ignore this problem, or dismiss it as "lifestylist" or as somehow distracting from the "real" struggle of emancipation from wage-slavery. A revolution that frees people only halfway will not be a real revolution. Liberation has to be extended to all spheres of human activity“not only in the economic arena, but also to social life. To that end, Worker Solidarity organises Special Commissions in order to combat sexism, the struggle against racism, the execution of particular tasks, and so on. Theoretically, these can take the form of Womenºs and Menºs Commissions, Anti-Fascist Commissions, Strike Support Commissions, Commissions for the Environment, Homeless Support Commissions, Prisoner Support Commissions, and so on. These special commissions are organised on the basis libertarian and federalist basis as the unions, and are open to participation by non-members of Worker Solidarity. Solidarity By ourselves, we, the people, are open to all sorts of abuse. We are the dispossessed, the monopolised and the ruled. By ourselves we have no power. We are supposed to vote, to choose between our masters on election day, and then we are supposed to get out of the way and let those view themselves as our intellectual, cultural and moral superiors get on with the job of running society as they see fit. This is supposed to be the most we can possibly do to participate in the running of society, the most we can do to influence the direction that our own lives follow. Voting and participation in parliamentary politics never has been, never will be, and never can be a solution to the problems facing workers today. In Australia, the experience of parliamentarism has been exposed for what it is time and time again“by the breaking of the airline pilots strike in 1991 by a Labor government, to cite only one example of thouands“merely as a tool for ruling society in the interests of the rich and as a gracy train for a few overfed, underworked politicans. Only the solidarity of the workers of all professions and trades and the unemployed remains; only it can bring about substantial changes in the social and economic order. A fundamental change in the social and economic order is not only desirable, today, but necessary, as we see our planet getting hotter and areas such as China and Bangladesh flooded by water that was once a polar ice cap, and no one in power able to confront and/or such as these, problems caused by capitalist greed. To confront problems such as these is to admit the fundamentally corrupt nature of capitalism and the insitution of private property. To capitalism we pose the alternative of worker self-management. To poverty we pose the alternative of equal distribution of wealth. To competition and the war of all against all we pose the alternative solidaritic untiy of the entire human race. We believe these things are not simply pipe dreams, but realistic, attainable goals. To be achieved, however, we must be united in purpose and physically able to carry out in practise the theories and ideas we talk about. That is why we organise. Ben