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Anarchism in Britain today

Since even anarchists admit that not all decisions can be made by general assemblies or referendum, they get round this by saying that “delegation” is acceptable. But any attempted distinction between “representative” (bad) and “delegate” (good) is just playing with words.

 This is not to say that what is called “representative democracy” in relation to the capitalist state is ideal. Far from it, even in the Swiss cantons and US States and cities where it is supplemented by the right of initiative (of a certain number of citizens to propose laws and call referendums) and the right to recall (unelect) a representative.

State elections

Capitalist democracy is not a participatory democracy, which a genuine democracy has to be. In practice the people generally elect to central legislative assemblies and local councils professional politicians who they merely vote for and then let them get on with the job. In other words, the electors abdicate their responsibility to keep any eye on their representatives, giving them a free hand to do what the operation of capitalism demands. But that’s as much the fault of the electors as of their representatives, or rather it is a reflection of their low level of democratic consciousness. It can’t be blamed on the principle of representation as such.

There is no reason in principle why, with a heightened democratic consciousness (such as would accompany the spread of socialist ideas), even representatives sent to state bodies could not be subject – while the state lasts – to democratic control by those who sent them there. The only arguments that anarchists have ever been able to put against this are that “power corrupts” and that this practice is not allowed by the constitution. But if power inevitability corrupts why does this not apply also in non-parliamentary elected bodies such as syndicalist union committees or workers councils?

Somewhat surprisingly, Franks does not condemn out of hand anarchist participation in state elections. Discussing Class War’s standing of a candidate in a parliamentary by-election in 1988 he says that there could be occasions when this could be done as long it is done in a way that doesn’t “reaffirm representative democracy”, as he claims we do when we stand candidates. We would reply that when we stand candidates we do “prefigure” the genuinely democratic nature of future socialist society in that our candidates do not stand as leaders or offering to do anything for people but merely as potential delegates of those who want socialism, as mere “messenger boys (and girls)” pledged, if elected, to submit to the democratic control of those who voted them in. We suspect, however, that in not completely ruling out any participation in state elections Franks will be regarded by other anarchists as having conceded far too much.

The book – despite the drawback of having been originally written as a university thesis – does give a useful and comprehensive view of the discussions that have gone on in anarchist circles in recent years. It is interesting to note that some of these have been paralleled by discussions within our party, for instance, whether the revolution is to be a class or a non-class affair, and to what extent can community struggles outside the workplace be assimilated to struggles at the point of production. (For the record, our view is that the revolution has to be the work of the working class, but as the working class understood not as just manual industrial workers but as anyone forced to work for a wage or salary irrespective of the job they do, i.e. most people today; and that non-workplace struggles such as tenants associations and claimants’ unions are as legitimate defensive struggles as the trade union struggle over wages and working conditions.)

On the other subjects which divide contemporary anarchists, we would side with the syndicalists in saying that economic exploitation is primary, but with the anarcho-communists in saying that future society will involve community-based administrative councils and not exclusively industry-based ones. We oppose the blanket rejection of the existing trade unions as proposed by the ACF (and the council communists). And we would agree with statements quoted by Franks (and have said the same thing many times ourselves) that “we exist not as something separate from the working class, not as some leadership for others to follow, but as part of the working class working for our own liberation” (Subversion) and “to the Left the working class are there to be ordered about because we are too thick to think for ourselves” (Class War).

In Franks’s scheme, we would be classified as a group practising “propaganda by word” with occasional forays into “constitutional activity” in the form of participation in elections. What we don’t do – and which all the anarchist groups engage in – is to participate, as a group, in “micropolitics”, local single-issue campaigns. We don’t necessarily dismiss all such campaigns as entirely useless but think it best to leave them up to the people directly concerned, merely advising them (if asked) to organise and conduct themselves democratically, without leaders and without outside interference from Leninist (and, indeed, anarchist) groups. As a group composed of people who have come together

because we want socialism, we see our group’s task as to concentrate on spreading socialist ideas.

ADAM BUICK