Modern industrial, capitalist, state-run civilisation is rotten to the core:
money, hunger, power, exploitation, patriarchy, propaganda, violence,
obedience, destruction, mass 'culture' and isolation, war,
industrialisation, ecological disaster and brutality towards animals...
Despite being a comparatively recent and temporary phenomenon in human
history - over the last few thousand years overall, the worst aspects being
only in the last couple of centuries - a world wide system has been
established by the use of force and manipulation.
Our talents and potential, our feelings, solidarity and creativity are
continuously undermined and frustrated, as is human fun, co-operation and
adventure.
Coupled with the fact that the present course of civilisation is ecological
suicide, and that no powerful institution has ever given up an inch of its
power voluntarily and without a struggle, reforms are mostly pie-in-the-sky
and change nothing fundamentally. Illusions can lead to disillusionment.
The struggle for 'reforms' can be useful in developing people's
self-organisation and confidence - but the necessity for social and
ecological revolution is urgent.
Previous large-scale struggles and experiences have shown that transforming
our society is possible. Whether it is likely, no-one can say - it is
certainly worth striving for, and it is our responsibility...for ourselves,
our planet and for future generations.
People's ideas change, sometimes quickly, through experience and struggle,
but generally not through 'propaganda'. There can be no 'blueprints' which
people must accept or fit into. Successful and empowering experiences,
inspiration from the experiences of others, and common sense, all help to
shape the direction we should go (or not go).
Ordinary people's confidence in themselves and each other must grow, as well
as confidence in the possibility of creating an alternative, worthwhile free
society. A realistic and honest picture or 'vision' of what such a society
would be like and how we could achieve it is very important. We cannot
afford to ignore or dodge these issues. People everywhere can learn much
from the strengths and mistakes of the past, but most importantly they can
be convinced that the current system is neither desirable nor invulnerable,
and that its survival is not inevitable. In fact, the System is weak. It's
just that the powerful minority and their institutions are very well
organised, unlike the vast majority of the population. The seeds of the
new, sensible human society are in the self-organisation, the struggles and
in the positive and progressive attitudes around us today.
Real changes are not made by Organisations, 'leaders' or present
institutions - we change our society by the way we act, live and relate to
each other, through organising ourselves in the community, through our
collective strength and solidarity and mutual aid, through our initiative
and confidence, and through class struggle.
IT MAY SEEM QUIET, BUT THINGS CAN MOVE VERY FAST
People's everyday oppression and experiences can and do provoke collective
responses with the potential to transform our society.
Opposition to 'the way things are' stems from hardship and alienation,
inadequate housing, ecological problems, from being controlled, policing and
repression, from the breakdown of 'order' and efficiency etc, as well as
from people's self-confidence and awareness.
Protests and struggles tend to be isolated from each other. However, when
they occur on a more regular basis and begin to link up, the atmosphere in
the community can swing to one of awareness, optimism and
confidence...resistance and conflict has the potential to spread very fast.
If the authorities are unable or unwilling to successfully buy off these
partial struggles with concessions, to co-opt them by negotiating with and
integrating a supposed 'leadership', or to halt them with repression and
State violence, then a 'dual power' and pre-revolutionary situation
involving millions of people can develop. This has happened for example in
Europe on a number of occasions on a greater or lesser scale over the last
30 years such as in Paris '68, the North of Ireland '70-73, Portugal '74,
Italy '77-8, Poland '80 and more recently in other former State Communist
countries. There have also been full scale insurrections and social
evolutions in history - for example in Paris 1871, Mexico 1911, Russia 917,
Germany 1918, Italy 1920, in Spain in 1936 (probably the most libertarian
social revolution in human history), Hungary 1956, and in many other
countries such as China and throughout Africa and Central America and
elsewhere during anti-colonial conflicts. We can learn a lot from the
positive and negative features of these momentous popular events, their
successes and failures - especially that fundamental change is possible but
it is essential that people keep things in their own hands.
OPPOSITION AND RESISTANCE
Empowering events that have occured in recent years and which can
re-occur, spread and develop
The following practical examples are of diverse and often patchy activities
which tend to come and go, with varying shades of intensity and success, not
necessarily experienced directly by substantial sections of the population.
Yet each is an example of people empowering themselves and therefore
inspiring others to do likewise. Each also helps to tip the balance of
forces in favour of the public and the working class, and contributes to
undermining the 'legitimacy' and power of the establishment and the ruling
class:
Strikes; solidarity strikes and picket lines in different industrial sectors
at the same time; independent organisation in every street, neighbourhood
and workplace; sit-ins and work-ins at workplaces; occupations of empty
homes, buildings and local community centres and services; blocking streets
and creating temporary no-go areas - using a street all day to communicate
and organise, and blocking the flow of traffic; setting up street check
points; occupying town centres; partial and mass non-payment of bills;
taking food and resources from those who control supplies, and taking
temporary control of the distribution of various essential goods or
services; resource-share schemes; local mutual trading networks; opening up
recycling centres and schemes; street and land parties and festivals;
waste-land and park tent-cities; gatherings, demonstrations and carnivals;
riots; defying bans on assembly and protest; blockades of or attacks on
police stations; sabotage of certain oppressive property or machinery;
boycotting and physically opposing animal cruelty practices; prison protest
and resistance; dismantling border posts, fences and walls; army and police
dissent; ecological defence of green spaces and countryside; setting up
nature reserves and reafforestation; rural self-sufficiency and autonomy
movements; seizing unused farmland; setting up producer and consumer
cooperatives; alternative subcultures outside the control of the
authorities; parties and self-organised public entertainment; workers'
non-cooperation and resistance to bosses orders and plans; residents'
non-cooperation and resistance to the orders of bureaucrats, police and
bailiffs etc; defiance of State censorship; using waste-land for events,
childrens playgrounds and for growing food; children boycotting school or
going on strike; parents' groups and other residents' groups using schools,
playcentres and community centres as bases; sharing childcare and opening up
places for creches etc; making certain oppressive practices unworkable;
protest camps and blockades at sites of oppression (eg. military bases,
elite conferences, bank and corporate HQs etc); setting up workshops, cafes,
cinemas and meeting places in empty buildings; colleges occupied; invasions
and sit-ins of TV and radio, organising pirate 'cut-ins' or pirate radio
stations; setting up self-run medical services in neighbourhoods or during
events or struggles (and other self-run services - libraries, mutual aid
networks etc); car-free zones, and temporary bailiff-free or police-free
zones....and many, many more examples of self-organisation and people's
attempts to take control of their immediate lives and environment. All
these things have happened in the UK and Europe in recent years - imagine if
many of these things happened widely and simultaneously....
How the general atmosphere among people can develop positively
The examples just outlined all tend to help create a more widespread
positive atmosphere (and vice versa), strengthening community contacts and
solidarity networks, stimulating self-organisation, initiative and mutual
aid in neighbourhoods, as well as debates in the street, in workplaces and
homes, the spreading of information and discussion through the use of
leaflets, posters, free papers etc, and a wide range of activities and
groups, including anarchist groups. This process can lead to the calling of
neighbourhood gatherings, the encouraging of inter-neighbourhood links,
inter-city contacts and city-rural direct links, as well as industry-wide
and regional workers' solidarity networks and meetings.
FULL SCALE CONFLICT BETWEEN HUMANITY AND 'THE SYSTEM'
Revolution
Everyone gradually becomes involved and embroiled in the situation when the
practicalities of what needs to be done become so great, when the potential
to run our own lives becomes obvious, and when it becomes inconceivable for
the majority to accept once again the dead weight of oppression and
exploitation. Then society moves into a revolutionary situation:
General strikes and occupations of most workplaces, with local and regional
workers' councils; sending continual news, messages and calls for action all
round the world; repossessing areas under control of the ruling class;
abolishing all State borders; liberating and using heavy equipment; the
population organising alternative distribution and sharing of food supplies,
as well as growing food in all available spaces; labourers and peasants
seizing and generally but voluntarily collectivising all agricultural land;
working towards maximum local and regional self-sufficiency and autonomy in
all matters; abolishing money and profit systems; expropriating all
resources; recycling everything possible; abandoning useless, destructive or
alienating production - eventually all workplaces are either abandoned, or
occupied and transformed; battles for key buildings (high ones, phone
exchanges, food depots etc); traffic halted, checkpoints everywhere; all
town centres occupied; re-organising transport and communications; seizing,
transforming or abolishing the establishment's media; children abandon
schools to be in the streets and the community, or schools used as
neighbourhood organising centres; people developing group and communal
childcare and playgroups in every street, also involving children in all
activities wherever possible; workshops and resource-sharing centres in
every street; people dealing with anti-social actions (robbery, rape etc)
themselves; creating alternative street-based medical systems and a wide
range of local workshops; closing cruel factory farms; protecting and
extending wilderness zones, nature reserves and forests; revitalising
countryside economy and repopulating rural areas, and developing a whole
range of new urban-rural interrelationships; army mutinies; people seizing
gun supplies; barricading and defending streets and workplaces; confronting
and disarming all police and army units; protracted civil war;
re-establishing face-to-face decision-making and community gatherings,
forums of all kinds and interneighbourhood networking, and abolishing all
forms of Government; resisting and preventing any new structures or
institutions set up to take power or to control people or their struggles,
or to mould community life (whether called 'governments', 'committees' or
whatever - or Left-wing and other political Parties, vigilante policing and
nascent bureaucracy); drastically reduce pollution and the imposed
industrialisation of everyday lives and the ecomomy; encourage maximum
diversity within and between communities.
Being determined and making sure of success
We need to create an atmosphere of freedom, solidarity and collective
responsibility, self-motivation and empowerment, concern for each other and
for all, and respect for individual personalities as well as for individual
and group initiative. This needs to be coupled with an unflinching
determination to succeed, along with constant debate and self-organisation
and self-defence, and constant efforts to involve ever greater numbers of
people in cooperation together, to spread to other regions and eventually
all countries. We need to transform the existing social, industrial and
economic patterns by building on people's experiences and needs, natural
social ties and collective common sense to do what needs to be done.
TRANSFORMING OUR LIVES AND SOCIETY
A society based on freedom and sharing, on voluntary but responsible
relations and activities, has only been glimpsed briefly and on a small
scale. And not everything that has taken place in past upheavals has been
positive. The eventual outcome has usually been isolation from the rest of
the world followed by mass repression (from outside, or from the new State
controllers within). Therefore it seems it is essential that the process of
constructive transformation must spread all over the world.
Everyone should be sharing the resources, the work and decision-making as
equals, with a diversity of settlements and cultures, and freedom to choose
where to live, what to do etc. Children's needs and desires, and their
unequalled energy and imagination, should be at the centre of social life.
We need to rethink our dependence on a centralised economy, mass production
and industrialisation. We need to 'green' our lives and our environment,
turning villages, towns and cities into federations of autonomous
neighbourhoods, each as far as possible integrated into and respectful of
the natural local surroundings. Due to capitalism's environmental
destruction and damage, we'll have to replant forests and encourage
wilderness. Road networks and traffic should be at the minimum. Would we
be able to end the need for long-distance 'trade'? We need to reassess our
relationship with nature and animals and work towards respect for all living
things.
OURS FOR THE TAKING...
Nothing is easy, including the necessary changes we have to make to our
society worldwide. However, accepting and obeying modern industrial
civilisation for decades to come is the most difficult thing of all for
everyone with any awareness of the consequences, with a sense of injustice
or of their own potential.
The revolutionary process may involve a whole series of mass strikes and
uprisings, no-go areas leading to stalemates or even defeats. New power
structures will try to establish themselves and will have to be boycotted,
challenged and dismantled. This may all take years or even decades. It's
vital that people's struggles be under their own direct initiative and
control, not 'representatives'. People must be alert to minimise violence
as far as possible, whilst recognising the freedom of individuals and
communities to defend themselves when under attack. The important thing is
we all continue to struggle for a better society, to learn from our
mistakes, strengths and weaknessess, and to get stronger and more determined
all the time.
At the same time as working within our communities at the present to build
up grass-roots awareness, solidarity and organisation, we need to expand the
influence of revolutionary, ecological and anarchist groups and ideas -
until it is obvious to all that such a free society is not only desirable
and obtainable, but is ours for the taking, together. |
