A review of the Anarchist Federation:
Fighting at the margin vs. winning alleged "middle forces"
Organise! For Revolutionary Anarchism Spectacular Perspectives on "Anti-
Capitalism"
#55?
reviewed by MC5, November, 2005
This is the publication of the Anarchist Federation based in England.
First off, in talking about Seattle and Milan, let MIM say it does not have much
objection to the "black bloc" of mostly anarchist youth. They deserve the credit
for making the Seattle anti-globalization demonstrations a big deal.
Some of the calculations concerning Seattle are similar to the earliest stages
of what the Weather Underground considered in the 1960s; although the Anarchist
Federation opposes that example as too Custeristic, as in self-defeating.
Our biggest complaint about the Black Bloc writer in this issue is the
calculation concerning the media. It seems that the comrade tailors tactics to
catch the oppressor media's attention. Yet catering to the capitalist monopoly
on the media twists our tactics. It's not just that they don't cover
demonstrations, but when they do, they're not really able to bring out basic
facts or questions. If we let the capitalist media, we will become the
equivalent of Hollywood actors, porn stars, rock bands or sports athletes trying
to get their attention. For this reason, MIM stresses as its principal task
"creating public opinion and the independent institutions of the oppressed to
seize power." The word "independent" is key. Probably the comrade works for
indymedia.org in some capacity or another anyway. That would be a better way to
go than tailoring military tactics for the imperialist media. At this time, it
is still very effective to build media and anyone can do it.
That brings us to another main point. The Anarchist Federation opposes national
liberation and yet the Seattle organizers admitted to being mostly white--not
that there is anything wrong with that in a mostly white society, especially in
the case of an advance in independent struggle such as Seattle's! The Anarchist
Federation has coherently hooked together three points all of which are rooted
in the wrong belief that there are exploited white workers in the united s$tates
and England. It's not that community work among workers is tedious: the problem
is that it is for the petty-bourgeoisie and that is why such work never leads to
revolutionary advance.
Organizations like the Anarchist Federation will ask people to dedicate their
active lives to organizing sheet metal so-called workers in Western Europe for
example. However, while the Anarchist Federation denounces anti-intellectualism
it hasn't seriously examined and calculated that there is no net surplus-value
coming from the people they consider workers. Hence, their conclusion to
organize the European petty-bourgeoisie they call workers is wrong. Based on
this single wrong premise, the Anarchist Federation also opposes national
liberation and anti-imperialism. We would say they are consistent, moreso than
those who adopt one premise and not the others.
In actual fact, the Anarchist Federation is in a bloc with the oppressor nation
bourgeoisie against the Third World bourgeoisie. Like many Trotskyists, the
anarchists give the bourgeoisie too much credit--as if the bourgeoisie could
live in peace and harmony even among itself instead of in selfish division. The
Anarchist Federation should realize by now that the European bourgeoisie has
tried for decades but still has not come to a business deal among itself just in
the European Union. France just rejected the European Union constitution. This
is not to mention that the bourgeoisie is no paragon of unity elsewhere where
there may even be a conflict over natural resources. All this is to say that
some small sections of bourgeoisie may find themselves on the proletarian side
by course of bitter intra-bourgeois struggle.
The fact is that there are many class struggles involving the most exploited
workers of the world against the most advanced capitalist countries in which a
segment of the bourgeoisie is bound to benefit as well. It's never the case that
class struggle lines up perfectly with all the good guys on one side and all the
bad ones on the other. The national bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation excluded
from an equal partnership with the imperialists is a class on the margin, a
concept we will explain below.
To prove this point, there is how this magazine runs down the concept of anti-
imperialism to replace it with anti-capitalism. Hitler called himself anti-
capitalist, and the reason was that such a phrase says nothing about the
location of one's anti-capitalism. It turns out he only opposed Jewish
capitalism and then French capitalism and Polish capitalism. So there is that
problem, but the next problem is the question of the social forces as they exist
in the world.
Ironically from reading the reasonable grip of the Anarchist Federation on some
questions of reality, the reviewer believes that the Anarchist Federation knows
that the slogan of anti-capitalism is not sufficient at this time to rally any
decisive struggle. If they stick with this understanding, the comrades of the AF
may use it to understand where the MIM is coming from. In other words, the
social forces for what AF wants in England, Europe and the united $tates do not
exist. When we do not directly acknowledge this all kinds of stunts and
divisions based in delusion result, so we're hoping AF will stay on the same
page and follow through this thinking.
Because there is no immediate force for AF-style revolution, AF opposition to
anti-imperialism does decisively serve one social force that does exist--a
faction of the bourgeoisie in its intersection with state power. In particular,
the first Gulf War vets seeking compensation from Iraq and the 911 victims
seeking reparations from Saudi Arabia benefit from the Anarchist Federation's
anti-anti-imperialism. We are not talking chump change but large portions of the
entirety of Middle East assets up for grab in the empire's courts by the
empire's militarists--as if the Iraq occupation were not egregious enough. By
the interpretation of many so-called anti-capitalist organizations, the ex-
soldiers in the Gulf War and 911 victims are so-called workers seeking damages
against the Iraqi and Saudi capitalists. Anti-capitalism has nothing to say
against that. MIM does have something to say against that because anti-
militarism in our imperialist society has to come first. Anti-imperialism is the
only logical choice then.
There are real social forces with a real chance to win Middle East assets in the
immediate future. As we write this, the vets and 911 victims have won some court
battles and the backing of people like Michael Moore. It is easily the case that
a much larger slice of public opinion favors the 911 victims against Saudi
Arabia than favors any combination of the Anarchist Federation, the Black Bloc
and MIM. So there is a difference between what Anarchist Federation says and its
actual impact in public opinion, the net effect given the backward and bought-
off population we are dealing with. Subjectively the Anarchist Federation may
intend one thing but objectively the real beneficiary is the labor aristocracy
seeking to appropriate itself Middle East assets. We hope AF will come to see
that its anti-militarism has to take higher precedence than its anti-capitalism.
The same goes for pseudo-feminism. Like the Anarchist Federation, Robin Morgan
consciously opposes national liberation struggle. She can say all she wants that
she opposed the bombing of Afghanistan. However, she was one of the most
prominent voices attacking the Taliban on the question of the rights of wimmin
and doing it in front of Western audiences--without exposing the u.$. role in
setting up the Taliban and other anti-womyn regimes around the world. She made
it sound like oil was the only u.$. connection to the question. Oil was a factor
against taking action against the Taliban, because the Taliban provided a stable
government with which to make a deal for a pipeline. (In actual fact, the
imperialists were already fed up with the failed negotiations for the pipeline.)
When 911 hit, Robin Morgan said "I told you so" for not "dealing with" the
Taliban earlier and some monopoly capitalist media outlets published her essays.
Robin Morgan knows very well that her combined readers and all the combined
activists of her stripe of alleged feminism amount to no social force that could
stop the Afghan war; yet, there was a large portion of the public saying, "yes,
we were too late with the Taliban. Let's take action now!" For the Amerikan
public, "action" by custom now means bombing. As they rampage through
Afghanistan, U.$. troops can summon a bit more self-righteous rage against
Afghans thanks to Robin Morgan.
It's really one of the oldest stories in the international patriarchy: little
sister sniffles vaguely and big brother rushes out to beat up some man. Some of
Morgan's supporters may subjectively believe one thing, but the objective effect
of her support for Westernizing Third World wimmin is dovetailing support for
bombing campaigns. Her work on Afghanistan (and Iran) before 911 contributed to
the climate for imperialist war as did her work after 911. There is never any
other result possible without correctly naming imperialism versus the oppressed
nations as the principal contradiction. Like it or not, all Robin Morgan's
activity falls within that socio-political logic dovetailing for imperialist
war. All we will accomplish is raising the hopes (to be dashed of course) of
tiny minorities with our Anarchist Federation or Robin Morgan slogans while
large majorities see us as a good reason to be appendages to imperialist war: to
oppose Saudi capitalism in one case and support Afghan wimmin's rights in
another. The deluded people who deny this are in fact white nationalists
attributing greater purity in motive to the white nation than demonstrably
exists. Robin Morgan did not revolutionize the situation for wimmin in
Afghanistan, not before or after 911, and only her conception of the "white
man's burden" allows her to dream otherwise, but an imperialist war in
Afghanistan did start. Only by imagining an unoppressive and non-exploitive
white nation did Robin Morgan justify her approach to the question and then limp
out of responsibility in the usual deluded failure. In the true balance of her
actions, we see only imperialist war. The only way out of such failures leading
to responsibility for imperialist war is having an accurate grip on the social
forces opposing the wars.
We must arouse the social forces that will bring down imperialism, without
leaving any squirm room for justifying another imperialist war or act of
international exploitation. Examples of struggles that do not have imperialist
overtones that can be capitalized on by the capitalist class include opening the
borders to migrants and immigrants, fighting for the status of children in the
imperialist countries, opposing the draft and supporting the fair trade
movement. So the question is not necessarily reform versus revolution. Some
reform movements easily lend themselves to public opinion for imperialist war
while others do not.
AF's stance against capitalism and patriarchy is in the same boat as Morgan's.
By rejecting the national liberation struggle and believing in white worker
exploitation, the AF assumes better of the white nation than it should. When it
opposes anti-imperialism, AF leads to confiscation of Middle East assets along
with very possibly the next war on Syria or Iran. Likewise, liberal feminists
like Morgan talking about the oppression of wimmin in the Middle East without
linking it to the decisive U.$. role in that oppression are doing nothing but
preparing for the next war on Syria or Iran. So an unscientific approach to
capitalism and patriarchy is in effect war-mongering whatever the intentions of
an activist.
The conception of principal contradictions and fighting only at the margin is
much different than the concept of Mencius and the "mean" or in another version,
the "median." Rallying the 90% is not always useful or doable. It should only be
attempted when that 90% mark happens to coincide with the margin, not a minute
sooner. The margin is that place at whatever position involving whatever
majority, minority or even extreme where people are flipping and flopping back
and forth depending on argument or other slight events.
Even more metaphysical than the mean or median is the concept of "middle forces"
when that conception from Stalin and Mao is not synonymous with forces at the
margin. Stalin and Mao could often equate "middle forces" with middle peasants
or the urban petty-bourgeoisie, because overall those forces could go one way or
the other and did in practice. In other words, such a concept of "middle forces"
only works when they are already at the margin politically. If the middle
coincides with the margin, if the people at the median are wavering this way and
that way, then and only then the concept of "middle forces" is of no danger.
When we assume in idealist fashion a priori that the "middle forces" must exist
despite no concrete signs of their wavering, we set up dogma and failure. If
they are in the middle by income or by assets or by age or by number of sisters
they've seen sexually harassed, but they are not wavering one way or another
based on action, they may be "middle forces" by some definition, but they cannot
be any crux of a winning strategy.
This becomes clear when we mistake "middle forces" as having to exist simply
because some people are raking in millions of surplus-value instead of billions.
Likewise some benefit more from capitalism than others and so supposed anti-
capitalism must appeal to those in the middle (50% mark), based on a relative
comparison to the mean or median according to these metaphysicians and
unconscious followers of Mencius. Yet when the 90% of a country supports bombing
every Third World country it can lay hands on, pursuit of the "middle forces" is
metaphysical and demobilizing. It was impossible to organize among whites to
stop either the Iraq or Afghan wars before they started and cost whites their
lives. What did turn out possible and the polls proved it was organizing among
Aztlan people. These were people on the fence, some polls showing support for
war, some not, people among the first to waver against the Amerikan patriotic
fervor for war on Third World people. If we do not do our work, the Aztlan
people will integrate themselves into the empire: they can go either way and
therefore the fight for the soul of the Aztlan people is an example of a fight
at the margin, one that matters. Because she gave too much credit to the white
nation, as if it were going to take up feminist liberation any minute, (which is
easy to do when you count sub-reformist lifestyle changes as a justification for
encouraging u.$. wars) everything Robin Morgan did riling up gender questions
contributed to the war climate. Whether she compartmentalized gender away from
the principal contradiction or had some other theory, the result was what
mattered. Yet, every action taken even by a labor organizer for Aztlan workers
tends to raise that political consciousness which will lead to withdrawl from
Amerikan imperialist wars.
For the neo-Nazi scum, they are confronted with a problem, whether they are
going to be primarily pro-white or anti-Jewish. Those who are pro-white and
fomenting that consciousness contributed to the u.$. wars in the Middle East,
whether they know it or not. When they emphasize those aspects of their culture
that are superior to Arab culture the way Robin Morgan does, KKK activists
contribute to the Zionist agenda, and this has caused a split in the neo-Nazi
movement. So some neo-Nazis decided that the margin within their movement is the
Jewish question. Though we share neither the anti-Jewish nor pro-white agenda,
we do recognize that there is a fight at the margin going on within the neo-Nazi
movement. It's a scientific question. The margin can never be known in advance
and it also depends on the goals of the organizer. In the cases of Robin Morgan
and AF, we see no battle at the margin and in Robin Morgan's case we believe
that may be intentional service to the empire.
When we assume before a concrete examination (what we call "a priori") that there
are "middle forces" at the 50% mark of a population, we end up carrying out reasoning
similar to why George W. Bush sought the endorsement of Ross Perot. From the perspective
of Democrats and Republicans the former supporters of Ross Perot are genuine "middle
forces." From the perspective of the international proletariat, the Ross Perot voter
was another member of an undifferentiated mass of enemies.
Fighting at the margin effectively is not at all the same thing as moderation or
going for the mean. Quite often the margin can only be addressed by the most
extreme principles, principles that perhaps the 90% do not like. It cannot be
determined in advance where the margin is in any political context. If the 90%
cannot be budged by argument, there is no point in taking up the principles of
the mean or median. This is the case when it comes to U.$. wars on the Third
World before there have been heavy casualties. Democrats and Republicans are
only arguing over how to oppress the Third World more efficiently and so chasing
after their majority may fit a metaphysical concept of the "middle forces," but
it is detrimental to the struggle against imperialist war. One organization with dim
followers confused by the "middle forces" concept recently published interviews with CIA
analysts running the line that Bu$h is cooking intelligence, as if Saddam
Hussein's having weapons of mass destruction would have been a justification for
war. Another example, the vast majority of whites are at least somewhat hostile
to the idea of Aztlan, but when it came time to organize against the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars, Aztlan was a necessary concept for the fight at the margin, as
was the Black nation. Katrina is another example of something very important,
because Bu$h tried to use 911 to unite Blacks to his cause, but Katrina killed
more Blacks than 911 and so we had a chance to rip Blacks away from integrating
with the system and all the imperialist war that goes with it. Our enemies are
those who downplay the national/racial aspect of the Katrina devastation.
Another example of the fight at the margin is MIM's struggle against pseudo-
feminism. Robin Morgan's generation exited anti-imperialism and she and other
gender bureaucrats are trying to take as many people with her as she can, with
her most dangerous impact on wimmin in the Third World and war-mongering whites
in the imperialist countries. Because of the unique educational, social and
historical advantages of the Robin Morgan generation of wimmin even many anti-
imperialist men are still falling for pseudo-feminism and the argument that
pseudo-feminists have found the road forward. The number of people we are
talking about is small--though being unconscious followers of metaphysician
Mencius they won't always admit it. Despite the small number interested in
pseudo-feminism, MIM conducts the fight there because it is at the margin.
Despite the siren song of Robin Morgan it still remains the case that Mao
accomplished what pseudo-feminists only talk about so we have a basis for
winning that fight.
After numerous successful proletarian battles at the margin, the revolutionary
forces accumulated critical mass in the imperialist countries in 1968. Yet even
in that context white workers and white wimmin did not budge. Those too deluded
to acknowledge that and the ongoing stability of the oppressor nation actually
set back the struggle at the margin, where the real fighting is going on. Those
with a linear approach from the 1960s generation assumed that the accumulated
forces from the 1960s were still in place for revolution, right into the 1980s
and were thus unable to give up the battle for the 90% inside the imperialist
countries and play a productive part at the margin.
Those who want revolution need to find the proletariat. When we forget that and keep
on issuing calls to a stable bloc of people who are not going to move, when we
act like if we just use a different slogan the white nation is going to rise up
for feminist liberation or communism and when we allow fighting over various
tactics of the mean, we bring disaster on ourselves and leave an impression of
being deluded.
There are three parts to grasping the MIM line and production of its srategy
and tactics. The part most understood by the public is that MIM operates under
tight, even physical contraints because of the bought-off nature of the population.
Even those who disagree with us understand this reasoning. The whole idea that raising
economic demands only ends up backfiring when the population
wants a war to lower gas prices is increasingly understood. Economic demands in
most countries in the world lead in a progressive direction and can
end up undoing a state, notso in the united $tates and similar countries.
The second part of MIM's strategy starting to gain some wide understanding is the idea of the
principal contradiction between the imperialists and oppressed nations. There is even
some limited discussion with pseudo-feminism about not making gender the principal contradiction.
Less understood is how there is also a principal task, again something that focuses
us on what can be accomplished at the margin. The understanding of how to
debate MIM on the principal task is lacking across-the-board.
For some people the labor aristocracy and principal contradiction idea are clear but how
we arrive at the production of other truths related to those is unclear. That is why
we need to talk about the difference between the battle at the margin and calling forth
main forces that do not exist, a regular occurrence by idealist so-called leftists.
Very commonly the very forces crawling to Democrats are also telling us like Robin Morgan
that there is some white nation force or subsection about to rise up any minute and justify
their ulraleft call. When that ultraleft call fails, the justification for crawling to the
Democrats seems to grow stronger. In the united $tates this regular oscillation between fictional
white revolution and the Democratic Party is usually embedded in the same organizations and
individuals, so undeveloped are Amerikan politics. What we need is organizations like MIM that
go forward from whatever weak position and develop the struggle at the margin completely
independently of the two-party system.
Hopefully this discussion of the battle at the margin makes MIM more accountable--why it is that
we regularly take the most unpopular positions, in combination no less and yet grow in influence.
Recently we pointed out Chomsky
as an anarchist does have a theory of transition that he is not
being held accountable for: 1) defense of Social Security in its present form;
2) advising a vote for Kerry over Bu$h; 3)calling Japanese imperialism benign relative to
others in the 1930s. How he comes to these ideas
should be a mystery to all, because Chomsky has in no way attempted to replace Lenin's theories
of transition with his own. Once we realize that MIM would not care about even 99% of the population
if it is stuck somewhere and once we realize MIM is nonetheless going to put in a fight at the margin
wherever that margin may be, much of what MIM does should start to pull together.
On the surface, the combination of Chomsky's views of what is acceptable to do right now and MIM's
may seem like long lists of unconnected ideas. In MIM's case though, we say we do have a theory
of transition and we try to explain the method for approaching various battles.
One last point on fighting at the margin; although it should be already clear.
There is nothing that says the fight at the margin should be moderate in any way: quite the
contrary, if the 70% is always for war, we have to assume that whatever is going to work in
the remainder population will be by definition seen as "extreme" by the other 70%.
By this reasoning, the Black majority seeing Katrina as involving intentional negligence
comes off as "extreme," simply because there are more white supremacists than Blacks inside
u.$. borders.
Sometimes people such as Noam Chomsky say there is a marginal difference between Bu$h and Kerry.
"What is that marginal difference in connection
to?" needs to be asked. MIM already named the principal contradiction and since the Democratic Party has carried out
as many wars on the Third World as the Republicans, and both are imperialist parties, we cannot
see any marginal difference between Bu$h and Kerry. On the other hand if the principal contradiction
centered on abortion choice, we would have to see some marginal difference and a fight at the margin
between Democrats and Republicans. (It just so happens that defending Liberal "choice" is not
principal for MIM.)
So if like some metaphysicians of the "middle forces" we of the
fight at the margin raise up fighting at the margin above the concrete goals we have, we can
become confused and stupid and there won't be any way to see how MIM arrived at its conclusions.
When we see that internationalism and future world harmony are the goals and when we know that
exploitation and oppression are incompatible with those goals and further when we have narrowed down our
strategic goal to unravelling the principal contradiction between imperialism and oppressed nations, then
our fight at the margin should be clear. Moreover, by looking at the margin we can criticize those
forces that seem to have no fight at the margin, just demoralizing calls for white nation revolution
that never materialize and thus lead straight to the Democratic Party or the Republican
Party in the case of neo-Nazis disappointed in their class. (In fact there is no difference among
Nazism, Trotskyism and non-Sakaist anarchism in terms of class analysis.)
We appreciate the Anarchist Federation's effort to talk about informal structure
and the particular evils it presents to anarchists and those who gossip or take
informal action without accountability in any organizing context. We would only
go further and say that anarchism has become less accountable than Marxism,
especially since the defeat in the Spanish Civil War that led anarchism to
become more pie-in-the-sky oriented and less willing to compare its transitional
activity to other transitional activities. Anarchism is now more-or-less
synonymous with bourgeois individualism in its worse wing and unaccountable use
and formation of states in its better wing.
Despite these wide-ranging criticisms there is much "common sense" which we
share with the Anarchist Federation. MIM's 2005 Congress shares the AF's
concerns about infiltration and the loss of star leaders. For the foreseeable
future in the imperialist countries the kind of cell structure AF is talking
about makes considerable sense with tight security. Such disciplined security is
doubly necessary, because the imperialist country population is actually petty-
bourgeoisie: it does not benefit as much as a proletariat would from exposure to
radical activists in public.
There is even one more similarity at least in the short-run. AF proclaims it
does not want to seize power, but for practical purposes MIM is not seizing
power either for the foreseeable future. Thus many of our calculations about how
to advance people the most possible given the circumstances are similar.
The AF may find it has more in common with MIM than Sakai-style anarchists,
because we center our analysis on surplus-value. Before dedicating further
activity to community-worker activism, we invite AF to get further into the
details of whether the people they think are exploited actually are exploited or
not. If we could get this issue squared away, we would find much in common with
the AF.