Talk by Alan MacSimin at WSM meeting, Wexford, 
October 1992

Do we need an anarchist federation?

The collapse of the East European Stalinist 
dictatorships has caused enormously important 
changes on the left.  After this collapse the only 
real alternative that many radicals see is the 
mortally ill Castro regime in Cuba, where it is only 
a matter of time before the "gone out of business" 
sign is put up; the Chinese police state; and the 
quasi-religious Orwellian dynasty in North Korea.  
Certainly not an inspiring alternative. 

On the negative side it has led many to believe that 
no alternative to American-style capitalism is 
possible.  This is reflected in a generally high 
level of cynicism and suppressed anger combined with 
a low level of classstruggle.  We can see the 
effect of this in that throughout the world  the 
Communist Parties have gone into crisis.  In Britain 
the Stalinists have lost practically all of their 
influence among radical workers.  The biggest 
fragment of the disintegrated CPGB has given up, 
closing its magazine and renaming itself Democratic 
Left - with a programme that calls for the Labour 
Party to enter a coalition with the Liberal 
Democrats.  

The Trotskyists have done little better.  The 
Workers Revolutionary Party, which was the largest 
Trotskyist organisation - the only one in the world 
to be able to publish a daily paper - has 
disintegrated into at least seven competing and 
politically irrelevant factions.  The Militant group 
has split.  The Socialist Workers Party maintains 
its level of membership by recruiting disillusioned 
Labour Party supporters and young people who 
previously would have had several viable Trotskyist 
parties to choose from.  

In Ireland we have seen the Communist Party, which 
was never much of a force outside sections of the 
trade union bureaucracy, reduced to supporting 
itself from the proceeds of an illegal drinking 
club.  It has become incapable of even producing a 
regular newsletter for its rapidly dwindling 
collection of supporters and fellow travellers.  The 
Workers Party has split, with the majority leaving 
home to set up a more explicitly social democratic 
party.  

One effect of all this has been not just the decline 
of these particular groups but also a marked decline 
in the number of non-aligned activists who are 
involved in campaigning for change.  To many it must 
seem that Western style capitalism is invincible.

The positive side of things is seen in the fact that 
ever increasing numbers are critical of the present 
system, or at least of some of its effects.  There 
is little confidence at present in peoples' ability 
to do anything about it but that alienation from the 
system is there.  

For the first time since the 1930s anarchism does 
not have to play second fiddle to Leninism among 
workers and young people looking for an alternative.  
It is now a lot easier to find an audience willing 
to listen to our anti-authoritarian views, willing 
to listen to us when we explain how Leninism did 
lead to Stalinism.  Our task is to step up this 
work, leading to a situation where ever increasing 
numbers see anarchism as providing not only a 
desirable goal but also the means of reaching it.  
The objective prospects for establishing anarchism 
as the leading ideas on the Left are better than 
they have been for 50 years.

However, in Ireland, our numbers are very small and 
most comrades have little political experience.  Few 
have been through years of struggling and learning 
in the trade unions and campaigns.  We are a very 
weak and inexperienced movement.

It must seem worthwhile to investigate the 
possibility of uniting in an Irish Anarchist 
Federation. This would mean that we could produce a 
regular paper, co-ordinate activities in several 
cities and towns, create a greater awareness of our 
existence and ideas, move away from being seen as 
small and irrelevant groupings.  It is an attractive 
idea, but could it work?

For any organisation to survive, yet alone develop 
and grow, it must be in agreement not just about 
what it wants at the end of the day but about how it 
can achieve it goal.  A political organisation has 
little purpose if its component parts are doing 
different, contradictory things.  It would soon 
disappear - as happened to the Anarchist Federation 
of Britain and its successor the Confederation of 
British Anarchists in the late 60s/early 70s.  That 
is so obvious it hardly needs to be stated.  

There are several tendencies within Irish anarchism, 
or at least embryonic tendencies.  One is the 
lifestylism which emerged from the post-punk culture 
and was represented by bands like Crass, causes like 
animal liberation and tactics which were popularised 
by the Stop the City protests in London.  Determined 
to avoid anything that smacked of boredom they 
decided to "re-invent anarchy".  These people 
constantly sought to do and say things that were 
"alternative" to what the rest of the Left was 
doing.  The emphasis was on the personal, the "old 
fashioned" concept of classstruggle was to be left 
to the Trots and other party builders.  Activity 
meant producing fanzines and setting up cheap cafes 
and rehearsal rooms.  Penny Rimbaud of Crass summed 
it up as "anarchists believe that if each individual 
can learn to act out of conscience, rather than 
greed, the machinery of power will collapse."  

Anarchism became, for them, less a political 
movement, more a semi-religious sect.  Rimbaud went 
on to talk about the need to "give back to life what 
we have taken from it.... to understand the seasons, 
the weather, the soil... to eject the grey filth and 
shit."  Get rid of the mystical nonsense and what 
are we left with but personal politics.  The 
revolution begins ...and ends within each of us.  
Whether or not you agree with this it is, as Nigel 
Fox said in Socialism from Below, "about as 
revolutionary and anarchist as sharing your last 
rolo with someone you love."   There is nothing 
wrong with trying to be a nicer person or growing 
your own organic vegetables but it won't get rid of 
capitalism, and until we can overthrow capitalism we 
are stuck with authoritarianism, poverty, 
unemployment, wars, and all the other things that 
are part and parcel of it.  As Bakunin pointed out 
"the serious realisation of liberty, justice and 
peace will not be possible whilst the majority of 
the population remains dispossessed."

Where this tendency engages in activity outside its 
own sub-culture it often unconsciously adopts a 
Leninist-type role.  It does things for people 
rather than with them.  Supergluing locks or 
vandalising a bank cashpoint machine is exiting but 
is essentially elitist, and little more than 
adventurism.  You are more likely to find such an 
anarchist running around late at night with a 
spraycan than on a picket line or at an anti-local 
charges meeting.   I have spoken for a few minutes 
about this as I find that a loose tendency like 
lifestylism rarely throws up people who will openly 
put forward its positions.  Maybe my remarks will 
lead to some responses.

Another tendency in Ireland is syndicalism.  These 
comrades place great emphasis on structure, 
genuinely democratic structure.  They hope to 
organise the majority of workers into syndicalist 
unions as the way towards revolution.  In Britain 
their strategy revolves around the formation of 
networks in different industries which they hope can 
become the basis for the revolutionary unions of the 
future.  

There are those who believe that the most immediate 
task is to build local anarchist groups which will 
begin to co-operate with each other as they appear 
in more cities and towns.

Then there is the WSM, which asserts that there is a 
need for a national organisation with clear politics 
and unified activity.  If you don't have a good idea 
of where we stand, you will by the end of the 
weekend so I'll say nothing more about it at this 
stage.

I do not believe that there is any basis for a 
federation at present.  There are real and very 
important differences among Irish anarchists.  There 
are comrades who have not yet worked out what they 
feel needs to done.  This does not mean that we all 
have to agree on everything before we can work 
together but we do need something more than a vague 
aspiration towards some undefined anarchism.  

United action means we have to agree where to put 
our limited energies and resources.  What strategies 
do we put forward?  How do we relate to other 
tendencies on the Left?  What do we believe is 
possible in conditions facing us today.  Without 
such agreement any artificial unity would collapse 
within months, if not weeks.  In concrete terms this 
would be posed in the upcoming referendum on 
abortion information & travel, in our activity 
within the trade unions, in the stand we take on the 
fight against unemployment, on the question of 
republicanism.  How would we intervene in the debate 
among republican sympathisers about a possible 
ceasefire?   What would we say to Green Party 
sympathisers about zero-growth of the world economy 
and anti-industrialisation?

However this is not to say that unity is impossible.  
We all share some basic anarchist ideas.  Let us 
build on this by discussing and debating with each 
other, by attending each others meetings where this 
is possible, by working together on specific issues 
where find that we have enough agreement to do this.  
There are groups or potential groups in Belfast, 
Cork, Derry and Dublin.  There are ones and twos in 
Ballymena, Drogheda, Galway, Fermoy, Wexford and 
probably other towns.  Let us not try to run before 
we can walk but let us also begin to clarify our 
ideas so that we can move further along the road 
towards making anarchism the leading movement among 
those who want to see an end to capitalism and the 
beginning of a truly free society.  

THIS IS THE TEXT OF A TALK GIVEN AT AN ANARCHIST 
SUMMER SCHOOL ORGANISED BY THE WORKERS SOLIDARITY 
MOVEMENT.

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PO BOX 1528
DUBLIN 8
IRELAND.


