ARC UP is an anarchist organisation building the power of workers as leverage to fight the issues Indigenous and migrant communities face in Narrm (Melbourne). If you’re interested in joining or going through our introductory anarchist workshops, fill out the form here.
What is Class War and why do we need it?
A summary of the present situation under late-stage capitalism:
- Capitalists reporting record profits took those profits through the exploitation of workers and indigenous lands.
- Land banks make billions keeping homes empty, displacing and forcing people onto the street.
- Imperialist powers expand their reach and influence through genocide and wars, while fascist and nationalist ideas gain popularity.
- States consolidate more power, taking protest rights and other freedoms away from the people.
Many social issues result from corporations and states taking their power and wealth directly from the rest of us. Like a game of tug of war, when they advance an inch, we lose an inch. Capitalists take their profits from exploited workers. States take their power from people’s freedoms. Imperialists build their empires from the dispossession of sovereign people. This is possible because of structures of top down power, where those with power — the ruling class — dominate, coerce and exploit those without power — the working class.
Anarchists call this class war. But rather than be dragged toward destitution and death to line the pockets of the ultra-wealthy, Anarchists propose we fight back.
What Anarchists Do.
The immediate task for Anarchists is to build the power of workers to deny capitalists the profit they seek through strike action. This is the way the working class can bargain with capital to have our demands met — not just for workplace issues but also broader social issues.
Capitalism is global and our resistance must be global in return. The end goal for Anarchists is to expropriate all production from capitalists and establish a democratic, just and fair society, run for collective need and not for profit. Our actions to achieve this must be compatible with this vision. We fight for democratic worker-led unions that can act as the leverage necessary to wrestle control over our lives from the ruling class.
Revolution.
Anarchists don’t want a lawless society, we want a society without class and its unending war of competing interests. To reach this world, the ‘top-down’ power structures that enshrine class in society must be abolished and replaced with ‘bottom-up’ power structures. This would begin with consent established through treaty agreements specific to the sovereign peoples of the land, that outline mutual obligations of relating harmoniously to land, community, and culture.
Any necessary authority would be defined, mandated and dissolved by those that elect it. Imagine if you could fire your manager for unfair or abusive treatment, and replace them with a more trusted member of your workplace? Similarly, workers wouldn’t labour for bosses seeking personal enrichment, but to fulfill the expressed needs of communities seeking safe and fulfilling lives. Councils of indigenous knowledge holders, experts, scientists and engineers would be accountable to community needs, not to the highest bidding capitalists seeking drone technology for war.
All social functions and decisions are determined directly and democratically by the people through structures of temporary delegates called ‘federations’. These allow people to make decisions between communities, industries and continents without having to fill football stadiums to get things done.
In this society, each person will contribute according to their ability, and take according to their needs. This way every person’s basic needs can be met and people can live fulfilling lives in an environment of social harmony facilitated by conscious structures that encourage it.
No Authority but The People.
Many feel Anarchists are idealistic about the directly-democratic society we seek, even though Spanish Anarchists established and operated a society on this basis in 1936. For anarchists the idealists are anyone who believes top-down power won’t reproduce class divisions and result in competing interests that subject those without power to domination, coercion or violence.
The bloody history of ‘communism’ proves anarchists correct. Whole populations of people have attempted to give power to representatives they believed shared their interests. But once these parties are in power, they eventually turn around to purge, imprison, exploit or otherwise dominate the people who made their ascent to power possible. There is always a conflict of interest between those in power and those without, no matter their rhetoric or intention.