The role of the Anarchist organisation is to prepare and support Anarchists to take a principled role within the workers and social movements, to push them toward realising their power. We feel a complementary, symbiotic relationship between revolutionary organisations and mass movements has been crucial to historic periods where workers power was most realised.

This strategy is called Dual Organisationalism. It goes back to Bakunin, and then was further developed and implemented by the Platformists in Russia, as well as the Especifists in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. This means this strategy has been tested not just in Europe, connected to the lineage of Marx, but also pressure tested in the Global South under colonisation and imperialism. If we are true internationalists, it is important that our organisational strategies can flourish in the Global South.

Let’s walk through the thinking behind how Anarchists set up our organisations to complement movements.

1. Anarchist Communists want movements to remain non-ideological.

The workers movements and social movements attract mass participation exactly because they’re non-ideological. Any worker can join their union, and anyone that doesn’t like police violence can join a social movement. This is something we want to protect.

But just because we want movements to remain non-ideological, doesn’t mean ideological groups don’t vie for dominance within these spaces — electoralists, non-profits, vanguardists all want movements to serve their own ends. To combat these interests, Anarchist Communists aim to be an organised force within movements that supports them winning their demands, and for their power to be kept with those with the most at stake.

2. Anarchist Communists want to stand beside workers.

As Anarchists, we must not stand in front of workers and the oppressed, but beside them as equals where we find agreement, struggling with them for better wages and conditions, an end to racist policing, and ultimately toward an end to all exploitation and oppression on earth.

Ignoring mass movements, acting as individual radicals within movements or merely tailing the average ideas present within them is a road to defeat. These approaches would all end in propping up more organised ideological interests present within movements to achieve their ends – some of which would gut the movement, or put its faith in political figures that can’t deliver on promises, or drive the movement toward reaction or nationalism. It would be an unprincipled and useless position to take.

Instead, Anarchists must unite to present clear arguments within movements. Our only tool of influence must be the merit of our ideas, and the trust we build with those we struggle alongside. The way we unite around this strategy and vision is through the Specifically Anarchist Organisation.

3. Anarchist Communists build their organisations to complement movements.

Because movements ebb and flow and take on the many different influences of people within them, they often fail to retain clear political memory of failures and lessons for the future. Not to mention that workers often don’t join unions to strategise, but for the added protection and better pay union jobs offer them.

Therefore the Anarchist organisation in part exists to outlive movements or downturns in radical worker activity, to keep a political memory of movement lessons, studying history, tactics and strategies that have worked in the past, in order to argue for the strategies most likely to result in the demands of movements being met.

Broadly these principles are of direct action, direct democracy and anti-electoralism.

4. The Anarchist Organisation must be united in theory and tactics.

To be a coherent group within movements, the Anarchist Organisation builds theoretical unity with its members, which is a base level of political agreement members learn through the organisation’s education. Agreement with these political minimums intends to stop nationalists, liberals, reactionaries and vanguardists from joining the Anarchist Organisation and rendering it ineffective or splitting its focus.

Tactical unity is an agreement to act as a unit within struggles, while collective responsibility is an agreement to advance the organisation’s positions and to be responsible to the organisation, not undermining its positions or acting in a way that inhibits it from achieving its aims in movements. It also means the organisation is responsible to you as its member.

5. Anarchist Communists shouldn’t hide their political motivations.

There is no trick here. Anarchists should be genuinely reliable, trustworthy and hard-working within movements. They should endeavor to be the spark that inspires collective action and solidarity. If it is safe, they can feel free to let others know that they are Anarchists and that is why they fight for regular people to democratically wield movements of their own emancipation and for them to choose strategies that win their demands.

The broader fight for revolution can be shared with those we struggle with too. That we not only want to see an end to specific injustices (wage theft, refugee detention, etc) but ultimately our goal is to end all injustice on earth. Those who agree with these premises can come back to the organisation and join the broader fight against Capitalism.

6. The Revolutionary Program:

If it has genuine revolutionary aims, the Anarchist Communist organisation can’t just be a supplement for movement building – it also must also be a hub of Anarchist revolutionary strategy and theory in a given context. It must produce an often revised program that in the short term offers an in-depth analysis and plan to build workers’ power at crucial points of production. In the longer term that would involve a plan to build an imposing workers movement capable of conducting cross-industry general strikes to overthrow Capitalism and establish a directly democratic and classless society.

Examples from our context:

The Communist Party of Australia once had substantial influence within the Builders Labourers’ Federation; a construction union that was de-registered in 1986. The BLF managed to ban the development of areas in Sydney to prevent the poor being pushed out, protected Indigenous heritage sites from being bulldozed, and engaged in ‘work-ins’ that ran construction sites under workers’ control. It sought the participation of all workers (including migrants with limited english) in decision-making, and mobilised the force of the construction industry in solidarity with various social issues. Things the union movement couldn’t dream of doing today. This is broadly our vision for how class power can be weaponised in solidarity with struggles outside of the workplace.

And while we don’t want to organise hierarchically like Authoritarian Communists, it doesn’t mean we have to cede organisation to them. Organisation can be directly democratic, and is the tool that unlocks our ability to intervene meaningfully in mass movements to build the power of all exploited and oppressed peoples. As Anarchist Communists we would recommend all revolutionaries join a political organisation that supports your education, training and has a focused, clear program and then seeks to intervene in struggles to give them the power to win.