AND SO - WHAT NOW?

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        As the corporate fascist machine moves into overdrive, the entire fabric of our society is being dramatically changed. All public assets are being privatised, all public spaces are being sold off at bargain basement prices to that same corporate machine. We the public will be rootless individuals in a fragmented society owned by the financial Barons of the corporate world. Anarchism holds up a vision of a society that could be, a society where we the people own everything in common ownership. A society that sees to the needs of all its people, freed from the grip of the profit motive that feeds the parasitical army of the corporate fascists. But are anarchist going about it in the right way? With all the rapid and dramatic changes taking place in the world today perhaps it is time to examine ourselves, to ask questions, to re-adjust, to shape to the new dangers of that rampant corporate fascism that confronts us today.

The following is from an article from FREEDOM;

         Putting things in perspectiveAnarchists in the UK today stand at a historical crossroads. Whether we identify as students, workers, unemployed, as members of a network/organization or not, we are called upon to answer this fundamental question: what is our political relevance to the larger world in the context of the struggle against austerity and beyond?

Other important questions lead on from here:-

• Are we existing in a tacitly recognized political ghetto, where we see ‘our’ concerns as more or less unrelated to the more ‘mainstream’ struggles of the students and the workers (public as well as private sectors)?
• If many of the anarchists identify themselves ‘as class struggle anarchists’, are we adequately engaging in that class struggle?
• Perhaps the term ‘class struggle’ itself needs to be sufficiently defined in order for us to engage in it?
• How do we relate to the rest of the anti-cuts movement, which falls within the ambit of ‘class struggle’? Is there a desire to do so?
• Most crucially, as social anarchists, how do we act collectively and in a unified way, as an ‘anarchist movement’, not just in name but in deed?

Looking forward
The answers to the above questions – the desire to engage with these questions – will determine our future as to whether anarchism has an appeal beyond the visuals of menacing-looking black blocs and street battles with the police. Do we have answers to the thorny problems of everyday life? Can we practically and materially create the alternatives needed that the Left has no desire to do? Or, are our ideas mere rhetoric, and incapable of being implemented?

Organizing ourselves, and mobilizing people to this end, not just in the current social unrest but also in the long-term, is key to the continued political life and growth of anarchism. Otherwise, the title ‘anarchist’ would mean nothing at all, and we may have to consider ceding the way to new political subjectivities and new political subjects who are better able to adapt to the changed circumstances. The is true of the Left as much as it is true of anarchists.

Perhaps we can begin this self-critical, but also self-renewing process, by examining whether our current organizations and organizational frameworks have been adequate to meeting this challenge, or do we need to create entirely new spaces and structures that are efficient, inclusive, and non-sectarian. For there is no doubt that the need for such structures and procedures exists, and if we can begin to build them together it might just spell the difference between our political obscurity and a political rebirth.

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