There have been enormous changes in the world and on the left in the last 30 years. How do these effect what the role of an anarchist organisation like the WSM is? The weekend of October 11th after a couple of years of discussion the WSM reached some collective agreements around this in the form of the position paper below which replaces an older text that largely dated from the 1980’s.
There have been enormous changes in the world and on the left in the last 30 years. How do these effect what the role of an anarchist organisation like the WSM is? The weekend of October 11th after a couple of years of discussion the WSM reached some collective agreements around this in the form of the position paper below which replaces an older text that largely dated from the 1980’s.
An early form of the text below was submitted to a natioanl WSM discussion some months beforehand and from my notes of that discussion I prepared the text as below as a motion for conference. Foc comparison purposes the much older position paper of the same title is archived for reference.
WORDS: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )
Role of the Anarchist Organisation
1. To popularise the idea that an anarchist society is desirable and that it is reachable if enough people organise for it.
2. To encourage the use of anarchist methodologies in day to day organising efforts.
3. To expose the class nature of capitalist society and to argue that class organisation is fundamental to overthrowing capitalism and creating a new society.
4. To demonstrate the links between the issues that people struggle around and how these struggles often do not stand in isolation from each other.
5. To develop a sense of trust in the methods and analysis of the organisation as a collective body rather than a collection of individuals
6. To act as a scaffold around which new networks can quickly be formed
7.To retain contacts from one struggle to carry them over to others
8.To retain experience from one struggle to transmit it to others
9.To harvest news & information from the large network of people we communicate with and present that information to our networks
10. To constantly engage in collective discussion & analysis to develop a deeper under standing of challenges and opportunities
11. To transmit that analysis to a large circle of interested people
12. To act as a training hub to retain and transmit essential skills to developing networks
13. To bring together the experiences of a wide range of struggle across time & space to develop and propagate a fully intersectional analysis of the change that is needed
14, To develop SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) to maximise the results from organising efforts and to train members in their use
15. To develop large networks of communication both in terms of infrastructure but also the development of trust
16. To accumulate resources in the form of physical spaces, equipment and cash so that the infrastructure is available for both ongoing organising and peaks of struggle
17. To create larger and larger networks of people who are convinced capitalism must be other thrown and replaced with libertarian communism
18. To develop members / organisers capable of
– self motivated strong administration
– training across a range of skills
– communicating effectively both verbally and in written form
– collective critical thinking
– collective decision making under pressure
19. The revolutionary organisation needs to be scalable. That is we need to develop organisational procedures and training methods that will work for and integrate significant numbers of new members in relatively short periods of time.
As Agreed October 2014