What is to be done? A proposal for an Aotearoa Anarchist-Communist Federation

I've read your whole text ( a bit quickly and filtered by a bit of nasty illness, so sorry if I've got anything muddled).

You are right about what is needed. I'm not sure if there's such a huge difference between the reality of membership of the AF and NEFAC, though. We (AF) are going through something of a growth phase at the moment - partly caused by members creating groups around themselves. We are a federation of groups rather than individuals and the amount of agreement needed to join is high. That's what makes it possible for autonomous groups to function within one organisation. Synthesism is definitely to be avoided. The main differences between us and NEFAC are political, I think - as shown on these boards.

It's also worth noting that our current growth is due to a lot of patient work. Holding regular meetings, bringing out propaganda regularly, intervening on demonstrations, getting involved in campaigns with a distinctive voice all take time, but the hard work is worth it.

Finally, as one who has been active during the period of bringing up kids, it's soemthing you need to take very seriously and see as being an area for collective responsibility - not the childcare, but the making sure that comrades with children are enabled to be as fully active as possible.

I'll be interested to hear how you get on.

I reckon you'd be wrong there. I guess you are referring to the Defy ID/No2ID debate there. Groups like No Borders, though, aren't specifically anarchist, are they? Nor the IWW.

As a result of discussion.

You'll generally hear us all singing from the same song sheet. It's discussion again.

...and there was me thinking that federalism was one of the main principles of platformism!

As to the AF, we work with all sorts, though it is often the case that we'll be in smaller, more libertarian coalitions than the biggest leftist one.

We also make (and try to implement!) decisions nationally.

You can discuss things all you like but if members arent bound by a majority decision of the organisation and you dont have specific positions then surely they'll be free to argue a different line?

IWW and No Borders are libertarianish groups though, do AF get involved in campaigns that involve a mass of people including trot groups or whatever? If, as I understand, you dont it reflects the purism of your position on unions and national liberation; don't go where the people are, stay where we are and wait for them to come to us. No?

I ask because I don't think the only difference between NEFAC and AF is merely political positions, its how you view the role of the anarchist organisation.

Sorry comrade, on the political thing you must have quoted while I was editing my post. I hit enter before sub-editing.

When our kids were young we sometimes had to say only one of us would go to a meeting. Other times we had all meetings round our house. Then when pub time came, comrades took it in turn to babysit. Mind you it didn't work so well with another comrade whose partner was not in the organisation. He felt torn between family/politics and naturally family won. He's still in occasional contact, but is a big loss. Sorting out the comrades/kids issue is important. It helps overcome the young, male orientation of groups.

I don't think this can be stressed enough.

On a practical level, i don't think importing the AF or NEFAC or WSM model wholesale would really work in NZ conditions. Of course, I'm not suggesting in any way that you are Asher.

To be specific, NZ is a provincial country, generally conservative, reasonably spread out geographically, and sparsely populated. It has only one big city (Auckland) and Auckland really functions more like several small cities -- Akld doesn't really have a centre or heart. This means in NZ its v. hard to form functioning local groups of people along the same wave length. Cos there would probably only be about a dozen people in the whole country who would call themselves anarchist communists, i think it would make more sense to form a national federation of individuals rather a federation of local collectives. At the moment, there are no local anarchist communist or communist groups, and in some cities like Dunedin there would be no hope whatsoever of forming an anarchist commie group, and even in the bigger cities, such groups would prob only have 2-3-4 people in a local. IHO It would take more effort to form a lasting local group than to form a national federation. By forming a functioning national fed you would be able to pool all the resources and skills of people around the country into one group. And of course if that doesn't work you can then put more effort into forming locals.

I think some anarchists have a tendency to fetishise local groups, and see them a priori as the be all and end all of organisation. I think it depends on the situation whether localism is workable/desirable or not.

ART wasn't explicitly anarchist communist and did call ourselves a class struggle anarchist group mainly because one member considered themselve a syndicalist, another a mutualist and another a situationist. At the time it seemed like a useful compromise. The rest of us did describe themselves as anarchist communist.

Probably at the time I would had called myself an anarchist without objectives though my politics were (and still are) closest to anarchist communism.

No, I think I got it right.