organisation

Origin and function of the party form - Jacques Camatte

1961 paper by Jacques Camatte, on the "historical" and formal communist party. With a 1974 postface.

General Premises

The central thesis that we wish to state and illustrate is that Marx and Engels derived the characteristics of the party form from the description of communist society.

Anarcho-syndicalist methods

A text from the French CNT-AIT written in March 2006, covering anarcho-syndicalist tactics and strategy.

METHODS OF STRUGGLE
Thursday 29th July 2010

The following text was written to help people discover, remind themselves or popularize the various syndicalist methods of struggle because in any battle, one must start from a few key ideas:

Hitting the enemy harder than they can hit you, or better - hitting them so they can't hit back.

Basic principles of revolutionary organisation

A brief outline of basic points of agreement which we think are the minimum necessary to be the basis of potentially productive pro-revolutionary organisation.

Communist: We are against all forms of capitalism whether private, state or self-managed.

Organization: a key question in the left libertarian movement

1976 statement by Des Moines, Iowa libertarian socialist group called Redwing Workers Organization.

This is the first part of a two-part series on organization. In the first part we will center on the need for organization. The second part will outline our conception of libertarian organization, based on our practice.

Defining Practice: the intermediate level of organization and struggle

Miami Autonomy & Solidarity on organisation for revolutionaries.

There is a left tradition of thinking about and taking action within two realms of activity: the mass level and the revolutionary political level. There are different ways to cash out these concepts, but they are distinguished basically by levels of unity and content.

The Need For Industrial Unity: a question of anarchist organisational imperative

An article on organisation by Liberty & Solidarity, which we disagree with completely and find the tone rather pompous, but reproduce here for reference.

Most comrades are familiar with the benefits of industrial organisation, as opposed to trade or craft based organisation. The theory that the early workers movement arrived at more than 100 years ago, that all workers along a supply chain, in the one industry, should be formed into the one organisation.

Another look at the organisation question

Bolsheviks speaking at meeting of the Petrograd Soviet.

The following text was published in 1982, over the name “Cormack”. It is an attempt to draw lessons from the Bolshevik experience, not only for the abstract “theory of the party”, but also for the concrete problems of communist organisation we face in the here and now, when any emergence of anything you might call a revolutionary party is far, far over the horizon.


The article was written by a member of the Communist Bulletin Group, a group which had split with the British section of the International Communist Current. The article is therefore framed in part as a critique of the ICC and, tangentially, the Communist Workers Organisation, another group in the “left communist” milieu.

Introduction

The subversion of everyday life

Kolinko on how capital comes to dominate all areas of our lives, and how within our everyday lives lie the seeds of a new society.

1 [Work]
2 [Capital, Gender, the State]
3 [Class Struggle]
4 [Tendencies]
5 [Revolution]
6 [Revolutionary Struggle]

Who is it that told you that life is yet to begin? Or are you already waiting for your pension?

Anarchist organisation ... the next step

This article on anarchist organisation is from Joe White of the Anarchist Workers Group. The Anarchist Workers Group existed in Britain from 1988 to 1992 when it changed its name to Socialism from Below and then disintegrated. It was born out of a split from the Direct Action Movement, led a controversial existence and when it fell apart a few of its leading members ended up in various Trotskyist groups.

One of the most abused words in the political dictionary is "spontaneity". It is used to justify disorganisation and mystify the historical process of revolution. Starting from descriptions of mass struggle, "spontaneity" has too often been elevated to a general theory of social change.

Getting Organised

Article from Class War Issue 73 looking at revolutionary organisation.

When Class War started, we saw ourselves as standing in opposition to virtually every other political organisation existing in the UK. Arrogant? Maybe. But we stood in total opposition to the Left's traditional hierarchical way of doing things and we wanted some new form of organisation to match our politics.