[UNSW] Communist Club, and Anarchy and the Left

Tharunka Wed 18 Sep 1974 p. 15

COMMUNIST CLUB

MANIFESTO
1. Throughout the world, the vast majority of people have no control over the decisions that most deeply and directly affect their lives. While parliament and parliamentary parties are not totally irrelevant, we believe that real power lies elsewhere - in the hands of those who own and control the means of production, mass-communications, etc., who establish a framework within which parliament can 'reform' - needless to say it is a framework which leaves in tact their power and privileges.

Propaganda and policement, prisons and schools, the nuclear family, traditional values and morality, all serve to reinforce the power of the ruling class and to convince people to accept a degrading and irrational system.

In distinction to parliamentary democracy, we counterpose a social system the central tenet of which can be summed up in a word: SELF-MANAGEMENT. That is, the direct and decentralised control of ALL institutions in society by those who participate in them: workers' councils can and should run industry, staff and student councils can and should run educational institutions.

We believe that events such as the 1968 revolt in France, the Prague spring in Czechoslovakia, and above all the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people herald a new revolutionary crisis after the frozen decade of the fifties.

2. Students and the University

In line with the aim of the genuine self management, we hope to initiate and support student struggles for control of departments, course content, assessment and, of course, the overall running of the university - now in the hands of the University democracy.

One particular strategy that raises the question of staff-student self-management can occur when there is a national protest against, say, the treatment of Aborigines. On this day, students can and should discuss, analyse and take action against racism by reorganising the running of the departments and faculties. Discussion could be directed to a whole re-examination of racism for example.

Students, unlike other layers in society of the same age group, cannot live an independent life away from parents, they are kept in a state of protracted adolescence, under the living blackmail of parents. hence, the demand for a living wage, cheap housing, etc., is necessary for personal self-management.

in the society at large, students have a special role to play as an awakening or detonating factor for discontent in other social strata; for the sake of the future generations it is necessary that students continue to take up issues.

3. Apart from the question of the struggle for education self-management, three other questions seem to us to be of prime importance: the questions of women's and gay liberation; the ecology crisis; and the struggle against imperialist exploitation of the Third World. We see these and other issues related to the need to overthrow a capitalist societies and bureaucratic "socialist" societies and to institute a genuinely liberated socialist society.

a) The emergence of the women's liberation movement signifies that the socialist revolution in western countries will be far more profound and of a different qualitative nature from previous revolutions. The type of society that will emerge will be one where emphasis is given to the freeing of individuals from destructive and violent personal and psychological traits - which means above all the ending of the nuclear family as a basic unit in society which enslaves women and produces alienated human beings.

A complete redistribution and re-direction of property and economic resources is necessary for the basis of a liberated society. This involves the placing of property (corporations, factories, transport, etc.) under communal control in the hands of the State made up of the sum of the self-managed units in society.

b) For us, the rapidly worsening destruction of the ecology - the very basis of the existence of men and women - is a classic case of the contradiction between the productive forces and productive relations. The scientific and technological revolution has shown the possibility of liberating all humanity from hunger, disease and poverty. Yet such a revolution in productive forces require a complementary revolution in productive and social relations. until such an evolution - which would place the means of production in the hands of the people, instead of the capitalists, to be used for rational human ends - ecological destruction will continue serving as it does rampant capitalist profiteering and expansion.

It is not good enough to rely on the good intentions of the Labor Party, and we think the next few years will demonstrate this. To save the environment, we can rely only on ourselves, the mass of the people.

c) Intimately related to the question of ecology is the over-development of the west - reaching its most bloated form in the USA - and the fact that such over-development is based on the exploitation of the natural resources of the under-developed world.

The economic relations between the West and the Third World can be described as imperialism - the effect of which is to siphon off economic surplus from under-developed countries, thus checking the growth of indigenous industry, distorting the economy to suit western needs. All of this produces the characteristic syndrome of under-development: poverty, disease and hunger. A comparison of the development of India and China shows the road to a decent life for the Third World lies via the path of national liberation struggles which breaks links entirely with the west.
We believe that an independent revolutionary organisation is necessary so that the necessary analyses and work can be done without the restricting framework of reformism and bourgeois ideology which is to be found in the present mass worker's party - the Labor Party - which in any case we believe to be incapable of solving the problems facing us.

On the question of the socialist countries, we oppose the prevailing bureaucracy and the bureaucratic elite and believe that the principles of workers' control and self management, which are necessary for genuine socialism, are lacking, to various extents, in those countries. We oppose the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia which contravenes individual countries' rights to self determination, and continue to support the forces working for socialist democracy and against the ruling elites in those countries. This is not to deny the tremendous progress in living standards, education, etc., that have been made, and we will support those peoples in any fight against imperialism e.g. the heroic Vietnamese liberation struggles against the American imperialists.
The Communist Club is open to all revolutionaries who support the Club's manifesto.

The Communist Club has a regular bookstall every Thursday from 11.30 to 2.30 outside the library. A wide range of books are available on politics, Marxism, ecology, Women's Lib., Black Power, Workers' Control, etc. We also sell Tribune and other left publications. The Club also holds public meetings on campus in support of self-management, non-bureaucratic socialism.
The Club is open to all communists, socialists, and anarchists and operates on a loose non-authoritarian basis. Meetings are held every Wednesday at 1 p.m. in G. Arts Building.

Tharunka Wed 16 Oct 1974 p. 5

Anarchy and the Left

The Communist Club, UNSW.

Dear Friends,

I was interested to read your recent Manifesto (published in Tharunka, 18th September 1974), and would like to make several comments, going through the Manifesto roughly from the beginning.
In your first section, you paraphrase and quote from the documents 'As We See It', the 'manifesto' of the libertarian revolutionary groups 'Solidarity' (London), and the 'Self Management Group' (Brisbane). But then you go on to contrast self management with the social systems of parliamentary democracy - why don't you similarly contrast self management with the social systems of what you call the 'socialist countries'? Both 'Solidarity' and the 'SMG', and most other non-authoritarian socialists, communists, anarchists, libertarians, etc., are prepared to attack the societies of BOTH the West and the East as authoritarian class societies. If socialism means more to you than the 'common ownership of the means of production' - as it seems to, for instance, in your later section on human relationships and sexism - you need to explain the nature of 'bureaucratic socialism' (your phrase), as something other than a class society; and why it is (presumably from your arguments?), a step on the road to 'genuine socialism', (your phrase) and hence, why you are prepared to defend such countries against the forces of western (private) capitalism. Would you actually support the USSR in a war against the USA, (such as Trotsky did during the notorious Stalin-Hitler pact during World War 2), or would you call on the working classes of both countries to refuse to support their own ruling classes, and instead, to attempt to overthrow them? (as the original Bolsheviks, amongst many others, did, during World War 1).
You must be more specific in your Manifesto - either you support a libertarian/anarchist revolution, based on a central tenet such as self management; or you support hierarchically structured class societies based on wage slavery and exploitation - such as the USSR, China, Eastern Europe, North Vietnam, Cuba, etc.

To quote further from 'As We Don't See it'; 'In every country of the world the rulers oppress the ruled and persecute genuine revolutionaries. In every country the main enemy of the people is their own ruling class.'

For instance, when you talk of 'the 1968 revolt in France, the Prague spring in Czechoslovakia and the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people'; with which aspects of these events do you identify? The role of the French Communist Party and its unions in crushing the revolt, or the role of and workers and students in support of self-management?; Dubcek's reforms, or the attempts to build workers councils and move from reform to revolution?; the workers involved in the Saigon Commune of 1945, or Ho's Viet Minh who helped the British and French to crush them?

In the second section of the Manifesto you talk of the 'overall running of the university' being at present 'in the hands of the University democracy(?)' - an unfortunate typing error, I presume?
Then you talk of self management of the university being raised in reference to special days of national protest against particular injustices. Why not raise that issue in reference to the ordinary, 'business-as-usual', days of university life? Or are we to have a token form of self management - a 'self management day', to go with 'mothers' day', 'Anzac Day', 'anti-racism day', etc? Libertarian revolutionaries would argue for revolutionary changes in people's relationships in their ordinary, everyday lives.

The Manifesto goes on to talk of students play an 'awakening or detonating' role. I hope this - and the later mention of the need for a revolutionary organisation capable of solving our problems - has little in common with the elitist Leninist notion of 'vanguard revolutionary parties dialectically (?) leading the working class'?

In the third section you talk of placing 'property under communal control in the hands of the State, made up of the sum of the self managed unit in society'. Whew!! Surely you either have control resting with self managed units themselves, (and hence, no need or function of the State); or control rests with the State, (and hence, any form of self management structures will be token, and/or important, e.g. Yugoslavia).

Then you bring up the so-called 'contradiction between the productive forces and the productive relations', as the reason for the escalating ecological destruction. Firstly, if there has been a revolution in productive relations in the USSR - i.e., according to you, 'placing the means or production in the hands of people, instead of the capitalists' - why is the USSR on a comparable level with Western (private) capitalism, in its level of ecological destruction? But libertarians don't believe there has been a revolution in productive relations in the USSR - for them, the means of production have been placed in the hands of the State, which is obviously not the same thing as being in the hands of the people!

Secondly, even if the change in productive relations, that you state that you believe in, were to occur, there seems to me to be nothing inherently good or 'rational', about decisions of the 'mass of the people'. I agree that we have to rely on ourselves, not on Labor parties, union officials, revolutionary leaders, etc; but the 'mass of the people' are as libel to make mistakes as anyone. Also, there seems to be no inherent connection between revolutions and productive forces and (so-called 'complementary') revolutions in productive relations. There may in any particular instance be such a connection; but whether it exists or not has to be established in each instance, and not just accepted as an a priori piece of ideology.

Does the 'road to a decent life for the Third world (really) lie via the path of national liberation struggles . . .'? it is true that modern private and/or state capitalism can further develop the means of production. And, at the cost of the intensified exploitation necessary to expand the level of primitive capital accumulation, progress in livings standards can be achieved. But neither of these phenomena have any socialist content. Anyone who wants three square meals a day and the prospect of endless employment, can find them in any well-run gaol. Socialism, surely, is not about transistors for the prisoners; it is about the destruction of the industrial prison itself. Nationalism and class struggle are irreconcilably opposed, and the historical record makes a myth of the theory that a 'successful national liberation struggle' will unleash 'the real class struggle'.
It could be said that the principles of workers' control and self management are 'lacking, to various extents' also in the Western (private) capitalist countries. Yet again, your Manifesto seems to imply that the 'socialist countries' are closer to 'genuine socialism' than the Western capitalist countries. Once again we are back to asking whether your implied definition of 'socialism' is either adequate, or even desirable.

Finally, you support the right of individual countries to self determination; but surely a nation is a bourgeois reality, and ALL nationalism inevitably class with class consciousness. The right of particular countries to self determination can be seen as attempts of sections of indigenous ruling classes to appropriate a larger share of the surplus value generated in 'their own' countries.
Your Manifesto seems an attempt to grapple with the problems involved in libertarian forms of communism. However, as I have attempted to argue above, your attempt is repeatedly compromised by the concepts and ideology of authoritarian forms of 'communism'.

Looking forward to your reply.

Peter McGregor.