Are anarchist organisations in decline?

I think it's more complicated than this. The whole anti-glob wave that anarchism fed off of through the 90s/00s/early 10s has most definitely ended (not entirely a bad thing) but the reformist wave that followed it is also not as strong as it was 5-10 years ago. There are a fair number of people who were introduced to radicalism through the DSA/Corbyn/etc but have since become embittered by their defeats and moved to the left. The dividing lines between the soft-left and hard-left are a lot clearer than they were at Sandermania's peak. My understanding is that a lot of the people joining Black Rose in the US are exactly these sorts of ex-DSA types.

As you say, anarchist media can often be surprisingly popular, but I disagree that it's not flowing down to ground-level organising. I was involved in Black Flag Sydney from the beginning of it to the end, and the vast majority of people we recruited (or attempted to recruit) already had a decent understanding of what anarchism was, not necessarily through reading a specific text or something, but through absorbing it from leftist internet culture. They often had a bunch of misconceptions (eg about electoralism, localism or whatever) but I was impressed about how much people knew.

From my perspective, the challenges weren't about political identification, but about the personal challenge of turning passive identification into active militancy. Going to meetings every fortnight, taking an active role in organising your workplace, getting used to writing and speaking, etc. People would agree with pretty much everything we said, join us, and then basically go radio-silent. I still don't know the answer to this problem, but I also know it's not just anarchists that experience it: most of the organised left, including Stalinist/"tankie" groups, struggle to organise these people. This isn't a problem for the DSA or CPUSUA because these sorts of groups thrive with base of passive members.

1. But these people wouldn't have any concept of an appropriate strategy informed by extensive historical research and industrial experience eg in regard to getting anarcho-syndicalist unions going..
2. To get anywhere on the industrial front particularly areas of strategic importance affecting the arteries of the corporate set up they would need intensive out-side-the job assistance. Even where long existing militant networks have existed. In many workplaces they would be affected by low morale amongst co-workers. Associated with the progress of the employer offensive where they work - they would affected by worsening conditions such as worsening speed ups, long shifts, etc. All facilitated by the corporate unions and the role in the unofficial Accord which exists with the corporate set up and enterprise bargaining. So in many workplaces they would obliged to lie low as well as co workers. Longer and rotating shifts would also have a disorganising impact of various sorts on these people affecting militancy..
3. Also the predominance of the corporate media today is involved with covering up and distorting things on industrial front to give false impressions. There was last year an important victory in the class struggle in the NSW Railways associated with new trains. In particular there had been a long struggle going back to 2016 - to get a functioning guard's compartment on them - The ASN assisted militants there - one of those sectors where you would have the above networks to out manouevre the union officials on a number of occasions who were hell bent on eliminating guards on these trains as part of the Govt's privatisation agenda and on one occasion direct action by rail workers occurred affecting some thousands of commuters. But the corporate media gave all credit bizarrely to the union bosses of the RTBU. (See NSW Railway News in Rebel Worker Vol.42 No.3(238) Dec. 2024- Jan.2025.) There has been similar episodes going back some decades and some major industrial action completely covered up by the corporate media such as industrial action at Central Station affecting some 100,000's in Dec. 1997. Also the Corporate media covers up massive Govt. corruption such as the rigging of union elections for many decades now helping maintaining compliant union officials allied with the ALP . It has been in RW. So all this affects adversely people's morale and their capability to get militant action and organisation. So they are more likely to become inactive etc.

Why would anyone join an anarchist organisation would be the first question innit? Like what are they offering besides talking therapy for disaffected people. From the outside there’s an obvious orthodoxy that is resistant to any sort of change, and it’s just a vicious cycle of haemorrhaging. Not exactly the first person to point this out either. What was the last exciting idea or strategy or tactic. Why are they still putting out text in a saturated hyperdigital age no one reads. When was the last time someone even was willing to talk about post revolution, let alone what it may look like. Black Rose go as far as the usual vague now but nicer, not exactly blow your socks off, https://www.blackrosefed.org/about/program/3-ultimate-objective/ And most of all, something that I don’t think people are willing to admit, aloof from people, the mass, whatever as a whole. You yourself Steven said something you didn’t understand was stupid, it’s not very persuasive. Even persuasion through ideas is viewed with skepticism (only through struggle can… etc etc) like putting the cart before the horse.

There was a time anarchism was at the cutting edge of propaganda, theory, art, the avant garde, experimentation. Invented the car bomb (just saying), the first experimental and first feminist film in Thais, or modernised old concepts like federalism and iconographies. Necromancy the more in thing these days.

To provide a bit of background information...

With 'organized' anarchism or anarchist political organization in the US, there was a surge of groups and interest that came out of the anti-globalization movement among some anarchists who wanted to go beyond 'summit hopping'. Andrew Flood of the Irish group Workers Solidarity Movement did a tour of the US that was pretty influencial. I can't remember if the NorthEastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC) or the Andrew Flood tour happened first, but NEFAC's magazine The Northeastern Anarchist, was influencial among the miliu of anarchists looking at platformism and especifismo to get better organized.

A lot of us corresponded and interacted with each other on the internet, such as on libcom.org, MySpace anarchist groups (!) and Facebook.

The groups started putting on the Class Struggle Anarchist Conferences (CSAC), which led to a 'regroupment' process that eventually resulted in Black Rose Anarchist Federation. Groups that emerged or grew a bit in this mid to late 2000s period were:

-North-Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC) / Common Struggle

-Common Action (Pacific Northwest)

-Common Cause (Ontario)

-Wild Rose Collective (Eastern Iowa)

-Four Star Anarchist Organization (Chicago)

-Miami Autonomy & Solidarity (Miami, Florida)

-Rochester Red and Black (Rochester, New York)

-Solidarity & Defense (Lansing, Michigan and Detroit, Michigan)

-First of May Anarchist Alliance (Detroit, MI & Twin Cities, MN)

-Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) (Mostly NY/NJ, Bay Area, LA)

I might be forgetting a group or two? In any case, none of these groups exist anymore. They either disbanded before the 'regroupment' process, merged into what became Black Rose, or did not merge and have disbanded since then. The one exception is WSA which seemed to have gone into a membership decline and has since split but is seemingly still active in Philadelphia.

Black Rose has suffered at least one split since forming, which seemed to have pushed the organization towards not much public activity for a bit.

A lot of us who were more about the IWW than anarchist political organization started growing apart from this miliu. I know I felt increasing distance from these groups and individuals as part of Recomposition.

Black Rose today I believe is the largest formal anarchist organization in North America. I have no idea how large they are. I suspect they are not larger than all the pre-regroupment groups membership's combined, but that is just a guess.

The other main anarchist tendency in North America that was around during the bulk of my involvement in things was insurrectionary anarchism, which developed out of the anti-civ and primitivist stuff of the early 2000s. IA was influenced by a lot of ultraleft groups and texts such as The Invisible Committee, Endnotes, Theorie Communiste, communization current, Alfredo Bonnano, etc.

I feel like this was the dominant strand of anarchism and people associated with this stuff were often among the leading, most militant edge of most social movements of the time such as the wave of student occupations in 2008-2009, the Occupy Movement, maybe also the 'antifa' craze of the first Trump term. But they seemed to have mostly disapeared.

Websites such as Infoshop have gone defunct. Anarchist News used to be one of the main sites for these folks, that seems a lot less active and may have actually briefly gone defunct, not sure.

Yeah. I do wonder if there's some kind of economic factor behind it. I know the whole dole-bludging culture that sustained a lot of the insurrecto types is getting harder and harder to maintain. Even students, who used to be relied on to have a lot of free time, are working non stop. It's hard to convince tired, worn out people to sit through a two hour long meeting about something insubstantial, time that might otherwise be spent socialising with friends or doing something personally enjoyable.

I'm also aware that this goes beyond just the left. There are probably more shut-ins than ever nowadays, people are getting more isolated, and mainstream newspapers often go on about the "loneliness epidemic". Maybe the organised left is another victim of the trend towards building a digital social life to replace the in-person one.

With that said... it's not all doom and gloom. The UCL in France is large, and growing. The ACF in Australia was only formed this year and its constituent groups have only been active for like 4-5 years.

"Why are they still putting out text in a saturated hyperdigital age no one reads."

If you mean text in the shape of a hard copy flyer/magazine -produced/issued in the context of industrial organising in a strategic sector/elite groups of workers - it is of great importance - not so much the info but as "playing the psychological game" - producing collective discussion amongst groups of these workers leading to collective action particularly amongst militant networks - certain of these groups could take direct action affecting millions - also in the shape of a magazine via humor/satire help with raising these workers' morale involving collective discussion and creating a militant work place culture and combating atomisation which on line media encourages and plays into the management/union bosses agenda. It was with a humble hard copy flyer involving distro amongst an elite group of workers we were able to defeat a move by union officials and management involving introducing new trains in the NSW railways leading to privatisation some years back.

Does anyone know how big is the political Left, if by that term, we are only referring to socialists of all kinds? What proportion of the population are socialists? If only pollsters like Gallup included the category when inquiring people’s political identity, then we could have had reasonable estimate. Instead, they only ask if people are either very liberal, moderate liberal, moderate, moderate conservative, or very conservative, as if liberalism and conservatism are the only two ideologies.

My own suspicion is that socialists make up only 5-10% of the population in the U.S. at least. Of the socialists, many assume that anarchism was/is the dominant tendency since the anti-globalization protests, or at least some kind of default organizing model. Others say that most socialists are practically social democrats in the original 19th century meaning of that term, or perhaps more appropriately democratic socialists. The Leninists seem to be super popular online, but between them and anarchists, I would say anarchism is more prevalent even though they are less organized.

Yeah, I think the formal big-A anarchist organisations definitely seem to be in decline. Other stuff than anarchists are involved in is harder to measure. Where I live there's a SolFed group that's very good at stickering but I never actually seem to see in real life, an IWW group that's slightly more noticeable but still dunno how much they actually do, and then stuff like a migrant solidarity/anti-deportations group that's not explicitly anarchist but has a heavily anarcho membership.

I think a great deal of the actual activity of the anarchist movement, such as it is, is probably through stuff like local anti-raids, antifa, etc groups, but that's a really hard thing to measure growth and decline in over time, as opposed to say looking at how many local groups the AF or SF have now and comparing it to what they listed 10 or 15 years ago. Suspect it's probably not great overall though.

If I can have a brief moment of optimism (and while it's legal to write this comment!), I think Palestine Action are one of the most successful direct action groups in a long time, and actually qualify as direct action more than the XR/JSO style of disruptive-but-symbolic-and-indirect protest.

I feel like PA have been embraced by the heart of the Palestine solidarity movement in a way that's very very different to how marginalised direct action was at the time of the anti-Iraq War movement (at least seen in retrospect), and seems like at least a partial break with the old mass passive protest/small elite group direct action binary that's been a curse for ages.
Obviously direct action by itself doesn't sum up the whole of the anarchist tradition, PA aren't an anarchist group and don't claim to be, but still, it is an approach that's pretty vital to anarchism.

"With that said... it's not all doom and gloom. The UCL in France is large, and growing. The ACF in Australia was only formed this year and its constituent groups have only been active for like 4-5 years."

I'm not very familiar with France, but in the Australian context the same phenomena affecting your Black Flag Group is likely to affect this new group - the low morale/exhaustion/disorganisation caused by a complex interweaving of factors on the job and new members immediately dropping out which I referred to in one of my previous posts. This situation is also probably a significant factor contributing in the USA with the IWW's purely "on line members" growth. With similar situations in other countries.

But this can be changed. For a range of factors (influence of identity politics/the impact of the stalinist/trot ways legacy/unwholesome focus on formal organisationand micro bureaucracy/imitating mainstream/trot parties in certain ways/involvement in everything going on various fronts/focusing on strategically irrelevant workplaces/industries, middle class/student social base/background etc - these groups: like the IWW in USA, so called anarcho groups there in UK/USA, and this new one in Australia etc will not be able to conduct the strategic industrial organising which the catalytic network phenomena can - In the Australian context it has achieved most important results on the industrial front and having ramifications in other ways eg on the environment and slowing the tempo of the employer offensive (See in RW Vol.41 No.3(235) Dec.2023- Jan.2024 "From Corporate Bureaucratic Unionism to Grassroots Controlled Direct Unionism:Activity & Perspectives for Australia Today" on www.rebelworker.org )

To change the situation radically on the industrial front and tackle the employer offensive would require the strategic industrial organising to get the strike/direct action wave going. It would involve the long range precision industrial work "behind the scenes" to get it going - this seems to have occurred in the prelude to events of Paris May '68 and associated factory, uni occupations and General Strike etc.

A "symbiotic" relationship (this is a phenomena which occasionally occurs in the animal kingdom and between some humans and animals) could be developed between the catalytic networks and formal groupings - members of these formal groups - could help in certain ways which fit into their normal routines with catalytic network publications - that could help raise the morale of members who don't do much or anything - they could do something which makes strategic sense - they could easily fit with their normal routines. Also in this way maintain contact with them and they could at least do something useful. In the context of the big industrial upsurge facilitated by the strategic industrial organising of the "maverick" catalytic networks- they are likely to get active with militant activity in their workplace to help get major break aways from the corporate unions on syndicalist lines going.
In certain countries catalytic networks may already exists - the Angry Workers World group in the UK looks a bit like this - in other countries you would have to create them.

As far as not-specifically-anarchist-but-vaguely-adjacent groups go, I get the impression the AWW aren't up to much at the moment, although their last strategy piece from last year was pretty good:
https://www.angryworkers.org/2024/08/24/what-is-to-be-done-now/
Think their main practical effort at the moment is focused on two hospitals in Bristol, which sounds worthwhile, but think that's about it: https://www.vitalsignsmag.org/
Think Plan C went through a bit of a period of hibernation but they seem to be emerging from it somewhat now.

R Totale, Steven wrote "Class War in the UK", not Class War, of the UK.

For an exposition of our position unconfined by national barriers, read [AST] For the creation of a global network of revolutionary anarchists and anti-Leninist communists!

R Totale wrote:

...an unrelated long-winded Czech...

Just because my mother was born in Czecho, this does not make me Czech; how much less so does it make our group "Czech".

Class War has been a group of anarchy, of socialism, of communism in the UK, but not of the UK, since the early 1990's. The other body, which you alluded to, and latterly named, is firmly a part of the political and social and economic establishment of the UK.

Following

Juan Conatz

I might be forgetting a group or two?

The only group I could think of not.on your list was Prarie Struggle in Canada (Manitoba, Sasaskatchewan, maybe also Alberta). There were also some comrades in Windsor, but I think they linked up with one of the Michigan groups.

What is abundantly clear from this thread is that anarchist organisations, especially in the US and UK, are a minute fraction, in contrast to the hundreds of millions of militant working class worldwide that have taken to the streets to oppose all form of government over recent years. Time to come in from the cold?

Why not both, Geoff?

That’d be a start yeah. If your girl/boy/themfriends keep dumping you, it’s probably you though.

You're not wrong.

I was listening to Vivek Chibber's podcast that is put out by Jacobin called Confronting Capitalism. He said something along the lines of that much of politics in the West since 2008 has been in response to the economic crash of that year and the shattering in many people's minds of neoliberal capitalism being the only possibility.

I think there's something to that. Basically, 'TINA' became no longer viable and since then politics has been about trying to find what that alternative is for many people while large parts of the establishment either are clinging to that myth or trying to loot whatever they can as it crumbles. I think it is hard to explain the resurgence of the authoritarian and neofascist right, as well as the social democratic/democratic socialist left otherwise.

If you accept Chibber's views here, I think it is difficult for many to see anarchism or anarchist groups specifically as one of the viable alternatives. All of these politics are happening at the level of the State and are about either distribution of resources or distribution of pain on "the others".

"I think it is hard to explain the resurgence of the authoritarian and neofascist right, as well as the social democratic/democratic socialist left otherwise."

But an important explanation in the 30's and today for the rise of the ultra right in certain countries and social democratic parties in certain layers of workers is their low morale. and intertwined with hostility to the corporate union hierarchy due to their constant sellouts but covered up by sophisticated "smoke and mirrors" performances associated with contract negotiations and the role of the corporate media. In the 1930's the bureaucratic unions of those days aligned mostly with Social Democratic formations/Labor Parties mostly completely caved -in to the massive employer attacks of that era particularly associated with the Depression . An intriguing example of this phenomena - is in the 20's a certain local of the FAUD (german anarcho-syndicalist union confederation) went completely over to the Nazis. It became a seed of the Nazis in the german labour movement. Pointing to the impact of low morale and crisis of confidence of workers in the majority Social Democratic unions and also with the FAUD which was experiencing quite a crisis leading to major splits (particularly due to the rise of Leninism and subsequently mass Stalinism) and a spiraling decline in membership. (See the essay on Germany in the Book "Revolutionary Sydndicalism: An international perspective").

The increased support for Social Democratic formations in such countries as the USA - should be seen in the context of workers and other groups low morale and sellouts of the corporate unions with even some of their officials support for Trump- workers and others think you can rely on electoral politics "socialism out of the ballot" to improve things.

As I have argued in a previous post that the so called most anarcho formations and groups like the IWW in the USA and elsewhere are incapable of conducting the strategic industrial organising to slow the tempo of the employer offensive and help ignite the processes leading to the strike/direct action wave movement which could lead to major syndicalist oriented splits from the corporate unions and transitional steps to a mass syndicalist union confederation. In this context you would see the mushrooming of many anarcho-syndicalist oriented anarchist groups composed of militant workers - you had a process very similar to this in regard to the major growth of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT in Spain in the early 30's and massive expansion in members.
Today's dysfunctional anarcho groups (for the reasons I have outlined in a previous post) in some cases also harm the activity or potential activity of the a-s catalytic networks which could conduct the appropriate strategic industrial organising to change the situation. In the case of the US IWW - it receives dues which are used to facilitate their organising which lack such a focus - in areas which definitely won't change the situation to achieve the above processes and that would characterise their salting activity. Most in the IWW today I'm sure they don't see any problem with their current industrial organising orientation - but their seems an anti intellectual orientation and focus on formal organisation and copying of some of the ways of bureaucratic unions amongst therm so they won't do the necessary research/and lack the necessary industrial experience to grasp the radically different context in which the syndicalist movement actually emerged in the late 19th and early 20th Century and the ramifications for such insights for today and an appropriate industrial strategic. Much
of the revenue secured today by groups such as the IWW would be much better used to help with this catalytic network strategic industrial organising - definitely their publication activity would require significant financial support even with a sympathetic printer. Also in certain areas of the industry focused upon would probably need help with salting. In other sectors not so necessary with the involvement of allied industrial groups.
In Sydney in 2013 some IWW members were even manipulated by the cult guru at Jura Books today in a right wing direction leading into their involvement in a major attack on the ASN and hijacking of Jura Books for a cult temple. They would fit the bill of demoralised workers who were also members of an emerging cult and see the IWW as a sort of pseudo church. The ASN has had a major positive impact in the class struggle in NSW and Australia via strategic industrial organising. See one of my previous posts and thread "New Org. in Sydney" on libcom and A-Infos Rebel Worker Obituary for Jack Grancharoff. This is of course is an extreme situation from the wilds of Down Under.. But an example of the madness which can suddenly burst up with these mixed up anarcho and allied groups of today. Definitely unheard of during the rise of the syndicalist movement in the early days and the mainstream currents of the anarchist movement of those days.
.

Chibber is right only in so far as there has been a shift. I don’t think anyone, especially the ultraleft, fully understands how much of this is powered by an upstart nouveau riche. Mostly crypto, mostly young, very online. I’ve been in these spaces and I wouldn’t be able to describe it, like up is down and everything interpreted through a screen. They do not give a fuck about tradition or the norms. It’s well known about Trump’s funding but Farage is also backed by a twenty something crypto tycoon. He’s also a middle man for the two and done time over there for money laundering by the way. The centre is done and if the libs want power, they are going to have to up the ante. This should make people very nervous. It’s easy to mobilise people against the far right, try doing it when Sanders or Corbyn are driving the lemon.

And we’re reading Marty Glaberman and riding penny farthings.

People get older, they lose interest in shit, and there's not enough younger people to reproduce the existence of groups.

What will happen is that the youth of today will go through their own experiences of activism and disillusionment with whatever the latest fad is (probably some environmentalist, post-XR shit), political self-education, and enlightenment, and create their own groups.

Personally, I think preservation of theory/history is more important than here-and-now organising. With the benefit of hindsight, the world would probably have been better off if Marx spent less time in IWMA and more time writing Capital.

Perhaps we should do our bit by producing a new, Little Red Book: The Quotations of westartfromhere, explaining why millionaire farmers are actually proletarians.

To skip past all the oddballs, organised anarchism in the UK is definitely in a dire state. There have been some really bitter splits which seems to have fucked the anarchist communists (and the anarchist bookfair). Not sure what happened to the anarcho-syndicalists, but as an outsider it looked to me like the SolFed got big at one point from students joining which is not likely to last. Local anarchist groups just don't seem to be around anymore either, don't know what's happened there but seem to be another sign of the dire state.

One thing is for certain, this thread needs an abbreviation/acronym guide.

WF: we’re fucked?

“The proportion of UK employees who were trade union members fell to 22.0% in 2024, down from 22.4% in 2023. This represents the lowest union membership rate on record among UK employees for which we have comparable data (since 1995).”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/futurist-adam-dorr-robots-ai-jobs-replace-human-labour

Still lads, maybe G.P Maximoff has a plan here.

Yeah, here’s a hit tweet from someone Libcom follows, “I think we can all agree the real heroes of the hour are we the middle aged anarchists and left communists who held our tongues because we have finally learned to read a room once in a while” https://x.com/n_hold/status/1937706240685027519

6 thousand likes for anarcho-electorialism, bosh. Is this cope about social media posts the new ‘it’s just a low ebb for class struggle”? Denial is not very becoming.

In case people are interested in what the debates among the extant anarchist organisations are like, there is a discussion going on about Black Rose's programme and some related things it brings up, like especifismo and its relationship to class politics:

https://www.blackrosefed.org/about/program/ (BR/RN's programme)

https://www.redblacknotes.com/2025/02/13/popular-power-or-class-power/ (response from Australia by a supporter of the ACF)

https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/The_Voice_of_an_Especifismo_Militant.pdf (response to above from a member of the Centre for Especifismo Studies)

I think more will follow eventually. Regeneración Libertaria (publication aligned with the Spanish platformists/especifists) is compiling and translating these documents into Spanish. Us in Australia write in redblacknotes.com.

"Perhaps because most of their contact with anarchism is through individuals on social media, rather than back in the day through getting a newsletter, leaflet or magazine on a demonstration or in-person event."

This on-line social media "life" encourages by definition atomisation which feeds into and facilitates the management/corporate union boss strategy of encouraging atomisation on the job particularly in those strategic sectors where workers particularly elite groups have considerable industrial muscle - undermining solidarity and heading off collective discussion on the job which can result in direct action/industrial action.

The workplace paper would play a critical role in countering this atomisation and producing collective discussion of issues leading to direct action.as - an example see www.sparksweb.org
Due to the particularly harsh and worsening conditions in many industrial sectors eg dis-organisation caused by longer shifts, increased surveillance etc - out-side-the job organisation must play a much intensive role in this papers production/distro and general their long term sustaining - in other eras much less such a role. Particularly in previous eras leftist groups of various stripes wouldn't have taken the rightward shifts they have taken today. In Australia today most of these groups act as hopeless stooges of the union bosses - assisting them with their smoke and mirrors performances associated enterprise bargaining and the often ineffectual community picket lines and covering up the massive webs of corruption associated with tentacles of the ALP Octopus the union bosses are entwined.

"Where can people go to meet where they don't have to spend money, or how many venues can be hired at an affordable rate, or how many people can even afford the bus/train fare to attend some event? I remember Freedom bookshop used to have a sofa for people to sit on, and (last time I was there) it's no longer there, that's a small example."

A problem would also be that these dysfunctional anarcho milieu "spaces" can play a very negative impact - eg in the case of Jura Books in Sydney in the lead up to its hijacking in 2013 by a cult and afterwards - very loud punk rock gigs to raise money to purchase the cult temple occurred - every one of these very common events - may have contributed to long term hearing damage and via long term excessive alcohol consumption on those attending - many inexperienced young people - leading to the likely production of many "deaf alcoholics or with significant hearing problems" in their later years. The guru of the cult and one of his cult muses had OH&S credentials and would have been fully aware of these dangers and needless to say always avoided attending these events. At these events due to the terrific noise - there would have been no discussion or enlightenment about anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism possible and the disruption of the work of serious anarcho-syndicalists at the place. My impression is that you would have a similar situation at many so called anarcho venues elsewhere and in other countries. Many attending and "involved" in these spaces eg bookshops - probably are all about having excuses for social occasions and participating in pseudo church rituals although surrounded by classic anarchist works and others which none of them are not in slightest interested in reading and getting up to all manner of navel gazing identity politics informed "political correctness" displays.

It seems to me like the number of people consuming anarchist media, and publicly putting out anarchist arguments and talking points on social media is extremely high – certainly higher than any point in the last 25 years.

What liberals and progressives have are media outlets that comment on almost everything, from that perspective on a daily basis. There’s the Youtube channels like Majority Report or The Young Turks, or online print sources of news and commentary like Truthdig, Truthout, or Alternet. Anarchists really don’t have anything like that. I don’t think social media posts can have the reach those liberal sources have.

Steven:

I mean apart from the fact that you can literally look at those countries, look at those movements, see the flags and banners participants were carrying, read the opinions they are stating, giving on social media and in the press, and see how they voted

Admittedly, amongst the militant mass movement in France the black flag was not the vast majority, but it had a strong presence, as did the red flag, regional and national flags, and every other flag under the sun.

On the streets of London, I witnessed over a million. On one photo recording the event, taken on Whitehall, ten thousand are captured and only one banner is visible, UNMASK CHILDREN.

Where can we glean the opinion of hundreds of millions? From voting habits? Which detergent is purchased?

What we can gauge is the state's reaction: violent suppression.

One song still resonates in my ears: For the honour of the workers and for a wonderful life, we are here.

You know if you act like a knob to everyone that doesn’t agree with you, Libcom will end up with about ten peop…nevermind, carry on. Hard as steel, clear as glass lads!

I thought this forum was down to about ten people so I doubt that's a concern. And to be fair there has been some right bollocks on this thread.

I think it's hard to be objective about this as anarchist groups rarely publish their membership figures. This is because they are generally tiny. There do seem to be fewer of them though and the ones that do exist appear to me to be less active.

The general wisdom in the professional membership associations world is that their memberships are in decline too. This is partly because of generational reasons, with Gen X and Boomers tending to be very loyal, or feeling that it is expected that they will be members of their professional association. Whereas Gen Z and Gen Alpha question the membership model more and may be more "transactional" in their approach - i.e. it is more about what they are going to get out of a membership than what they are going to contribute. (It is also to do with the cost of living crisis and the decline in the status of professions, but let's not get into that here).

(Of course, it is possible that anarchist groups are immune to this for some reason - and their decline is therefore for other reasons...)

It also appears to me that there is a decades long situation where the number of people who call themselves anarchists in the UK (or sympathisers) has heavily outnumbered the membership of the national orgs, so that isn't new.

In my view, it is worth asking the question from upthread about why people might join a political organisation.

It is possible that it is solely because people wish to be more politically effective, or to contribute to an organisation in some way that they feel is in alignment with their beliefs.

But it is also possible that people who are attracted to revolutionary politics may feel wildly outnumbered and marginalised and have a desire to associate with people who they can call comrade. And that these associations could be more than the alienated interactions that social media provides.

Or maybe it's something else.

In fifty posts, we’ve gone from the “revolutionary left is growing massively” to actually no so we’re making some progress. Now if we can bring up age, and ask if forty something and over, white, nice, well spoken men that make up the ultraleft are really hip to what’s going on in the streets, we’ll be cooking with gas.

"I mean, in some ways the point isn't whether anyone joins this or that group, but to what extent we're successful at making anarchist ideas the common sense across the wider working class, establishing a leadership of ideas or what you want to call it. Which is even harder to measure, although I don't think we're doing that well there either."

What is critical is getting the processes going which result in industrial direct action which affects millions and tens of millions - this can only be carried out by the strategic industrial organising of catalytic networks - the industrial organising mavericks which can scorch holes in the employer offensive - this industrial upsurge and spreading movement will unlock doors which today seem impossible to open particularly on the industrial front. Key militants in these networks based on cores and peripheries would have to play a key role in the bank rolling of their activity. (If you rely just on membership dues - nothing much will probably get done.) That definitely was the case with the Socialism or Barbarism group associated with Paul Cardan/Cornellius Castriadorius in the lead up to France May 1968 events - he had a high up job - an economist with the EEC and was in a position to fund most of its activity , similarly Chris Pallis a medical specialist funded a lot of the early Solidarity for Workers Power activity - in its early days it particularly focused on the car industry with its associated bulletins - in later years particularly with its merger with the Social Revolution group - definitely degenerated adopting left subcultural/middle class left orientations and oppression mongering. The thirty local Solidarity groups according to their publications lacked an appropriate strategic orientation. Bob Potter's account of his years in Solidarity definitely presents it as more of a network.
Whether such a phenomena is seen as small is irrelevant - its the processes it catalyses - . workers' self organisation and militancy in a strategic sector - its the workers who would be doing most of the leg work - and the network's work place paper should cease to be the network's paper but take on a life of its own in many respects and becomes seen as "our paper" by militant workers. Also important would be its capability to outmanoevre the union hierarchy/management particularly via its core members interaction with highly experienced industrial militants that they have worked with over the years - so it can move lightning fast with agitational material at the appropriate time. In this way it can slow the tempo of the employer offensive and potentially get major industrial upsurges going - it is in the strategic sector which it focuses - there exists that possibility and historical precedents.

@steven it appears to me that orgs like Momentum and DSA can provide things that revolutionary groups currently can't. The sheer scale of them means that you might get more of a sense of community as well as a feeling of being part of something with a lot of activity. Plus more people your age who are likely to live near you.

Also, there may be an opportunity for potentially getting some career advancement out of those groups, with paid positions, or at least training or volunteer roles that can be put on your CV if you are ambitious and want to work for liberal NGOs or similar...

I agree with others that the number of anarchist orgs or the number of members in them is not the most important thing, but it is probably an indicator of something.

Fwiw, as the closest thing to an anarchist organisation to be legally registered with the state, the IWW is required to keep public membership figures. I found them slightly surprising, my impression was that the IWW of the early 2010s seemed much more dynamic and impressive and that it had lost a lot of momentum once the IWGB and UVW got going, but according to the certification officer's figures they've grown from 437 members at the end of 2012 to 3,332 in the most recent figures at the end of 2023: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/industrial-workers-of-the-world-annual-returns
Which is not bad, I'd still struggle to tell you much about what contemporary UK IWW organising campaigns look like though.

That's the power of the folk-labor songs...

with the rego of the UK IWW with the Industrial Relations set up they would of course be throwing direct action out of the window with restrictions on the right to take industrial action and one of them IWWIRES is supportive of regional nationalism like at least one of the CNT's in Spain supporting Catalan nationalism - therefore throwing a key syndicalist principle of "internationalism" out the window in the quest for "numbers" in a formal organisation . My impression is that these IWW members would be particularly in less strategic/peripheral sectors/jobs like cleaning, education etc.
Behind this rego of the IWW with the state would also be an anti-intellectual climate discouraging any serious research into the emergence of syndicalism in the early days of the late 19th and 20th Century and a grossly simplistic concept of syndicalist union building - entailing aping the bureaucratic reformist unions ways such as gradual incremental growth, numbers games and needless to say avoiding direct action with worries about heavy fines for illegal industrial action.
But if you had a significant proportion of the magnificent 3000 to 4000 of the UK IWW today - involved assisting in some way in strategic industrial organising in a key sector together with some of significant resources - the situation on the industrial front in the UK maybe greatly different in a positive way re slowing the tempo of the employer offensive, getting major direct action, generally raised morale of workers going leading to the emergence of transitional steps toward genuine mass syndicalist unionism.

The TEFL Workers Union is currently the most successful thing the UK IWW are doing.

"People feel anarchism is irrelevant to our daily struggle. We are alienated from it and from ideology in general. This is positive."

But the work of anarcho-syndicalist catalytic networks such as the ASN in Australia have had a major impact on their daily struggle - eg important victories since the late 1990's against job losses, speedups and restructuring for privatisation moves in the NSW Railways avoiding associated worsening environmental effects and in the 1990's important victories against worsening conditions eg victories against abolishing penalty rates and extended office opening hours in the public service. But most people would be oblivious to these achievements - the most important any leftist grouping has achieved since the early 1990's in Australia. Due to the cover-ups or distorting by the predominant corporate media. Some important goodies which we played a key role in assisting militants winning eg a functioning guard's compartment on new trains, are credited to the corporate unions. Meanwhile the Corporate Union officials in contrast to the officials of the former "Bureaucratic Reformist Unions" are capable of very sophisticated manipulation likely in certain cases to be connected with CIA training and their attendance of the Harvard Trade Union Officials training course and their media/ALP/management connections so if important victories are won against management/Government initiatives - the industrial action taken is given a very demoralising swing to it for workers particularly in strategic sectors. (See "From Corporate Bureaucratic Unionism to Grass Roots controlled Direct Action Unionism: Perspectives for Activity & Strategy in Australia Today in RW Vol.41 No.3 (235) Dec.2023 - Jan.2024 in www.rebelworker.org and Libcom.org)

Hah!

Another measurement that came to mind this weekend: I feel like about 10/15 years ago, we had, not loads of ABC groups, but functioning ABC groups in Leeds, Brighton, Bristol, London, supporting a pretty low number of UK political prisoners (and that list is considerably shorter than the list you can find in, for instance, old issues of Taking Liberties from the 90s: https://libcom.org/article/taking-liberties-newsletter-anarchist-black-cross-sheffieldlondon ). Now we have a considerably higher number of people incarcerated for political activity, and I think we're just left with Bristol as the only functioning ABC group.

I'd love to delve into some of this, but, as usual, I'm pressed for time.

Speaking strictly as an unaffiliated US anarcho-syndicalist (I have not been a member of WSA in almost 2 years), so all comments are, as always, my own.

My observation goes something like this: The libertarian socialist left in the US went from an upwards trajectory after Seattle and Occupy and peaked pre-COVID. It seems to have leveled off and then began a period of decline. Certainly among the organized a class struggle anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist tendencies. Some of this due to some folks moving in different directions, the usual burn out and internal issues that groups and organizations have from time to time. My sense is after some local groups and a national organization “regrouped”, the level of cooperation between existing non-regrouped groups and organizations seem to have largely disappeared.

In the post-Seattle and Occupy periods there was a tremendous growth among many younger folks to different forms of “anarchism”. With a seemingly new generation interested in organized, class struggle anarchism.

My overall observation, having been an active libertarian worker since the early 1970s, was this growth was the largest in all my years of active engagement up to that time (and beyond, actually). Seemingly COVID knocked every one for a loop, although the exponential growth of both the IWW and DSA from about 2016 through 2020 and into the Trump 1.0 years had their own dynamics.

I am somewhat bewildered by the seemingly "significant growth" of a few hard core authoritarian socialist and Leninist groupings. And even some form "maoist" current as well. Longevity, organizational activity, "front groups" and some form of regular "press" has probably acted in their favor as well. And the seemingly "nose dive" of organized anarchists tendency and anarcho-syndicalists groupings.

Juan is probably right about Black Rose Anarchist Federation being the largest and main organized grouping in the US at this time.

People have become more isolated in the past few decades due to the internet/smart phones /ect; people have less friends, they socialize less, they don't interact with others as often. If you put into account that most Anarchist organizations are primary made up of a group of friends and a couple of other guys they pulled in; it makes sense that there are less groups now. I don't think it speaks about the popularity of our ideas. I should also mention that reddit has largely replaced discussion boards for most people, hence less users on here. It also dose not help that neo-anarchist types dominate the anarchism sub-reddit.

Here in the states, the only serious Anarchist organization is Black Rose; from my understanding they only accept members that are organizers in other mass-ish movements(labor unions, tenant unions, cop watches, ect), as part of their social insertion strategy. I also know that the DSA is getting a lot of members. But DSA is not an effective organization, it is honestly just a social club for like minded people. I think there needs to be an anarchist-ish mass front, for 'not yet effective' people to socialize and hang out (and maybe make grand speeches to each other or something) , without diluting the Platformism/Especifismo organization. A lot of self proclaimed anarchists are from the place of privilege, and often not in a place where they can act in a way that social insertion requires them to. While I agree these people are probability not the most effective to the movement(and nor do I think that most will act as courageously ,as it is required, when the times comes), I still think they they can still be organized as a effective tool.

It's funny how with all this talk about the death of forums urban75 seems to be doing pretty well... Is it actually an anarchist site, or anarchist-sympathetic? It seems like the site itself doesn't openly promote any single political view, but other people have described it as anarchist and there are obviously a lot of anarchist/communist users over there.

It’s definitely not an anarchist site, but is sympathetic as you say. I think it’s done well because it’s quite general and has retained a large user base of Gen X posters who can see the limitations of social media for online discussion. Plus it has spawned a bunch of irl stuff over the years.

Interesting. I like that they have a "Post Your Dreams Here" thread that has been consistently active since 2018... If I tried that here, the thread would sit there for two months before someone finally commented on it to tell me that my thread is off topic and that I should fuck off. We need to step up our game libcom (i.e. more dream threads)!

At least Portland Oregon, the anarchist movement is in sharp decline.

From 2020-22, a somewhat broad movement of mutual aid networks, tenant intervention organizations etc and political groups emerged in the wake of the George Floyd protests. All of them have collapsed. I can confidently say the mass movement which I observed in the PNW is dead.

For the most part, I think this is because none of these groups had very strong political formulations. Even the anarchists involved who had many years of experience and deep convictions didn't help. No one involved seem to be willing to reckon, in a deeper fashion, with the internal problems of the movement in 2020, which inevitably lead to those same problems destroying the groups which emerged from it.

The last 5 years have given me no confidence that anarchists or communists are willing to look inward and seriously examine their nebulous nationalism(s), identity politics or self-centered conceptions of social development and come away with something useful. Many anarchists I know supported Ukraine and currently support Hamas.

From my perspective, if anarchists wish to achieve a lasting development, a minimum basis of strict internationalism and rejection of unionism is necessary. Otherwise, the same issues and questions which have consistently proved to be a stumbling block won't move an inch.

msommer wrote: The last 5 years have given me no confidence that anarchists or communists are willing to look inward and seriously examine their nebulous nationalism(s), identity politics or self-centered conceptions of social development and come away with something useful. Many anarchists I know supported Ukraine and currently support Hamas.

Unfortunately true. We could also add the recent uncritical support of the ICE protests earlier this year, where flag-waving (whether American, Mexican, Mexican-American, or some other Central/South American country) featured prominently in the demonstrations. It's interesting to note that there was similar flag-waving of American flags during the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, seeing as how most of the textile workers had migrant backgrounds and constantly faced the charge of being "un-American, outside troublemakers." Wobbly publications and other socialist magazines often criticized this aspect of the strike while still supporting the workers' struggle itself,[1] which is definitely something that has been lacking with respect to the recent "anarchist" commentary (e.g. Crimethinc) on the ICE protests.

We could also say something similar about the "anarchist" embrace of the pro-Palestine movement in the US and elsewhere, which is often totally devoid of any serious socialist perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict, as partly evidenced by the large number of people who view Hamas as some kind of "liberatory force."

1. As just one example, see this article ("The Flag of the Free") in the Industrial Worker (21 March 1912) here:

The flag of the free, bosh!

Thousands of Lawrence strikers and hundreds in the crowd at San Diego will have found out that the only patriotism that Capitalism recognizes is profit patriotism—dollar patriotism. And the hundreds of thousands who read and are told of the affairs will see the true meaning of idolatrous respect for the masters' bit of cloth.

The flag is but a bandage over the eyes of labor.

msommer wrote: Comparing this "ideal" attitude to the events which took place, what I remember was these parasites calling the minority currents white, the minority currents calling the parasites white, and everything falling apart. It is true that one can't talk about class without race, but the inverse is equally true: talk about race without class is meaningless. Eager social climbers (their motivations are far beyond me) would create or take control of bizarre identity or political groups, exploit them for immediate gain, and then disappear.

You don't think Chaz-Chop Seattle was a revolutionary moment on par with the Paris Commune, with the latter's well-known revolutionary gardens exclusively for "black and indigenous people and their plant allies"?! To be fair though, the Commune also sort of put an undue emphasis on creating a new society before doing the work of suppressing the old order (i.e. marching on Versailles), which was partly illustrated by councilor Courbet's attempt to democratize the arts and sciences amid a civil war. This attempt at opening the arts and sciences to the lower classes was at least not as ridiculous as Chaz-Chop's obsession with things like skin color and "privilege," as if those were the sole determining factors for black Americans' poverty and overall condition.

msommer wrote: I think part of the reason had to do with people fearing that they'd lose "the moment", ie., voice criticism which would make them unpopular. But that is the actual risk you have to take in holding a political position. If you suspend your beliefs at every opportunity because it runs counter to the dominant ideology, you don't really have convictions.

It would be nice if certain "anarchists" were to learn what convictions are and to stop attaching themselves to whatever unrest is happening, all while mischaracterizing it as some great anarchist uprising (e.g. the recent ICE protests). I also don't think people of the left-communist persuasion really have this issue; it has mostly been the anti-authoritarian crowd who struggle in offering constructive criticisms of movements and analyzing things from an actual anarchist perspective (e.g. rejecting nationalism as harmful and divisive). Tony Montana and his associates could ransack a store while waving Cuban-American flags and publications like Crimethinc, Ill Will etc. would be gushing with praise about how it was some amazing anarchist act of workers reappropriating the fruits of their labor.

If the working class cannot, over the course of the struggle, separate itself from other social classes (and thus, those identity categories like "race" or "nation" which encompass other classes") it won't be able to attain independent power.

The working class by its nature is separate and opposite to all the classes of civil society.

Its programme is not to attain political power but the abolition of political power.

An individual may identify as a dog. It has no bearing, although that identification may bring down the wrath of psychiatry upon her head.

Part of the failure of 2020...

2020 marks the success of bourgie reaction: suppression of proletarian revolution.

Amora

These organisation covers UK, Some people post a few here: https://libcom.org/discussion/what-are-actual-anarchist-organisations-uk

I believe those two are the bigger organisations now in the UK

Anarchist Communist Group ACG
(strategic and social insertion organisation)
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/

Plan C
(anti-authoritarian communist organisation)
https://www.weareplanc.org/

ICC article "Against all national flags", with acknowledgments to adri and msommer....https://en.internationalism.org/content/17719/against-all-national-flags

Nice one, see also Mary Marcy's article against nationlism in the International Socialist Review, which she wrote in response to the nationalist rhetoric during the First World War. There are actually quite a few internationalist pieces in that magazine that are archive-worthy, especially considering the time period.

See also the next issue in the Industrial Worker, Vol. 4 No. 1, which is chock-full of internationalist, anti-patriotic pieces and which the editors themselves described as "A Special Anti-Patriotic Issue."

I think one of the problems we keep circling around in this thread is the gap between “anarchist presence online” and real-world organisation that can actually sustain itself, intervene in struggles, and grow. People are right that many groups rise and fall, that individuals burn out, and that the UK scene often feels fragmented. But maybe that’s not inevitable.

From my perspective, what could make a difference is putting more emphasis on organised anarchism, not just loose networks, but groups with strategy, collective responsibility, and continuity. I’m thinking in the direction of especifismo/platformism, where anarchists don’t just gather around identity or ideology, but build organisations that:

* have a clear shared analysis,
* agree on common tactics,
* take responsibility together for the interventions they make,
* and work consistently inside broader movements (unions, housing struggles, migrant solidarity, etc.).

It’s not about “becoming a mini-party” or about reproducing bureaucracy, it’s about ensuring anarchists can actually have influence in real struggles rather than just reacting from the margins.

Groups like ACG are a step in this direction in the UK. They already try to combine libertarian politics with organisation, and I think the potential is there if we push further: investing in formation, building local branches that stay rooted, and coordinating nationally in a disciplined way. The whole point isn’t to replace movements, but to give anarchists a common tool to be more effective inside them.

Yes, people are busy, tired, precarious, that won’t change anytime soon. But if we want anarchism here to be more than vibes and memories of past waves, we need to experiment with organised approaches. Otherwise we’ll just keep having the same conversation every 5–10 years about “decline”.

You are completely ignoring issues of political culture - particularly the stalinist legacy informed left culture in many countries particularly the Anglo world (connected with the predominance of mass stalinism to the left of the Socialist Democratic/Labor parties via the communist parties in their stalinist phases for 3-4-5 decades in the 20th Century and mushrooming of marxist leninist groups after 1968) - many so called anarchists would see it through an unconscious stalinist and Trot group way - in the thread on Toward an Anarchist Federation in Australia on libcom.org - some contributors who would consider themselves anarchists/anarcho-syndicalists brazenly resort to stalinist political practice eg air brushing out of history re ASN activity over many decades on the industrial front and smearing - they are completely oblivious to their contradicting anarchist principles.

Also on libcom.org thread "New Org in Sydney" there is a report on the adoption of what resembles stalinist political practice at a meeting of Jura Books/ARI(trustees) - seeing aspects of identity politics to be beyond debate and discussion - this meeting was also heavily orchestrated like done by Stalinist influenced types and particularly union bosses, politicians, Trots etc. None of those attending would identity as Trots or Stalinists .

In addition you ignore issues of social base of anarcho groups particularly in the Anglo World today often students/middle class and those from this background - unlike in the late 19th and early 20th century - mostly from sectors of the working class and few students/middle class elements - given the social base of many anarcho groups today - you have them going along with hierarchies of oppression rather than class consciousness and enthusiasm for identity politics like at that meeting at Jura Books mentioned above. Also many of these middle class types with cushy jobs eg academics etc take a rightward shift in their later years - this has been the case at Jura Books leading up to and since the cult hijacking in 2013 with the cult guru and his brethren fitting this description and becoming scoundrels.

"and work consistently inside broader movements (unions, housing struggles, migrant solidarity, etc.)."
In trying to do everything you will get no where and also copy the ways of many trot groups - squandering limited personnel and resources in irrelevant side shows which won't change the situation - the reality today would be great difficulties with personnel - low morale, people unreliable, flaking out when given important responsibilities - those few absolutely reliable. industrially experienced personnel must be focused on one strategic sector which can change the situation - get the strike wave movement going and tackle the challenge of corporate unionism - get major anarcho-syndicalist style breakaway unions going - others can help out with less important work eg distro of publications etc.

The Eclipse and Reemergence of the Anarchist Movement?

There is some new thing being launched at the London bookfair.

'The Eclipse Committee Manifesto'

'We begin the summoning of a new militant body for the anti-authoritarian forces and the anarchist movement. '

'Come. Let us gather. Let us emerge from the horizon stronger in ourselves and as a movement. Let us become dangerous in the only way that matters: together.'

'For total emancipation, for all those who struggle, for us all.'

– The Eclipse Committee.

https://wearetheeclipse.com/

Personally, this is the sort of thing that I hate about anarchism. Very hippie cosmic!
I can't see any reference to class. And what do they mean when they say:
'To teach one another. To feed and heal one another. To defend one another. To build a new way of life in the bones of a dying capitalist world.'
Do I want some anarchist to feed and heal me?
And what are 'self-appointed barriers'?
Maybe I am being too cynical and jaded.

'Come. Let us gather. Let us emerge from the horizon stronger in ourselves and as a movement. Let us become dangerous in the only way that matters: together.'

Sounds like bloody Star Trek.

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of Eclipse. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no one has gone before!

But workers in certain strategic sectors can take direct action - industrial action affecting millions and tens of millions - change the climate in the labour movement - lead to the strike/direct action wave movement - which can lead to major potentially syndicalist break aways from the corporate unions - You had something like that in the UK in the early 20th Century - the era of the Syndicalist Revolt Discussed in Bob Holton's British Syndicalism 1900-14 - the key sectors then were mining and transport industries and in the strike wave movement in France in 1947 associated with a wild cat strike at the largest factory in France - in this context numerous major break aways from Stalinist controlled CGT did occur initially..
In the conditions of today which are harsher than other eras - re long/rotating shifts, much more surveillance etc which would require intensive outside the job assistance for long term activity/organising eg getting a regular syndicalist publication going there such as in transport sectors would require groups such as you focusing on it - Without this focusing of resources/personnel of groups such as yours its just not going to happen.

It would definitely be probably too dangerous/too chaotic for those on the job to put it out etc but they would feed into it. In today's situation in contrast to other eras there would be much more space for such an initiative with the demoralisation/rightward shift of marxist leninist groups of various stripes.

You don't need big numbers - because the whole point is to link up with militant networks and to work with them - and the average worker (but for the reasons I have outlined you would need the key militants to get behind the paper and work miracles where necessary to keep it going and do the terrible marches when necessary, but less reliable/committed could help with distro during their normal routines eg in transport sectors) - for them to do a lot of the distro,and providing material for the publication. The role of the paper is to play a psychological game - to raise morale particularly of militant networks and to a lesser but important degree to counter/expose management/union hierarchy propaganda and agitate for direct action etc. Militant workers would see it as their paper so they get behind it and do much of the leg work. See www.sparkeweb.org

Other industrial sectors would have a lesser focus. Perhaps via producing a national paper - to facilitate networking of militants and education re anarchism/syndicalism in these areas. So in the context of a strike wave/direct action wave movement - it spreads and moves for syndicalist break aways from the corporate unions can occur.

Get a mass syndicalist union confederation going or a least transitional steps - you would unlock important doors eg union centres would also become centres for unemployed union members organising/activity and of course take direct action to assist community associations. A very important example of that is the CNT's role in the Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931 discussed in Goodway's book "For Anarchism".

But the ACG looks to be trying to do everything and likely getting nowhere. Particularly lacking a more realistic strategy as outlined above and a realistic approach to problems of industrial organising in the harsh conditions of today. In this way you may be "unconsciously" adopting ways/orientation of the Trot groups. Due to this issue of "political culture". You see other groups doing everything without a strategic focus - so you go along with it presumably. Exactly what you shouldn't be doing.
Also see Rebel Worker Review of "A Beautiful Idea: A History of Freedom Press" per google search and "From "Bureaucratic Corporate Unionism
to Grass roots controlled Direct Action Unionism: Perspectives for Activity & Strategy in Australia Today" on Libcom.org

Anyone else manage to get to the London bookfair? Afterparty with Roni Size was good.

Quite a bit of discussion of the bookfair on Urban75 (libcom and urban should just merge into one imo)

I don’t deny, asn, that transport and logistics carry real strategic weight, when workers there act, they can shake whole economies. I'm anarchosyndicalist And sure, a militant paper can help connect networks and morale. You have in UK "Troublemakers at work" in which Stalinist and trost are hegemonics, or "Strike map" that's a good tool to promote strikes and connect militants. What in your opinion suppose to be different from an anarchist perspective?

Just light up that revolutionary organising isn’t that simple, even if we all piled into transport tomorrow. Those sectors today are fragmented, heavily surveilled, casualised, and subcontracted, the bosses set them up precisely to break militancy. It’s not impossible, but it’s a long, uphill grind. Plus you have to work to build a grassroots culture that doesn't exist inside those trade unions, and transform from the bottom the union ideology and strategy orientation.

That’s why I push back on making this an either/or choice. Housing fights, migrant defence, health and education struggles, these are class issues too. People get radicalised in different arenas, not only at work.
And just to be clear: ACG is a tiny organisation. We’ve got some footholds in education and health, plus involvement in land/tenants issues, but I wish we had more members, more resources, and the capacity to do more and do it better. We’re not pretending to be everywhere at once, only where our members work, live and getting involved.
The point of especifismo/platformist-style organisation is exactly this: to coordinate what little capacity we have, generate narrative, proposals and long term plans, set priorities together, and stay rooted building a fighting community instead of drifting. That might mean putting energy into a workplace sector, into tenants’ unions, or wherever struggle is breaking out.
Plan C has even been revamping this year, even I am critical of there perspective, they showing that re-organisation is possible if we take it seriously. We need more of that spirit, not less.

"That’s why I push back on making this an either/or choice. Housing fights, migrant defence, health and education struggles, these are class issues too. People get radicalised in different arenas, not only at work."
Unless you can tackle the corporate union issue - you play to lose - due to particularly their influence and control over workers in elite groups and strategic sectors and their role in maintaining low morale on the industry of workers and community levels. The Thatcher victories would have been impossible without the connivance of the union bosses of different unions isolating various groups of workers. Also the corporate union officials as a result of their deep state and corporate media connections can engage in very sophisticated manipulation - setting up various campaigns to fail and claiming fake victories. So it is necessary to get major union break aways along syndicalist lines going in the context of the spreading strike/direct action wave movement - the above papers would play a key role in all this. Also the Corporate unions are playing a key role in facilitating the environment crisis and the war drive - so its just too dangerous not to tackle the issue - via launching a major attack on their and the Labour Party's key sectors of their heart land eg transport industries. Also if you can get major breakaways from the corporate unions going and steps toward a new syndicalist oriented union confederation - you can tackle the corporate media predominance - mass circulation publications maybe even secure radio/TV etc. The way you are going now its hopeless. This to me is a vital priority. If we can't tackle this we also play to lose.

"And just to be clear: ACG is a tiny organisation. We’ve got some footholds in education and health, plus involvement in land/tenants issues, but I wish we had more members, more resources, and the capacity to do more and do it better. We’re not pretending to be everywhere at once, only where our members work, live and getting involved."

What I'm arguing for is "underground" strategic industrial organising. I was looking at various allied groups restructuring not just yours - forming interconnected networks - consisting of cores and peripheries - based on compartmentalisation, need to know and vetting as much as possible focusing on one industrial paper and a national paper. Various okay people would be impressed if you were engaging serious industrial work and help as part of the periphery. Just imagine the personnel and resources which are squandered on this Anarchist Book Fair rubbish was used for this serious industrial organising which could change the whole situation?

also by focusing on such a strategic area you can actually slow the tempo of the employer offensive - as new spearheads of the employer offensive under the leadership of the Govt/State are first launched in these areas and then spread to less strategic areas - the ASN has assisted militant networks to defeat numerous moves to restructure the NSW Railways for privatisation since the late 1990's and so slowing the privatisation push in other sectors and foiling moves to generate new waves of speedups across industry as part of this restructuring See above article re ASN and a-s activity since the 1990's in Australia

There's a new group called 'Hackney Anarchists'. Not sure if anyone knows anything about them.

I don't think federalism/local sections make sense for anarchist groups in Britain, since the locals are often too small to serve any practical purpose you might as well just operate as a single organisation and achieve some economies of scale in interventions.

1. Trouble Makers at Work in the UK promoted by various Marxist Leninist groups has nothing to do with what I am advocating as it focuses on the fantasy of "democatising" the corporate unions for one thing - According to our analysis the corporate unions are interwoven and integrated into the corporate set up/Deep State/Labour Party machine at particularly the top levels. Our task is to get major breakaways going along anarcho-syndicalist lines in the context of the strike/direct action wave movement across industry. Obviously not a walk through the park.
2. Sparks transport paper - here is definitely not just read among militant types/networks - it reaches much broader layers particularly "old hands"- as it forms part of the workplace culture (through tireless work and playing the psychological game)- and the latest version of other such papers which have come out over 100 years probably. Also its the only effective workplace paper going - most on the job are kept in dark about many issues and hidden agendas so it can be seen as valuable by certain layers of workers. Also this must be seen with the rightward shift and concentration on campus stuff of various marxist leninist groups - many actual workers from these back ground and groups in transport - have been drawn into our orbit. They are always welcomed aboard. They would help out in their own ways re distro.
3. The problem re your small size: "small can be beautiful" of course. Is that you are getting involved in all these class issues. As I see it you are looking a bit at adopting the ways of the Trot groups which also get involved in all manner of such issues/areas . You are squandering your limited people/resources in areas which will not ignite the strik/ direct action wave movement ultimately affecting 10's of millions in the UK. However in regard to these class issues - it should be the transitional steps toward mass syndicalist unions and full on syndicalist unions/confederation to focus on all. this not you with your limited forces.
Also you have to look at getting a wide periphery of people to help out - they could easily fit distro into their daily routines. You should be looking at more of a core and a periphery with different layers, A national paper could spawn regional papers eventually.
4. You may already have the pieces in the puzzle for this radically different approach I;m advocating eg Angry Workers World group some years back had some contact with some grass roots railways group - but didn't see the importance of focusing there via production/editing of a workplace paper and instead focusing on West London factory organising which proved unsuccessful and may have burnt them out and their periphery of supporters/contacts a bit..
5. The surveillance is worrying - outside the job organisation must try what it can on this issue.
6. The transport industries strikes me as a "hill" which has to be taken. Its just too critical.

7. There has been important spinoffs re ASN activity in particularly the NSW Railways re slowing the tempo of the employer offensive re defeating privatisation pushes, new waves of speed ups across industry, etc and as a result avoiding worsening environmental issues through avoiding increased car usage associated with cut backs to rail services by private operators.

1. “Trouble Makers at Work” in the beginning was a mix of militants from all tendencies on the left, even anarcho-syndicalists, of course who has more people usually has the direction. In my opinion had the potential to push and extend the last strike wave; today, even though it’s good to share and promote struggles, it is declining as they are focusing on how they can align the unions with “YourParty” and probably now the Green Party that may take the role of “new Labour Party”.
I think trying to democratise the existing unions, as Trots try to do, is a dead path (recruiting and internal elections to gain chairs), it doesn’t fix the fundamental issues.
But if you build a grassroots community and networks based on solidarity, majority participation, worker-led, in workplaces and unions, as a result, you will be pushing towards the democratization of the union. Even though the current national directions don’t challenge the actual status quo.
I don’t think the strategic leap from today’s corporate unions to “mass syndicalist breakaways” is as linear as you paint it. Breakaways historically happen after deep, messy, sustained, multi-sector pressure, rising class confidence, and networks of militants across different industries. Even in the early 20th century, the upsurge didn’t start in one sector and radiate outward; it was multi-layered and contradictory. A single-sector push can contribute, but it can’t substitute for broader conditions. The question is how we build those conditions, not just where we’d prefer them to erupt.

2. Sparks might have its reach, but UK transport isn’t the Australian NSW Rail in the 80s-90s. The UK industries have multiple contractors, agencies, rolling privatisation, different bargaining units, and constant outsourcing. You can’t build a workplace culture on a terrain designed to prevent exactly that. A paper from outside can help a bit, but it doesn’t substitute for deep organising conditions from railway workers themselves, which don’t appear automatically because we prioritise a sector.

3. Small is not beautiful; it sucks. UK’s anarchism is generally small in today’s day; ACG tries to change this situation and needs to challenge the current militant culture too. Unfortunately, we don’t have 40 militants in transport. ACG isn’t trying to be everywhere; we’re active in education, health, tech, tenants’ struggles, and land issues. It makes zero sense to ignore the sectors where our members actually work and live to chase a hypothetical leverage point we don’t have the capacity to access yet. Those sectors could affect more than 10's of millions of workers in the UK, directly and indirectly.
Organisation isn’t just about sectoral strategy, it’s also about honesty about where we are rooted. If we lie to ourselves about that, we’ll burn people out faster than AngryWorkers did in West London, and I say that respectfully, because their failure shows that outside willpower alone isn’t a strategy.
Strategy has to start from real capacities, not imagined ones. Especifismo or social insertion strategy in the anarchist communist organisation is about coordinating limited forces inside social organisations; helping to robust, democratise, get massive and radicalise social organisations where we’re socially embedded and where struggle exists, not spreading thin or mimicking Trots. The Trot comparison doesn’t really land as they try to be everywhere to recruit, co-opt and parasitize struggles.

4. AngryWorkers’ experience shows the opposite of what you’re arguing: focusing narrowly on one sector without deep social roots is exactly what burned them out. They didn’t “miss the transport opportunity”; the conditions weren’t there, the militancy wasn’t there, and the organisational infrastructure wasn’t there. You can’t will a strategic sector into being; the strategy has to match the real terrain.

5. We agree here. Surveillance, precarious contracts, disciplinary procedures… all of these make workplace organising harder and strengthen the case for support structures outside the job.
This is exactly why a broader organisational framework (not just a workplace newspaper) is needed: legal support, community solidarity, political education, and shared analysis.

6. Transport is important, yes, but not magically decisive. Logistics struggles everywhere (US, UK, EU) show the same pattern: high potential leverage, but extremely hard to organise because the sector is deliberately fragmented.
If a real opening emerges, ACG would support it. But we can’t build a national strategy around a battle we currently lack the numbers, contacts, or rootedness to fight.
If we want to see mass syndicalist unions emerge someday, we need a coherent anarchist organisation capable of:
-training militants
-coordinating analysis
-producing propaganda/agitation rooted in reality
-and sustaining activity for years, not months

That’s what we’re trying to build: slowly, imperfectly, but seriously. An organisation's groundwork for future material possibilities.

7. The NSW context was different: long-term stability in workplaces, stronger shopfloor relationships, and earlier periods of concentrated union membership. UK rail and transport today look nothing like that terrain. I respect what ASN achieved in what you share with us, but applying the same template to a completely different industrial structure doesn’t automatically work. Conditions matter.
I wonder, though, what stopped ASN from achieving a radicalization of RTBU to become a syndicalist union if they had a key role in which you have been able to stop the privatizations from 80-90s to these days. Also what were/are the challenges.

"I wonder, though, what stopped ASN from achieving a radicalization of RTBU to become a syndicalist union if they had a key role in which you have been able to stop the privatizations from 80-90s to these days. Also what were/are the challenges."

But its not really "a union" old style pre Accord bureaucratic reformist one - its a corporate one interwoven with the ALP Octopus/Deep State/Corporate Media/Boses etc - rigging of elections when required and via Deep State/Corporate media connections eg CIA training- the union bosses/ALP Godfathers can engage in very sophisticated manipulation - as a result they can give what the corporate media presents as very militant action and achieving significant victories - a very demoralising swing and furthering of their bureaucratic/ALP designs - See the article "From Corporate Bureaucratic Unionism to Grass roots controlled Direct Action Unionism: Perspectives for Activity & Strategy for Australia Today " in RW Vol.41 No.3 (235) Dec. 2023 to Jan.2024 on wwwrebelworker.org and on libcom.org discusses this manipulation and ballot rigging. You would have a similar situation in the UK. As a result you can't reform or "democratise" the corporate unions because the corporate set/Deep State and political set up won't allow it.
Important historical precedents eg 1947 Strike wave in France, the strike wave/radicalising following the fall of the Franco Regime in Spain in the 1970's and in France May 68 to a lesser extent point to the importance of strike wave movements to major breakaways from what is now corporate unions - Train Drivers direct action played a key role in initiating the Strike waves across the public sector in France in late 1986 early 1987 and in Dec. 1995 and in NSW Australia Mar. 2004 NSW Drivers for Affirmative Action group was the early stages of such processes connected with ASN activity - over the years see above article. So in such contexts you could get these syndicalist breakaways going. If we were facing a level playing field we certainly would have radicalised the RTBU many years ago - but per the above its impossible.
What you are proposing and what Trouble Making at Work are doing - won't help facing these above obstacles - and the critical low morale manufactured by Corporate Unionismand its various connections and massive corruption - legal and other wise.

Also yes the UK situation is different in transport but that is connected with the success here of the ASN assisting militants defeating various privatisation pushes since the late 1990s in the railways. Yes you would be facing a more difficult terrain.

Given the difficult - terrain and chaotic situation re shift work issues etc and surveillance/infiltration issues - a workplace paper definitely would be need to be outside the job based - you need to be realistic about this situation - but as with Sparks activity over the years effective in winning important victories and is seen by militant workers as "our paper". We can't be adhering to "sacred codes" and worshiping sacred cows of activity.

Depends on the type of militants in a small set up - with a high level of industrial experience/extensive historical research/high levels of morale/self dscipline, a large periphery around them of various layers and linking up with militant networks on the job. They can achieve great things. In contrast to large groups consisting of middle class leftists/students getting copying the Trot groups getting up to every thing going and spreading dangerous and divisive identity politics and getting up to all manner of bizarre/navel gazing/oppression mongering antics - they would have a counter productive effect and totally oblivious to it.
A interesting example of this involved a metal workers' paper Link in Sydney Western Suburbs from the late 1970's to early 1980's. Some of the above "types" although not as bad as today's Anarcho-Stalinists/Trots we have in Australia today - were editing it with shop stewards (they were distroing it and were interviewed for it - this was all before the Accord era) from various factories in the area in association with the union AMWU branch - they discovered after producing the paper for many years - no one on the job actually read any of their articles/interviews according to some feedback! .But many on the job did read the back page with small accounts of disputes in factories in the local area and did lead to some disputes,
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