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The
countdown to the elections has begun, with election
posters appearing in our streets backed up with various
politicians otherwise rulers knocking round our doors
and practically saying anything in order to get an
X beside their box. All with their different aims
and policies but all poisonous with they’re constant
in fighting and squabbling as to who can capture the
anxiety and popular attention of the electorate. All
gasping for the chance to implement the disastrous
neo-liberal agenda in our public services, which Sinn
Fein the acclaimed party of ‘socialist’
credentials initiated a few years back when Stormont
was on one leg with Westminster in supreme command
enforcing the vital dynamite when need be. They all
have one thing in common which is that their legitimacy
derives from our society separated into two ataganistic
blocs: rulers and the ruled, masters and slaves, exploited
and the exploiters. Once inside the chamber of authority
they often fail to keep to their word or go back on
their earlier commitments or use rhetoric to justify
their the reversals, which is the norm throughout
our parliamentary democracy.
One
has to look at Labour’s track record especially
over the last couple of years on important issues
relating to education, privatisation of public services
and their total commitment to protecting the interests
and needs of big business. One man one vote becomes
one wealth and 6 votes or beyond. Such is the nature
of our representative democracy where you elect a
master mainly every 4 years, without any mechanism
enshrined to recall, dismiss or just generally make
them more accountable to their constituents. Apart
from the obvious which is that it is illogically false
that this coming dictatorship of the 108 can represent
the views and interests of the entire population of
the North of Ireland, except those of the rich of
course. Voting is not an expression of power, as the
state likes us to believe in but merely an admission
of powerlessness and disempowerment since it cannot
do otherwise than reaffirm the government's supposed
legitimacy and your continued enslavement. The state
is and will always remain a set of institutions with
entrenched power and privilege headed by a bureaucratic
class who dominate and oppress the majority. It is
sustained and maintained by psychological or violent
coercion. There may be a change in rulers (head),
but the rotten hierarchical class system (body) always
remains in place, with a tiny intellectual class determining
the fate and destiny of the majority who are excluded
from the decision making process: 'This restriction
of knowledge to elite group destroys the spirit of
society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment'
- Albert Einstein. As Anarchists we seek to help the
disempowered take the power back from the few by direct
action and direct democracy because we all have the
inner power, creativity and ability to overthrow those
who crush are individual liberty, diversity and fraternity.
Radical
parties who utilise the state apparatus to achieve
their goals always end up in miserable failure and
soon become detached from their native ground or inevitably
forsake their revolutionary principles. Electioneering
results in a party becoming more moderate and reformist
- indeed the party becomes a victim of its own success.
In order to get votes, the party must appear “moderate”
and “practical” and that means working within
the system. History is littered with examples from
the rise of social democratic parties post-1914 throughout
Europe and Latin America. Not to mention the numerous
radical parties in Ireland including Fianna Fail,
Workers Party and the new fame on the block Sinn Fein
who go down the prickly reformist road, and will eventually
if not already leave their radical image and ideals
outside the corridors of fame and glory. You cannot
dive in a swamp and remain clean! What goes beyond
all imagination and hysteria is the fact that old/
new bureaucrats will be elected without any authoritarian
institution to implement their privatisation agenda
and yet the tax payer will have to continue to pay
for their fat cat slaries and all the privileges and
perks that go with it, which is valuable money that
could be invested in our deprived working class communities.
Real
political and social change will never come through
the elitist institution on the hill but through the
self-activity, self-organised labouring masses dismantling
all institutions of domination, division and exploitation.
One man, one vote and other entitlements in the social
and economic sphere although imperfect were attained
by victorious social struggle from the state through
men, women and children taking to the streets and
demanding political and civil rights. Freedom and
equality is always taken and not given voluntarily
by the state and will never come through some vanguard
party liberating the people. Workers emancipation
is the task of the workers themselves! Michael Bakunin
once wrote, 'the whole history of progress of human
liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her
august claims have been born of earnest struggle.
If there is no struggle there is no progress.'
Anarchists
believe that society should be run and controlled
by those who produce the wealth, the working class
(majority), unlike today where a tiny parasitic boss
elite lives off the sweat and toil of the many whose
position is protected and enhanced by the state with
all its instruments of repression and coercion. The
boss class needs us more than we need them! People
would become masters of their own destiny, spiritually
and materially free from all forms of oppression and
subordination to authority through a network of community
councils and self-managed workplaces from below working
upwards, an ultimate classless and stateless world.
Each community or workplace would elect a delegate
who would meet other delegates from various other
workplaces and through mutual cooperation and co-ordination
make decisions. However, each delegate would have
a clear mandate that if broken could be instantly
recalled, dismissed and replaced in contrast to the
democracy of the rich today where you rarely see your
ruler until he maybe calls at your door close to the
election day. This is direct democracy and is real
equality and liberty in solidarity. You may say it
is a dream but what schools etc never teach us is
that authority dressed up in whatever disguise is
unjustified and unnecessary and was formally abolished
by the social and political revolutions in Russia
of 1917 and Spain in 1936 where egalitarian worker’s
councils emerged but were violently repressed by self-appointed
revolutionaries who continued to wield the stick of
tyranny, intolerable oppression, brutality and wickedness.
The Red flag also flew over Munster in 1920 during
the War of Independence which is something our leaders
wish us to overlook, which put to bed the idea that
the Irish working class are always embedded with the
forces of Conservatism.
Spoil
your vote!
Educate, agitate, organise!
Spirit of revolt!
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