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Based on the text written by Attack International found at the back of the book The Free by M. Gilliland
Towards a New World
We live in a free world. At least, that’s what we’re told. But in this society, ‘freedom’ means freedom for the few at the expense of the many. Freedom for the bosses to close down factories and offices, and fire workers; freedom for the police to beat us up and frame us; freedom for newspaper owners to control what we read; freedom for politicians to make and break promises at will. Meanwhile we are ‘free’ to sell our labour, our bodies and our lives; in return we get a fraction of what we produce. And millions are ‘free’ to starve while food is stockpiled in the massive food mountains of Europe and North America. Freedom in this society is a lie. East and West, North and South, the vast majority of us get nothing except more exploitation, poverty and oppression.
But this has not always been the case. There have been times when people have broken through to discover new ways of living and new worlds. Worlds where we have real control over our lives, worlds where the idea of ‘community’ is not just wishful thinking. Of course, we are not taught this side of history at school: the boss class wants us to believe that this way of life is with us forever. But the truth is very different. The enormous battles in Russia in 1917, for example, showed glimpses of the potential. Factories taken over and run by the workers with the products distributed on the basis of our needs not profit. In Spain, in 1936, hundreds of thousands of working class people threw off the chains of bosses and bureaucrats, priests and politicians, and started to build a society based on freedom and equality. Both these revolutions were strangled at birth by those trying to ride to power on the back of the mass movements. But whenever the struggle for real freedom has been suppressed, it has only broken out somewhere else: in Hungary in 1956, France in 1968, portugal in 1974, Poland in 1981, Britain in 1984-5, in Rojava as we speak. Even in South Africa the bosses were starting to panic in 1984.
We need a vision of real freedom: freedom from hunger, freedom from discrimination, freedom from poor housing, freedom from isolation, freedom from exploitation. Such a new world has nothing to do with politicians, or bureaucrats, or liberal do-gooders. History shows that quite clearly. For real freedom can only be created by the vast majority of us who have no privilege and no power: the Working Class. Some may say that revolution is impossible. But what’s really impossible is the continuation of the existing system: we have nothing to lose but out chains!
Organise
A truly free society will only arise from our mass struggles against the bosses and their state. But such struggles do not emerge from thin air. They develop and grow over periods of time, battles half won and lost on the shopfloor and in the community. Often these battles are sectionalised and separated, moderated and then diverted. But on occasion they burst through the barriers that divide us and reveal a unity that sends the bosses and politicians running for cover. If we want to help build towards such explosions, we have to be organised together: otherwise we remain weak and isolated. The best form of organisation is at the base, in the community and in the work place.
The ANC, SACP, etc. etc. and the tiny Trotskyist sects can offer no real solutions to the problems that face us: from exploitation at work to poverty in the home, from pollution in the air to repression on the streets. The only real solution is revolution: overturning the existing social set-up and building a new world run, not for profit, but to satisfy our needs.
Breaking Free
Every day our backs are being pushed harder and harder up against the wall: speedups at work, retrenchments, police harassment, attacks on our communities, the destruction of the environment. Not to mention the everyday frustration and boredom of living in a world ruled by money, where we work our arses off to keep the powerful few in a life of idle luxury.
All around the world – South Korea, Poland, Britain, the whole world – wealth and power are in the hands of a tiny few. But that’s not to say we’ve taken it lying down. Time and again we have fought back and shown that we are not powerless: In France, Burma, Germany, Britain, Russia, Chile, Algeria, Spain, America, in South Africa and everywhere else. In the fields, on the streets and in the workplaces, our history is one of revolt and rebellion. A history of survival, support and mutual aid against near unbeatable odds.
This is not about how to make a revolution, because there are no right answers. And people who say they have the right answer are the ones who will try to ride on our backs: the politicians and bureaucrats who are as much of an obstacle to real change as the Ruling Class. Whenever we fight back, we’re not just up against the courts, the police, the press, etc. We find ourselves blocked, undermined and attacked at every turn by the left-wing parties and by trade union bureaucrats. They want to sabotage our struggles, contain our anger and keep us fighting separately, when we know that the only way out of this rotten world is to organise and stand together. Solidarity is Strength. We can only create a world of freedom, equality and real community by breaking down their divisions of race, gender, sexuality, trade, age and area, and realising our common interests and our common enemy.
Revolution means all sorts of things to all sorts of people. But it definitely doesn’t mean swapping one set of bosses for another. A revolution is a complete and total change in the way we live: it will look like nothing we’ve ever experienced before. It’s not just about petrol bombs, guns and shooting. Revolution also means putting an end, once and for all, to a world where people are treated like things, and where things, (like money, washing powder and clothes) are treated more importantly than people. It means taking control of our lives and starting to produce for our needs rather than their profits. It means putting an end to starvation, poverty, isolation and bigotry, so that we can realise our full human potential of strength, intelligence, imagination, fun, love and caring.
No-one ever changed the world from the comfort of an armchair. We need to organise and act together. As anarchists, we encourage struggles in the workplace and in the community. When we say “struggle”, we don’t just mean massed men at the factory gates: we mean women too. We also mean local people defending their community against attacks, kids pulling faces at the police, gay men and lesbians marching proudly through the streets…
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