As 2022 comes to an end we celebrate the founding of our organisation. In just 4 months we have come together and formed an amazing network which while small has produced a lot of articles, 2 pamphlets as well as our newsletter Rebel Rose. We have attended demo’s, pickets and held our founding conference (in December 2022):
Below is a report of our founding conference and the subsequent Aims and Principles (for our full constitution please see the associated page).
Here is to growing and carrying on our revolutionary role.
AnarCom Network Founding Conference
The outbreak of war in the nuclear capitalist heartlands; the climate catastrophes of the last year; the unfolding consequent barbarism of total hunger and destruction, and the resurgent global struggle of our class has added urgency to our challenges as revolutionists.
Last summer, a group of us started discussions on how a new network could better contribute to the wave of resistance we as workers were already involved in. From this came the idea of the AnarCom Network and our discussions to develop it.
Unfortunately delayed due to climate and righteously reconfigured due to striker’s militancy, the conference’s inaugural meeting to establish it took place online on December 18th, 2022.
Our aim was to create a structurally flexible network around a concise and coherent set of agreed revolutionary principles we would define as Anarchist Communist.
A flexible network to enable comrades from other traditions, local groups and non-aligned to manage their route to engagement with us.
Coherent because lessons from centuries of revolutionary class struggle are not open to endless debate or unlearning with fleeting fads or expedience.
Anarchist Communist because our consensus lies firmly within this tradition while recognising members bring their own rich experience from the traditions of other anarchist movements, council, left and libertarian communism.
Our aims and principles were formulated and discussed ahead of the conference and unanimously ratified at it.
Aims and Principles:
1. We are committed to the class struggle and liberation through our own collective action and organisation.
2. It follows that we reject the state, political parties and leaders of every persuasion. All are the source of our organised repression and subjugation.
3. We therefore oppose parliamentary democracy and the sham of elections as a deliberate deception to paralyse and subdue working class choice and action. The idea that the ballot box makes us equal, that the banker and the beggar somehow share power in the voting booth is a spectacular deception.
4. It follows that in refusing hierarchy and power, we reject the god concept and religion. While hope, faith and spirituality are humanistic qualities, their organised manipulation is not. We seek a truly human community free from delusion or fantasy.
5. We recognise the importance of the trade union movement in defending working people whilst acknowledging their inability to be the organisations capable of ridding society of the scourge of capitalism. It follows that we are opposed to the action-limiting role of trade unionism and its Labour establishment.
6. The capitalist class divides and exploits us internationally. Consequently, we must struggle for its overthrow through resistance and solidarity across the globe. It follows that we reject illusory ‘national’ solutions and the concept of national liberation.
7. We refuse to play along with reformism, cross class alliances, fronts and collaboration that seek ultimately to divide our class and dilute our struggle.
8. We do not shy away from confrontation and support the right of working people to defend themselves. We also know that individual acts of violence- under any banner – cannot destroy the social relationship we fight against; capitalism. The fight against capitalism and for a liberated society is founded on organisation, education and agitation.
9. Our struggle is both practical and urgent. The generation that may witness our extinction is probably here. We face a binary choice of capitalism’s war against us in all its forms, or its revolutionary abolition. War or Revolution!
10. We are revolutionary internationalists. We reject sectarianism and work for principled cooperation with other class struggle revolutionary activists, groups and Internationals at home and abroad.
AnarCom Network 