Notes on a New Proletarian Anarchism

Setting the Stage; Destroying the Scene:

1. The class that is in the majority within anarchism will continue to pull in those of the same class to anarchism. The class that is the largest will be best suited to talking to those of the same class. The class composition of anarchism is directly related to the racial composition of anarchism. The class that holds control over what the anarchist movement produces; it’s newspapers, journals, and other media, will put forward ideas that largely are articulated class positions from that class.

2. Proletarians within anarchism are the minority. We seek to reverse this. We desire anarchism to be made up largely of proletarians. We desire this because proletarians are the largest segment of society. Proletarians have more of a reason to destroy Capital. However, we are proletarians because of the conditions which are imposed upon us. We seek not an identity, only face the reality of the project which is the destruction of class society.

3. The proletarian class is made up of those who survive by selling their labor power on the market. It is also made up of those who directly reproduce this system, (housewives, school kids, the homeless, those involved in black market capitalism), yet still own no amount of capital that would allow them exit outside of their class position.

4. The middle class can be seen the class that acts as a grouping of social managers and specialists that are the intermediaries between the proletariat and the ruling class.

5. The ruling class is made up of those military, political, and economic elites which direct and control the apparatus of politics, the economy, and the military.

6. Proletarian culture is almost extinct. Middle class values that seek to destroy the idea of class conflict and our own history and are replaced with their own values of finding the solutions to all problems within the marketplace of Capital and Democracy. Currently, the Left is largely a middle class world in which class violence and confrontation is disdained and participation within the market and politics is championed. The middle class discourse that we hear throughout society claims that the roles of citizen and consumer offer the solution to all problems. The Spectacle shows us that working class people are stupid, oversexed, and quick to become intoxicated. This myth helps to reinforce the idea that only middle class specialists can guide the proletariat in ending their problems, which are their own fault, and will end when the proletariat becoming middle class. The proletariat is denied the reality of its existence, it’s history, and thus cannot begin to build a material force that will abolish itself and all of class society.

7. The proletariat in the United States is divided. The ‘devil’s bargain’ of white supremacy in an effort to break up the possible unification of the class. It established a system in which whites come to a position of racial superiority over the rest of the class. White supremacy must be attacked if class consciousness is to lead to class recomposition that will attack and destroy capital.

8. Patriarchy and hetrosexism divides the class. Middle class feminism and the GLBT movement seeks to integrate women, queers, and others into Capital and politics. The destruction of class society means the destruction of patriarchy and hetrosexism.

9. The current crisis has created a massive sweep of proletarianization and with it the possibility of creating class consciousness. Proletarian anarchists are in a much better position to get out their critique to other proletarians than middle class anarchists.

10. Middle class anarchists should not be excluded from anarchism. Their class position and access to certain resources may prove useful. Our desire to ‘proletarianize’ anarchism is not a desire to drive them out; it is a desire to build a material force within the class in which we can abolish ourselves. Anarchism has served as a vehicle for the middle class for many years in doing just that; allowing them to abolish their class position. Either by dropping out, creating communities, are doing work as traitors to their class. We wish to abolish ourselves as well; however not by dropping out, but by becoming the force that can intervene in the social war which is class society. While the activity of middle class anarchists has brought many proletarian anarchists into the fold, since we have come over to the other side, we realize how many of us are left stuck in shit.

These are some principles for a new proletarian anarchism:

1. Revolutionary proletarian propaganda. Much of the current literature that is produced by anarchism does not seek to talk to proletarians; it seeks to talk to other anarchists, many of whom are not proletarians. Proletarian anarchists must articulate their ideas to other proletarians. We must attack and critique the Left. We must give confidence to self-organized and insurrectionary elements within the class. This includes propaganda such as journals, papers, tabloids, online videos, blogs, graffiti and wheatpaste, and more in which we talk about local and global issues.

2. Constant presence. We must be a presence within proletarian areas in our cities and towns. This means having our literature where people can get it. Having our graffiti and propaganda be visible to other proletarians. It means being a public material force that people know exists and they can come to. This visibility must be constant and build over a period of time.

3. Intervention and participation. Where there is fire, we must bring gasoline. We must base our practical activity within the tensions that exist within the class; pushing to generalize all struggles, fight the Left, promote and strengthen revolutionary elements, and fight against reactionary forces within the class.

4. Autonomy. We must make the class our commune. Other proletarians must become our mafia. We already are in the land of “stop snitching,” we are hoping to move towards the land of “permanent conflict with Capital while not snitching.”

5. Attack. We must push towards conflict with class society; steering away with dialog and making demands to our enemies, or working in concert with class collaborators. We must build the conflictual nature of the class. “Without violence, the class becomes decadent.”

6. Revolutionary solidarity. When one within the class is attacked, as are all. This cuts across racial, gender, and sexual lines. Actions against segments of the class result in the decomposition of the larger class as well as hurt all our material conditions. We must respond to attacks with attacks of our own. Solidarity means attack.