The way I figure it is that if you've made the effort to be here on a Monday night in October then the very least you deserve is the truth. Life in the KKKKelticKKKK Tiger is NOT great for the vast majority of us and Anarchy is the struggle to bring about freedom and Socialism (without losing sight of one over the other). You can't have true Socialism without freedom and you can't have true freedom without Socialism. ( A lesson that's been consistently lost on our Leninist friends.)
As Chekov illustrated in his previous talk the true home of Chaos is within Capitalism. The best trained Economists cannot forecast with much certainty how the global economy is going to pan out. Theirs two ways of looking at it. Macro - Russia is printing money in order to pay people for the first time in two years. Micro- AIB bank in here defrauded the revenue commissioners of over £80 million in unpaid DIRT tax. The overriding picture that were constantly presented with is corruption. From Politicians accepting brown paper bags full of money to company's accepting huge grants and ensuring all their profits end up in bank accounts on the Camen Islands. Ansbacher Accounts anyone. Corruption is a pre-requisite to success in Capitalism.
Anarchism is the breaking down of power structures so that it eliminates the possibility of corruption. Take leaders out of he equation and substitute participatory democracy and your beginning to see the picture. The truth about what Anarchism truly is.
We, the WSM are here as revolutionaries, we have the aim of trying to get from this point, the way society is currently organised to point in the future where society is based more on need than greed. We temper our politics with the reality that surrounds us. You don't hear us calling for a building of the barricades right now.
We are interested in the battle for hearts and minds. We wish to make the politics the mainstay in our class. The only way we can do this is to attempt to bring people towards the ideas and principles of anarchism. We are here to bring people to the water but we cannot make them drink. This is done by fighting for progress in the here and now. Our long term aim is the ultimate destruction of this society but in the meantime if we can win a pay claim, attempt to combat racism on the streets of Dublin, prevent the councils from imposing another charge on the PAYE workers of the city, then this is where you'll fins us. We expose our politics in the everyday real struggles of campaigns for improvements in the conditions that are lives are lived in. We are not the people who sit in Ivory Towers and hand down tablets of stone of how to get a better society. Anarchism is politics in practice. We think that history has done a fair enough job of proving that old adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Therefore Anarchism will be the destruction of the structures that ensures that power remains at the top. We want to break it down into a system whereby everyone who is effected by a decision is invloved in making that decison. This is not easy and it requires work but it is ultimately far more rewarding. It means real participatroy democracy. Workers being in charge of their own workplaces and making decisons on what and how much to produce. Communities in charge of what get's built in the area, ensuring children have safes spaces to play in. All this can be achieved by simple giving people the confidence to start making those type of decisons again. Delegate who are recallable (should they not carry our their manadate) are elected and these would be the carriers of the message to more widespread meetings effecting broader issues. Power has to be broken up in this way so that it becomes insignificant.
We've strapped ourselves in for the long haul, the full ride. We fight for progress now though a process of persuasion and education. We will stand alongside you in these struggles. Anarchists have no interest in taking power and exercising it on behalf of the working class. That's just the imposition of another authority and anarchists recognise no authority over the working class themselves. Already we have a society ruled by a minority and we are not interested in a different form of the same shit. Anarchism will either be the creation of a free and politically aware working class.....or it will not be anarchism.
Anarchism is based on fundamental principles which we shouldn't lost sight of in this complicated time. These are the principle of
Collective management of society by it's workers via a system of participatory democracy
In the meantime we fight in the here and now. We criticise what exists and publicise the alternative. We are building confidence by winning victories over the decisions imposed on us. But we can only (as I said before) bring you to the water. The choice to drink or not is entirely yours.
My advice is to drink deeply and know when you look in the mirror your looking at an anarchist revolutionary. It does your heart good when you know this going into work on a dark Monday morning. Because you are either working in this world and believing there is no alternative - to a planet governed and surpressed in the futile pursuit of profit for your already excessively wealthy bosses. Or your working for the destruction of this society and for one based on justice, equality and freedom. Drink deeply and warm your heart with that righteous knowledge that without Justice there will be no peace.