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Who
We Are
Organise! is a working class organisation. We seek to secure for
all workers a full and equal share of the wealth and social benefits
created by the combined labour of our class. We aim for the abolition
of all hierarchy, and work for the creation of a world-wide classless
society: libertarian communism.
Against Capitalism, Exploitation and Oppression
We are fighting to abolish the state, capitalism and wage slavery
and to replace them with workers’ control of our industries
and communities, ensuring production and distribution for need not
profit. To achieve our goal we must relinquish power over each other
on a personal as well as a political level.
We are opposed to capitalism; a system based on the exploitation
of the working class by the ruling class. By working class we mean
the vast majority of humanity who are forced to sell their labour
or survive on the pittance offered them by the welfare state.
Organise! is opposed to patriarchal and gender oppression, recognising
that hierarchical notions of male domination in the family and beyond
have imposed the oppression of females as well as males. This domination
has been reinforced by organised religion hand in hand with bourgeois
democracy and capitalism. Capitalism uses the “traditional”
oppression of women to divide the working class.
We believe that fighting racism must be part and parcel of the class
struggle. Libertarian-Communism cannot be achieved while racism
still exists. In order to be effective in their struggle against
their oppression both within society and within the working class
people of various ethnic backgrounds may at times need to organise
independently. However, this should be as working class people,
cross-class movements attempt to hide real differences and achieve
little for the working class.
Inequality and exploitation are also expressed in terms of sexuality,
health ability and age, among others, and sections of the working
class can engage in the oppression of others along these lines.
This divides us, undermining class unity in struggle, to the benefit
of the bosses. Oppressed groups, such as those previously mentioned,
are strengthened by autonomous action that challenges social and
economic power relationships.
The Trades Unions and Workplace and Community Resistance
Organise! believes that trade unions cannot be used as vehicles
of revolutionary change. After year upon year of attacks on our
class both the Irish and British based trade unions continue to
offer no strategies for effective resistance. Based on ‘social
partnership’ and top down hierarchical control of their membership
trade unions have clearly become more and more divorced from the
point of workers power – the workplace. We reject social partnership
between union leaders, bosses and government. In these ‘partnerships’
it is always the working classes that suffer. While rejecting the
trade unions as beyond reform we will continue to be active in them
at a ‘shopfloor’ level to fight for working class interests
at work. We will however be promoting workplace resistance not standing
in union elections on so-called ‘radical’ platforms.
As such we promote the formation of workplace and community based
resistance groups that will act as hotbeds of militancy, promoting
resistance and direct action, while building and strengthening links
between the workplace and community based struggles. We believe
such groups should, as they develop, federate both at local/regional
level and throughout industry. Such groups must promote methods
of working class activity, which enable us to use for ourselves
all the means at our disposal in the struggle against the bosses.
Nationalism
We
are opposed to the ideology of nationalism and national liberation
movements, which claim that there is some common interest between
native bosses and the working class in face of foreign domination.
We do support working class struggles against racism, genocide,
ethnocide and political and economic colonialism. We oppose the
creation of any new ruling class. We reject all forms of nationalism,
as they only serve to redefine divisions in the international working
class. The working class has no country and national boundaries
must be eliminated.
Capitalism and the Environment
Organise! recognises the appalling effects of capitalism on the
natural environment, and believes this is the natural result of
a system which treats both workers, and the planet, as something
to be exploited and disposed of at will. We believe that access
to a sustainable lifestyle is not a luxury for the wealthy, but
something urgent and important that must be extended to the mass
of the working people. Sustainable communities cannot arise as a
result of reforming capitalism, nor can they be imposed by the state.
With this in mind, we demand rational and sustainable practices.
The State
Organise! rejects the notions of various ‘left-wing’
parties, the would-be ‘vanguards’ of the working class,
that the state can be ‘conquered’ and used against the
bosses. Government, no matter on whose behalf, has always rested
on domination and exploitation, is an inherently repressive institution
and as such beyond reform. The basic function of the state –that
is the courts and prisons, the army and police, civil service and
other state institutions –is to defend the interests of the
bosses. Government is a top-down institution which puts power into
the hands of a few. All efforts at creating a ‘worker’s
state’ have only led to further oppression of the workers
as those in power consolidated and strengthened their positions.
We believe that the criminal justice system is a product of capitalist
society and is an instrumental weapon in the subjugation of the
working class. We recognise that this system is only interested
in the defence of the state, private property and the interests
of the bosses. We must organise to defend ourselves against it and
all kinds of anti-social behaviour, domestic and sexual violence
etc., supporting its victims until such a time that is no longer
a threat to our class.
Direct Action and Revolution
We advocate the use of direct action both in and out of the workplace.
Direct Action is an act of empowerment that in turn offers us the
confidence we need in our continuing struggle against the bosses.
Direct action should be localised and should be participated in
on an equal and direct democratic basis.
Genuine liberation can only come about through the revolutionary
self-activity of the working class on a mass scale. A libertarian
communist society means not only co-operation between equals, but
active involvement in the shaping and creating of that society during
and after the revolution. In times of upheaval and struggle, people
will need to create their own revolutionary organisations controlled
by everyone in them. These autonomous organisations will be outside
the control of political parties, and within them we will learn
many important lessons of self-activity.
Organise! believes that the emancipation of the working class is
the task of the working class themselves. As anarchists we organise
in all areas of life to try to advance the revolutionary process.
We believe strong organisations are necessary to help us to this
end. Unlike other so-called socialists or communists we do not want
power or control for our organisation. We recognise that the revolution
can only be carried out directly by the working class. However,
the revolution must be preceded by organisations able to convince
people of the anarchist communist alternative and method. We participate
in struggle as libertarian communists, and organise on a federative
basis. We reject sectarianism and work for a united revolutionary
movement.
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