Anzac Day Anti-Militarist Protest : Melbourne Indymedia

On Anzac Day, 25 April, the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group attended a small demonstration against nationalism & militarism in Little Bourke St, outside the old offices of the Industrial Workers of the World.

We handed out leaflets. The text is reproduced below.

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NO TO NATIONALIST HYSTERIA

NO TO PATRIOTISM

April 1915

In a minor episode of World War I, Australian and other troops of the British Empire storm a Turkish beach. The war is a crime against humanity, a clash of two great imperialist alliances over territory, colonies and markets. Before the year’s end, the Anzacs are sent packing, but the war drags on until 1918. Nine million troops die for “their” country.

April 2006

The armies of the United States and its allies (including Australia) occupy Iraq and have done since 2003. The occupation is a crime against humanity, a grab for strategic military power and control over some of the world’s largest oil deposits. At least 35,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed by the occupation, its puppet government, or reactionary forces within the resistance. 2,500 imperialist troops have also died. The occupation has not yet been sent packing.

Patriotism

John Howard and the Liberals, supported by the ALP, spread romantic myths about the Anzacs in order to build support for Australian imperialist adventures today and convince people of the need for sacrifice in the “national interest”. Patriotism is used to thwart resistance to unpopular wars by making it compulsory to support “our” troops. It is also used in an attempt to convince workers in Australia that we have the same interests as our bosses, a common “national identity”.

Workers can end war

Workers around the world are on the same side. We can refuse to fight the capitalists’ wars or make sacrifices for the sake of our bosses’ competitive position. We can reach out to the workers of Iraq and support them instead of the imperialist troops. We can reach out to the workers of Asia and support their struggles against oppression and exploitation. We can make a revolution that destroys the State and capitalism worldwide. Then, never again, will anyone have to die for their country.

YES TO WORKERS’ SOLIDARITY TO END WAR

Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group
No spam please
PO Box 2120 Lygon St North
East Brunswick 3057 25 April 2006

"Patriotism is used to thwart resistance to unpopular wars by making it compulsory to support “our” troops."

It also won the war for the North Vietnamese. And drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

Narrow-minded and prejudiced cockhead.

Struth if you disagree with this article you need your head read.

Accept I would like to change the wording slightly as follows:

"Patriotism is used to thwart resistance to unpopular wars by making it compulsory to support “our” Militants, Guerrillas and Killers!

All war criminals have to be handed over to the Hague.

That means John HoWARd and his cronies must be held to account for their war crimes against humanity.

Let me tell you as soon as they lose their hold on power even the man in the street will ensure that this does happens one way or another!

Scrap, it's you who needs your head read.

The only reason you have a right to post your garbage is because you live in a democratic country. And that was made possible by the very soldiers you hate.

Your hatred will only harm you in the end.

'We can make a revolution that destroys the State and capitalism worldwide. Then, never again, will anyone have to die for their country.'

All insults aside, this is where it gets interesting. What would you be replacing 'country' with? If your revolution came, and let's just pretend it could be bloodless, what would you be prepared do to protect the anarcho-utopia that followed? Would you allow it to fall to 'reactionary' forces without contest, or would you ask workers to die for...the collective? Or will we pretend that dissent would be impossible in utopia? Or simply, intolerable...

Jay says:

> What would you be replacing 'country' with? If your
> revolution came, and let's just pretend it could be
> bloodless, what would you be prepared do to protect
> the anarcho-utopia that followed? Would you allow it to
> fall to 'reactionary' forces without contest, or would you
> ask workers to die for...the collective?

Good questions. The MACG hasn't developed a detailed position on this question (we don't have a central committee & paid staff, so we have to do this in our own time), but some things can be said:

1. The revolution will probably not be bloodless. We are not pacifists, because we recognise the right to use reasonable force in self-defence. On this point, we probably agree with about 99% of the population.

2. The traditional Anarchist replacement for the State is the people* armed. In the event of an attempted coup by reactionary forces, we would rely on the commitment of the people* as a whole to defeat it, and be prepared to use reasonable force to defend ourselves if the reactionary forces attack us.

3. A global Anarchist society would eliminate things like nuclear weapons, tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, submarines, armoured personnel vehicles, etc, immediately. Once the Revolution has been victorious in most industrialised countries, this bit should be relatively easy. The workers' councils would also not allocate materials for their further manufacture. Reactionary forces would therefore not have access to anything more than the small arms which are freely available to the whole of society.

4. If the people* are not willing to defend the free society against reactionary forces, nobody can substitute for them. Perhaps the clearest lesson of the Russian Revolution is that, when faced with the choice of crushing the Revolution & defending the regime with autocratic methods, or sticking to one's revoloutionary principles and taking the chance of being defeated by the reactionaries, it's better to stick to one's principles & take the chance. This is because the one thing worse than the Revolution being crushed by open reactionaries is the Revolution being crushed in the name of the Revolution.

In summary, therefore, the answer to Jay's final question is that we wouldn't be asking people to die for anything. We would instead recognise their right to use reasonable force in self defence, with the possibility in some circumstances that we'll take some casualties.

* The word "people" is used because the destruction of capitalism entails the destruction of all social classes. It will no longer be necessary to make the same distinctions between the workers, the peasants & the middle class that are so essential today.

"A global Anarchist society would eliminate things like nuclear weapons, tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, submarines, armoured personnel vehicles, etc, immediately."

The problem with this is that the Anarchist society would then be vulnerable to any group that chose not to destroy all its heavy weapons.

There's also the problem of "how to get there from here".

I love everyone it seems it's the militants who hate someone!

Do you get the picture dude?

There is a better way! As follows:

2nd Renaissance -5

Not Revolution, But Abandonment [96]

The process of gaining full freedom from nation states will not involve revolution or civil disobedience. It will thus be beyond the power of federal governments to attack or control.

Daniel Quinn, writing in Beyond Civilization, Humanity's Next Great Adventure, puts the situation into sharp focus. Quinn uses the analogy of an aircraft in trouble, he argues that in such a situation nobody wants to shoot or overthrow the pilot, they only want a parachute and an open door. As Quinn sees it, governments always have countermeasures in place to put down any attack on their authority and power from within (aircraft pilots might have a double locked door between their cockpit and the main cabin, as well as weapons to use if they are attacked by passengers), but governments never have any defences against abandonment (a line of passengers with chutes exiting the external door of the main cabin).

Quinn contends that while governments can imagine a revolution they can't imagine abandonment. As he puts it, "..even if it could imagine abandonment , it couldn't defend against it, because abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support."

The new free cities will not emerge in some far off place, but inside the borders that nation states long ago set up to delineate their territories and facilitate the taxation of "drop it on your foot" products and commodities.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106136.php

[After recovering from the shock of not being personally abused for asking a question...]

hmmm: MACG did say a 'global Anarchist society' in answer #3, so the destruction of all that weaponry would, I assume, only occur once a global revolution had been realised. Would those same weapons be used in any interim though - assuming that a simultaneous global revolution would not be possible?

And yes, of course, the 'how to' is the biggie, but that's pretty much the case for everything, particularly social movements.

As far as abandonment goes, unless you could assure a close to 100% participatory rate, it would become a revolution anyway surely?

Jay says:

> Would those same weapons be used in any interim
> though - assuming that a simultaneous global revolution
> would not be possible?

He certainly asks the questions that approach from the awkward angle, but fortunately, the movement has usually managed to address something similar at some stage. Once again, the MAC Group hasn't had the chance to discuss this sort of question in detail, but some things can be stated:

1. The destruction of the weapons of military aggression - particularly the destruction of nuclear weapons - by a not-yet-global workers' republic will have a massive political effect around the world. This will make launching a war by the remaining capitalist States against the workers' republic vastly more difficult.

2. During the Russian Civil War that followed the Revolution in 1917, over a dozen imperialist countries intervened to attempt to crush the Revolution & restore a reactionary regime. They won virtually every battle they fought, but they ended up withdrawing anyway, because the intervention was causing political problems at home and inside the armies they were using to invade with. Large "Hands Off Russia" movements sprung up, demanding that their governments withdraw their armies from Russia and recognise the Bolshevik government. In the event of not-yet-global workers' republic forming along Anarchist lines, it will be even harder to demonise than the Bolsheviks were, since we would not be using the dictatorial methods they did.

4. Given the vastly inter-connected global economy, revolutions will spread &/or fall across wide sweeps of the Earth, rather than purely country by country. In fact, intervention by a government against a revolution in a neighbouring country might just be the spark that sets off a revolution at home.

5. None of this is a guarantee that the revolutionary forces won't have to resort to using tanks, etc, before they get the chance to destroy them, but it does show that there are other approaches that can & will be taken first.

6. The more force we have to use in the process of defending the Revolution, *even when the use of force is justified*, the more damage that the Revolution will suffer. We have a duty to ourselves, to our ideals & to our future to do the most we can to avoid the use of force - but I'm not going to tell anyone that their ethics require them to die.

Finally, on the topic of "abandonment", this has been tried:

(a) The Utopian Socialists tried it in many places and at many times throughout the 19th Century. They found that, without the advantages of the division of labour to be found in the wider society, their living standards sank to levels quite inferior to those of the surrounding society. People then pulled out, after a longer or shorter period, or the community integrated into the larger capitalist economy.

(b) The hippies tried it on the NSW North Coast in the 70s & 80s. Some of their experiments failed miserably. The ones that succeeded, however, found that their very success lifted the price or real estate to a level where later waves of settlers have required ever-larger amounts of money to set themselves up - money that is only available through the mainstream capitalist society. As a result, the radicalism of the 70s & early 80s hippies has been diluted so far that it is hardly noticeable these days.

More fundamentally, it is a mistake to think that the capitalists will let us get away with a strategy of abandonment. In the unlikely event that we started threatening their power through erosion of their economic & political base, they'd come after us with all the force at their command - and we'd have to resist.

The ruling class won't go away of its own accord. It has to be destroyed.