“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles” - George Orwell
Aware of class divisions inside the capitalist system, the brutal exploitation of which all of us are victims, state oppression which makes that exploitation possible, and also the general unsustainability of the current militaristic order which is inevitably heading towards a catastrophe, we organize ourselves into “Birov”, an organization with an established goal of radically opposing these social phenomena and their final eradication through class struggle.
By realizing that the working class, as the class hit the most by today’s social structure, holds the largest revolutionary potential, “Birov” organizes class conscious, militant workers with the intention of spreading class consciousness within the working class, and directing it towards organized workers struggle realized by means of workers councils. We reject all “post-Marxist” mystifications which tell about dying out or nonexistence of the working class and therefore negating the class struggle and the crucial role of workers as an agent of revolutionary change. A member of a working class is anyone who has to sell their work force to the capital : a butcher, a worker in the sexual industry or a girl working in a printing shop alike.
Emancipatory actions must be based on the self-activity of the oppressed, and autonomous workers` councils, thus strive towards creation of self-manageable society, without state, without classes and without involuntary institutions of the civil society. Every new attempt of overcoming of the old must be directed towards international organizing of council system, because only a radical change in the balance of class forces can initiate progressive social changes. The council form set after the dissolvement of the traditional, hierarchical capitalist state machinery is not something that revolution should strive for – here it only exists as a conservative organ which exists during the revolution and the final self-organization and emancipation of the working class will imminently threaten its power, as well as existence of that order itself. In this imminent conflict revolutionaries must recognize autonomously organized workers as revolutionary vanguard in the final and decisive battle against the old order and for the society of free producers.
Only the open and unrestricted opposition to divisions set by the society will unleash the subversive potential which the existing workers struggle holds today. Workers struggle must be founded at workplaces, where workers recognize themselves as producers and where class differences are being projected and resolved in its essence. We reject the party as completely inadequate for revolutionary organizing of the working class. Old reform parties which are remembered by won political freedoms and cut work hours, weren’t that in the first place : their primary purpose was a struggle for economic and political reforms, where the anti-political consciousness was yet to be and where itwas still strived towards traditional –hierarchical forms of representation.
We can conclude that “Birov” can be characterized as an anarcho-syndicalist propaganda organization. It addresses workers in struggle and gathers anarcho-syndicalists which act by forming militant class groups at their workplaces. These groups shouldnt be mistaken for trade unions because their intention is not to grow in numbers (but to participate in assembly movements), they dont have a formal structure and political program. These groups are formed at workplaces where there is already a tradition of autonomous workers` organizing and where a network of workers tends to continue their activities and development of new ways of struggle.
We consider that today the trade unions cannot have a political program which is not reactionary, and thus the only possible way for mass workers to organize can be assemblies ; while the mass organizing in a “permanent” organization isnt possible as the revolution becomes an immediate goal. Trade unions have, as instruments of reform struggle and a separate economic organization, lost their reason of existence in the conditions in which they cannot any longer consistently reflect the aspirations of the working class. They are today nothing less than a state incorporated instrument which holds the workers struggle depoliticized and their products in the wanted frame. They represent a working class prison of its kind without which the workers would be free in their tendency towards self-organization. Paid and often corrupt union bureaucrats are nothing but guards and wardens of those prisons. Therefore, unions are just an arm of a state which implements another kind of working class oppression. Capitalism cannot provide permanent reforms anymore, every struggle for immediate and daily interests of proletariat, where they are not suppressed by trade unions and parties, necessarily evolves into revolutionizing of the masses and action against repressive and exploitative foundations of the capitalist order. Because of that, today, any kind of phenomenon that tends to depoliticize workers struggle and keep it in the imposed frames, is necessarily reactionary. All claims about how anarcho-syndicalist organizations should be “non-ideological” arent any kind of alternative to fake divisions imposed by capitalism, but only a re-emergence of the old (unenforceable) idea about separate economic organization, and in practice most often end up as leftist activist networks which reproduce the ideology of the mainstream, nationalist “left”. Opposed to those claims, anarcho-syndicalist organizations are class-militant and political organizations : the lone principles of anarcho-syndicalism which are accepted by all members are necessarily political in their content.
We see ourselves not as an organization which necessarily tends towards growth in numbers and thus puts itself as a goal, which often results in radical activism, nor do we consider ourselves as a kind of vanguard of the working class which dictates its interests. Our goal is to develop an organization which will be able to intervene in workers struggle. The gathered experience we share with the workers and by that we increase the capacity of workers struggle, thus helping its spread and its further organizing. Such a relation creates a mutual dependence and therefore no revolutionary organization can be larger or stronger than the current workers general position dictates and because of that we arent afraid if workers self-organizing and “loss of control”, it is, on the contrary, our goal. Consequently, the foundation for unification of oppressed groups in capitalism will not be set by any party or a “front”, nor by a mass trade union, or an anarchist group which acts in the preparation phase, the phase of re-grouping of revolutionary forces, but by a mass anti-capitalist struggle organized in workers’ councils in only whose wing can the true emancipatory vision be articulated. Therefore, the best way of solidarity with oppressed groups is the development of our own struggle at the workplace and with constant education about the questions of oppression.
As completely reactionary we condemn the stance on revolutionary character of ’national liberation’ struggles, reminding that drawing a parallel with bourgeois-revolutionary national movements is wrong and that in this period anti-nationalism is a border line between one, revolutionary and another, patriotic, social-democratic left. In today`s capitalist society every state is imperialist and the growing of the national consciousness can only be seen as a tendency of capitalist order for self-preservation in the conditions of permanent crisis and impending doom. Any kind of acceptance of national, populist discourse can only draw workers towards a bloody imperialist war which preludes such a historic moment and which we all witnessed during the beginning and the middle of XX century.
As a complete opposite of the ideas of the anti-war movement of the First World War, in an after-war period contra-revolutionary ideology subordinates the workers to the needs of national bourgeoisie and all in the name of “anti-imperialism” and “peoples liberation”. Results are historically recognizable and are projected in “socialist revolutions”, after the end of October revolutionary period, which were victims of party instrumentation and suppression of any form of workers self-organization and have resulted in totalitarian imperialist regimes of state capitalism, or the so called “real socialism”.
Liberation of the working class will be carried out by the workers themselves, or it won`t be at all.
Belgrade, Serbia
October 2011
