- Title
- Back to the future: revival, relevance and route of an anarchist/syndicalist approach for twenty-first-century left, labour and national liberation movements
- Creator
- van der Walt, Lucien
- Date Issued
- 2016
- Date
- 2016
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144812
- Identifier
- vital:38381
- Identifier
- DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2016.1235365
- Description
- The failings of classical Marxism, social democracy and anti-imperialist nationalism point to the need for a radical left politics at a distance from the state. This paper examines the impact, revival and promise of the anarchist/syndicalist tradition, a rich, continuous praxis in labour, left, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and egalitarian movements, worldwide, since the 1860s. Outlining its core ideas – anti-hierarchy, anti-capitalism, anti-statism, opposition to social and economic inequality, internationalist class-based mobilisation – and critique of mainstream Marxism and nationalism, it highlights the arguments there is a basic incompatibility between state rule, and bottom-up, egalitarian, democratic, socialist relationships. The anarchist/syndicalist project cannot be reduced to an organising style, protest politics or spontaneism: for it, transition to a just, self-managed society requires organised popular capacity for a revolutionary rupture, developed through prefigurative, class-based, democratic organs of counter-power, including syndicalist unions aiming at collectivised property, and revolutionary counter-culture. Success needs formal organisation, unified strategy and anarchist / syndicalist political organisations.
- Format
- 20 pages
- Format
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Journal of Contemporary African Studies
- Relation
- van der Walt, L., 2016. Back to the future: revival, relevance and route of an anarchist/syndicalist approach for twenty-first-century left, labour and national liberation movements. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 34(3), pp.348-367.
- Relation
- Journal of Contemporary African Studies volume 34 number 3 348 367 July 2016 1469-9397
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Open Journals statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/openaccess/openjournals)
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RU Department of Sociology
Van der Walt, Lucien (Prof)
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Back to the future.pdf | 667 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |