Dual power strategies fail- backlash, cooption

(Introduction to Anarchist Communism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarchist-federation-introduction-to-anarchist-communism#toc13 , April)

The other typiIntroduction to Anarchist Communismcal approach to prefigurative politics is trying to build dual power. This means trying to build organisations in the here and now that will eventually replace capitalism. These can be anything from cooperatives of various kinds that organise to produce or to sell some product in a non-hierarchical way, to mass revolutionary unions that aim to take over the running of industry. The idea is that by building organisations through which people run their own lives now, a point of ‘dual power’ can be reached. This is a situation where both capitalism and potential alternatives exist side by side, where there are two systems of economic, social and political organisation in direct competition with each other. For people who argue this way, this is how revolution happens. People build an alternative which increasing numbers of people join until it is strong enough to confront capitalism directly and replace it. There are a number of different approaches to dual power strategies. Some see themselves as providing examples that can be taken up by other people and perhaps eventually become state policy. Things like the Transition Towns movement at the moment, or various alternative education movements work in this way. These are rarely very confrontational about their ideas and see themselves as reformist rather than revolutionary. They do, however, see the need to build an alternative base of power outside the state and capitalism. Others seek to build entire alternative economies through cooperatives, credit unions, local trading systems (LETS schemes as they are often called) and the like. These, they argue, could eventually reach the point where many people are in effect living outside the capitalist economy. People in this tradition often, but not always, describe themselves as mutualist. A variation on this idea sees building alternative centres of political rather than economic power as the key. There are two main traditions here. Some focus on building community assemblies to take local decisions and sometimes seek to take over local town halls and council chambers through elections. These people often, but again not always, describe themselves as municipalist. Others focus on building revolutionary trade unions which will confront management in the workplace to get immediate gains. They will also just as importantly be run by direct democracy, giving workers experience of taking decisions and organising. These unions are then seen as able to take over industry in its entirety replacing capitalism as they do so. This is usually described as syndicalism. All these approaches, and they often work in combination, see themselves as building a political and economic alternative to capitalism right under its nose. They argue that these alternatives are able to grow to the point where either capitalism withers away or there is a confrontation between the two systems which leads to revolution and the destruction of capitalism. There are many positive things about these approaches. They encourage self organisation and direct action by ordinary people. They provide important lessons in collective working and experience of direct democracy for those involved. The AF does not reject any of these approaches out of hand and members often involve themselves in this kind of project. However, there are important weaknesses in these approaches that limit their usefulness. These kinds of projects are highly vulnerable to attacks by the state. Laws can be passed that make most cooperatives illegal or at least very difficult to set up. Community assemblies can be denied resources, or even attacked directly by the police and the army. People who pursue dual power strategies are often very over-optimistic about their ability to avoid repression. Capitalism and the state tend to attack any threat sooner rather than later. It is not, however, direct attacks by the state that are the biggest problem with dual power strategies. The biggest problem is the risk of co-option. What this means is that movements and organisations which start out trying to provide an alternative are often ‘captured’ by capitalism. They become part of it rather than an alternative, helping capitalism to manage people’s exploitation rather than challenging it. For example, cooperatives often become employers in their own right, with full cooperative members becoming managers and their new employees exploited workers like any others. Community groups are approached by local councils, given funding and access to some power and end up administering the council policies they set out to oppose. Housing co-ops become landlords, credit unions become banks (building societies in the UK started out as community schemes), syndicalist unions negotiate with management and crack down on wildcat strikes. Ordinary people who start out trying to build alternatives end up becoming the thing they hate.