What We Believe
Geelong Anarchist Communists believe in a world that is equal, free and just. This means a number of fundamental things: Society should be organised on the basis of direct democracy, in our workplaces and in our communities. The collective wealth of society should be used to ensure that everyone has access to everything they need. Decisions should not be left to bosses, landlords or politicians.
Oppression and domination of any kind should be confronted and smashed. We’re for feminism, for queer liberation and for anti-racism, and because we are for all these things we are anti-capitalist.
What We Do
As a group we collectively plan our involvement in campaigns and organising. We organise in our workplaces, in our unions and in our community. GAC have supported strikes, feminist campaigns and anti-fascist protests.
Together we develop our skills and confidence as organisers and activists. We read, study and discuss anarchism, socialism and other political theories, current issues and history, and run public reading groups.
Geelong Anarchists Communists are part of a national and international network of anarchist-communist organisations that assist one another, and most importantly aim to help build the capacity for the international working class to fight for itself.
Statement of Principals
We are opposed to the domination and control of society by a small minority – to the capitalist system, private control over the means of production and social wealth, and the state. We oppose all forms of social oppression such as racism, sexism, queerphobia, transphobia, ableism, anti-sex worker attitudes and so forth.
In the place of capitalism and the state, we would see worker control over workplaces, community control over housing, and a thoroughgoing democratisation of all spheres of life. Society will be collectively controlled by all and the necessities of life are provided freely to everyone.
In the place of a society based on alienation, inequality and injustice, we seek a social system based on freedom, equality and democracy – where the goal of society is the full development, self-realisation and flourishing of all, rather than the endless expansion of profit.
We recognise that despite all the ways capitalism divides us, it is our position as workers and producers of all wealth that gives us the power to reshape the world and is the key to unity. The fundamental contradiction of the world is between the worker and the capitalist.
While we believe in fighting for social reforms as part of the movement towards building the revolutionary confidence of workers, we reject reformism. Workers should not have to wait until the social revolution to improve their daily lives, but we also understand the manner in which reforms are won is as important as the fact they are won at all. All political activity should aim to increase the self-reliance and organisation of the working class.
As such, we are opposed to all parliamentary participation and the advocacy of electoral parties. A society directly controlled by the mass of ordinary working people cannot be built from the top down, by a small minority utilizing government apparatus – whether by elections or a “revolutionary” seizure of power. We do not stand for the replacement of one set of bosses and politicians by another, but the replacement of all bosses and politicians by mass working class democracy.
We are against all parliamentary tactics, instead advocating for democratic mass movements that struggle through collective forms of direct action. We aim to influence social movements to maintain independence from the state, electoral political parties, NGOs, bureaucracy and capitalists.
Our orientation is towards mass politics – organising that involves hundreds, thousands, and eventually millions of ordinary working class people acting in our collective self-interest. We recognise a diversity of strategy and tactics required to meet the needs of revolutionary struggle in any particular context, however we are opposed to individualist, vanguardist and terroristic activity. Unless political action encourages the increased autonomy and participation of the mass of the working class, it is counterproductive.
As anarchist-communists, we always face outwards towards the working class. The key mass organisations for defending the working class today remain the trade unions. While we recognise that unions are not revolutionary bodies, through combining their interests during union struggles, workers can experience the ‘practical school of socialism.’ We intervene in the unions in order to propagate revolutionary ideas, to challenge bureaucratic forms of leadership, and raise the idea of winning struggles through direct action. We aim to constantly remind workers not to be divided by the sectoral interests of their particular trades and industries, but to understand the key purpose of unionism is practical solidarity.
In turn, the solidarity required for the realisation of a socialist society cannot be achieved if we are divided by nationality. As such, we are against nationalism and advocate for internationalist principles. As capitalism is global, the struggle against capitalism must also be global. We must act in solidarity and support for the struggles of oppressed people wherever they occur. Racism and nationalism divide the workers, weakening our ability to fight as class.
Australian capitalism is founded on an act of genocide – the murder and dispossession of this continent’s indigenous people. Colonisation began with the seizure and exploitation of indigenous land, and the genocide of its inhabitants. Capitalism in Australia continues to dispossess and destroy Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in its pursuit of extracting more resources and value. As such, the state and capitalism in this country must continue to enforce racist standards to justify its continued colonial expansion. In the face of this brutality, we support the ongoing struggle for Indigenous self-determination in Australia, and recognise that sovereignty over the Australian landmass was never ceded.
The expansion of capital and its destructive effects upon society do not end with the oppression, exploitation and division of workers, but the utter destruction of the environment. Capitalist production develops industry only to sap wealth from the environment and the worker alike. It poisons the soil, the seas, the air and runs all species to the point of extinction. Ecological destruction is inherent to capitalist production, which requires ceaseless expansion of profit, turning all natural resources into commodities that are bought, sold and exploited. Overcoming the environmental crisis requires humanity to live in a sustainable manner. This requires science freed from the logic of capital in industry and agriculture, so that production is not for the sake of profit, but the well being of humanity and the planet alike. In short, a socialist mode of production is the only sustainable solution.
Geelong Anarchist Communists 