“Queer Liberation and Anarchist Communism”

This was passed out as a  flyer at the Boston dyke march, to which the Boston local of NEFAC was invited to table and march. I’m not personally a fan of the term “anarchist-communism,” even though I’ve found myself affiliated with NEFAC.  Generally I prefer “social anarchism,” but these labels could generally just as easily apply: anarcho-syndicalism, libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, revolutionary anarchism, free communism/socialism, etc etc etc. I need to start hassling uncle Noam, the great linguist who also happens to be an anarcho-syndicalist, to see if he can come up with a label that’s not quite so damn clumsy or problematic…

by Thomas Giovanni

- Boston NEFAC

Anarchist communism is- and has always been- against all oppression and exploitation of people over people including any system where a person or group of people has privilege or power over any other person or group politically, economically, socially or otherwise.

It is for a cooperative and free social order aimed at the equal freedom of all humanity achieved through: directly-democratic decision-making, a social/cultural value system actively opposing domination, privilege, oppression and exploitation and a classless economy where all contribute according to their ability and receive according to their needs.

It was developed in the 1800s by revolutionaries who observed the natural tendency of generally communal and generally self-managing people -both within emerging economic imperialist states and within colonized states exploited by imperialists around the world- who resisted forced incorporation into a developing white-supremacist, patriarchal, authoritarian, industrial capitalist system. Of course, to develop anarchist communism the logic of the generally communal and generally self-managing societies had to be taken to their natural conclusions: that it’s neither desirable nor necessary for any human or group of humans to control, dominate, rule, exploit, decide for, oppress or otherwise cause harm to any other human or group of humans.

Therefore, as anarchist communists, it is only logical and consistent with our principles in the struggle for a free humanity that we support the personal, cultural, and institutional fight against patriarchy, hetero-sexism, the gender bi-nary system and all other struggles for queer liberation both in themselves and in their intersectionalities with capitalism, the state, white supremacy, and all other forms of human oppression. While we see queer liberation as an important struggle in and of itself, we feel that systems of domination and oppression depend upon and support each other. So, the elimination of one form of oppression is necessarily tied into the elimination of all forms of oppression. This doesn’t mean that we all must individually fight every struggle on every front in order to fight any; as individuals we don’t have time, energy or resources to be involved in every front of every struggle against every form of oppression. Rather we feel that we must bring an analysis of all forms and systems of domination and oppression to the struggles that we respectively fight. That we must not only see ourselves as part of an overarching struggle for the equal freedom of all humanity in every domain and the elimination of all forms of oppression, but we must confront the various manifestations and contexts of oppression within our respective struggles and build bridges between them. In this sense, we will be able to confront oppression on every front of every struggle… as a collective revolutionary movement working together.

Unlike authoritarian revolutionary tendencies which seek to gain support for their party so that they may gain power and rule in everyone’s name. We, anarchist communists, argue that systems of domination and control must be destroyed not captured… that it’s not the people in power that must change within the system, it’s the system itself that’s the problem. All human beings have the capacity for good and the capacity for bad. Only through the elimination of all structures which give some power over others economically, politically, socially, culturally or otherwise and the replacement of these systems with systems based on freely-associated equal power on all fronts globally will all humanity really be free.

Of course, we’re not utopian dreamers, we agree with Fredrick Douglass when he said in his 1857 speech “West India Emancipation”:
[i]”The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle…. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters… The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” [/i]

We feel that oppression can only be truly ended by the oppressed and those standing in solidarity with them. We realize that the struggle has been and will continue to be… a struggle. People’s capacity for good is just as malleable as their capacity for bad and the oppression of L,G,B,T,T,Q,Q, and I folks is both an institutionally and personally violent oppression that runs deep throughout the history of humanity. However, as we feel that anarchist communism is only possible with queer liberation, we also feel that queer liberation is only fully possible with anarchist communism. Systems of domination and oppression are too interconnected to ignore one and not all others. To end any form of human oppression we must end them all.

So let us struggle together, for queer liberation… and for anarchist communism.
Contact us at:
nefacboston@nefac.net
PO Box 230685
Boston, MA 02123

For more information:
http://nefac.net/
http://www.anarkismo.net/
http://anarchism.ws/faq/