A-Infos (en) NZ, Aotearoa, AWSM: Against the State, Against Electoral Illusions (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

For much of the socialist movement's history, the question of the state 
has acted like a fault line running beneath every strategy, every party, 
every programme. Again and again, the Left has been pulled back towards 
the idea that emancipation can be delivered through the machinery of 
government, that the capitalist state can be captured, redirected, and 
made to serve the interests of labour. However there is a growing 
recognition of the hollowness of that belief. It reflects an unease that 
has been quietly accumulating for decades - that parliamentary 
socialism, however well intentioned, remains structurally trapped within 
institutions designed to preserve capitalism rather than abolish it. For 
anarcho-communists, this is not a new insight but a confirmation of 
something long understood. The state is not a neutral arena waiting to 
be occupied by the Left; it is a form of social power built to 
discipline labour, defend property, and stabilise exploitation.

The capitalist state is not simply a set of elected officials or a 
collection of policies. It is a dense network of bureaucracies, legal 
systems, police forces, financial institutions, and ideological norms 
that together reproduce class domination. Even when staffed by 
socialists, it remains bound to the imperatives of capital accumulation, 
economic growth, and social order. This is why left governments, from 
post-war social democracy to more recent reformist projects, so often 
find themselves retreating, compromising, or outright capitulating. They 
inherit a machine whose purpose is to manage capitalism, not dismantle 
it. To imagine that such a machine can be repurposed for socialism is to 
misunderstand its very function.

The appeal of the state has always been understandable. It offers 
immediacy, visibility, and the illusion of control. Winning an election 
feels tangible in a way that slowly building collective power does not. 
Legislation can be passed, budgets allocated, nationalisations 
announced. Yet these victories remain fragile precisely because they 
leave the underlying relations of power intact. Capital retains its 
mobility, its ownership of production, its ability to withhold 
investment, relocate, sabotage, and discipline. The state, even under 
left leadership, is forced to respond to these pressures or face 
economic crisis, capital flight, and political destabilisation. What is 
presented as political realism is in fact structural blackmail.
AWSM gestures towards this reality by insisting that socialism cannot be 
reduced to electoral success. We point to the necessity of building 
power outside the state, in workplaces, unions, and communities, to 
support and sustain any meaningful transformation. This is an important 
recognition, but it remains incomplete. From an anarcho-communist 
perspective, the problem is not merely that the state is insufficient on 
its own, but that it actively undermines the development of genuine 
collective power. The more movements orient themselves towards 
parliamentary outcomes, the more their energies are channelled into 
leadership contests, messaging discipline, and electoral cycles. Popular 
participation is narrowed to voting, while decision-making is 
centralised and professionalised. The result is demobilisation, not 
empowerment.

Social democracy offers a clear historical lesson. Its great post-war 
achievements in welfare provision and public ownership were real, but 
they were also shallow. Workers were not given control over production, 
they were given managed security within capitalism. Industries were 
nationalised but remained hierarchical and bureaucratic, run by state 
managers rather than workers themselves. When neoliberalism arrived, 
these arrangements were easily dismantled because the working class had 
never been organised as a ruling power in its own right. The state could 
give, and the state could take away.

This dynamic was not just confined to Europe. In Aotearoa New Zealand, 
the legacy of Labour governments tells a similar story. The welfare 
state, built on colonial foundations and exclusion, provided limited 
security while entrenching bureaucratic control over Maori and 
working-class communities. The neoliberal counter-revolution of the 
1980s did not emerge from nowhere, but it was enabled by a state 
apparatus already accustomed to managing society from above. The lesson 
is not that reforms are meaningless, but that reforms delivered by the 
state are always contingent, reversible, and ultimately subordinate to 
capital.

Anarcho-communism begins from a different premise. It understands 
socialism not as a policy programme but as a transformation of social 
relations. The abolition of capitalism requires the abolition of the 
state because both rest on hierarchy, coercion, and alienation. The 
state concentrates decision-making in the hands of a few, separates 
people from control over their own lives, and enforces obedience through 
law and violence. Capitalism does the same in the economic sphere. To 
dismantle one while preserving the other is impossible.

This does not mean waiting for a mythical moment of total collapse. It 
means recognising that socialism must be built through practices that 
prefigure the world we want. Workers controlling their workplaces, 
communities organising their own resources, people collectively meeting 
their needs without mediation by state or market. These practices are 
not supplementary to political struggle, they are its substance. They 
create the material basis for a society without bosses or bureaucrats.

The parliamentary left need to draw on the idea of extending democracy 
into the economy, an argument that resonates strongly with 
anarcho-communist thought. But democracy, if it is to mean anything, 
cannot be confined to representative structures. Real democracy is 
direct, participatory, and rooted in everyday life. It is exercised in 
assemblies, councils, and federations where people have immediate 
control over decisions that affect them. It is incompatible with 
institutions that monopolise authority and enforce compliance from above.

Historically, moments of revolutionary rupture have demonstrated this 
possibility. Workers' councils, neighbourhood committees, and communal 
structures have repeatedly emerged in periods of intense struggle, from 
Russia in 1905 and 1917 to Spain in 1936. These were not spontaneous 
miracles but the product of long-term organising and collective 
confidence. They showed that ordinary people are capable of managing 
society without bosses or states, when given the opportunity and 
necessity to do so.

The tragedy of much of the twentieth-century Left is that these moments 
were either crushed by reaction or absorbed into new state structures 
that replicated old hierarchies under socialist rhetoric. The promise of 
the state withering away became a justification for its expansion. 
Anarcho-communists reject this logic entirely. The state does not 
wither; it entrenches itself. Power, once centralised, resists dissolution.

This is why the strategy of dual power remains crucial. Rather than 
aiming to take over the state and transform society from above, 
anarcho-communism seeks to build alternative forms of power that make 
the state increasingly irrelevant. Mutual aid networks that meet 
material needs without bureaucratic mediation. Workplace organisations 
that challenge managerial authority directly. Community assemblies that 
coordinate housing, food, and care. These structures do not wait for 
permission, they assert collective autonomy in the here and now.

In the context of Aotearoa, this approach must be inseparable from 
decolonisation. The colonial state was imposed through violence, land 
theft, and the destruction of Maori social structures. Any socialist 
project that centres the state risks reproducing these colonial 
dynamics, even when wrapped in progressive language. Anarcho-communism 
aligns with tino rangatiratanga not as a symbolic gesture, but as a 
practical commitment to autonomy, self-determination, and the 
dismantling of imposed authority. Supporting iwi and hapu control over 
land and resources is not a concession within the state framework, but 
it is a challenge to the legitimacy of the colonial state itself.

The fixation on elections often obscures these deeper questions. Some 
argue that voting can be a tactic, but it cannot be a strategy. When 
movements orient themselves primarily towards winning office, they 
internalise the priorities of the system they seek to oppose. Radical 
demands are softened to appeal to swing voters, direct action is 
discouraged to maintain respectability, and organisational energy is 
funnelled into campaigns that dissipate once the ballot boxes are packed 
away. Disappointment follows, then cynicism, then retreat.

Direct action, by contrast, builds confidence and capacity. Strikes, 
occupations, blockades, and collective refusal confront power where it 
actually operates. They force concessions not through persuasion but 
through disruption. More importantly, they teach participants that 
change comes from their own collective strength, not from benevolent 
leaders. This is the pedagogical function of struggle, one that no 
parliamentary process can replicate.

Socialism must be rooted in mass participation rather than elite 
management. Where anarcho-communism diverges is in its refusal to 
subordinate that participation to the state at all. The goal is not to 
pressure governments into doing the right thing, but to render them 
increasingly obsolete. Every time people organise to meet their needs 
directly, they weaken the ideological and material foundations of state 
power.

This does not mean ignoring the reality of repression. The state will 
defend itself, often brutally. Police, courts, and prisons exist 
precisely to contain challenges from below. Anarcho-communist strategy 
therefore emphasises solidarity, decentralisation, and resilience. 
Movements that are horizontal and federated are harder to decapitate. 
Networks of mutual support reduce vulnerability to repression. 
Collective defence becomes a shared responsibility rather than the 
domain of specialists.

Capitalism is entering a period of deep instability, marked by 
ecological collapse, widening inequality, and permanent crisis. States 
respond not by resolving these contradictions but by managing them 
through austerity, surveillance, and repression. In this context, the 
fantasy that the state can be the vehicle for emancipation becomes 
increasingly untenable. The machinery is being retooled not for 
redistribution but for control.

Socialism against the state is therefore not a slogan but a necessity. 
It means recognising that freedom cannot be legislated into existence. 
It must be constructed through collective struggle that dismantles 
hierarchy in all its forms. Anarcho-communism offers not a blueprint but 
a direction towards a society organised around mutual aid, collective 
ownership, and direct democracy, without rulers and without classes.

The task before us is not to perfect the art of governance but to 
abolish the conditions that make governance necessary. To replace 
domination with cooperation, coercion with solidarity, and 
representation with participation. In doing so, we move beyond the 
narrow horizons of state-centred socialism and reclaim the revolutionary 
heart of the communist project.

https://awsm.nz/against-the-state-against-electoral-illusions/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en