A-Infos (en) UK, ACG: The Liberal Capture of Anarchism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

We have re-published below an article from The Polar Bl@st, an anarchist 
communist news and views website from Aotearoa. The piece was first 
published in Nov 2025. 
https://thepolarblast.wordpress.com/2025/11/22/the-liberal-capture-of-anarchism/ 
---- For the past few years, a peculiar current has swept through parts 
of the anarchist milieu, particularly those corners closest to academia, 
the NGO apparatus, and the broad "social justice" ecosystems of the 
liberal left. It goes something like this: "we don't live in 
revolutionary times". The line is always delivered with a kind of weary 
resignation, as if the speaker has grown too sophisticated, too worldly, 
too traumatised or too professional to still believe in any of the old 
principles.

We are told that anarchists cannot reject electoralism, because that 
would be "dogmatic" or "purist." We cannot maintain a principled 
anti-militarism in the face of imperial alignments and geopolitical 
chessboards, because that would be "naïve" or "privileged" or simply 
"not how the world works." We cannot challenge nationalism, because 
apparently even anarchists must kneel before the altar of flags when the 
right war breaks out. And in Aotearoa, we are increasingly instructed 
that anarchists, of all people, should simply fall into line behind 
Labour, the Greens, or Te Pati Maori, and that anything else amounts to 
assisting the Right, aiding fascism, or failing to take "real-world 
consequences" seriously.

It is a remarkable ideological contortion, one that has transformed a 
large portion of self-identified anarchists into adjuncts of liberalism, 
junior partners to parliamentary leftism, and in some cases loud 
defenders of militarised state power. This collapse is not merely 
political drift; it represents a profound refusal to uphold the most 
basic tenets of anarchism. It is a capitulation dressed up as realism, a 
surrender disguised as nuance, and a fear of being politically 
unfashionable mispackaged as maturity.

But at its core, this discourse expresses something simple and corrosive 
- a belief that anarchism is incapable of acting as a revolutionary 
force in its own right, and must therefore outsource its agency to 
liberal institutions.

One cannot understand the present collapse of anarchist independence 
without understanding the cultural ecosystem that many leftists now 
inhabit. In Aotearoa, as across the Western world, political energy has 
been systematically redirected into NGOs, consultancies, academic 
departments, and publicly funded "progressive" institutions which 
operate comfortably inside capitalism's infrastructure. These spaces 
speak the language of radicalism but behave according to the incentives 
of bureaucracy.

Many young anarchists do not radicalise through struggle anymore, 
through occupations, workplace organising, anti-militarist resistance, 
housing fights, or anti-police action. Instead, they are socialised into 
a professional sphere where the primary goal is to secure contracts, 
maintain social capital, and avoid political risk. The result is 
predictable: anarchism becomes merely a branding aesthetic rather than a 
commitment to revolutionary action.

Inside those institutional spaces, rejecting electoralism is framed as 
childish. Criticising leftist parties is framed as sabotaging 
"progress." Maintaining anti-militarist principles is presented as 
dangerous idealism. Refusing to collapse into a Labour-Green-Maori Party 
electoral bloc is seen as a betrayal of the "community."

But these are not moral judgments, they are occupational ones. 
Anarchists working within NGO and academic networks quickly internalise 
that their material survival depends on aligning with the soft-left 
consensus. Electoral criticism risks contracts. Anti-militarism risks 
reputational safety. Anti-state politics complicates relationships with 
funders.

And so a new norm develops - anarchists should avoid being too 
anarchist. Radical rhetoric is allowed, even encouraged, so long as it 
ends up reinforcing the parliamentary left. Anything that threatens the 
state's monopoly on legitimacy becomes unspeakable.

The result is an anarchism that speaks fluently about "mutual aid" yet 
forgets that mutual aid is not a social service but a weapon against the 
state's claim to necessity. An anarchism that condemns racism and 
colonialism yet funnels all resistance into state-aligned institutions. 
An anarchism that champions decolonisation yet recoils from any 
challenge to parliamentary authority in Aotearoa. An anarchism that 
supports struggles overseas only when they align with Western strategic 
narratives.

In essence, it is an anarchism that has lost its nerve - and then 
rationalised that loss as intellectual sophistication.

The drift into electoral reasoning is a key symptom of this collapse. It 
takes several forms.

Sometimes it is explicit: "We must vote for Labour/Greens/TPM to keep 
the Right out." Sometimes it is dressed up in social-justice rhetoric: 
"Marginalised communities are harmed when the Right wins, therefore 
anarchists have a responsibility to vote." Sometimes it is wrapped in 
strategic fatalism: "Voting won't save us, but it helps buy time."

But underneath all of this is the same core assumption that the state 
must remain the primary vehicle for social change, and anarchists must 
adjust their politics to accommodate that reality.

It is extraordinary how quickly anarchists forget that the modern state, 
liberal or conservative, is structurally unable to abolish the 
exploitation, hierarchies, and coercive apparatus that define it. Even 
when left governments attempt reforms, they do so by strengthening the 
machinery anarchists seek to dismantle: police, prisons, militaries, 
borders, welfare bureaucracies, surveillance technologies, taxation 
extraction systems.

In Aotearoa, Labour is a textbook example. Every time it returns to 
power, the anarchist milieu fractures. Those closest to NGO 
infrastructures begin arguing for strategic support. The rhetoric of 
"harm reduction" becomes weaponised to shut down criticism from those 
who insist, rightly, that Labour has proven itself a reliable servant of 
capital, imperial alliances, and domestic managerialism.

This dynamic intensified during the Ardern era. Many anarchists who had 
once mocked parliamentarians found themselves reduced to timid 
criticism, or complete silence, because the social atmosphere of liberal 
adoration made genuine dissent feel culturally taboo. Within activist 
circles, Ardernism was treated as "good enough," and anarchists who 
disagreed were cast as troublemakers, misogynists, or unrealistic purists.

A movement that views itself as revolutionary should never be this 
fragile. Yet the collapse was widespread and revealing: many anarchists 
were more committed to social belonging within the liberal cultural 
class than to anarchism itself.

Once this cultural shift occurs, a fatal logic takes hold: anarchists 
must not reject electoralism because their allies, often their 
employers, depend on it.

This is how a revolutionary tradition turns into a lobby group.

The most alarming expression of this drift has been the abandonment of 
anarchist anti-militarism. For centuries, anarchists have insisted that 
war is not an aberration but a predictable outcome of the capitalist 
state system. Militarism is the purest expression of hierarchical power, 
resource extraction, nationalism, and obedience. It is the machine that 
devours working-class youth to protect the interests of competing ruling 
classes.

Yet in recent years, many self-described anarchists have adopted a 
military logic indistinguishable from Western liberalism. They cheer for 
NATO when it suits them. They speak approvingly of sending weapons to 
proxy conflicts. They amplify the language of "defence," "security," and 
"strategic necessity." They shame anti-militarists for "not supporting 
the right side."

This is the most dangerous capitulation of all.

Once anarchists accept the legitimacy of war, they have surrendered 
their last meaningful distinction from the statist left. The result is 
an anarchism that obediently follows the emotional rhythms of Western 
media cycles, outraged when instructed, supportive when instructed, 
silent when instructed, instead of maintaining its own anti-militarist 
compass.

Part of this collapse is ideological. Part is material. But a 
significant part is psychological.

Many anarchists today are terrified of being seen as "irresponsible." 
The wider liberal-left culture frames politics through the lens of 
compliance, safety, and harm-minimisation. Anything that challenges 
institutional frameworks is seen as reckless. Anything that disrupts 
political normalcy is dangerous. Anything that undermines parliamentary 
leftism is indirectly "helping the Right."

This creates a paralysing moral landscape where the worst sin an 
anarchist can commit is not supporting the status quo loudly enough. The 
fear of being blamed for a right-wing victory becomes so overwhelming 
that many stop imagining politics outside the narrow horizon of 
elections. The fear of being accused of "not caring" about marginalised 
communities becomes a weapon used to silence radical politics.

In such a climate, anarchism becomes an identity, not a praxis - a way 
of feeling radical while behaving safely.

This anxiety-based politics produces an anarchist who:

privately agrees the state cannot liberate anyone, but fears saying so 
publicly.
privately knows elections change nothing fundamental, but votes anyway 
and pressures others to do so.
privately opposes war, but shares liberal talking points so as not to 
appear insensitive.
privately wants to resist capitalism directly, but settles for symbolic 
action within the system.
The result is tragic: anarchists who are radical everywhere except where 
it matters.

The situation in Aotearoa intensifies this collapse because the liberal 
left is structured around moral frameworks linked to biculturalism, 
Treaty discourse, and NGO-based social justice work. These are important 
terrains of struggle, but the state has learned to weaponise them to 
maintain legitimacy.

This produces a political landscape where anarchists are pressured to 
treat parliamentary actors, especially Labour, the Greens and Te Pati 
Maori as central vehicles for "progress," even when their track record 
is deeply entangled with colonial administration, policing, market 
capitalism, and militarised foreign policy.

The liberal state in Aotearoa has become adept at performing moral 
virtue while intensifying its structural violence. It deploys kupu Maori 
in its rebranding while expanding prisons. It funds "community 
providers" while crushing working-class living standards. It hires iwi 
consultants while pushing militarised surveillance in the Pacific. It 
offers symbolic recognition while evading material decolonisation.

Yet many anarchists, immersed in NGO environments and Treaty workshops, 
struggle to critique this dynamic without being accused of cultural 
ignorance or reactionary politics. The result is silence, caution, or 
apologism, behaviours entirely incompatible with anarchist commitments 
to confronting state power, all state power, regardless of the rhetoric 
it cloaks itself in.

And so the argument returns: anarchists must support leftist parties; 
anarchists must not reject electoralism; anarchists must not oppose 
nationalist or militarised frameworks when they are framed as protective 
of Indigenous sovereignty or marginalised communities.

Such reasoning conflates the state with the people, a mistake anarchists 
spent 150 years warning against.

The claim that anarchists "can't" reject electoralism, or "can't" oppose 
leftist parties, is ultimately a claim about the impossibility of 
political imagination. It assumes that the state is the only terrain 
available, that nothing meaningful can be done outside of it, and that 
anarchists must align themselves with the managerial left because the 
alternative is irrelevance.

But this is only true if we accept the premises of liberal fatalism. The 
entire anarchist tradition exists because previous generations refused 
those premises. Emma Goldman did not look at the early 20th century and 
decide anarchists must support progressive mayors. Kropotkin did not 
conclude that the working class should vote for liberal reformers. Maori 
radicals in the 1970s did not decide that liberation ran through 
Parliament. The Spanish CNT did not believe emancipation required 
alliances with bourgeois parties, until internal liberal capture 
weakened them with disastrous consequences.

Anarchism has always insisted that politics extends far beyond electoral 
cycles. If anything, the crises of our age, climate breakdown, housing 
collapse, militarised imperial alignments, collapsing social 
infrastructure, prove that anarchist organising is not merely viable, 
but necessary.
The state is not the only site of political action. It is not even the 
most effective one. It is simply the only one liberals can imagine.

If anarchism is to reclaim itself from liberal capture, it must reaffirm 
some basic, uncompromising truths.

Anarchists must reject electoralism not because elections are morally 
impure, but because electoral participation actively undermines the 
development of autonomous working-class power. Every hour poured into 
canvassing is an hour not spent organising. Every argument about 
strategic voting is a diversion from the real labour of building 
alternatives. Every second spent defending leftist parties is a second 
spent normalising the idea that liberation flows downward from 
Parliament rather than upward from struggle.

Anarchists must oppose all militarism, not selectively, not only when it 
aligns with Western interests, not only when liberals approve, because 
every war strengthens the state, intensifies nationalism, and expands 
the repressive apparatus that will ultimately be used against us.

Anarchists must reject the notion that leftist parties represent "the 
community." Labour does not represent working people. The Greens do not 
represent ecological resistance. Te Pati Maori does not represent 
decolonisation. Parties represent themselves - their leadership, their 
funders, their institutional incentives, their careers.

Anarchists must refuse the guilt-trip politics of liberalism - the idea 
that we are responsible for right-wing victories if we refuse to align 
with the parliamentary left. That logic is emotional blackmail used to 
discipline dissent.

Most importantly, anarchists must rediscover the confidence that we can 
act, we can organise, and we can build political power outside the 
state. We must stop believing that autonomy is impossible. The future 
belongs not to voters but to those who take the risk of creating 
something outside the suffocating frameworks of capitalist governance.

The liberal discourse infecting contemporary anarchism ultimately 
reduces to one pitiful sentence:

"Anarchism can't do anything, so anarchists should help the liberals."

It is a defeatist creed masquerading as pragmatism. It is the whisper of 
a movement that has lost faith in itself. It is the ideology of an 
anarchism that has forgotten its own history, its own victories, its own 
capacity to terrify the powerful.

When anarchists argue that they cannot reject electoralism, they are 
abandoning the principle that liberation grows from below. When 
anarchists argue they cannot oppose leftist parties, they are 
surrendering their independence to the very institutions designed to 
neutralise social movements. When anarchists argue they cannot maintain 
anti-militarism, they are accepting the logic of empire. When anarchists 
argue they cannot act without state permission, they are no longer 
anarchists at all.

We stand at a moment when capitalism is unravelling, the climate is 
breaking down, global militarism is accelerating, and the old political 
categories are collapsing. This is not a moment to retreat into the 
exhausted pragmatism of the liberal-left. It is a moment to reclaim the 
audacity and clarity of anarchism: the belief that the working class can 
organise itself, that communities can govern themselves, that solidarity 
can replace coercion, and that states, all states, are obstacles to 
freedom, not vehicles for it.

We owe the world something better than becoming the auxiliary wing of 
liberalism.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2026/07/22/the-liberal-capture-of-anarchism/
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