Revolution Without Power
Anti-Authoritarianism and the Politics of Permanent Innocence
Morning Comrades.
This might come across as weird, even pointless hill to fight on, and to a certain degree it is, only because I long ago stopped thinking about, let alone talking / working with people that consider themselves ant-authoritarian and work within anti-capitalist structures. Those voices, especially here in the West have become louder, or rather more amplified of late and for the sake of my own sanity I wanted to put down my arguments against these idiots. That’s what this is and please do read it as such.
One of the defining characteristics of the contemporary Western “left” has been the transformation of anti-authoritarianism from a tactical consideration, if that ever was one, into an absolute moral principle. What once existed as a critique of bureaucracy, dogmatism, and the ossification of political institutions has increasingly become an all-encompassing worldview through which every question of political strategy is filtered. Authority is treated not as a social relation requiring analysis but as a self-evident evil. Organisation becomes suspect, leadership becomes suspect and even the idea let alone praxis of discipline becomes suspect. The exercise of collective power becomes suspect and what remains is a politics that defines itself less through its opposition to capitalism than through its opposition to those forces historically capable of overthrowing capitalism.
The result is one of the most profound paradoxes of contemporary political life. At precisely the moment when capitalism exercises unprecedented power over human existence, large sections of the Western anti-authoritarian milieu direct their most sustained hostility not towards the institutions that organise exploitation, imperial domination, and social reproduction, but towards socialists, communists, and anti-imperialist movements attempting to construct alternatives. The capitalist state, despite possessing armies, police forces, intelligence services, prisons, courts, and immense economic resources, frequently appears as a distant abstraction. Revolutionary organisations, by contrast, become immediate objects of scrutiny, condemnation, and moral judgement.
This asymmetry is neither accidental nor merely intellectual. It emerges from the social position occupied by much of the contemporary anti-authoritarian milieu itself. Marxism has long insisted that ideology cannot be understood independently of material conditions. Political ideas do not float freely above society but they emerge from concrete forms of social existence. Consequently, if anti-authoritarianism repeatedly arrives at conclusions that render revolutionary politics impossible while leaving capitalism fundamentally unchallenged, the explanation must be sought not only in philosophical error but also in the social circumstances that make such errors attractive.
The anti-authoritarian left of the contemporary West is largely a product of societies situated near the apex of the global capitalist order. Even where individuals experience precarity, debt, alienation, and exploitation, they nevertheless inhabit political systems whose relative stability rests upon centuries of colonial extraction, imperial domination, and unequal exchange. This position does not eliminate contradiction. It does, however, shape political perception. Capitalism appears less as a system maintained through naked force than as a diffuse network of cultural norms, bureaucratic procedures, and interpersonal relations. Domination becomes visible primarily in its micro-social manifestations rather than in its macro-structural forms.
Under such conditions, politics increasingly becomes detached from questions of power. The state is no longer encountered primarily as an institution capable of destroying revolutionary movements through violence. Instead, it appears as an arena of negotiation, regulation, and cultural management. The reality that every major capitalist state ultimately rests upon organised coercion recedes from view. What remains is an illusion that social transformation can occur without confrontation, without coercion, and ultimately without power itself.
This illusion explains the peculiar moral structure of contemporary anti-authoritarian discourse. Since power is understood primarily through its oppressive manifestations, any attempt to organise power collectively immediately appears suspect. The question ceases to be whether authority serves liberation or domination and authority itself becomes the problem. Consequently, movements seeking to challenge capitalism are judged less according to their capacity to transform social relations than according to their conformity to abstract ethical principles.
Such a framework inevitably places revolutionary movements in an impossible position. Every successful anti-capitalist struggle in modern history has required organisation, coordination, leadership, strategic planning, and institutional development. Every revolutionary movement that has survived confrontation with imperialism has exercised authority. The Cuban Revolution exercised authority. The Vietnamese Revolution exercised authority. The Chinese Revolution exercised authority. Anti-colonial movements throughout Africa exercised authority. They did so not because their participants possessed an irrational love of hierarchy but because they confronted adversaries possessing overwhelming military, economic, and political power.
