I first came across this text back in 1973. At that time I was a
member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain - of which maybe more
at another time. As We See It suprised me. Until that time I
had not come across any anarchist or libertarian material. all I had
seen apart from the SPGB material was idiotic leninist garbage - the
typical workers are too stupid to go beyond trade union
consciousness, they need a party of intellectuals to lead them stuff.
Suddenly I had discovered a group that looked at workers' industrial
struggles and showed how these struggles themselves were the place
where revolutionary consciousness began to evolve. Solidarity and its
publications was to have a big influence on a group of us who were
trying to change the SPGB. We called ourselves Libertarian
Communism and published a journal of the same name. Looking back
on it, a lot of it was pretty crass, but it was a part of our
political evolution. In the end , it was people from that tendency
that went on to form Wildcat and Subversion. (Counter
Information was partly the work of another of us) Before then, we
were kicked out of the SPGB (rightly so!) and set up on our own
calling ourselves Social Revolution, during which time we were
an active part in the rediscovery of class struggle communist
politics in Britain. By 1978 we had begun to find it difficult to
sustain our activity and anyway thought we had a lot in common with
Solidarity. We held a series of meetings with them and a dissident
faction of the then Anarchist Workers Association (a precursor of
today's Anarchist Communist Federation). The upshot was a convoluted
process of merger negotiations. This led to changes in the statement
As We See It and As We Don't See It. We wanted them to
be more explicit on socialism as the end of commodity production and
wanted the whole thing rewritten to remove sixties sexism.
What follows is four documents:
Intro
When, in 1967, we first published 'As We See It' we felt it
to be both an accurate and a fairly concise summary of our views.
Alternatives had been discussed and every possible effort made to
avoid ambiguities. We thought we had produced a fairly explicit
text acceptance of which should be the basis of adherence
to a SOLIDARITY group.
Over the years we have come to realise that we were wrong, There
was either something the matter with the document - or with some of
those who read it. Or perhaps there -was something the matter with us
- for having -thought the text was self-explanatory. Radicals
repeatedly told us that they agreed with every word of the statement
... and in the next breath asked us why we were not doing faction
work in the Labour Party, or living in communes or
campaigning for the T.U 'lefts', or eulogising the Black Panthers or
Karume' s anti-imperialist regime in Zanzibar, or participating-- in
the anti-Common Market agitation. Some even asked why we were not
advocating the launching of a ‘real, revolutionary, leninist party’.
We now feel it necessary to dot some i's and cross some t's. What
follows is an attempt to state explicitly thoughts that were only
hinted at, and to formulate in writing propositions that were only
implied. 'As We Don't See It' would convey the general tenor
of what follows. In an attempt to avoid further ambiguity we will
also discuss some matters that were not dealt with in the original
text.
We here reprint both texts: first the original As We See
It, then our comments.