Aims and Principles

By Organise!

Published in 1996

Topics: statements of principles, Ireland

1. Organise! is a working class organisation.

2. We aim to create a free and classless society. We are fighting to abolish the state, capitalism, and wage slavery and replace them with workers' control of both production and distribution for “Need not Profit”.

3. We believe that only the working class can change society from the present system of chaos and inequality to a society based on co-operation, mutual aid, and equality. This change must be achieved by the conscious participation of the workers themselves. We oppose all those who would set themselves up as “new leaders”.

4. The only way to achieve this revolutionary change is by the formation of an independent workers organisation, the “Anarcho-Syndicalist Union”, within industry and the community, in federation with others in the same industries and localities, independent of and opposed to all political parties and trade union bureaucracies.

5. The Anarcho-Syndicalist Union is one controlled by the workers themselves, it is opposed to the sectionalism of traditional trade unionism and is open to membership of those outside and inside industry, it will unite not divide the working class. Any and all delegates will be subject to immediate recall to that membership.

6. The class struggle is world-wide and must recognise no artificial borders or boundaries. We must fight all attempts by capitalism to divide our class by setting worker against worker, employed against unemployed, man against woman, and protestant against catholic.

7. The armies and police of this and all states do not serve to protect us, they exist as the repressive arm of the state.

8. At present Organise! is a propaganda group. It is the role of Organise! to support workers in struggle, to expose the weakness of traditional trades unionism, and to work for the creation of an Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation in Ireland.

Additional Information

Taken from Organise!'s first pamphlet, “An Introduction to Anarcho-Syndicalism: The Tactics and Vision for a New Workers Movement.”