How does Mitchinson misrepresent anarchist organisation?
Mitchinson now moves onto the real enemy, anarchism. He asserts that: “Anarchist organisations have always hidden behind a facade of ‘self-organisation’. They claim to have no leaders, no policy etc. Yet who decides?” Yes, anarchist groups claim to have no leaders but they do not claim to be without policies. Anyone with any comprehension of anarchist theory and history would know this (just one example, Bakunin argued that we needed to establish “a genuine workers’ program — the policy of the International [Workers Association]” [“The Policy of the International”, The Basic Bakunin, p. 100]). Mitchinson asks the question, if we do not have leaders, “who decides?” That in itself exposes the authoritarian nature of his politics and the Bolshevik style party. He obviously cannot comprehend that, without leaders deciding things for us, we manage our own affairs — we decide the policy of our organisations collectively, by the direct democracy of the membership. Forgetting his early comme
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