FOUR FUTURES PART I – BUSINESS AS USUAL

THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE

Forming a strategy requires thinking about the many possible futures that we might face. Today, it is hard to say with confidence where British society will be in 10 or 20 years. The state and capitalism seem to be in a slow decline, and the old established political parties are dying, but they still have time to reinvent themselves. Likewise, new political forces are on the rise, but the extent that they will attempt something genuinely different to the current ruling class consensus is unknown. On top of this, environmental problems, wars and natural disasters all effect politics and the economy in ways that are hard to predict.

While it is hard to say for sure what kind of future we might end up with, change is inevitable. Our current political-economic system is not maintaining itself because everything is fine. Instead, it has come at the cost of ignoring the many systemic and structural problems that society faces, which will eventually require changes to be made before they cause total collapse.

For anarchists in Britain, perhaps ironically, the 2029 election is a potential pivot point for such change. However, given the current weakness of the ruling Labour Party, there is also a chance that an emergency election may be called before then. We must think about what a change of central government might mean, and map out the different futures that might come from such a change because they will affect our strategy.

There are broadly four different futures that seem the most obvious:

1. The current political system tries to resist change and stay on its current course.

2. The system attempts to stabilise itself through progressive reforms, competently or otherwise.

3. The system attempts to stabilise itself by leaning more heavily on its authoritarian and oppressive elements, competently or otherwise.

4. Social collapse

Each of these futures will demand different responses if we want to push society in a genuinely libertarian direction, and they pose different challenges that we must consider and plan for in advance. Of course, there are far more possible futures than these four, but hopefully they will act as a basis from which the reader can start to think about possible futures and start planning for them with their comrades instead of just reacting to whatever happens in the moment.

The first possibility that we must consider is that the next election does not bring any major changes to the political-economic system. Here, whichever party gets into power mostly ignores the structural problems that face British society and attempts to run things as they have been run for the last few decades. This is the first possibility we discuss because the opportunities and challenges that it presents anarchists are broadly similar to those we face now.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

Such a result could come from any of the current political parties. The establishment wing of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, or even a deradicalised Conservative Party would all likely take this approach, and both Reform UK and the Green Party might end up being forced to maintain business as usual if they are quickly co-opted or strong-armed by the entrenched economic and political actors who benefit the most from the existing status quo.

While the victory of business as usual would appear to indicate the stabilisation of the political-economic system, it would not deal with any of the problems that this system causes which have resulted in a combination of apathy and radicalisation among the general public and the rise of Reform and the Greens:

• The cost of living would likely keep rising as nothing would be done to reign in the current political and economic structures that enable price-gouging and rent-seeking.

• Workplace conditions would likely keep getting worse due to the systematic bias of the current system against workers.

• Key social infrastructure (such as the NHS, public utilities, and social third spaces) would continue to degrade as they are stripped down to make them more profitable or efficient.

• Very little would be done about a collapsing environment.

• Despair and anger would continue to spread among everyday people.

The continued stability of the political-economic system would be at the expense of the continued destabilisation of society at a deeper level.

Such a result would simply defer social change, putting off any major changes while ensuring a build-up of social pressure that makes future changes even more likely, and likely to be drastic. So business as usual would mean that anarchists would still need to prepare for a more radically oppressive or progressively reforming future government, but this has been put off for another election cycle.

The strategy we would have to develop in this situation is a continuation of the strategy we need to develop now. The system of the state and capitalism is awkwardly maintaining itself in Britain while continuing to make most people’s lives worse, driving them either to apathy or to find alternatives in Reform or the Greens. Anarchists need to demonstrate how both apathy and electoral political parties on the right or left cannot improve people’s lives in the ways that they desire. To do this, we need to actually be present in communities and workplaces in a way we simply are not right now. Anarchist organisations and propaganda currently have a very small reach, and some of this is due to anarchism being small in Britain. Strangely, we often seem comfortable for anarchism to remain small: we do not put a strong focus on getting our ideas out there or intentionally growing the anarchist movement in a way that, by 2029 or earlier, puts us in a better position to contest the far right or a resurgent left reformism within society.

And while business as usual may present many of the same kinds of problems that we see today, they will likely intensify the longer the status quo remains unchanged:

• People will become more isolated and disillusioned with the status quo.

• People will become poorer and more desperate for organisations that will fight for them in their communities and workplaces.

• The welfare state and other public infrastructure will become more dysfunctional.

Any political movement that can step in and provide solutions to these problems outside of the existing system will be able to embed itself deeply within society, and while anarchism might be best placed to do this in theory, it will still require concerted action by anarchists to make this a reality. Otherwise, the far right can take that position and use it to support a fascist Government, and left-wing reformists can build a social movement to introduce or reinforce a reformed version of the state and capitalism instead of replacing it with something radically better.