>Here is actually a task for left-wingers, not just anarchists. There used to be many welfare rights organizations in the USA that functioned as community service organizations that help the unemployed and the working poor navigate the system and/or staged vigorous protests so that the government would loosen up the eligibility criteria in response. Today, few organizations are doing such jobs, though the needs are just as great or greater.
The most effective unemployed workers unions in Australia during the eighties were predominately run by anarchists. Earlier on in the thirties the unemployed movement was inspired by the Communist party and in the late seventies the CPA instigated a number of new Unemployed Workers Unions. These groups outlived the CPA, which folded sometime in the eighties, its remaining members joining the ALP. The Melbourne UWU, with strong anarchist influence, was the most vigorous. The notion that government welfare payments were inconsistent with their anarchist principles didn't seem to occur to them, although they consistently opposed the social control aspects of the welfare system.
Yes, this is an important task. Although there are dangers in organising welfare rights groups of the professional kind. These are usually quite useless at best, participatory direct action oriented organisation by the poor is quite powerful though. The difference is that a few "professional" organisers can and will be bought off, if they are the least effective. The only way to buy off the poor and the unemployed en masse is by giving in to their demands, which demands will then only escalate. The other big strategic advantage is that the poor have little or nothing to lose.
However, in addition to the strategic danger of professional welfare workers, there is a similar danger inherent in organisations of the poor. The tragic fact is that individual 'leaders' are strongly tempted by opportunities to corrupt the organisation for personal gain. So the presence of politically-motivated 'middle class' anarchists and other left wingers is a great advantage, they are subject to professional opportunism, but at least can be relied on as a bulwark against petty gangsterism and corruption.
The roll-back of the welfare state is not at the same level in Australia as in the US yet though. Partly that is probably somewhat to the credit of the anarchist unemployed activists of the eighties, they (or I should say we) were a constant thorn in the side of the authorities for over a decade, to some small effect. The movement is not nearly so effective here now, partly because it lacks that ingredient of political motivation offered by committed activists of the CPA and the anarchists in times past.
Naturally, the ruling class is taking the opportunity to return the welfare state as much as possible to what it was in the nineteenth century. But the American system seems to in a class by itself, surely the conditions for revolt must be ripening? If not, I'd like to know WHY not?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas