ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the contemporary anarchist turn on the global left, explains why anarchist elements are entering into mainstream left organising and thinking, and considers its implications for movement-building on a global scale. It explains why the ideas and practices that animated the twentieth-century socialist left have been rejected by contemporary young activists as they turn away from hierarchical and non-democratic modes of organisation, such as traditional parties and unions, and instead seek to build the alternative democratic society they would like to see already within left movements. This approach is related to the anarchist theory of change, which rather than seeking to change or overthrow ‘the system’, seeks instead to ‘build the new society in the shell of the old’. Anarchists seek to do this through ‘dual power’, a combination of the practices of horizontalism, direct action, prefiguration and mutual aid, through which they seek to change culture, build alternative institutions and resist existing structures of domination. What is happening in contemporary movements may actually be the beginning of a convergence between anarchist and Marxist/socialist approaches, signalling a potentially hopeful direction for the future of the global left.
