This pamphlet is a reprint of chapter 7 of Unfinished Business: the politics of Class War, a book published in 1992 by Britain’s Class War Federation in conjunction with AK Press. It takes an openly Platformist approach to the question of anarchist organisation, which was a major reason why the pamphlet was produced by people associated with the class struggle wing of the Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (ARM) in Johannesburg. The pamphlet, described as the 1994 South African edition, used as its distribution address/ contact point the (unfortunately named) “Backstreet Abortions” Distribution, also associated with ARM at the time. As with other materials issued at the time, production values were pretty low.
The Class War Federation was well known among South African anarchists for its tabloid-style paper Class War, which was locally circulated, as was the the Class War compilation edited by Ian Bone, Alan Pullen and Tim Scargill, entitled Class War: a decade of disorder (Verso, 1991). The Federation deeply impressed the class struggle wing of ARM, as well as its immediate predecessors. For instance a Class War poster, showing a burning police car and captioned “Our Contribution to Global Warming,” was the cover image for the one-off South African anarchist paper Revolt. Class War’s forthright opposition to liberal reformism, lifestylism, and orthodox Marxism, its stress on working class power and struggle, and its clear writing struck a powerful cord; so did its ability to reach large numbers of people. Although it is now clear that not all of Class War members agreed with Unfinished Business, and that the Federation was not very Platformist in practice, the Federation’s impact on what would become the Workers Solidarity Federation (WSF) should not be underestimated.
SAASHA 