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Libertarian Labor Review #13
Winter 1992-93, pages 33-39
MARKET ANARCHISM? CAVEAT EMPTOR!
Review by Jeff Stein
A Structured Anarchism : An Overview of Libertarian Theory and
Practice by John Griffin. Freedom Press (84b Whitechapel High
Street, London E1 7QX, U.K.), 1991. 38 pp., One pound.
In A Structured Anarchism, John Griffin argues that an
anarchist communist society, while a desirable goal in the
distant future, is not practical in the short-term. This is
because 1) people accustomed to a capitalist society aren't
culturally prepared for it, and 2) the modern economy is too
complicated to organize without the "self-regulation" of a market
system. Therefore Griffin calls for a series of short term
compromises to be made with classical liberal economics, and dubs
this "collectivist anarchism".
Griffin, unfortunately, doesn't understand collectivism nor
economics in general. He manages to garble and lump together the
views of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Malatesta. Bakunin was the only
collectivist of the three. Proudhon was a mutualist and
Malatesta, an anarchist communist. Besides mistakenly lumping
them all as "collectivists," Griffin makes an even bigger error
by equating collectivism with "market anarchism." Collectivism,
however, was not based on a market economy, but on a federally
coordinated system of "honest exchange" of products at their
labor cost. In a market system the prices of products are
determined according to their relative scarcity (ie. the "law of
supply and demand"). These are not the same thing.
Time and again, whether on the issue of markets or money,
Griffin proves he is in no position to lecture other anarchists
about their shaky grasp of economics. For instance, on page 22 he
writes, "The extraction of large amounts of unearned income by
the capitalists is a source of inflation, since too much money is
generated to buy the available goods, thus encouraging price
rises. Any inflation in a collectivist [sic] economy will not be
aggravated by this spurious money growth, since those who operate
it are remunerated only for work done."
The extraction of value by the capitalist out of the
workers' gross product has nothing whatsoever to do with the
money supply, since the capitalist does not print his/her own
money. (In effect, Griffin is saying that a robber creates money
when he steals your purse.) If what Griffin was saying were true,
the history of capitalism would be one long inflationary spiral,
without periodic economic depressions. On the contrary,
capitalism, if not interfered with by the state, tends towards
economic depressions (which cause deflation), since its constant
drive to reduce workers to low wages and unemployment has a
depressive effect.
In reality, the individual capitalist has very little
control over the money supply, which is a source of constant
consternation to the pro-laissez faire monetarists, like Hayek
and Milton Friedman, so oddly respected by Griffin (p.23). The
monetarists, however, do not suggest that the money supply be set
according to what has been produced, since according to them only
the market can determine the "true" value of these products
anyway. What the monetarists argue is that the state should
increase the money supply at a constant rate, so the capitalists
can plan ahead without having to worry about whether the state
economic planners will overreact to some minor market
"adjustment." According to classical laissez faire theory,
business cycles are inevitable and the market eventually corrects
itself. As for the effects these cycles have on working people
and the poor in the meantime, Hayek and Friedman could bloody
well care less. We should not forget the role of the "Chicago
Boys" (a group of Friedman's disciples) in running the economy of
the ruthless Pinochet regime in Chile. Griffin should freely
choose his mentors more carefully.
The state has always played a key role in the capitalist
market and monetary systems. First its role was as a defender of
private property, strike breaker of last resort, and as a
foundation of a (somewhat) stable currency. More recently it has
acted as a "pump primer," business subsidizer, and money lender
of the last resort. The so-called "Keynesian revolution" in
capitalist economics was not the beginning of the state's role in
the economy, just an attempt to better play that role in hopes of
making a more smooth running system and to stave off its
collapse. Griffin himself admits that "the manipulation of the
market by both the State and the Capitalists make the so-called
'free market' unfree." (p.24)
Yet by making this admission, Griffin has inadvertently
undermined one of his own arguments. On the one hand he attacks
the anarchist communist position because "it lacks empirical
justification from modern technological societies: it is not
enough in my view to dwell on its great ethical strength, and
gloss over organizational problems." (p.24) But on the other, he
doesn't hold his own doctrine up to the same standard. It may be
true that the market system "works" (perhaps in the since that
the inhabitants of Europe and North America haven't all starved
to death so far), but as he admits it is not a "free market," and
thus cannot be used to accurately predict what might happen in an
anarchist version. What of the many problems which would result
when the state no longer plays even its "limited" role in the
laissez faire sense? Who, for instance, would issue money in his
anarcho-market economy and guarantee its value? Although Griffin
cites Malatesta to back-up his claim for the necessity of money
during the transition towards an anarchist economy, he apparently
missed the Malatesta's admonition that "one should seek a way to
ensure that money truly represents the useful work by its
possessors..." (Malatesta: Life and Ideas, edited by Richards, p.
101). Griffin, in spite of his enthusiasm for money, doesn't
address this problem.
Unlike the anarchist communists, what Griffin lacks in
empirical evidence and practical concern for organizational
problems, he can not make up for with "ethical strength." For in
his conciliatory approach towards market economics, he is
prepared to sacrifice even the most basic anarchist principles,
including the abolition of wage slavery and an end to the private
ownership of the means of production: "I think we have to face up
to the fact that if some people want to be employed and others
want to employ them, then wage labor will continue. Recourse to
coercion by anarchists not involved should in my view be regarded
as a 'cure' which is worse than the disease. As long as
libertarian cultures constitute the dominant socializing force, I
do not think that the presence of small scale capitalist
enterprises is very important." (p.30)
Perhaps Griffin does not understand the implications of what
he has written. We are not talking about economic individualism,
self-employment or family businesses (which as long as they don't
employ non-family members, are not capitalist). The only reason
workers want to be employed by capitalists is because they have
no other means for making a living, no access to the means of
production other than by selling themselves. For a capitalist
sector to exist there must be some form of private ownership of
productive resources, and a scarcity of alternatives. The workers
must be in a condition of economic desperation for them to be
willing to give up an equal voice in the management of their
daily affairs and accept a boss. Wage labor would not be
tolerated in an anarchist society anymore than extortion or
blackmail, no matter how much the perpetrator might claim the
victims "asked for it." It would not take any "coercion" to get
rid of wage labor either, as long as the condition for possession
of any productive property is that all workers be given an equal
voice in management. If not, the facility in question is given to
some other group that will run things democratically.
To the extent that A Structured Anarchism was meant to stir
controversy, it has succeeded. If it was meant to lay the
foundation for a more practical anarchist economic alternative,
it is a botched attempt. Griffin's "collectivism" might more
accurately be described as watered down mutualism mixed with
laissez faire liberal ideology.
Recent Books on Spanish Anarchism
Reviewed by Jon Bekken
Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868-
1898 by George Esenwein. University of California Press (Berkeley
CA 94720), 1989.
Esenwein offers a rare English-language look at the origins
of the Spanish anarchist movement. He argues against the
"millenarian" approach (viewing anarchist as a prepolitical,
incoherent movement almost religious in its emotional appeal)
that dominated academic research into Spanish anarchism until
fairly recently, instead focusing his attention on the evolution
of movement ideology from the September Revolution of 1868
through the aftermath of the Montjuich repression, which forced
our comrades underground.
Esenwein situates Spanish anarchism in working-class
associational life, and anarchist ideology within broader
theoretical debates in the European socialist movement,
demonstrating that anarchist ideas gained substantial influence
within only two years of their introduction. The anarchists
plastered street corners with revolutionary manifestos and
published newspapers and pamphlets to spread their ideas
throughout the country, reading them aloud for those who could
not read. The movement quickly developed its own holidays and
cultural traditions. Each November 11th, for example, Spanish
anarchists commemorated the Haymarket martyrs and others fallen
in the struggle against capital and the state. Commemorative
meetings were largely devoted to readings of prose and poetry
dedicated to their memory, and to revolutionary songs. Like the
anarchists' May Day demonstrations, these meetings aimed less at
mourning the dead than on continuing and expanding the
revolutionary struggle.
Anarchist ideas focussing on direct action, class struggle
and revolution, quickly came to dominate the Spanish labor press.
Although the Marxists eventually built their own organizations,
they were far less influential. Esenwein demonstrates that even
though he never set foot in the country, Bakunin was deeply
involved in organizing the Spanish movement through
correspondence and the brotherhood of his comrades. "Beyond
doubt[,] their adherence to Bakunin's program contributed greatly
to the FRE's ability to flourish... and to survive the harsh
circumstances of repression" (p. 224, n. 15).
The Spanish movement was shaped in adversity, often forced
to go underground to survive repression. The Federation was
outlawed between 1874 and 1881, encouraging a turn from strikes
and other mass direct action to individual acts of "propaganda by
the deed." This, in turn, provided a pretext for further
repression against workers' movements. The anarcho-syndicalist
movement developed during this underground period, seeking a way
out of an increasingly tenuous illegal status while maintaining
their revolutionary values. Esenwein chronicles the debate
between collectivist and communist currents, and the eventual
triumph of 'anarquismo sin adjectivos,' an attempt to sidestep
the entire debate in favor of an all-inclusive movement.
Spanish syndicalism developed out of this tendency, quickly
coming to dominate the anarchist movement. It was only with the
emergence of the CNT, Esenwein argues, that anarchism developed a
mass following among the working-class. But in the latter quarter
of the 19th century, anarchists developed the ideas and
organizational forms that "enabled [them] to combine successfully
trade unionism with the general strike tactic... [making]
anarchism a formidable social and economic force in a rapidly
modernizing Spanish society" (p. 215).
Esenwein relies heavily on secondary sources and memoirs,
making relatively little use of movement newspapers and other
contemporary sources (perhaps not held at the Hoover Institute,
where he is employed). Nonetheless, his extensive endnotes are
often informative and correct much misinformation spread by less
careful historians of our movement (even if he is too quick to
accept Jos? S?nchez's weakly documented claims of anarchist
atrocities during the Spanish Revolution). While Esenwein is
clearly no anarchist, it is difficult to argue with Paul Avrich's
assessment (printed on the back cover) that this is "an
outstanding history of Spanish anarchism during its formative
decades in the late nineteenth century... the best treatment of
the subject in English."
Spain 1936-1939: Social Revolution--Counter Revolution, edited by
Vernon Richards. Freedom Press, 1990.
This volume, released as part of Freedom Press' centenary
series, brings together 75 short texts, most originally published
in the journal Spain and the World. The selections include first-
hand accounts of the revolution, reports on meetings and
demonstrations in favor of the Spanish workers' struggle, reports
of speeches by CNT and FAI figures justifying their compromises
in accepting government posts, testimonials by non-anarchists on
the constructive work carried out by our comrades in society and
on the battlefield, and two poems by Herbert Read.
This volume is not a history of the Revolution, rather it is
composed of reports from the front written in the heat of battle.
As such, they provide invaluable contemporary glimpses into
various facets of our Spanish comrades' struggle, though not
always the depth and detail we might prefer, especially in the
material on the collectives. (Fortunately, Freedom Press also
offers Gaston Leval's detailed Collectives in the Spanish
Revolution, Jose Peirats' Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, a
detailed report by A. Souchy and others on The May Days:
Barcelona 1937, and Vernon Richards' controversial Lessons of the
Spanish Revolution. Interested readers may also want to look at
Sam Dolgoff's collection, The Anarchist Collectives: Workers'
Self-Management in Spain, published by Black Rose Books, and
David Porter's moving anthology of writings by Emma Goldman,
Vision on Fire.) Very little of the material in this collection
comes from the Revolution's early months, for the simple reason
that Spain and the World did not begin publication until
November, 1936. So this is almost entirely a chronicle of a
revolution under attack, both by the fascists and by its allies--
the socialists, republicans and, above all, the communists.
Although readers unfamiliar with the Spanish Revolution
would do better to begin with one of the books mentioned above,
this is a useful supplementary volume. Particularly interesting
are the brief portraits of several anarchist militants, Italian
anarchist Camillo Berneri's views on the dangers posed by the
compromises the anarchists made with their Marxist "allies" (who
never honored them), and reports on Spain's ultimate collapse and
the appalling treatment of Spanish refugees at the hands of the
French Popular Front government.
In Spain our comrades demonstrated that anarchism not only
offers a powerful critique of authoritarianism, but more
importantly that it offers a strategy for reorganizing society
along libertarian lines. That they were ultimately defeated is no
disgrace--what was disgraceful was the treachery of the
"democratic" governments, marxists, and others of their ilk who
demonstrated that they preferred the triumph of fascism in Spain
to a workers' revolution.
Reviewed Briefly
Winning the Class War: an Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy by the
Direct Action Movement. DAM (Box 29, SW PDO, Manchester 15,
U.K.), 1991, 28 pp.
This pamphlet, published by the Direct Action Movement, the
British affiliate of the IWA, makes the case that the British
trade unions have generally hindered workers' efforts to defend
their living standards from the onslaught of the employers during
the Thatcher era. This is not because, as the various Marxist
sects argue, of the ineptitude of the trade union leadership, but
because the trade unions have been designed to be "an important
part of capitalism." Instead, the DAM advocates the organization
of "a new and altogether independent workers' movement...
revolutionary unionism" with "the aim of creating a free and
classless society, based on workers' control and the satisfaction
of human needs" (p. 4).
Winning the Class War signifies a departure for British
syndicalism. At the turn of the century, British syndicalists
(with the exception of a tiny British IWW section) generally
followed the practice of trying to revolutionize the Trades Union
Congress by "boring from within." The present generation,
however, argues that clearly the TUC has had its day, and that
the left-wing tradition of "rank-and-filism" (i.e., the old "bore
from within" strategy of trying to reform the trade unions)
proved to be a dismal failure during the 1980s. Parts of Winning
the Class War read almost as if they came from the IWW's One Big
Union pamphlet. For instance, on page 4, the DAM clearly argues
for the One Big Union concept: "The working class needs to take
stock of the new situation in which it finds itself, and needs to
organize itself as a class if it is to fight for its interests
against the bosses."
Faced with the problem of organizing a revolutionary union
movement from scratch, the DAM does not suggest building them
overnight, but building "industrial networks" as a first step.
The DAM makes an important distinction between industrial
networks and "rank-and-filism." Industrial networks "maintain
their independence and identity" from the trade unions by
encouraging "general workplace activity ie. workplace meetings,
strike committees, etc, outside of the sphere of influence of the
unions and other 'interested' bodies, like the political parties"
and have as their ultimate aim not trade union reform, but "to
create an anarcho-syndicalist union" (p. 19).
The most historically successful of all syndicalist
movements, the Spanish CNT, combined the best elements of
anarcho-syndicalism and the IWW's "revolutionary industrial
unionism." The British syndicalists have clearly begun to
recognize this fact, and are now seeking to apply the lesson to
their own conditions. This makes Winning the Class War a
worthwhile pamphlet to read for workers in any country. [JS]
Mapping Hegemony: Television News Coverage of Industrial Conflict
by Robert Goldman and Arvind Rajagopal. Ablex (355 Chestnut St.,
Norwood NJ 07648-2090), 1991, 258 pp.
Goldman and Rajagopal examine the ways in which television
newscasters shape public understandings by scrutinizing CBS News
coverage of the 1977-78 coal miners' strike. The analysis is
presented in terms of an ongoing sociological debates around
ideology and hegemony (which attempts to explain how particular
ideas, such as the notion that workers are a special interest,
come to be widely accepted as common sense), which makes for some
rather difficult slogging in the early chapters. As the authors
note, the media rarely report on labor issues except in the
context of strikes and violence. The media show little interest
in working conditions, health and safety, or routine labor
struggles.
The authors have looked at every report aired on the strike
on CBS News to examine how CBS portrayed mine workers, the union,
the government and the bosses. To illustrate how these portrayals
represent choices--rather than some objective picture of events--
they also examine coverage in local and other newspapers. The
strike stemmed from efforts by miners to gain control over their
union, gain relief for black lung victims, defend their embattled
health care system, and reverse a long-term decline in union
power. In the 1970s, miners increasingly resorted to wildcat
strikes over health and safety and other issues (the courts, of
course, regularly issued back-to-work injunctions even though the
miners had never signed a no-strike agreement). The operators,
meanwhile, demanded the right to fire strikers, to slash health
benefits, etc. After miners rejected a sell-out contract,
Democratic president Jimmy Carter issued a Taft-Hartley
injunction to force them back to work. But fewer than 100 of
160,000 strikers obeyed the order.
CBS aired several pictures of angry miners throughout the
dispute, but rarely reported why miners were upset or what they
wanted. The network did give as much air time to miners and the
UMW as to the coal operators association and the government, but
this was because the operators preferred to keep a low profile
and so generally refused comment. (Indeed, the bosses were
virtually invisible on CBS--workers went on strike, workers
defied the government, workers threatened the nation's energy
supply, etc.) And miners were rarely allowed more than a few
seconds to make their case, were shown in tight close-ups in off-
the-cuff settings. Rank-and-file miners appeared in interviews
averaging just 9 seconds, while UMW, industry and government
officials averaged 15-20 seconds per interview. It is, of course,
easier to express coherent, compelling arguments in 20 seconds
(and Carter once got more than 2 minutes) than in "interviews"
ranging from 2 to 16 seconds long.
"Though ostensibly impartial on the surface, the terms of
presenting the issues have been stacked to privilege the
interests of capital.... The neutrality the news media seek
consists not in a bias toward any particular fraction of capital,
but in depending on, accepting and promoting the interests of
capital in general" (177). Although CBS did several human
interest stories on the miners themselves that may have increased
public sympathy, it never allowed them to speak about the
underlying issues. Network coverage created "balance" by
portraying strikers in a battle not against the bosses, but
against the public (and against their union). Government
intervention against the miners, then, is shown as necessary and
inevitable. While miners were shown, their story was not told--
and indeed cannot be told within the constraints of journalists'
ideas as to what constitutes news, whose ideas are newsworthy,
and how information should be presented.
Not all viewers necessarily make the same interpretations of
the reports they see, of course. But Goldman and Rajagopal argue
that while it is theoretically possible to read these reports in
any number of ways (such as, for example, as evidence of anti-
labor media bias), certain meanings are preferred, and more
readily available to audiences. I suspect that had Goldman and
Rajagopal looked at a more recent dispute, they would have found
much more one-sided coverage (and also much less coverage--labor
has practically disappeared from the news, and even presidential
candidates today are rarely given more than a few seconds to
spread their lies). But they have done a thorough job of
demonstrating just how the patterns of media coverage (which
pervade all news) serve to refocus, distort and mislead--even as
journalists proclaim and believe that they are objective and
unbiased. [JB]
Not Beyond Repair : Reflections of a Malaysian Trade Unionist by
Arokia Dass. Asia Monitor Resource Center (444-446 Nathan Road,
8-B Kowloon, Hong Kong), 1991. 177 pp., $14.50.
Arokia Dass, a former rank-and-file insurgent and presently
an official of the Malaysian autoworkers' union, gives a history
of the Malaysian labor movement. Dass is critical of the labor
unions in his country for being bureaucratic and dominated by the
state and the employers. He also accuses the ICFTU, the AIFLD,
and the Japanese unions, with being pro-employer and undermining
militant unions in other countries. The author suggests that the
solutions to the problems of Malaysian labor are more shop-floor
union democracy, direct worker-to-worker contacts between
countries, and a labor party.
Although Dass is clearly a marxist, he suggests that marxism
is as much in need of repair as trade unionism. He demonstrates
that marxist analysis does not fully explain the labor situation
in Asia, where capitalism and the state can at times have
conflicting agendas, and strongly rooted cultural traditions
provide an added political dimension. Unfortunately, this does
not prevent him from aligning himself with the communist-
dominated WFTU, which he claims is an international center "free
from political ideology," nor from apologizing for the failures
of central economic planning in eastern europe.
In spite of the author's ideological blinders, there is some
interesting information in this book. The role of labor
regulation and selective repression of radical unionists in
creating a docile labor movement is explained very well. Dass
also shows how workers have been betrayed on numerous occasions
by nationalist politicians, who are unwilling or incapable of
providing effective resistance to multinational corporations.
[JS]
From The Ground Up: Essays on Grassroots & Workplace Democracy,
by C. George Benello. Edited by Len Krimmerman, Frank Lindenfeld,
Carol Korty and Julian Benello. South End Press (116 St. Botolph
St., Boston MA 02115) $12.00.
George Benello was an anarchist of sorts, active in the New
Left and then the workplace-democracy, peace and green movements.
He was part of an American decentralist movement that included
Paul Goodman, Lewis Mumford, Ralph Bosordi and others often
mistakenly labelled as anarchists (though there certainly are
similarities and borrowings to and from). Towards the end of his
life, Benello wrote a series of essays in the "Libertarian
Municipalist" tradition which are the book's weakest, and which
he never published during his lifetime--perhaps because he
recognized their many contradictions.
In these essays, Benello criticizes the "wasteland culture"
and attempts to articulate a strategy for confronting a system
that "works all too well [writing in 1967], and in the process
grinds up human beings" (p. 20). Although it is easier and more
efficient, in the short run, to organize hierarchically, Benello
argued, such social arrangements are undemocratic, deny people
the ability to realize their potential, and ensure that basic
social needs will go unmet since elites need not take them into
consideration. Many of the early essays in this collection
address aspects of participatory democracy and federalism, and
how these might be realized in practice:
A movement striving to bring to life viable and
effective models of humanized work, capable of creating
useful and consumer-oriented products while utilizing a
high level of technology, would strike at the heart of
the corporate system... It could appeal to the new
consumer and ecological consciousness... to the growing
group of unemployed or those employed in positions
below their skill and education level. ... A movement
creating not only jobs ut also self-determination and
freedom in work, committed to producing goods with
integrity and usefulness, would not only appeal to
basic material needs, but would also provide a live
basis from which a critique of both the dehumanization
of work and the falseness of current consumer values
could be made... (p. 85)
Benello pursued this objective, for the most part, through
efforts to create self-managed enterprises which he saw as a
means both of meeting real needs and of demonstrating the
viability of democracy in actual practice--an issue which is
addressed in several of the essays reprinted here. Those essays
discuss self-management as both an objective to be struggled for
and a means of struggle whereby workers can educate themselves in
the skills necessary for a democratic economy while carving out a
space relatively autonomous from capitalist relations. Benello
considers the role that unions might play in such worker-
controlled enterprises, offers his take on the Mondragon network
and the lessons it can offer North American workers, and provides
useful (if brief) reflections on his involvement in the
Federation for Economic Democracy and the Industrial Cooperative
Association. These essays are among the collection's strongest.
Unfortunately, the editors proceed to include essays on the
"decentralist" potential Benello saw in nuclear free zones and
efforts to develop local tax and economic policies reminiscent of
Bookchin's libertarian municipalism. To his credit, Benello did
not publish these no-doubt exploratory writings. The book
concludes with commentaries on Benello's thought, some of which
implicitly or explicitly defend centralism and hierarchy, or
argue for working "within the system." The editors conclude with
an essay reasserting the importance of Benello's thought in terms
far less cogent than those advanced by Benello himself. [JB]
Freedom to Go: After the Motor Age by Colin Ward. Freedom Press
(Angel Alley , 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX), 1991.
112 pp., 3.50 pounds.
Colin Ward points out that our dependence on the private
automobile makes the freedom to travel an illusion. People do not
choose to travel by car from a variety of alternatives, since
those alternatives are rarely there. Government transportation
planners and corporate investors have foisted the automobile upon
us. More energy efficient, less dangerous, and less
environmentally damaging forms of transport, like rail or boat,
have been starved for investment, while billions are spent on
highways.
Ward stops short of suggesting that only by doing away with
a profit-oriented transportation system can we go beyond the
automobile age. Rather he ends by offering some reforms which
"people of any political complexion can agree with." These
include a moratorium on new road construction, greater railway
investment, low-cost or free mass transit, traffic limits in
towns, and minibus cooperatives for rural areas. Freedom to Go is
a well-written primer for anyone interested in transportation
alternatives. [JS]
Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, edited by
Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein. Sierra Club Books (730
Polk St., San Francisco CA 94109) $14.95.
This curious anthology brings together 26 essays that,
despite the all-embracing title, are drawn from a very
particular, spiritualist, current within ecofeminism. As a
result, most of the book reads more like a theological than a
political text. In this context, reformists like Charlene
Spretnak and mystics like Starhawk are among a very few authors
who seek to come to grips with the actual, material conditions
that are destroying our planet and our humanity.
Spretnak raises the question of power, arguing for the
importance of improving health and economic conditions and
involving "women at the regional level... with the planning of
population-control programs, health care, education, and non-
exploitative small-scale economic opportunities" (p. 12). This
may not seem, and is not, particularly far-reaching. But it is a
refreshing contrast to such nonsense as: "in ancient times the
world itself was one. The beating of drums was the heartbeat of
the earth.... everything was done in a sacred manner..." (p. 33)
Starhawk's essay, "Power, Authority and Mystery" argues for
an "earth-based spirituality" grounded in the interconnectedness
of the earth. She analyzes the Livermore Action Group's campaign
against the U.S. weapons lab; discusses the need to address
questions of sex, class and race; and argues that we must reject
apocalyptic rhetoric in favor of approaches that allow for hope,
for human agency, for organizing. Her analytic metaphor is
grounded in the economy, which, she argues, "reflects our system
of values, in which profit replaces inherent value as the
ultimate measure of all things." If the "anarcho-pagans" invading
our movement in recent years thought as sensibly it might be
possible to work with them.
Other worthwhile essays include those by Ynestra King and
Vandana Shiva ("Development as a New Project of Western
Patriarchy"). But while the book may prove useful for those
trying to get a handle on the gibberish spouted by many new-age
"ecologists" and "anarchists," those seriously interested in
reweaving the world would do better to look elsewhere. [JB]
Work, Politics and Power: An International Perspective on
Workers' Control and Self-Management, by Assef Bayat. Monthly
Review Press (122 W. 27th St., New York NY 10001), 1991, $18
(paper).
Too often, the literature on self-management assumes that
only in advanced capitalist societies can workers aspire to
exercise control of the production process. Bayat argues that
experiments with democracy in the workplace are a central part of
workers' asserting their humanity and transcending meaningless
work, and that such democratization is possible even in Third
World settings. In this, he is surely correct. However, Bayat's
argument is undermined by a fairly doctrinaire Marxist approach
and by his often superficial descriptions (drawn almost entirely
from previous studies, the details of which he only rarely
provides) of the experiments in "workers' control" that he
discusses and compares.
Bayat does recognize the importance of power relations in
industry, noting that a mere transfer of ownership is not
sufficient to overcome the powerlessness intrinsic in existing
work methods, technologies, and separation of technical expertise
from the shop floor. Ultimately, this requires a transition from
private to social ownership, Bayat argues, although workers can
gain some control even in the context of capitalist societies.
His definition of workers' control is wide-ranging, from
defensive struggles to maintain conditions to efforts to seize
direction of the enterprise. It includes both rank-and-file
efforts and strategies where employers or the State grant limited
"control" or participation rights in order to defuse broader
demands. The bulk of the case studies Bayat considers fall in the
latter category.
Bayat divides his many case studies into three categories:
conditions of dual power (Russia, Algeria, Chile, Portugal and
Iran), socialist states (China, Cuba, Mozambique and Nicaragua),
and populist regimes (Egypt, Tanzania, Peru and Turkey). For
those less wedded to Marxist doctrine, the distinction between
the latter categories ("populism here denotes the nationalistic
ideology and development strategy of a regime which relies on the
support of the popular classes [workers, peasants and 'the poor']
as its social base, while it pursues a capitalistic economic
policy within the framework of an authoritarian state" p. 130)
will be unclear at best. Thus we see the unlikely prospect of a
discussion of "workers' control" in Cuba during the very period
that the government was ruthlessly suppressing all independent
working-class organizations, or of "workers' control" in
Nicaragua at a time when co-operatives and unions were subject to
government registration and approval, and were prohibited from
criticizing the government or demanding better pay and working
conditions.
Bayat brings together a great deal of information on
participation schemes in several countries, but these are often
more akin to quality-of-worklife programs introduced by union-
busting employers in the U.S. than to genuine self-management.
Nonetheless, he demonstrates the very real desire by our "Third
World" fellow workers in countries throughout the entire world to
control their workplaces and their worklives. This surely gives
us reason to hope, and indicates that the bosses' current global
offensive may well ultimately meet with defeat. [JB]
Strip the Experts by Brian Martin. Freedom Press (in Angel Alley,
84b Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX), 1991. 69 pp., 1.95
pounds.
This is a humorous how-to manual for anyone engaged in a
propaganda campaign where the other side has all the "hired guns"
(ie. academics, well-known professionals, etc.) to convince the
public they have a monopoly on the truth. Martin shows how to go
about discrediting the "experts," although sometimes his value-
free approach can be disturbing. For example, Martin's main
reason for arguing against character assassination seems to be
that such tactics might "backfire," not that they should be
avoided on principle. [JS]
CORRECTION
Our review of The Anarchist Press in LLR #12 stated that
Love & Rage had "eliminated much of the nationalist cheerleading
that marred its early issues.... [and] is no longer an
embarrassment to our movement." After those words were written,
but before we went to press, they published an untrue account of
the IWW's 1991 assembly including groundless accusations against
a member of our collective (refusing to publish his response).
More recently, they published a lengthy article celebrating Black
nationalism. Thus, it appears that our relief may have been
premature.