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Title: Heretical Thoughts Author: Ron Tabor Date: December 15, 2014 Language: en Topics: The Utopian, anarchism, anarchist movement, anarchist Source: Retrieved on 7th August 2021 from http://utopianmag.com/archives/tag-The%20Utopian%20Vol.%2013%20-%202014/heretical-thoughts-why-i-am-anarchist Notes: Published in The Utopian Vol. 13.
During the decades that I have been involved in left-wing politics, I
have written many things, in different formats and in various venues.
Much of this material has been “negative,” specifically, critical
discussions of political/economic events along with more fleshed-out
analyses of such ideologies as Trotskyism, Stalinism, Leninism, and
Marxism. In part because of this, a while ago I decided that I needed to
write something of a more “positive” nature, specifically, an article
explaining why, and in what sense, I consider myself to be an anarchist.
This decision was also motivated by the fact that in recent years, a
number of friends, comrades, and readers (and former friends, comrades,
and readers) have indicated confusion about or opposition to my adoption
of an anarchist standpoint, since I had been a Marxist for much of my
life. In fact, I thought I had dealt with this question (explaining why
I became an anarchist) in a series of articles in the Utopian that
presented a critique of Marxism (published in book form by Black Cat
Press as The Tyranny of Theory, A Contribution to the Anarchist Critique
of Marxism). As I wrote these pieces, I assumed that once I had shown
why I believe Marxism to be totalitarian, readers would recognize that I
had retained my revolutionary aims but would also understand why I now
consider anarchism to be a more appropriate framework within which to
pursue them. This turned out to be a mistake. Some of these people took
my critique (along with their own experiences and thought processes) as
a motivation to move to the right, to become reform-minded socialists or
even simply pro-capitalist liberals. Others remained more radical but
were left at sea, since they knew little about anarchism and were unable
to come to a clear understanding of what anarchism is and why I would
embrace it. (This may have been in part because, unlike Marxism,
anarchism does not constitute or present itself as a fully logical,
unified ideology.) Thus, a former supporter of the Revolutionary
Socialist League and subscriber to the Utopian admitted that he “had not
made the transition to anarchism.” Others seemed bothered primarily on
the aesthetic level. One longtime reader of the Utopian sent me an email
that consisted of little more than a tirade against my embrace of the
term “anarchism” (since it is commonly associated with chaos and
rampaging motorcycle gangs) and my use of the word “comrade” (since it
reminded him of Hollywood Grade B movies from the 1950s).
I therefore determined that I ought to present a more positive, and more
thorough, explanation of my anarchist views. But that is easier said
than done. This is because, at least at the moment, I do not feel very
optimistic about either the prospects for an anarchist transformation of
society or the current state of the anarchist movement.
To be sure, there are a few things about the global situation and the
anarchist milieu that I do find at least somewhat gratifying. In the
interests of avoiding too much stress on the negative (which will come
later), it is worth mentioning them:
of the Great Recession. While some leftists thought and still think that
such an event would have been a good thing, believing that it would have
sparked a revolution, this was/is certainly not my position, since there
was no guarantee that a world-wide economic disaster would have brought
about a revolution but a very high probability that it would have led to
a great deal of misery. To confess to what some may view as treason to
the revolutionary cause, I am therefore grateful that the international
ruling class and its economic advisers had learned enough from the
Depression of the 1930s to avoid the policy mistakes that exacerbated
that crisis and that they moved quickly to bail out the banks and take
other steps to shore up the system. (Of course, it would have been nice
if instead of just rescuing the financial institutions [and the auto
companies], they also put some cash into the hands of the ordinary
victims of the housing crash and punished some of the top bank
executives, but it was probably unreasonable to expect this.)
Ukraine, and elsewhere. While these insurrections have not ultimately
gone beyond demands for bourgeois democratic governments (and did not
always achieve even that), they have helped to keep the idea of popular
revolution, at least in its broadest sense, alive.
successes in the long battle for full rights for and acceptance of
Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender people have been nothing short of
astounding. This represents a substantial broadening of the social space
for all of us who do not fit comfortably into traditional patriarchal
structures and roles, and even for those who do. It also represents a
substantial defeat for the right-wing movement, which in some other
respects has seemed to be on the offensive.
of undocumented immigrants (and the resultant tearing apart of families)
and explicitly targeting the Obama administration, suggests the
existence of significant disaffection with the Democratic Party among
its supporters.
over the radical milieu in the United States and internationally and the
development of a substantial anarchist movement over the last decades
may portend the emergence of a socially significant, competent, and
truly anti-authoritarian left.
elite have begun to recognize that global warming is having a negative
effect on the profitability of the capitalist system (largely by raising
the costs of natural resources and of production through flooding,
droughts, and other “natural” disasters). These include Henry Paulson,
former head of Goldman Sachs and the Secretary of the Treasury under the
Bush administration, who recently launched and now leads a charitable
foundation that is attempting to address the problem of air pollution in
China; the chief executives of such corporations as Pepsico; and a
retired hedge fund manager, Tom Steyer, who has set up a super-PAC
designed to help elect politicians, regardless of party, who are
committed to doing something about climate change and to help defeat
those who are not. Most recently (and somewhat ironically), the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, controlled by the heirs of oil magnate John
D. Rockefeller, announced that it would be divesting itself of all its
investments in fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, these positives are far outweighed by what I see as
negatives:
among the population at large and in at least a section of the
capitalist class, very little of substance is being done to deal with it
and with the widespread environmental degradation it is causing. While I
believe that a long-term, systemic transformation of energy production
(from fossil fuels to renewables) is currently underway, it is moving
far too slowly to be able to avoid large-scale ecological damage:
growing pollution of the land, the atmosphere, and the oceans; melting
polar icecaps, the dying-off of coral reefs, rising sea levels, and
increasing coastal flooding; destruction of Arctic tundra; an escalation
in the frequency and intensity of destructive weather conditions, such
as tropical storms, blizzards, droughts, flooding, and tornadoes; and
the escalating extinction of the planet’s plant and animal species. Very
few people in the United States and internationally have become alarmed
enough to want to do something substantial about the problem, especially
if this involves a significant level of sacrifice. As a result, I expect
that the world will experience severe — and for a period of time,
mounting — environmental disasters involving the deaths, illnesses,
injuries, and suffering of millions of people (and plants and other
animals).
for the foreseeable future, resulting in the continuing erosion of
popular living standards and increasing economic inequality within these
societies.
East) are likely to proliferate, as human beings, divided into competing
nation states, ideologies, and religions, fight over natural resources,
land, food, and water, and to augment their economic and political power
at each other’s expense.
anarchist movement remains small, ineffective, and socially marginal. As
I will discuss in more detail later, in my view, a successful
international anarchist revolution would require that the vast majority
of the world’s people, particularly among the lower and middle classes,
come to understand, embrace, and be willing to fight for a libertarian,
anti-authoritarian — democratic, egalitarian, and cooperative — vision.
I see no signs that a significant portion of humanity is ready to adopt,
let alone work for, such a revolutionary libertarian outlook.
in the fact that in the revolutions that have occurred in the past few
years, significant anti-authoritarian currents — that is, libertarian
forces powerful enough to have a palpable impact on developments — have
not emerged. As a result, insurgent movements have largely remained
confined within a pro-capitalist framework and, conversely, have lacked
a socially transcendent vision. To put this another way, virtually all
of the popular forces involved in these struggles accept
“globalization”; their differences are over the precise terms under
which they wish to be integrated into international capitalism. For
example, in the recent and on-going struggles in North Africa and the
Middle East, the opposition forces are largely divided between two
pro-capitalist tendencies: one, based mostly in urban middle-class,
university-educated layers, intent on establishing bourgeois democratic
(and pro-Western) governments (and willing to support military
dictatorships as a means to do this) and adopting the cultural
accoutrements of Western societies; the other, centered more in
lower-class urban and rural sectors, focused on setting up Islamic (but
still pro-capitalist) regimes and maintaining at least some traditional,
particularly patriarchal, social structures. A partial exception may be
occurring in Syria, where, according to accounts, some of the population
has managed to utilize the civil war to build democratic local
structures to tend to their daily needs and to organize resistance to
both the Assad regime and to the various right-wing Islamist militias
contending to for power. Also, in the north of the country, among the
Kurds, the PKK (the Kurdish Workers Party) has reportedly jettisoned its
Stalinist program and embraced decentralized, even libertarian,
conceptions, which it is attempting to implement while battling the
retrograde Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
weaknesses. These include that fact that, as is the case with the
international anarchist milieu but even more so, it is small and
isolated. Beyond this, the movement suffers from serious theoretical
shortcomings, which I believe are preventing it from having an impact on
broader sectors of the population. It is to these that I now turn.
Throughout its history and continuing today, the anarchist movement has
suffered from a variety of theoretical weaknesses. Here I would like to
discuss two.
The first is what I see as a kind of pollyanna-ism, that is, a facile,
shallowly optimistic outlook. This attitude has been apparent from the
beginning of the anarchist current and is embodied in some of its most
fundamental beliefs. For example, virtually all the seminal thinkers of
the movement held to what I see as a rosy, one-sided conception of human
nature, and following from this, a simplistic notion of what would be
necessary to establish anarchist societies. To be more specific, the
“fathers of anarchist thought” — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail
Bakunin, and Pyotr Kropotkin — seem to have believed that humanity is
inherently anarchistic, and that all that’s really necessary to create a
global anarchist society is to liberate people from their enslavement by
the state (and the oppressive social and economic systems and
ideological apparatuses the state sustains). Once this is done, the vast
majority of people will naturally and spontaneously organize their lives
according to anarchist principles, while the altered social conditions
will relatively quickly and easily re-educate the few antisocial
individuals who might resist. (If I am simplifying, it is only
slightly.)
This argument has been repeated, in different forms at different times,
throughout the history of anarchism, so that today, many anarchists base
their belief in the viability of anarchism simply on the claim that
“people naturally cooperate.” It is, of course, true that people
cooperate, but it is also the case that people compete, that is, engage
in hierarchical, aggressive, and domineering behavior, and that
cooperation often — in my view, even usually — occurs in hierarchical
settings. A very rough analogy would be wolf packs and comparable
groupings of other social animals, including our closest biological
relatives, the chimpanzees. In these social formations, the animals
cooperate, but they do so within hierarchical structures and competing
groups. While we do know that, prior to the emergence of class
societies, human beings lived in cooperative, relatively
non-hierarchical societies (so-called “primitive communism”), it is easy
to forget that these associations were centered around small numbers of
people usually genetically related to each other, while a distinctly
non-cooperative relation -competition for scarce resources often
erupting in war — existed between these distinct kinship-based groups.
In some sense, then, cooperation tends to occur within an antagonistic
(and at least potentially hierarchical) framework: an “in group” (“us”)
cooperates to defend itself against an “out group” (“them”). The crucial
question is: Is humanity capable of establishing and sustaining a truly
global, species-wide, non-competitive, non-hierarchical society, that
is, one not based on an “us vs. them” attitude. I don’t think this
question can easily and confidently be answered in the affirmative, and
I think it is incumbent upon the anarchist movement to give more thought
to, and to provide more explanation of, how an international anarchist
society could be established.
The belief that human beings (or at least most of them) are inherently
anarchistic implies the questionable notion that all that is needed to
create an anarchist world is to wake them up, to show them that the
state can be destroyed and freedom achieved if only enough people merely
realize that they are oppressed — bamboozled by patriotism, religion,
bourgeois propaganda, pro-capitalist education, and the mentally dulling
routine of daily life — and that it is in their power to create truly
free societies if only they would. And over the years, this has led to
the very troublesome attraction on the part of some sectors of the
movement to “propaganda of the deed” — detonating bombs, robbing banks,
and launching armed insurrections independent of mass movements — in
attempts to arouse the benighted masses. To be sure, such tactics have
been utilized by only a minority of anarchists, but they have done
incomparable harm to the cause. Rather than liberating people from their
thralldom to the state, such methods (aside from killing and wounding
innocent victims) usually wind up throwing people into the hands of that
entity, as they look to the authorities to protect them from what
appears to them to be random and senseless violence. These types of
actions have also helped to smear the entire movement with an image it
does not deserve, one that is reinforced by popular stereotypes. That
this type of thinking remains significant in the anarchist milieu can be
seen in the fact that one of its largest sectors today consists of the
Insurrectionalists, who continue to implement such stupid,
self-defeating tactics.
This naive outlook is also apparent in recent theoretical work. In his
readable, erudite book on the history of the anarchist movement,
Demanding the Impossible, Peter Marshall describes all sorts of
political and philosophical figures either as anarchists or as being
very close to anarchism who by other judgments might be seen to be not
very anarchistic at all. Two examples are Friedrich Nietzsche and
Jean-Paul Sartre.
While Nietzsche does not deserve his reputation as a precursor of Nazism
which is so popular on the left (among other things, he was not a
nationalist; he also abhorred mass movements, feared the state, hated
Germans [although he was one], and admired Jews), and while anarchists
might learn a lot from reading him (something Emma Goldman recognized),
he was not, in fact, close to being an anarchist. He might best be
described as an “individualistic aristocratic conservative.” Not least,
he detested all forms of socialism, which he viewed (as he saw
Christianity) as an expression of the “ressentiment” (envy) of the
masses. And where he had any concern for lower class people at all, he
despised them and saw them as, at best, providing the biological basis
for the emergence of superior human beings, a tiny, essentially
artistic, elite that is capable of living in a cosmos without meaning.
Also, contra Marshall, Jean-Paul Sartre was far from anarchism. As with
Nietzsche, there are things anarchists might cull from his philosophy,
but beyond his version of existentialism, and what some believe to be in
total contradiction to it, he was an unabashed defender of, and an
influential apologist for, Stalinism (the Soviet Union under Stalin,
including forced collectivization and the purges, the “socialist” side
of the Cold War), which he saw as being the embodiment of History. This
is readily apparent in his later work, Critique of Dialectical
Reasoning, which argues that bureaucratization is the inevitable outcome
of all revolutions, that it is necessary to the historic process, and
that it is therefore progressive. Ergo, Stalinism, despite its obvious
flaws and horrendous crimes, represents progress and should be
supported.
There are many similar examples throughout Marshall’s book (which is
definitely worth reading, albeit with a critical eye). They reflect, as
I see it, the comforting but superficial view that, underneath
everything, all, or almost all, human beings are anarchists at heart.
I certainly wish this were the case, but I don’t think it is. If it
were, it is hard to believe that we wouldn’t have already established a
world-wide anarchist society or at least that we wouldn’t be witnessing,
if not participating in, anarchist revolutions throughout the world.
Obviously, this is not what’s happening. People’s behaviors and motives
are far more complex than they are often portrayed in anarchist thought,
and in many ways, human nature is supportive, and even constitutive, of
contemporary society. Human beings are not just cooperative and loving,
they are also selfish, uncaring, dishonest, competitive, manipulative,
domineering, aggressive, and (in the case of too many individuals)
downright evil. (To put it crudely, along with indifferent individuals,
there are too many assholes in the world, which asshole-ness is not
going to go away just because social conditions have changed.) Although
I will almost certainly be attacked for saying this, I believe that
contemporary global capitalist society represents human nature as it has
evolved so far.
To be sure, capitalism does not simply take human nature as it is given.
As we know from our own experiences and from looking at the various
forms of society under which people have lived, human nature is rather
malleable, encompassing a fairly broad spectrum of personality types and
behaviors. Capitalism strongly encourages and rewards (“selects for”, to
put it in Darwinian terms) certain types of people and behavior and
punishes others. At the extremes, saints are not usually “successful” in
our society (in the sense of accumulating wealth and power), while the
higher one goes in contemporary capitalism (and other types of class
systems), the more psychopaths (people without or with only
poorly-developed consciences) are generally found.
So to say that capitalism represents human nature as it has evolved to
this point is not to say that I believe human beings cannot change or
that a truly free society cannot be established. It is only to say that
it will require a lot more work, and a lot more change, than many
anarchists now recognize or are willing to admit. I believe (or would
like to believe) that an international anarchist society is possible, in
other words, that it is within the potential of human beings to create
it. But I also think that people will have to be convinced to want it,
to organize and fight for it, and to change their thinking and behavior
to make it possible. It is not simply a matter of waking them up,
organizing them to fight their oppressors, call a general strike, and
carry out an insurrection.
The pollyanna-ism I have been discussing is also apparent in the broader
anarchist movement in the form of an intellectual superficiality and
laziness. There are far too many anarchist activists who have read
little and know little. There are too many who have been involved in the
movement for years (even decades) who have not read much about
anarchism; too many who, if they read at all (and some even boast that
they don’t), simply surf the internet, scanning articles or parts of
articles, and speak and write as if they know something; too many people
who pick up and throw around a few leftist cliches, such as “ruling
class”, “capitalism”, “imperialism”, “racism”, “patriarchy”, and
“fascism”, but who have done no serious study of these issues and know
little about what they actually mean; too many who claim to be concerned
about the environment but who cannot competently argue the case for
human-induced global warming; too many who present themselves as
militant opponents of “creationism” but who cannot give a coherent
account of the modern (neo-Darwinian) theory of evolution.
(Of course, the anarchist movement is not alone in its ignorance. It’s a
problem with our entire society. Thus, President Barack Obama was unable
to spell “respect” correctly when, earlier this year, he honored Aretha
Franklin for her recording of the song with that title. [Nor did he
remember, if he ever knew, that the tune was written and first recorded
by Otis Redding, who was certainly not a nobody in the R and B scene of
the 1960s.] Likewise, several years ago when the California high school
exit exam was introduced, the members of the Los Angeles Board of
Education, working with pencil and paper and taking a lot of time,
struggled with some very easy algebra problems that a competent ninth
grade math student could solve in his/her head in a couple of minutes.
And there are huge numbers of supposedly educated people who cannot
answer even simple scientific questions, such as what causes the
seasons.
Why should the broader population take the anarchist movement seriously
if large numbers of its members cannot coherently explain what anarchism
is or defend anarchist positions on current issues? The ruling class —
its entire spectrum, liberal, moderate, and conservative — has an army
of theoreticians and spokespersons, well-educated, well-trained, and
very well paid, at its disposal. How can we hope to contend with them if
we cannot competently answer their arguments and put forward our own?
Similarly, if, as I have long believed (or hoped), there will at some
point be an upsurge in popular struggles, and if, as I have also
expected, this will lead to a significant resurgence of Marxism and
Marxist organizations, the anarchist movement will have to deal with
them. At the present time, the country’s colleges and universities are
rife with Marxism (which says something about Marxism, and about
academia). If there is an upwelling of mass struggle and many of today’s
students and professors join in, the Marxist movement will have immense
numbers of capable, articulate spokespersons at its disposal. Beyond
this, given Marxism’s dogmatic, scholastic nature, it will be relatively
easy for Marxist organizations to train their rank and file cadres in at
least the rudiments of their politics. Will anarchist activists be able
to hold their ground against them? I’m not so sure. Today, many
anarchists know very little about Marxism. Even worse, many anarchists
are sympathetic to it and often parrot Marxist positions on various
issues. Others, instead of working to arm the anarchist movement against
Marxism, try to convince anarchists that they have a lot to learn from
it. For their part, the vast majority of Marxists are not so ecumenical.
They have no comparable illusions about anarchism, which they see as a
highly noxious — “petit-bourgeois” and “objectively
counterrevolutionary” — tendency. In short, as the anarchist movement
currently stands, I am not confident that it will be able to defend
itself against political currents and organizations that are deeply
hostile to it.
This intellectual dilettantism reflects and is expressed in a tendency
to be obsessively concerned with local organizing. Much of this work is
impressive and worthy. But it is occurring, at least to some extent, at
the expense of engaging in regular, well-informed, and serious
discussions of current political issues, the development of anarchist
theory, and the political education of anarchist activists. While in the
short run, such practical work may be gratifying, good intentions,
organizing talent, and energy will not, by themselves, add up to an
anarchist revolution or even to a healthy, capable, and growing
anarchist movement.
Given all this, why do I consider myself to be an anarchist? There are
several questions involved, so let me try to explain myself as best I
can.
First, there is the issue of terminology: Why do I use the term
“anarchist” to describe my political orientation, rather than
“socialist,” “communist,” “anarcho-syndicalist,” or something else?
Given that US society is so conservative, that the country lacks a
tradition of mass radical movements, and that, as a result, most people
in the United States are ignorant of the meaning of the terms
revolutionaries use to describe themselves, almost any word we use is
going to lead to misunderstandings. The goal in choosing a label, it
seems to me, is to try to lessen this confusion as much as we can. For
example, many anarchists call themselves “communists” or
“anarcho-communists.” But to me, the word “communism” is too closely
identified with the “Communism” of the former Soviet Union, China, et.
al., with their appurtenances of bureaucracy, secret police, prisons,
labor camps, purge trials, and mass murder (forced collectivization in
the Soviet Union, the “Great Leap Forward” in China, the “killing
fields” in Cambodia), to be of any use. Personally, I’d like to make it
as clear as possible that those kinds of regimes and those types of
policies are not what I am advocating. Perhaps “socialism” would be
better. Certainly, its connotations are more benign than those of
“communism.” Yet, to most Americans today, “socialism” means the vast
expansion of the state, having the government take over and run large
sections of the economy and society as a whole. This, too, is not what I
am proposing. (A propos, many people believe that Barack Obama is a
socialist, while those who are somewhat more sophisticated consider the
systems in Scandinavia, with their large welfare apparatuses, to be
socialist. While many might see such set-ups as preferable to what we
have in the U.S., I’d rather not risk being identified with such
state-heavy [and still] capitalist societies.) Going further, my main
problem with “anarcho-syndicalism” is that it is too specific, narrowly
prescribing that the economic system we wish to establish will by
managed through industrial-style labor unions. While that is certainly
one option, I don’t wish to be identified with such a precise blueprint
and would instead leave it up to those involved to determine the form of
society they wish to establish. So, I am left with the term “anarchist”,
even though its commonly understood meaning is disorder, destruction,
and (yes) gallivanting biker clubs (“The Sons of Anarchy”). It seems
easier to me to explain to more sedate citizens what I mean by
“anarchism” than to try to assure them that I do not advocate the
drastic augmentation of the power and reach of state, while many of the
more alienated members of our society are a least somewhat more likely
to relate positively to the word. As one young acquaintance of mine
responded when I first told him that I was an anarchist, “Anarchists are
cool, man!”
More substantial than this is why I now identify with the anarchist
current of the historical socialist movement rather than with the
Marxist. As I have written at length, I see Marxism as an inherently
statist, totalitarian creed whose practical outcomes reflect the logic
of its underlying assumptions and conceptions. After having tried for
many years to elaborate and promote a democratic, libertarian form of
Marxism, I now believe that the idea of a “libertarian Marxism” is a
contradiction in terms. Because of Marxism’s commitment to
centralization, because its key strategic goal is the seizure of state
power and the establishment of a revolutionary dictatorship, and because
it is based on a philosophy that purports to explain all of reality,
natural and social, within one logical construct and that simultaneously
sees itself as opposed to all other philosophies, I believe that
Marxist-led revolutions, if they succeed, will result not in classless,
stateless societies, but in new variants of totalitarian, or at least
authoritarian, systems. In contrast, I view the anarchist tradition in a
much more positive light.
To be sure, the anarchist movement has its share of deficits. Beyond the
weaknesses I discussed above, many of its foundational figures were
seriously flawed. Proudhon was an unabashed male supremacist, a French
patriot, and an anti-Semite. Bakunin believed in, and tried to organize,
secret, hierarchical, and conspiratorial organizations to try to carry
out the anarchist program. (In one such effort, he wound up
collaborating with a truly nefarious individual, Sergei Nechaev, who
held to the most extreme of cynical of moralities, and consistent with
this, carried out, and justified, the murder of at least one innocent
person.) On a personal level, I find Kropotkin to be the most
sympathetic of the seminal figures of the modern anarchist tradition.
Yet, despite his undoubted services to the development of anarchist
theory and to the anarchist movement more broadly, toward the end of his
long life he wound up supporting the Entente (Great Britain, France,
Italy, and Tsarist Russia) during World War I, and in this way,
justified the senseless mass slaughter that that conflict entailed.
(Of course, key individuals in the Marxist movement were no angels
either: Marx was an authoritarian personality if there ever was one;
Engels was a racist; Lenin and Trotsky possessed the mentality of
religious fanatics; Stalin was a thug; Mao, a pathological narcissist.
On the other hand, some historical anarchists were truly admirable,
among them, Errico Malatesta, Emma Goldman, Emiliano Zapata, and Nestor
Makhno.)
Beyond these details of biography, the anarchist movement lacks the
theoretical breadth and depth that is one of the more impressive facets
of Marxism. Among other things, to my knowledge no anarchist has
produced an analysis of capitalist society that comes close to matching
Marx’s in its cogency and sophistication (which is probably why so many
anarchists have looked to Marxism when it comes to “economics,” despite
the fact that the theory predicts, and hence advocates, a highly statist
and centralized economic system — state capitalism — as the outcome of
the historic process).
One of anarchism’s perceived debits, however, is more imputed than real.
The movement has often been derided for its historical failure, the fact
that anarchists have never — nowhere and at no time -succeeded in
establishing an anarchist society. This is contrasted with the supposed
successes of the Marxist movement, whose different organizational
embodiments have managed to seize power in a variety of countries and to
create (or begin to create) revolutionary societies according to the
Marxian program. But this contention is a red-herring. Marxism’s
“successes” have been, not the creation of the state-less and class-less
cooperative society advocated and predicted by Marx and Engels or even
systems moving in that direction, but the establishment of brutal and
corrupt regimes that exiled, jailed, tortured, and killed millions of
people, and made a mockery of the ideals they claimed to uphold.
Moreover, in those countries in which Marxist regimes still exist they
have done so only by moving to create traditional-style capitalist
societies. By my lights, this is not success; it is failure. In any
case, judging revolutionary movements by such criteria as “success” or
“failure” is to miss the point. It is of the very nature of libertarian
programs and currents that they will fail, probably many times, before
they succeed (if, indeed, they ever do succeed).
Despite these and other weaknesses, real and imputed, I find the
anarchist tradition and movement much more to my taste than Marxism. In
contrast to Marxism, which presents itself as a logically unified whole,
anarchist theory is diverse; there are many different types, even
styles, of anarchism. While I used to see this as a problem, I now view
it as a source of strength, since it militates against the drive toward
ideological conformity that characterizes most political movements. As
an extension of this, anarchism implies that the fundamental
philosophical questions are not subject to definitive answers.
Philosophically, then, anarchism implies a pluralism of outlooks, not a
totalitarian uniformity. I also find the spirit of anarchism — its
militant, uncompromising commitment to the cause of human freedom,
individual and collective — much more attractive than that of socialism,
which seems dull and bureaucratic, and than that of Communism, which
strikes me as arrogant, rigid, and puritanical. (It is this, along with
its pluralism, that makes the anarchist movement so much more colorful
than the Marxian.) Finally, anarchism’s hostility to the state, and
specifically to the notion that revolutionaries should strive to seize
political power and set up revolutionary dictatorships, means that the
anarchist movement is much less likely, after successful insurrections,
to establish authoritarian and totalitarian regimes than are other
currents on the left (or the right). As an indication of this, where
such “revolutionary” governments have been established, anarchists have
been among their most dedicated and militant opponents, often at great
costs to themselves.
Going further, there is the question of what I mean by anarchism in the
broadest sense of the word, that is, why I advocate the overthrow of
contemporary capitalism and what kind of society I propose to establish
in its place.
My starting point is a critical view of our current global system.
Despite its achievements, contemporary capitalism, even in its “ideal”
(that is, bourgeois democratic) form, leaves a lot to be desired.
Although it presents itself as a democracy, in reality, a very small,
very rich, and very powerful elite governs our society. They own or
control its economic resources and dominate its political life. True,
the members of this class rule through an apparently democratic
political structure. As a result, they are not the only ones who have
political rights. In the United States and similarly structured
societies, all adult citizens have the right to vote, to express their
opinions orally and in writing, to form organizations to promote their
positions and fight for their interests, to join political parties, etc.
This is certainly better than living under dictators or in one-party
states, but it is not really very democratic. While in theory, an
individual worker and a large corporation meet as equal entities in the
supposedly free market, how can one compare the economic might of a
giant corporation with billions of dollars at its disposal with the
power of an individual worker, who consumes most of his/her income and
who runs the risk of getting fired and becoming permanently unemployed
if he/she tries to do something as simple as organizing a union? The
same disparity exists in the political arena. How can one weigh the
political leverage of an isolated voter of average means against that of
a wealthy individual (let alone a corporation) who can give (legally and
illegally) huge amounts of money to political parties and to individual
politicians and who has ready access to a variety of means of
disseminating his/her views: via the mass media, by writing or
sponsoring books, giving money to universities, organizing conferences,
establishing non-profit organizations, or just privately networking with
fellow members of the upper crust? Moreover, even without such direct
subornation, the effective operation of the system requires that
politicians and state functionaries cater to the interests of the
dominant economic institutions and individuals and to the needs of the
system as a whole. To think about this situation concretely ought to be
enough to realize how absurd it is to call it “democracy.”
Beyond the question of the inequality power, capitalism has other
drawbacks. Most apparent is the huge — and increasing — disparity of
wealth. A tiny handful of people are very rich, a few more can be
described as comfortable, a greater number just manage to make a living,
while many, many more struggle simply to survive, often in truly abject
conditions, with few pleasures, few prospects, and even fewer hopes. Our
current political system reflects these disparities, so that little or
nothing is done to alleviate, let alone truly improve, the conditions of
those on the bottom. The system also ensures that economic, social, and
cultural tasks only get done if a profit can be made from them. As a
result, essential social needs do not get addressed and are often not
even recognized. In addition, as I mentioned, capitalism tends to brings
out the worst in people, emphasizing the competitive and aggressive
sides of our natures over the cooperative and caring aspects. Thus,
nation states vie over territory and natural resources, resulting in
political tensions and wars. Religions and ideologies struggle for
dominance, leading to conflicts, armed and unarmed. Economic entities
and individuals also compete with each other. One result of this is that
it is in the interests of economic actors to cheat — to take advantage
of customers’ and competitors’ weaknesses, including and especially
their gullibility, wherever and whenever they can — and to exploit such
aspects of their surroundings as they are able. Another outcome is
economic instability, occasionally taking the form, as we’ve recently
seen, of severe and disruptive economic crises, which lead to widespread
suffering and the tremendous waste of productive resources. Perhaps the
most salient effect of our economic arrangement is what is known as the
“tragedy of the commons,” with its most obvious result being the
environmental disaster we are now facing. The way our system is set up,
it is primarily the job of the government, along with some non-profit
organizations, to look after the communal interests that private
entities have no positive incentive to address. Yet, given that the
government and such charitable institutions are controlled by the rich
and powerful, these communal concerns wind up on the bottom of the list
of priorities, when they get tended to at all.
The consequences of our current social arrangements are staggering.
Aside from the economic stagnation, social disparities, and
environmental destruction I have mentioned, there are, just looking at
the United States: the shameful size and appalling conditions of our
homeless population; the record numbers of people incarcerated the
country’s prisons (many of whom have only committed “crimes” against
themselves, such as the possession and use of drugs, or have merely
crossed the border in an effort to find work); the callous treatment of
military veterans; the many thousands of people suffering from substance
addiction; a frightening scale of sexual assaults and seemingly random
violence (much of it coming from the police); an epidemic of suicides,
both in and outside the military; a decaying infrastructure (roads,
tunnels, and bridges; airports, rail lines, and urban transit systems;
water mains, aqueducts, dams, and levees), a lack of affordable housing;
poorly performing schools; and a corrupt, hypocritical, and
commercialized culture centered on entertainment and consumption and
promoting self-centered, hedonistic, and rude behavior.
In contrast to such an undemocratic, semi-functional structure, I (and
other anarchists) envision a society based on the radical dispersal of
wealth and power, collective and democratic decisionmaking, and
comradely concern and consideration. Since it is not likely that the
elite will agree to relinquish their wealth and power out of the
goodness of their hearts (they all believe they deserve them), this may
require some degree of coercion, specifically, the mobilization of the
overwhelming majority of the people, — poor, working class, and middle
class — to persuade them, or to force them. Assuming this were done,
society would no longer be polarized, as it now is, between a small and
ever richer elite, on the one hand, and a mass of poor and (at best)
modestly comfortable people, on the other, and we might be able to
organize society on much more democratic, more cooperative, and more
productive lines than it now is. As others have written in greater
detail and far more eloquently than I, workplaces, such as factories,
farms, warehouses, stores, hospitals, offices, and schools, could be run
by assemblies and committees of manual and white collar workers,
technical/organizational staff, and members of the surrounding
communities; while communities could be organized by similar bodies, all
of which would link up on the regional, national, and international
levels. Obviously, this would take some doing, since large numbers of
people would have to learn how to meet, discuss issues, resolve
differences, and make and carry out decisions in reasonably peaceful,
democratic ways (and outside of hierarchical structures), something we
have not always been very good at. And there are a myriad of questions
that would have to be addressed, such as how to re-arrange and manage
the economy, how to encourage science and technological development, how
to coordinate and finance the various sectors of the economy and
society, how to finance the arts. But if enough people were truly
convinced that a reorganization of society along the lines anarchists
have proposed were necessary, I think it reasonable to expect that such
decisions might eventually be arrived at.
If such a revolutionary transformation were accomplished, we might be
able to stop competing and start cooperating to solve the grave problems
confronting the human species and the rest of the planet; eliminate the
huge military, repressive, and bureaucratic apparatuses; spread work
around so the employed do not have to toil so hard and long, and the
unemployed can be employed; build affordable housing to get the homeless
off the streets; institute job training and re-training programs where
they are necessary; focus resources on rebuilding our infrastructure,
including and in particular, our public schools; institute feedback
loops to increase productivity and cut down on waste; develop and
utilize the mental capacities of all human beings, not just a select few
who happen to be in positions that enable them to exercise their
cognitive facilities; encourage a broad range of the arts (not just
those that are profit-producing).
At this point, three questions are posed: Is it possible to create such
a society? Would it be workable? And, is it desirable?
To me, the key to whether such a radical reconfiguration of our social
arrangements is feasible is the attitude, the consciousness, of human
beings. To make such a change possible, the vast majority of the people
currently inhabiting the planet would have to want to radically change
how they live. They would have to become tired of our current system, be
able to envisage a new — democratic, cooperative, and egalitarian —
arrangement, and be willing to struggle to set it up. In other words,
the radical social change I have described would require a profound
alteration of the psychology of the human species. If such a
transformation does not occur, if such a desire to establish a new way
of living does not arise — if it is not strong enough or if it is not
widespread enough — anarchism will remain nothing more than a dream in
the minds of small bunches of deluded visionaries (as it has been for
millennia).
Are there any grounds for believing that such a psychological/spiritual
revolution is possible? I can think of several, although taken either
singly or in any combination, they are not decisive.
our history, human beings did live in relatively non-hierarchical
groups, suggesting that cooperative, egalitarian arrangements are
possible, even if only on a local scale.
organize clubs, social gatherings, and sporting events among themselves
without the help of authority.
flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and
similar disasters, considerable numbers of people “come together” to
lend each other support and comfort, in other words, to relate to each
other in a more familial, less “alienated” way than they usually do.
mutualistic, “comradely” behavior emerges on an even larger and deeper
scale during times of popular revolts, such as the Paris Commune, the
Russian and the Spanish revolutions, and more recent social upheavals.
True, even here, such behavior has been geographically and temporally
limited (the euphoria does not last), but such developments are
suggestive of broader possibilities.
religions have included, among their fundamental beliefs, visions of a
paradisical condition (from which I believe the socialist and anarchist
utopias derive), at either some point in the past, some point in the
future, or in some altered state (e.g., after death). The strength of
these visions and the fact that they are so widely held suggest that the
conception of such an ideal condition and the desire for it exist deep
in the psyche of human beings.
Given all this, I believe that it is not totally ridiculous to hope that
if humanity were faced with a substantial global crisis, such as the
widespread environmental destruction that is probably looming, a large
enough number of people might be willing to consider rearranging society
along the lines anarchists have proposed. However, as I indicated above,
all this is more suggestive than probative.
Assuming for the moment that the transformation that anarchists advocate
is possible, is it workable? To me, the answer to this question is the
same as the answer to whether it is possible. That is, I believe that if
a substantial enough number of people were to become truly committed to
reordering our economic and social arrangements, they will also be able
to make it work.
Finally, there is the question: is the radical reordering of society
along the lines anarchists propose desirable? While, to convinced
anarchists, the answer to this question may seem obvious, it is not so
to most people. Aside from the dangers involved in any radical social
change — the risk of violence and destruction, the danger that social
disruption may bring out the worst in people rather than the best, the
possibility that a revolution may result in the establishment of a
dictatorship of fanatics (and bureaucrats) rather than the ideal society
envisaged by anarchists — there is the fact that current, capitalist,
society, despite its recent problems and its obvious drawbacks, has
considerable assets to its credit. Although it may be unpleasant for
revolutionaries to admit it, these are substantial and ought not to be
ignored.
Among them:
new technology — scientific, economic, and medical. On this front, the
results of the system have been impressive, despite the predictions of
Marxists that at a certain stage in its development (which Lenin and
Trotsky saw as having occurred around the turn of the 20^(th) century),
capitalism would “fetter” the “forces of production.” While this may be
partially true of the human forces of production (insofar as millions
[billions?] of intelligent human beings continue to spend much of their
lives doing virtually meaningless, repetitive tasks in capitalist
enterprises large and small, leaving aside the millions who are
unemployed or only marginally employed), it has certainly not been the
case with what Marx and Engels called the “material” forces of
production. An honest look at the scientific, technological, and medical
progress of the 20^(th) and 21^(st) centuries should be enough to
demonstrate this, and I see no reason to believe that such progress will
not continue indefinitely.
Marxists of 50 years ago thought was impossible, that is, the
industrialization of what were then described as “undeveloped”,
“underdeveloped”, or “semi-developed” countries. Today, many regions
that had then been seen as helplessly “distorted,” mired in stagnation
because of the dynamics of the world market and imperialism, now appear
to be well on the road of “modernization.” To be sure, this has often,
even usually, required the aggressive involvement of the state in these
countries’ economies, which might be described, very loosely, as
“socialism”, thus seeming to vindicate the Marxists’ predictions.
Nevertheless, the modernization of much of what used to be called the
“Third World” has in fact been occurring, including in places where this
seemed particularly doubtful, e.g., sub-Saharan Africa. (Thus, Nigeria
has recently outstripped South Africa as the largest economy on the
African continent.) As an integral part of this, millions of people have
been lifted out of poverty in the last several decades, so much so that
capitalist apologists are now crowing that more people have been rescued
from poverty in the last 50 years than in all prior history.
least the weakening of traditional hierarchical structures, particularly
patriarchal social institutions, around the world. This has resulted,
and is continuing to result, in the (partial) liberation of millions of
women as they, and the societies of which they are a part, are drawn
into the maelstrom of the international capitalist division of labor.
This, too, runs counter to the predictions of many Marxists, who argued
that capitalism would be incapable of carrying out such “bourgeois
democratic tasks” to the degree it has. It is true enough that such
liberation as capitalism promises is limited and one-sided, insofar as
millions of women remain and will continue to remain subordinated to the
international capitalist hierarchy, as well as being trapped within
surviving patriarchal structures, but it is substantial.
form provides millions of people with a considerable degree of political
and economic freedom. While from an anarchist standpoint such freedom
may be limited, even illusory, it may not seem so to people recently
living under oppressive social conditions, e.g., traditional social
institutions and military or other types of dictatorships. Meanwhile,
capitalist economies offer the possibility — for many, the reality —
that they may improve their economic situations, and for a few, that
they may get rich.
Given these assets, given the dangers involved in the attempt to
radically transform society, and given the fact that it is not obvious
that an anarchist society is possible or workable, it is understandable
to me why most people today are not sympathetic to the anarchist cause.
Nor do I believe it likely that this will change in the foreseeable
future, as much I might wish it were otherwise. As a result, I am not,
as I’ve mentioned, optimistic about the prospects of anarchism in the
coming period.
My pessimism is also motivated by the fact that I no longer accept the
reasoning of historical utopian thinkers that motivated their belief in
the certainty or at least the high probability of socialist/anarchist
revolutions.
Marx and Engels, and following them, most Marxists, believed that the
ideal society — socialism/communism — was the logical outcome of the
internal dynamics of capitalist society. To them, communism was immanent
in human history; it was the goal (the “telos”) toward which history was
moving. This is why they called their brand of socialism “scientific”
and why the terms “inevitable” and “inexorable” appear so often in their
writings. While I once accepted a version of this idea, I no longer do
so. Despite their claims, Marx and Engels never proved their contention,
and in fact, I do not think it is provable in any meaningful sense of
the term.
In apparent contrast to this view, anarchist thinkers attempted to make
their case by appealing to human reason. That is, they tried to
demonstrate the moral necessity of a revolutionary transformation of
society and attempted to show the reasonableness and practicality of
anarchism. And central to these attempts was their belief that human
nature was consistent with anarchism, that human beings were, at bottom,
anarchists. A little thought, however, suggest that this view is really
not all that different from the Marxian. Marxism contends that the human
behavior we see under contemporary society is an everted or “alienated”
form of a deeper, “truer” human nature, one that is based on and
embodied in social labor, which is inherently cooperative; and that it
is the underlying logic of this social labor, this alienated version, or
mode, of human nature, that will bring about the liberated society.
Underneath the philosophic apparatus, both views –anarchist and Marxist
are saying pretty much the same thing: socialism/anarchism
is...inevitable, probable, or possible...because it represents the
underlying logic of human nature.
After Marx and Engels, other Marxists, such as Rosa Luxemburg, coined
the phrase “Socialism or Barbarism.” This meant that, in their view,
humanity was and is faced with a stark choice: either the working class
overthrows global capitalism and establishes an international socialist
society or the human species will be plunged into “barbarism,” a
primitive, savage condition, such that existed prior to the
establishment of civilization. Such barbarism was presumed to be the
virtually certain result of an inter-imperialist war, an international
economic collapse, or some combination of the two. A more recent version
of this idea is that such “barbarism” will be the result of an
ecological catastrophe, perhaps combined with a global conflagration and
an economic crisis, as humanity struggles over increasingly scarce
resources, particularly arable land, food and water.
Although I, too, once held such a view, I do not do so any more. I now
expect that human civilization, even as it is currently organized, is
likely to survive. As I indicated, I believe our economic system is
somewhere in the early stages of a slow, and probably very painful,
transformation of its energy basis from the combustion of fossil fuels —
coal, oil, natural gas — to renewable sources. This process will require
several more decades and will, along the way, result in considerable
environmental destruction and a great deal of human suffering, but I
think it is likely that it will be accomplished.
So, given these considerations, why do I still call for the overthrow of
capitalism and the establishment of a democratic, egalitarian, and
cooperative society; why, in other words, do I still consider myself an
anarchist?
Whereas I once held to an ideological (that is, a Marxist) belief in the
necessity of establishing international socialism, my views today are
primarily based on ethical considerations. I find contemporary society
to be morally repugnant. I don’t see how one can survey the ecological
devastation our planet is currently experiencing, let alone envision
what is likely in the future, without a deep sense of dread. I cannot
contemplate the international political scene — the wars, the seemingly
endless parade of national, ethnic, and religious conflicts, with so
many dead, disfigured, and displaced — without being depressed. I cannot
assess the reality of the millions of lives being lived out, and wasted,
on the world’s streets and in its prisons without outrage. I cannot view
contemporary cultural life — the obsession with wealth, athletic
prowess, good looks, fame, and consumption, on the one hand, and the
anger and despair, reflected in pandemics of substance abuse, suicides,
rapes and other types of assaults, and senseless massacres, on the other
-without nausea. And I cannot look at the lifestyle — the colossal
wealth, the unbelievable hypocrisy, the insufferable egotism, and the
colossal cynicism — of our country’s elite and its global counterparts
without disgust. It all seems so putrid, and I refuse to accept that
this is the best that human beings can do.
To survive in this morass, to maintain my sanity, my sensitivity to
others, and a degree of hope, I find it essential to maintain, in my
mind, an alternative conception, a contrasting notion of what the world
could be like, of how people might treat each other, and of how the
human species ought to relate to our planet. So, beyond seeing anarchism
as a program and a strategy, I also embrace it as a vision, a goal
toward which human beings might strive. And even if such a vision turns
out to be a mirage, even if the goal is never reached or is not even
reachable, it helps me to live day to day, as I attempt to approximate
the vision in my relations with other people — family, friends, and
casual acquaintances — and with the little splotches of the Earth I am
privileged to touch.
Yet beyond even this level of desperation, anarchism, for me, is a
stance, an attitude. Even if I, as an isolated individual, have no
power, have absolutely no influence over any other aspect of reality, I
still retain my mental autonomy, and I (still) refuse to make peace with
the abomination that is contemporary society.
Finally, to me, anarchism is a spiritual state. I like to believe that
there are other people out there -however many or few they may be,
wherever they live, from whatever backgrounds they come, whatever
religions they believe in or philosophies they hold — who share the same
moral outlook, who inhabit the same cosmic reality, as I do. And I try
to connect with such people, whenever and wherever I meet them, in the
little ways that I can.
THAT IS WHY I AM AN ANARCHIST!