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Title: Overcoming the Authoritarian Mindset Author: Ilan Shalif Date: March 12, 2008 Language: en Topics: authoritarianism, anti-authoritarianism Source: Retrieved on 10th December 2021 from http://anarkismo.net/article/7829
In modern times, the way people and societies are organized is dependent
on objective conditions and the opinions people have in their minds.
Because of long history and the prevalence of conservative tendencies,
people do not usually abandon the authoritarian mode of thinking and
opinions. However, in a situation of high excitement and crisis, people
do change – at least temporarily, but even for ever.
In social upheaval, when the system is destabilized, people may stop
accepting the usual authoritarian relations and rebel against the
State’s authority.
However, even when rebelling against a specific authority or most
authorities, people tend to accept other authorities, both older and
new, as leaders.
One form of major social upheaval is the general uprising that negates
the current State system and replaces it – at least temporarily – with
an ad hoc order of one kind or another.
In modern times we have seen the tendency to replace the State with
alternative systems. In some cases, the alternative system was basically
authoritarian, but at times it has been based on inter-connected, local
grassroots committees.
When the alternative system is authoritarian to begin with, the return
to a class society is unavoidable. Even if the desire to end class
society was most popular around, it nevertheless re-emerged. And even
when the alternative system was initially a mixed one, or even mostly
anti-authoritarian, it gradually reverted to an authoritarian system and
to class society.
(In his essay “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the
People”, Mao Zedong predicted that the tendency to accept authority of
most participants in a rebellion and the tendency of activists to accept
the authority the people confer on them will revive the old
authoritarian opinions and will cause the social system to revert to an
authoritarian form and, consequently, to class society.)
The only logical conclusion is that only if the anti-authoritarian mode
is predominant in the new system and remains so long enough, until the
old authoritarian opinions wither away, will class society remain a
thing of the past.
The only measure which can prevent the return of the class society is to
keep power in the hands of the grassroots assemblies, who will mandate
people to carry out their decisions with the least power possible,
permanently supervised and recallable if ever any authoritarian tendency
“raises its head”.
In the revolutionary, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist movement, two
main systems of grassroots power have been suggested: one organized on
the basis of workplace organization; the other organized on the basis of
neighbourhood communities.
Many people with difficulty in deciding which of the two is preferable
have proposed a mixed system with equal power – impossible to apply in
the real world, even if “theoretically” possible (though without taking
all the details into consideration).
As life is much more than just work (and will be even more so after the
revolution); as most people, most of the time, are in their
neighbourhood; as the time spent working should diminish greatly after
the fall of class society; as the neighbourhood will be the centre of
social consumption and life; then it is logical to base the people’s
grassroots units on their neighbourhoods.
Society will be organized as a multi-tier, direct-democratic world
network, of which the basic units will be the neighbourhoods and the
regular assemblies of their grassroots communities.
Workplaces and the various production and service units will be mandated
to act as needed in autonomous ways within the boundaries decided on by
the relevant grassroots community assemblies.
(Some “workerists” find it hard to accept the secondary position of the
workplace and call for a system of two independent systems. Thus, all
the relevant decisions would have to be negotiated between the two
systems. This way, the system of communities which is responsible for
the consumption side of things would not have the final word over who is
to work where and what is to be produced. But as the same people make up
both “communities” – the community itself and the workplace – this would
result in a kind of a split personality (dis)order.)
During the uprising stage of the revolution and the dissolving of the
States, there will be disorder. Therefore, production and the supply of
services will have to be taken over and reorganized very quickly in
order to support life.
The members of the old capitalist class will have to be relocated to
workplaces and their huge accumulated wealth confiscated. We cannot be
sure how strong their resistance to change will be. Many of them, and
indeed a minority of others, will want to revert to the class society,
but faced with a cohesive community, very few of them will have the
ability to resist. Even fewer will have to be dealt with as endangering
the system.
(Ex-capitalists, like every other person, will be mandated to work
tasks. And like everyone else who is mandated to work tasks, they will
be accountable and supervised by co-workers, other community members,
and the relevant grassroots community committee. The real die-hards
among them will be dealt with in the same manner as those who go to make
up that tiny fraction of less-than-sane people and who will need special
treatment with restriction of freedom so that they will not endanger
themselves or others in the grassroots community.)
Among anarchists and other like-minded people there are polemics about
the transition from the capitalist system and the nature of the society
they want to replace it.
As is the case regarding the power structure of the future society, so
is the case about the way people will obtain what they need.
There is the question of abolishing the system whereby needs are
distributed according to work and effort contributed and reverting to
the communist mode of “from each according to ability, to each according
to need”.
All of us are influenced by the capitalist system and the consumer
culture we grew up under. The opinion system of each of us includes –
besides anarchist opinions – less prominent opinions that contradict our
anarchist opinions. The result is a certain amount of vacillation, of
internal “compromises”, and on some points the reactionary opinions can
become predominant.
The main areas where reactionary opinions are likely to be expressed
among common people and even among revolutionary anti-capitalists is
with regard to people’s motivation to contribute to society. It is these
people in particular who doubt the claim that people will follow the
principle of “from each according to ability” unless they are materially
compensated in accordance with their contribution. The capitalist
brainwashing which links the effort and work one invests with the
remuneration one receives is prominent among these superstitious
opinions. As if the motivation to invest in work were not related to the
satisfaction felt after a job well done... As if the opinions of your
acquaintances which are so dominant in human behaviour – and is
expressed in the capitalist society in the form of consumer culture –
will die alongside the capitalist system and will not influence people
to contribute according to ability.[1] It seems that revolutionary
anarchists’ ability to resist social pressure to conform to the
alienated capitalist system, blinds them to the strength of this factor
in human behaviour.
There are also secondary factors in the hesitation of people to adopt
the communist principle and thus claim the need for a long transitional
period.
One is the distribution factor: how the principle of “to each according
to needs” can be applied.
Those who resist the part of “to each according to needs” raise several
questions, first among which is who decides what are the needs of each
person? The “danger” of others intruding on one’s freedom makes them
jump as if they had been bitten by a snake. The other problem is how
people can receive according to their needs when there is not a free
supply of everything. As there will never be an unlimited supply of
everything for everyone, and as the idea of a social agency that will
decide for us about everything we receive is repulsive, the implication
is that distribution according to needs is impossible.
However, it was already suggested by Isaac Puente Amestoy that anything
not included among essential supplies that are provided according to
needs will be supplied as a quota of values so that everyone will be
able to choose from a wide option of services and products that are more
luxury than essential needs.
Those who do not raise the question of measurement units only to
discredit the communist principle can easily understand the use of
“socially needed work time”[2] invested in the creation of a product or
service.
A large-bodied person may need more calories than a small-bodied one,
and get them according to need. But the urge for sweets cannot be
distributed according to needs, so people will be able to choose them
from their quota (of values of choice) as measured with the work
invested in these sweets.
Some people who do not have a clear commitment to the multi-tier direct
action of the world commune of grassroots communities hide behind the
slogan “let the people experiment and decide”. But the real reason for
that position is hidden behind the absence of the model these people
suggest.
The evasive “let people experiment and decide” reply is mainly because
people shy away from thinking and committing themselves.
In a way, the option of “experimenting” is only a real option in
relatively small, isolated areas. Experimentation with whole blocks of
buildings in big cities is minimal. It is hard to imagine the
decentralization of a city’s main infrastructure, its health and
education systems, and of course the daily supply of needs.
For sure, each grassroots community will indeed be free to experiment or
make decisions on what ties there should or should not be between
contributions to society and the supply of needs, but is hard to imagine
that people will cherish inequality and non-solidarity to such an extent
as to invest in the measuring the different contributions made by
everyone to society, in order to give them the exact equivalent.
Even Michael Albert’s non-communist Parecon does not suggest measuring
what people contribute, but rather assessing the most elusive
“efforts”...
Certainly, each community will have to find its own way to organize its
daily life. However, practice in Israel shows that the variation within
the wide spectrum of communes and movements[3] that followed the
principle of “from each according to ability, to each according to
needs” was minimal.
[1] I still remember my first years in the kibbutz (Israeli communes),
when I worked in fruit and vegetable picking. It was certainly not the
kind of work I preferred but, as I was interested in promoting
revolutionary political opinions, I made efforts to be regarded as a
diligent worker and not as a lazy wordmonger... I succeeded in that, and
was regarded by all as the best worker, with the result that people were
more responsive to my political opinions. Years later, when the members’
assembly of the Zionist commune tried to expel me for anti-Zionist
activities after the 1967 war, there was a majority for this motion –
but not the 75% majority they needed.
[2] The “costing” of products and services will have to be monitored in
order to compare the various alternatives and planning (methods of
production, etc.). In the capitalist system, it is done to maximise
profit; in the class-less society, it will be done to optimize
production and to monitor the allocation of products and services. When
you are allocated a quota of luxuries for a year, both you and the
community will need to know if you have used your allocation, or indeed
have taken too much or too little.
[3] There have been pro-capitalist, socialist, religious, Leninist and
extreme nationalist communes, and also supporters of big communes and
supporters of small, intimate communes.