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Title: Anarchism and Its Aspirations Author: Cindy Milstein Date: 2010 Language: en Topics: introductory
One of the strongest speakers and writers in North American radical
movements and anarchist networks, itâs about damn time that Cindy
Milsteinâs amazing thinking and writing is put together in a book.
Simultaneously a participant in popular radical movement actions and
articulating the theory behind the actions, she paints a clear-headed
vision of the free and just world weâre fighting for. Uncompromising,
practical, and hopeful, this book is essential reading for all who are
taking on climate change, war, or corporate capitalism, and know that a
better world is both possible and necessary!
âDavid Solnit, coauthor of The Battle of the Story of the âBattle of
Seattleâ
Iâve often been asked by people for a book on anarchism that âgives them
an idea,â and Iâve often wondered what I could recommend that is all at
once concise, profound, highly readable, and up to date. Cindy Milstein
has now solved this problem. In these wonderful essays, she brings
together anarchist history and current developments with ease,
illustrating how the core values, ideas, and principles of anarchism
remain the same while their expressions change according to times,
places, and circumstances. You will find it hard to put down this book
until youâre finished, and it will leave you longing for more
intelligent and inspiring thoughts on how to make this world a better
place for all of us. I expect Anarchism and Its Aspirations to become
the introduction to anarchism of the next decadeâand I certainly hope it
will be!
âGabriel Kuhn, editor of Gustav Landauerâs Revolution and Other Writings
Milsteinâs work is a clear and passionate account of the anarchism that
lives beyond any particular organization, as an expression of humanityâs
indestructible desire for a world free from hierarchies and all forms of
domination. The book is also a road map to the many social and cultural
movements that anarchism has traversed, from the Provos to radical
ecology and Zapatismo, and a testimony to its continuing ability to
capture the radical imagination. Above all, the book is a call to live
the revolution now, making of our daily lives a prefiguration of the
egalitarian and cooperative ethics that anarchism aspires to.
âSilvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch
In a crazy world full of complexity, contradiction, and irony, itâs easy
to lose your footing. If you are looking for a solid place to root your
analysis, this is a fabulous place to land. Cindy Milsteinâs book is
thoughtful, energetic, and visionary, and will give you a ton to chew
on. It is a brilliant primer of anarchist politics.
âMatt Hern, author of Common Ground in a Liquid City
At a time when anarchism is no longer merely the most revolutionary
political theory and praxis but also the only one left, it is even more
important to rescue it from the dangers of potential fossilization. A
century ago, another âdanger- ous woman,â Emma Goldman, reminded us that
anarchism should not be a theory of the future but rather a âliving
force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions.â
Goldmanâs voice resonates strongly in this beautiful and inspirational
book, which offers the much-needed hope that every individualâhere and
nowâcan change this world and create it anew.
âĆœiga Vodovnik, author of Anarchy of Everyday Life
Radical ideas can open up spaces for radical actions, by illuminating
hierarchical power relations and drawing out possibilities for
liberatory social transformations. The Anarchist Intervention seriesâa
collaborative project between the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS)
and AK Pressâstrives to contribute to the development of relevant, vital
anarchist theory and analysis by intervening in contemporary
discussions. Works in this series will look at twenty-first-century
social conditionsâincluding social structures and oppression, their
historical trajectories, and new forms of domination, to name a fewâas
well as reveal opportunities for different tomorrows premised on
horizontal, egalitarian forms of self-organization.
Given that anarchism has become the dominant tendency within
revolutionary milieus and movements today, it is crucial that anarchists
explore current phenomena, strategies, and visions in a much more
rigorous, serious manner. Each title in this series, then, will feature
a present-day anarchist voice, with the aim, over time, of publishing a
variety of perspectives. The seriesâ multifaceted goals are to cultivate
anarchist thought so as to better inform anarchist practice, encourage a
culture of public intellectuals and constructive debate within
anarchism, introduce new generations to anarchism, and offer insights
into todayâs world and potentialities for a freer society.
Anarchism and Its Aspirations doubles as a book and a bookend. I
finished the manuscript on the tenth anniversary of the âbattle of
SeattleââNovember 30, 2009. A decade ago, that same mass mobilization
and the anarchism that it made visible in North America spurred me to
write for the new anticapitalist movement of movements as part of my
political work. Chapter 3, âDemocracy Is Direct,â was the first result
of that effort. It was penned for the booklet Bringing Democracy Home,
which an anarchist group of us produced and then distributed for free,
by the thousands, on the streets of Washington, DC, at the A16 direct
action against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings
in spring 2000.
As a book, I hope this small collection of essays contributes to
building a better anarchism and encouraging new anarchists. I hope it
sparks debate about what anarchism is and could be, first and foremost
because I want us to be effectiveâto winâand that involves critical yet
constructive dialogue as integral to our prefigurative practice. And I
hope that the ideals expressed here stand the test of time, because I
firmly believe in the expansive ethical sensibility that has marked
anarchism as a tradition. Like many anarchists, I know that words can
indeed be weapons. Thatâs why I write. It is my greatest hope, then,
that this book adds to our arsenal as we fight to institute a
nonhierarchical society.
As a bookend, though, I worry that the lavish emphases of ten years
agoâdirect democracy, unity in our diversity, and a cooperative,
creative impulse, among othersâhave been lost. Such loss can certainly
be attributed to the numerous historical events over the past decade
that seem to have gone from bad to worse, crushingly so: 9/11, âwars on
terror,â green and brown scares, Katrina and now Haiti, accelerating
ecological and economic devastation. Sadly the list could go on. But I
worry that in the face of this morass, anarchists are becoming
increasingly nihilistic and far less concerned about ending social
suffering. The ever-crueler, more alienating world appears to be doing
far more damage to us than we have the capacity, much less stamina, to
do to it. It troubles me that as I finish this book, I get the eerie
sensation that I might have to shelve my own aspirations for what
anarchists can accomplish, just when we are needed more than ever.
This may be my own sorrow speaking, from the standpoint of a bookended
period that began with so much potential, so much exuberance, and seems
to have ended in such despair. The gap between the ideals advanced by
anarchism and the actual social reality today, even within anarchist
circles, can be greatâdispiritingly so, if one is a self-reflective
anarchist. Contemporary anarchism can appear messy. In practice, it
manifests all the forms of hierarchy, domination, and oppression that
one finds elsewhere. Its subcultural codes of dress, say, or its
sometimes-tired protest tactics can make it seem like a parody of
itself. Chapter 4, âReclaim the Cities: From Protest to Popular Power,â
written midway through this bookended time and revised for this book,
was one attempt to address this problem. For newcomers, the gateway to
the lived world of anarchism can be rusty and unwelcoming , and many of
you will exit all too quickly. As one friend morosely joked recently,
the past decade has seen three generations of anarchists come and go.
With this book, I want to extend a compassionate hand, and urge you,
those new and old to anarchism, to stay. I want us all to struggle for
whatâs best within anarchism, not just for ourselves, but in order to
construct the free society of free individuals that anarchism, as Iâll
argue below, so generously and lovingly strives to achieve for everyone.
Yes, the world is increasingly messy; rather than retreating, however,
itâs imperative that we advance toward an egalitarian community of
communities. Thus I hope Iâve adequately imparted enough of the good,
the true, and the beautiful of anarchismâs aims here to convince you to
joyfully yet diligently embraceâor continue doing so with renewed
vigorâthe spirit of anarchism.
There is much that is promising within present-day anarchism. Chapter 2,
also written midway through this bookended period and revised here,
captures this possibility. We may not have put a dent in capitalism, and
thatâs something we need to strategize long and hard about, but we have
come a long way in a relatively short time. The âPaths toward Utopiaâ
epilogue, excerpted from a recent collaboration with Erik Ruin for World
War Three Illustrated, gestures at how our cultures of resistance can
move toward cultures of reconstruction. On the ground, the first decade
of the twenty-first century has provided a remarkable opening for
anarchism, thereby swelling the numbers of those who identify as
anarchists. This has led to a flowering of anarchist infrastructure,
from a dramatic increase worldwide in social centers and infoshops, to
an upsurge in collectively run projects meeting needs like legal
support, food, and art. Weâve developed informal though articulated
global networks of exchange as well as solidarity, facilitated by
everything from savvy uses of communication technologies and indie media
to material aid. Along with like-minded others, weâve engaged in forms
of face-to-face politics that have supplied a new radical imagination
through numerous days of action, consultas and convergences, and
horizontalist movements.
It isnât enough. Still, the ten-year bookend here isnât only holding up
a history of desolation; we have made substantial gains, even if
embryonic. Such seemingly minor victories are necessary for social
transformation, not just as sustenance along the way, but also because
our processes are part and parcel of revolution, pointing beyond
hierarchy. The main essay in this book, chapter 1, written this past
year, reflects my optimism that anarchismâs constellation of ethics,
along with its dynamic practices, can bind us together, inspiring us and
many others for the hard work ahead of forging a world from below. That,
too, is my hope.
I copyedit university press books for a relatively pleasant âlivingâ (as
a friend quipped once, âEven when I love my work, I hate capitalismâ),
and every prologue reminds the reader that any mistakes belong to the
author. The same holds true for Anarchism and Its Aspirations. Such
prologues also offer a round of appreciation, but primarily to
professional colleagues, well-funded foundations, and frequently, wives.
I was struck, when thinking about acknowledgments, that my gratitude is
for all those acts of mutual aid that anarchists regularly do for each
other, and not to build careers, nor for money, power, or due to
coercion. I am proudâon most daysâto call myself an anarchist, yet as
another dear friend has reminded me of late, it isnât what we call
ourselves that counts but how we behave. And that has been underscored
for me umpteenth times in the writing of this book. It was a collective
process, made possible by numerous acts of kindness and cooperation, by
dedicated comrades, global ties, voluntary associations and shoestring
projects, and chosen friends/family. My name is on the cover, but that
masks the fact that anarchist books, like all anarchist endeavors, are
intentionally communal works.
In this case, some of that mutual aid is visible. My book marks the
first in the Anarchist Interventions series produced collaboratively by
the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS), AK Press, and Justseeds
Artistsâ Cooperative. My profound respect goes out to everyone involved
in those projects, and my profound gratitude likewise goes out to the
people in those projects who encouraged and also pushed me to do this
book; thanks most especially to the members, past and present, of the
IAS board. I want to particularly thank by name those anarchists who
went so far beyond the âcall of dutyâ that in hindsight, Iâm almost
embarrassed to have asked so much of them: to Zach Blue, David Combs,
Chris Dixon, Josh MacPhee, Suzanne Shaffer, and Charles Weigl, for
untold hours of critiquing , editing, and copyediting , design and
layout, and advice. Much appreciation, too, to Alec Icky Dunn for
lending his artwork; I couldnât have asked for a better graphic
complement to my words. And thanks to Kate Khatib for proofreading.
Much of this mutual aid is, sadly, invisible, just as, sadly, so much of
anarchism and anarchists are frequently invisible to the world. When I
think back on it, during this bookended time period, my various essays
and now this book have only been improved by the countless anarchists
who have either offered rigorous criticism of my writing and ideas,
explained their ideas to me or handed me their zine or CD, taught me
lessons in collectives, study groups, and conversations, dialogued at
conferences or bookfairs and during my public talks, shared exhilarating
as well as deflating moments on the streets, and just plain given me
moral support. Whenever I needed someone to dig up a quotation, debate a
new thought, or publish something Iâd written, there was always an
anarchist ready to assist. This isnât miraculous, nor should it even
seem extraordinary. But in reflecting on what went into this bookâaside
from the long hours I stared at my computer screenâI am more convinced
than ever that there is something special about how most anarchists
choose to act, despite all the odds at this historical juncture: with
empathy, tangibly giving of ourselves and doing it ourselves, toward a
form of social organization in which it will be routine to act in
mutualistic ways. If you are one of those many thousands of anarchists
that Iâve met over the past ten years through our widening milieu and
had a lovely interaction with, or better yet gotten to know as an
acquaintance or friend, or are someone I love (or have loved) and are
(or have been) fortunate enough to have in my life, the biggest of
heartfelt thanks. And a hug.
I wish that I could acknowledge all the anarchist projects that ended
during the time frame here, but alas there are too many. I do want to
name a few that are no longer around, and that I was intimately involved
with and still mourn, especially politically, because they also shaped
me and this book: the anarchist summer school known as the Institute for
Social Ecology, the Free Society Collective, and the National Conference
on Organized Resistance (fortunately, Black Sheep Books is still alive
and kicking). Iâve also lost more friends and comrades, not to mention a
partner, who influenced me and this book than I care to recount during
the past ten years. It is one of the most painful parts of remaining an
anarchist that, at least for now, anarchism seems to be a revolving
door; if this book does anything to change that, every hour of writing
will have been worth it. Death, too, takes good anarchists, though, and
I want to express the deepest of appreciation for one person in that
regard: Murray Bookchin. A lifelong, self-educated revolutionary, and
arguably one of the most influential anarchists of the second half of
the twentieth century, Murray gave tirelessly of himself to mentor and
befriend generation after generation of radicals, including me. I
remember years ago, at a public meeting in Burlington, Vermont, when
some politician was spinelessly equivocating about some economic
injustice, Murray stood up and in a booming yet measured voice said, âIn
my day we called it capitalism.â I miss him.
Lastly, the past two years have been the darkest and oddly, as a result,
the brightest of my life. Many friends and strangers as well as my
biological family have startled me by being there at just the right
moment. Yet certain chosen friends/family truly made this book possible,
by renewing my faith in trust, love, and home within the uncertainty
that is life: Walter, Ace, Arthur, Chloe, Katie, Nutmeg , Karen, Diane,
Andrej, Harjit, and especially Joshua.
I want to end this prologue and begin this book with an anecdote. Iâve
heard Ashanti Alston, Anarchist Panther, former IAS board member, and
ex-political prisoner, speak in public on many occasions. I am
continually amazed by his knack for gifting a positive outlook to
others, even when he personally is having a hard time. After one
particularly reinvigorating talk, someone asked Ashanti how he had
remained so hopeful during his dozen-plus years of incarceration. His
eyes lit up, and Ashanti enthusiastically exclaimed, to paraphrase:
âThat was the most hopeful time of my life, because every day we were
scheming about how to escape from prison!â No one should have to live in
the cages of capitalism, states, and other forms of social domination,
but given that we still do, anarchismâs aspirations supply a key to
finding our way out.
By anarchist spirit I mean that deeply human sentiment, which aims at
the good of all, freedom and justice for all, solidarity and love among
the people; which is not an exclusive characteristic only of
self-declared anarchists, but inspires all people who have a generous
heart and an open mind.
âErrico Malatesta, Umanita Nova, April 13, 1922
At its core, anarchism is indeed a spiritâone that cries out against all
thatâs wrong with present-day society, and boldly proclaims all that
could be right under alternate forms of social organization. It is also
precisely the quality of an airy free-spiritedness that gives anarchism
its attraction. Anarchism playfully travels across the mists of time and
space to borrow from the best of human innovations, to give body to the
most lofty of ideals. It can be hauntingly beautiful. But it involves a
difficulty as well: pinning down this ghostly figure, this âinhabitant
of an unseen world,â with any definition or substance, much less getting
other people to believe in the utopian apparition called anarchism.[1]
What is anarchism exactly? People have asked and answered this question
since the birth of the word as a distinct political philosophy within
the revolutionary tradition. Most definitional tracts on the âABCs of
anarchismâ were penned long ago.[2] I will try to offer an introduction
to anarchism from the vantage point of the early twenty-first
century.[3] More specifically, I will hone in on anarchismâs
aspirations, as opposed to its history or current practices. That
anarchist projects, and anarchists themselves, fall short of these aims
underscores how essential it is to transform society in order to also
transform ourselves. âWeâre only human,â the saying goes, but our
humanity is profoundly damaged by the alienated world of control that we
inhabit. Anarchism contends that people would be much more humane under
nonhierarchical social relations and social arrangements. Hence my
concentration on the ethicsâthe values pertaining to how humans conduct
themselvesâthat knit anarchism together as a distinct political
sensibility.[4] As will hopefully become clear, anarchism serves
unflinchingly as a philosophy of freedom, as the nagging conscience that
people and their communities can always be better.
There are many different though often complementary ways of looking at
anarchism, but in a nutshell, it can be defined as the striving toward a
âfree society of free individuals.â[5] This phrase is deceptively
simple. Bound within it is both an implicit multidimensional critique
and an expansive, if fragile, reconstructive vision.
To deepen this definition, a further shorthand depiction of anarchism is
helpful: the ubiquitous âcircle Aâ image. The A is a placeholder for the
ancient Greek word anarkhiaâcombining the root an(a), âwithout,â and
arkh(os), âruler, authorityââmeaning the absence of authority. More
contemporaneously and accurately, it stands for the absence of both
domination (mastery or control over another) and hierarchy (ranked power
relations of dominance and subordination).[6] The circle could be
considered an O, a placeholder for âorderâ or, better yet,
âorganization,â drawing on Pierre-Joseph Proudhonâs seminal definition
in What Is Property? (1840): âas man [sic] seeks justice in equality, so
society seeks order in anarchy.â[7] The circle A symbolizes anarchism as
a dual project: the abolition of domination and hierarchical forms of
social organization, or power-over social relations, and their
replacement with horizontal versions, or power-together and in
commonâagain, a free society of free individuals.
To fill out this initial definition a bit further, letâs look at the two
sides of that phrase. Anarchism is a synthesis of the best of liberalism
and the best of communism, elevated and transformed by the best of
libertarian Left traditions that work toward an egalitarian,
voluntarily, and nonhierarchical society.[8] The project of liberalism
in the broadest sense is to ensure personal liberty. Communismâs
overarching project is to ensure the communal good. One could, and
should, question the word âfreeâ in both cases, particularly in the
actual implementations of liberalism and communism, and their shared
emphasis on the state and property as ensuring freedom.[9] Nonetheless,
respectively, and at their most âdemocratic,â oneâs aim is an individual
who can live an emancipated life, and the other seeks a community
structured along collectivist lines. Both are worthy notions.
Unfortunately, freedom can never be achieved in this lopsided manner:
through the self or society. The two necessarily come into conflict,
almost instantly. Anarchismâs great leap was to combine self and society
in one political vision; at the same time, it jettisoned the state and
property as the pillars of support, relying instead on self-organization
and mutual aid.
Anarchism understood that any egalitarian form of social organization,
especially one seeking a thoroughgoing eradication of domination, had to
be premised on both individual and collective freedomâno one is free
unless everyone is free, and everyone can only be free if each person
can individuate or actualize themselves in the most expansive of senses.
Anarchism also recognized, if only intuitively, that such a task is both
a constant balancing act and the stuff of real life. One personâs
freedom necessarily infringes on anotherâs, or even on the good of all.
No common good can meet everyoneâs needs and desires. This doesnât mean
throwing up oneâs hands and going the route of liberalism or communism,
propping up one side of the equationâultimately artificiallyâin hopes of
resolving this ongoing tension. From the start, anarchism asked the much
more difficult though ultimately pragmatic question: Acknowledging this
self-society juggling act as part of the human condition, how can people
collectively self-determine their lives to become who they want to be
and simultaneously create communities that are all they could be as
well?
Anarchism understood that this tension is positive, as a creative and
inherent part of human existence. It highlights that people are not all
alike, nor do they need, want, or desire the same things. At its best,
anarchismâs basic aspiration for a free society of free individuals
gives transparency to what should be a productive, harmonic dissonance:
figuring out ways to coexist and thrive in our differentiation.
Anarchists create processes that are humane and substantively
participatory. Theyâre honest about the fact that thereâs always going
to be uneasiness between individual and social freedom. They acknowledge
that itâs going to be an ongoing struggle to find the balance. This
struggle is exactly where anarchism takes place. It is where the beauty
of life, at its most well-rounded and self-constructed, has the greatest
possibility of emergingâand at times, taking hold.
Although it happens at any level of society, one experiences this most
personally in small-scale projectsâfrom bike cooperatives to free
schoolsâwhere people collectively make face-to-face decisions about
issues large and mundane. This is not something that people in most
parts of the world are encouraged or taught to do, most pointedly
because it contains the kernels of destroying the current vertical
social arrangements. As such, weâre generally neither particularly good
nor efficient at directly democratic processes. Council decision-making
mechanisms are hard work. They raise tough questions, like how to deal
with conflict in nonpunitive ways. But through them, people school
themselves in what could be the basis for collective self-governance,
for redistributing power to everyone. When it goes well, we have a
profound sense of the types of promises, or agreements, we can make with
and keep to each other. We recognize what we can be, in a way that
qualitatively points past capitalism, the state, and other
all-too-numerous forms of oppression. On the microlevel and much larger
ones, anarchism forms âthe structure of the new society within the shell
of the old,â as the preamble to the Industrial Workers of the Worldâs
Constitution asserts.[10] More crucially, it self-determines the
structure of the new from spaces of possibility within the old.
From the start, anarchism was an open political philosophy, always
transforming itself in theory and practice. This, too, might be seen as
part of its very definition. Anarchism has to remain dynamic if it truly
aims to uncover new forms of domination and replace them with new forms
of freedom, precisely because of the ever-present strain between
personal and collective freedom. Self-organization necessitates
everyoneâs participation, which requires being always amenable to new
concerns and ideas. Yet when people are introduced to anarchism today,
that openness, combined with a cultural propensity to forget the past,
can make it seem a recent inventionâwithout an elastic tradition, filled
with debates, lessons, and experiments, to build on. Even worse, it can
seem like a political praxis of âanything goesââlibertine without the
libertarianâwithout regard for how one personâs acts impact another
person or community.[11] It is critical to understand anarchismâs past
in order to understand its meaning, but also its problems and
shortcomings as well as what we might want to retain and expand on. We
study anarchist history to avoid repeating mistakes, but also to know we
arenât alone on what has been and will likely be rocky, detour-filled
âpaths in utopia,â to borrow the title of a Martin Buber book. Of
course, itâs generally helpful to understand historical contexts.
Anarchism, for its part, is in large measure filled out and changed by
its lived engagement in social struggle and visionary experimentation.
Harmony ... [is] obtained [through] ... free agreements concluded
between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely
constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the
satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a
civilized being.
âPeter Kropotkin, âAnarchism,â 1910
To understand anarchism as a political philosophy and specifically its
aspirations, we have to go back to the classical anarchism of the
mid-nineteenth centuryânot to romanticize it, because it wasnât
âclassicâ in many ways, but because that is when anarchism emerged as a
word describing a particular set of political beliefs and practices.
There were certainly innumerable human behaviors and forms of
organization going back millennia that could be classified as
âanarchisticâ in hindsight. Nevertheless, anarchism as a distinctive
praxis, a constellation of attributes that weâll explore below, appeared
in the 1840s. It began in Europe, a nonmonolithic grouping of countries
and cultures that, in turn, spawned a variety of anarchist tendencies.
It then quickly traveled to and developed in places around the
world.[12]
Anarchism in Europe grew out of, in part, hundreds of years of slave
rebellions, peasant uprisings, and heretical religious movements in
which people decided that enough was enough, and the related
experimentation with various forms of autonomy.[13] It was also partly
influenced by Enlightenment thought in the eighteenth century, whichâat
its bestâpopularized three pivotal notions, to a large degree theorized
from these revolts.[14] The first idea was that individuals have the
capacity to reason. This may seem self-evident now, but at the time it
was a revolutionary conceptualization. For centuries, people grew up
believing , in essence, that reason was only to be gleaned from the word
of a monarch and/or god. Enlightenment philosophy gave voice to the
ideas of on-the-ground social struggles and, in percolating through
society, gradually shattered such self-abnegation with the increasingly
hegemonic understanding that everyone has the ability to think for
themselves. This, in turn, led to a second idea: if humans have the
capacity to reason, then they also have the capacity to act on their
thoughts. Again, this was an explosive notion, since prior to this, most
people were largely acted on by an all-powerful king and/or god, via an
all-powerful monarchy and/or church.
Hence, and perhaps most liberating, a third idea arose: if people can
think and act on their own initiative, then it literally stands to
reason that they can potentially think through and act on notions of the
good society. They can innovate; they can create a better world. A host
of Enlightenment thinkers offered bold new conceptions of social
organization, drawn from practice and yet articulated in theory, ranging
from individual rights to self-governance.[15] Technological
advancements in printing facilitated the relatively widespread
dissemination of this written material for the first time in human
history via books, pamphlets, and periodicals. New common social spaces
like coffeehouses, public libraries, and speakersâ corners in parks
further allowed for debate about and the spread of these incendiary
ideas. None of this ensured that people would think for themselves, act
for themselves, or act out of a concern for the whole of humanity. But
what was at least theoretically revolutionary about this Copernican turn
was that before then, the vast majority of people largely didnât believe
in their own agency or ability to self-organize on such an
interconnected, self-conscious, and crucially, widespread basis. They
were born, for instance, into an isolated village as a serf with the
expectation that theyâd live out their whole lives accordingly. In
short, that they would accept their lot and the social order as rigidly
god-given or naturalâwith any hopes for a better life placed in the
afterlife.
Due to the catalytic relationship between theory and practice, many
people gradually embraced these three Enlightenment ideas, leading to a
host of libertarian ideologies, from the religious congregationalisms to
secular republicanism, liberalism, and socialism. These new radical
impulses took many forms of political and economic subjugation to task,
contributing to an outbreak of revolutions throughout Europe and
elsewhere, such as in Haiti, the United States, and Mexico. This
revolutionary period started around 1789 and lasted until about 1871
(reappearing in the early twentieth century). In this approximately
eighty-year stretch, the peoples of Europe in particular lived through a
time when dramatic upheavals were occurring every ten or twenty years,
when bottom-up change seemed possible.
Over these decades, spurred by the daily suffering experienced by
millions along with the emancipatory elements within Enlightenment
thought, many rebellions were successful, but not always in the way that
the revolutionaries intended. Monarchs, aristocrats, and gods were
felled by waves of revolutions, and an era of absolutism and arbitrary
rule came to an end. In its place, frequently after power struggles
between the radicals themselves, a new political zeitgeist took hold:
secular varieties of parliamentarianism or representative democracy.[16]
Murray Bookchinâs concept of the âthird revolutionâ captures this well:
first thereâs a revolutionary overthrow of a despotic regime, then a
directly democratic revolutionary structure emerges, only to be crushed
by forces from within the revolutionary milieu that then institute new
forms of tyranny.[17] This period saw a profound assertion of individual
liberty and revolutionary potentiality. It also witnessed the
constitution and rise of the modern state, which brought with it a new
hypercentralization and hyperindividualism. All of this was fertile
ground for anarchismâs development as an antistatist and utopian
sensibility.
Capitalism, too, came into its own for a variety of reasons, including
the revolutionary undoing of the aristocracy and feudal privileges. The
Industrial Revolution was especially transformative. It disturbed rural
subsistence economies, essentially compelling mass migration into the
growing cities and factories for wage work or indentured servitude. This
tectonic shift offered both promise and new forms of mass
impoverishment. People were freed from the constraints of often-stifling
village traditions, such as proscribed kinship relations and religious
beliefs, not to mention traditional power structures emanating from
cathedrals and castles. They were exposed to diverse cultures, ideas,
and experiences in the urban mix, and what for many felt like new forms
of freedom. Yet life in the rapidly expanding metropolises also involved
wretched life conditions for most people, and work generally was
exploitative. Under capitalism, the âeconomyâ began to gain importance
over all else, including human life and the nonhuman world, increasingly
restructuring social relations.
More than anyone, Karl Marx grasped the essential character of what
would become a hegemonic social structureâarticulated most compellingly
in his Capital (1867) as well as the earlier Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844.[18] More than âsimplyâ a form of economic
exploitation dividing the world into a few haves and many have-nots, or
those who owned the means of production and those enslaved by it through
wage labor, capitalismâs inherent grow-or-die logic would reconstitute
the whole of life in its image. It ânaturalizedâ values like competition
and the domination of humans over other humans, as if they were normal
conditions of life, like breathing, and made such values increasingly
hegemonic.
This logic unfolds dialectically, as Marx shows, from the commodity, or
âcell-form,â of capitalism: an object no longer defined by how useful it
is (use value), but by its exchangeability (exchange value).[19] Rather
than things having inherent worth in themselves, all of life becomes
instrumentalized within a capitalist system. Capitalism is necessarily
compelled to commodify more and more things, material and immaterial,
affective and ecologicalâthe whole world, if possible. âValueâ is
determined by how much one has to exchange and accumulate: money,
property, or especially power over others. This buy-sell relation, as
Marx explained it, ultimately becomes masked in the commodity itself.
Things-as-commoditiesâfrom goods and human labor, to value systems and
social structuresâseem to be ever-more independent of human creation. In
this way, people become alienated, estranged, or seemingly removed from
a world that is actually of their own making, and that could be remade
in alternate, humane ways. As the Situationist International would later
add, people become spectators of rather than actors in their own
livesâlives that are increasingly controlled and deadening, if not
deadly, regardless of whether one is âat workâ or not.[20]
Such a âgreat transformation,â to borrow Karl Polyaniâs phrase, was
fertile soil for the birth of a revolutionary socialism, with an
adamantly anticapitalist and emancipatory sensibility.[21] Mass
socialist organizations and movements engaged in a variety of social
struggles. Their political contestations, in turn, birthed
often-antagonistic strains within revolutionary socialism itself, from
communism to anarchism, as revolutionary socialists hashed out their
analyses, goals, and strategies. Two battling camps emerged: libertarian
versus nonlibertarian (or less generously, authoritarian) socialism.
Both looked to transform society through class struggle aimed at
abolishing private property and class itself, in favor of communitarian
forms of justice and equality. Picking up on Marxâs contention that
capitalism will only continue to spread and thus will not ânegotiateâ
with any other socioeconomic system, socialists considered the abolition
of capitalism as key to human liberation.
Anarchism developed within this milieu as, in Kropotkinâs words, the
âleft wingâ of socialism.[22] Like all socialists, anarchists
concentrated on the economy, specifically capitalism, and saw the
laboring classes in the factories and fields, as well as artisans, as
the main agents of revolution. They also felt that many socialists were
to the ârightâ or nonlibertarian side of anarchism, soft on their
critique of the state, to say the least. These early anarchists, like
all anarchists after them, saw the state as equally complicit in
structuring social domination; the state complemented and worked with
capitalism, but was its own distinct entity. Like capitalism, the state
will not ânegotiateâ with any other sociopolitical system. It attempts
to take up more and more governance space. It is neither neutral nor can
it be âchecked and balanced.â The state has its own logic of command and
control, of monopolizing political power. Anarchists held that the state
cannot be used to dismantle capitalism, nor as a transitional strategy
toward a noncapitalist, nonstatist society. They advocated an expansive
âno gods, no mastersâ perspective, centered around the three great
concerns of their dayâcapital, state, and churchâin contrast to, for
example, The Communist Manifestoâs assertion that âthe history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.â[23] Itâs
not that anarchists didnât take this history seriously; there were other
histories, though, and other strugglesâsomething that anarchism would
continue to fill out over the decades.
As many are rediscovering today, anarchism from the first explored
something that Marxism has long needed to grapple with: domination and
hierarchy, and their replacement in all cases with greater degrees of
freedom. That said, the classical period of anarchism exhibited numerous
blind spots and even a certain naïveté. Areas such as gender and race,
in which domination occurs beyond capitalism, the state, and the church,
were often given short shrift or ignored altogether. Nineteenth-century
anarchism was not necessarily always ahead of its day in identifying
various forms of oppression. Nor did it concern itself much with
ecological degradation. When it came to questions of human nature, quite
a few anarchists held that without capitalism or the state, everyone
would get along fine, and people would have little or no need for formal
nonhierarchical institutions, much less agreements. Of course, comparing
classical anarchism to todayâs much more sophisticated understanding of
forms of organization and the myriad types of domination is also a bit
unfairâboth to anarchism and other socialisms. Anarchism developed over
time, theoretically and through practice. Its dynamism, an essential
principle, played a large part in allowing anarchism to serve as its own
challenge. Its openness to other social movements and radical ideas
contributed to its further unfolding. Like any new political philosophy,
it would take many minds and many experiments over many years to develop
anarchism into a more full-bodied, nuanced worldviewâa process, if one
takes anarchismâs initial impulse seriously, of always expanding that
worldview to account for additional blind spots. Anarchism was, is, and
continually sees itself as âonly a beginning ,â to cite the title of a
recent anthology.[24]
From its beginnings, anarchismâs core aspiration was to root out and
eradicate all coercive, hierarchical social relations, and dream up and
establish consensual, egalitarian ones in every instance. In a time of
revolutionary possibility, and during a period when older ways of life
were so obviously being destroyed by enormous transitions, the early
anarchists were frequently extravagant in their visions for a better
world. They drew on what was being lost (from small-scale agrarian
communities to the commons) and what was being gained (from potentially
liberatory technologies to potentially more democratic political
structures) to craft a set of uncompromising, reconstructive ethics.
These ethics still animate anarchism, supplying whatâs most compelling
about it in praxis. Its values serve as a challenge to continually
approach the dazzling horizon of freedom by actually improving the
quality of life for all in the present. Anarchism always âdemands the
impossibleâ even as it tries to also ârealize the impossible.â Its
idealism is thoroughly pragmatic. Hierarchical forms of social
organization can never fulfill most peoplesâ needs or desires, but time
and again, nonhierarchical forms have demonstrated their capacity to
come closer to that aim. It makes eminent and ethical sense to
experiment with utopian notions. No other political philosophy does this
as consistently and generously, as doggedly, and with as much overall
honesty about the many dead-ends in the journey itself.
These ethics will continually need to be fleshed out. They will need to
adjust themselves to particular historical conditions if they are to
remain relevant and vibrant. Nevertheless, from the outset, anarchism
grounded itself in a set of shared values. These revolved around
interconnected notions such as liberty and freedom, solidarity and
internationalism, voluntary association and federation, education,
spontaneity and harmony, and mutual aid. Anarchist principles affirmed
humanityâs potential to meet everyoneâs needs and desires, via forms of
nonhierarchical cooperative and collective arrangements. As weâll see
below, adding the prefix âself-â to words that other socialists
generally fail to interrogate embodies the grounding ethical project of
creating fully articulated social selves, who strive with others for a
society of, for, and by everyone. The early anarchists thus began our
ongoing efforts to bring forth self-determination and self-organization,
self-management and self-governance, as the basis for a new society.
If these overarching ethics are the thread that stitched anarchism
together as something recognizable, not to mention compelling, then the
specific ways that anarchists put these values into practice are the
patchwork pieces. All political philosophies contain various tendencies,
divergent views within a shared whole. Anarchism understood this, even
if only implicitly, as precisely its politics, as the creative impulse
allowing unity within diversity to have qualitative meaning. Clearly
this is easier said than done. As with the balancing act between self
and society, anarchists also need to juggle unity and diversity toward a
happy equilibrium. Classical anarchists self-identified their
differences in a publicly transparent way, even if not necessarily out
of the most comradely motives. Rather than a sign of factionalism or
antagonism, this âanarchism of adjectivesâ is the means of developing a
rich variety of emphases and passions. When interlinked under the banner
of anarchism, these many adjectival descriptors increasingly capture the
concerns and ideals of an ever-more egalitarian societyâor at least that
is the hope.
The early years of anarchism saw the emergence of various âschoolsâ of
thought. These tendencies spanned a wide range. They captured the
tension within anarchism of trying to balance individualist strains with
communist, mutualist, and collectivist notions. They ran the gamut from
philosophical and evolutionary perspectives to insurrection and direct
action. They emphasized everything from the economic to the
psychological to the spiritual, and influenced a large number of social
movements and struggles around the world.[25] Beyond the ethics noted
earlier, all these tendencies held that the state was artificial, alien,
and coercive; that it always represented the interests of the few and
powerful at the expense of the many; and that it relied on a monopoly of
violence to maintain itself. Nearly all of these anarchist strains
looked to forms of libertarian worker-oriented socialism.[26] And all of
them recognized that fundamental social transformationâwhether gradual
or suddenâwas necessary to move beyond state, capital, church, and other
hindrances to the full fruition of self and society.
The classical anarchists were engaged revolutionaries as well as
propagandists in the best sense of the word, actively putting their
theories into innovative practice. They initiated all sorts of
projectsâsome of which look distinctly familiar to present-day
anarchists. They created collective living situations and community
social spaces such as labor halls, and met material needs through
everything from local currencies to mutual aid societies to schools.
Anarchists set up federated organizations and convened conferences; they
threw themselves into ambitious campaigns, agitational speaking tours,
and numerous publishing activities. They also organized diligently among
the working classes, and brought council forms of organization to
everyday life. One of the grandest of these âprojects,â heartbreakingly
beautiful and ending in a heartbreaking defeat, was the large-scale,
self-managed collectivist experiment in Spain during the revolution in
the 1930s.[27] But despite the best efforts of anarchists and other
social revolutionaries, history did not favor a turn toward freedom in
the early to mid-twentieth century.
The aim of anarchism is to stimulate forces that propel society in a
libertarian direction.
âSam Dolgoff, The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, 1970
Classical anarchismâs aims were no bulwark against the brutal
transformations that swept the globe with the rise of actually existing
communism and fascism. Historical forces drove society in a murderous
direction. Anarchism did not disappear during this time. Yet its ranks
were decimated. Touchstone figures were killed, including Gustav
Landauer by protofascists following the Bavarian Revolution in 1919 and
Erich MĂŒhsam by Nazis in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934.
Others died in prison, like Ricardo Flores MagĂłn in 1922, and some
committed suicide, such as Alexander Berkman in 1936. Anarchists were
increasingly isolated. Kropotkinâs death in 1921 marked the last mass
gathering of anarchistsâfor his funeral procession, and then only with
Vladimir Leninâs permissionâin Russia until 1987. Thousands of
anarchists worldwide were incarcerated, exiled, or slaughtered. They
were victims of repressions like the Red Scare in the United States and
purges of radical opposition by numerous Communist parties. As a result,
anarchism became far less vibrant, a ghost of itself. This made it
difficult for people to discover the politics, further reducing the
number of anarchists and anarchistic efforts. It was as if the
antiauthoritarian Left skipped a generation or two.
At the same time, the world itself was transformedâbut in a polar
opposite way from anything that anarchists had advocated. Fascism,
Bolshevism, and Maoism; the rise of the United States as a world
superpower; the birth of multinational financial institutions along with
the âadvancementâ of capitalism; the cold war with its nuclear threat:
these and other emergent phenomena dramatically expanded the forms of
domination that any liberatory politics needed to address. Attempts to
rebuild anarchism were slow going, but never truly disappeared. In the
postwar era, through the 1960s and beyond, anarchism struggled to tailor
itself for the late twentieth century. It gained insight from other
overlapping or like-minded movements, such as radical feminism and queer
liberation, or the Autonomen in Germany and Zapatistas in Mexico. It
inspired, both explicitly and in less obvious ways, everything from the
playful urban politics of Amsterdamâs Provos to new forms of radical
ecology like the antinuclear movement and Earth First! to the British
poll tax rebellion.[28] While anarchism seemed behind the curve on some
issuesâthe collapse of Communism and the subsequent rise of unipolar
neoliberalism, for instanceâit continued to grow and develop.
By the close of the twentieth century, the âbattle of Seattleâ in 1999
was, for anarchism, just one manifestation of a whole chain of
reinventions within its own tradition.[29] Often seen as the birth of a
ânewâ anarchism, the now-famous role of anarchists in Seattleâs mass
mobilization againstâand successful shutdown ofâthe World Trade
Organization meetings was more a marker of something that had already
occurred: a modern anarchism had developed in a direct, however hidden
or circuitous, line from its âclassicalâ past. What Seattle did do,
though, was spotlight this reinvigorated anarchism, whether via images
of âblack blocâ anarchists throwing bricks through Starbucks windows, or
explanations of how the affinity group and spokescouncil model worked in
practice.[30] Mostly, it gave visibility and voice to anarchism in
general, helping it recapture the political imagination, in league with
a host of other âmovements from belowâ around the world.
The modernization of anarchism is also marked by what at times seems an
almost dizzying array of different emphases. This increasing
multiplicity is frequently a healthy development, challenging anarchism
to remain germane to todayâs world and draw its reconstructive visions
from potentialities within the present. Yet anarchism is not immune from
the increasing fragmentation and immediacy, among other conditions, that
characterize much of contemporary capitalist society. It is just as
damaged by the phenomena it decries. Even as anarchists advocate a
community of communities, they are, like most people today, alienated
from any sense of place and hence each other. Nonetheless, there remains
a profound sense of recognition between anarchists, based on a shared
set of distinct values, which in turn structure their lives and
projects. So letâs return to this amorphous entity called anarchism, in
order to add flesh to what still may feel like a vague definition by
exploring the constellation of sensibilities that describes all
anarchists.
Possibility is not a luxury, it is as crucial as bread.
âJudith Butler, Undoing Gender, 2004
First and foremost, anarchism is a revolutionary political philosophy.
That is, anarchism is thoroughly radical in the true sense of the word:
to get at the root or origin of phenomena, and from there to make
dramatic changes in the existing conditions. Anarchism aspires to
fundamentally transform society, toward expansive notions of individual
and social freedom. Much of the time, in practice, this means engaging
in various âreformsâ or improvements, but ones that at the same time
attempt to explicitly articulate a revolutionary politics. This
reform-pointing-to-revolution is certainly hard to navigate, much less
implement. Debates within anarchism relating to strategies and tactics
hinge on this question, and rightly so, since capitalism, in particular,
has an astonishing knack for recuperating anything that seems to stand
in its way.
Despite the difficulties, anarchists never advocate a purely reformist
attitude. They try their best never to participate in reform as an end
in itself, or to bring about improvements that also make the present
social order look attractive. Their efforts to move from âhereâ to
âthereâ intentionally highlight how current social arrangements cannot,
by their own raison dâĂȘtre, meet everyoneâs needs and desires.
Anarchists do not ârest content with the ideal of a future society
without overlordship,â as anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker put it long
ago; they simultaneously direct their organizing efforts at, for one,
ârestricting the activities of the state and blocking its influence in
every department of social life wherever they see an opportunity.â[31]
Anarchism is not satisfied with remaining on the surface, merely
tinkering to make a damaged world a little less damaging. It is a
thoroughgoing critique aimed at a thoroughgoing reimagining and
restructuring of society. It views this as essential if everyone is to
be free, and if humanity is to harmonize itself with the nonhuman world.
As mentioned earlier, anarchism from the start focused on what appeared
as the two biggest stumbling blocks to a libertarian society: capitalism
and the state. This pair, sadly, are still the predominant forms of
social immiseration and control. Capitalism and statecraft loom large in
terms of naturalizingâand thereby being at the root ofâthis immiseration
and control. Their separate yet often-interrelated internal logics
consolidate power monopolies for a few, always at the expense of the
many. This demands that each system must both continually expand and
mask its dominion. To survive, they have to make it seem normal that
most people are materially impoverished and disenfranchised as economic
actors, and socially impoverished and disenfranchised as political
actors. They have to restructure social relations in their own imageâas
unthinkingly assumed ways of being and acting. The world that most of
humanity produces is, as a result, denied to the vast majority, and a
relative handful get to make binding decisions over all of life.
Anarchism is therefore staunchly anticapitalist and antistatist, which
ensures that it is a revolutionary politics, since battling such primary
systems necessarily means getting to the root of them. Moving beyond
capitalism and states would entail nothing less than turning the world
upside down, breaking up all monopolies, and reconstituting everything
in commonâfrom institutions to ethics to everyday life.
So, for example, whereas many in the global and now climate justice
movements focus on corporations as key, anarchists see these entities as
only one piece of capitalism, and a piece that if removed, wouldnât
destroy capitalismâbad as corporations may be. One can have capitalism
without corporations. Capitalismâs essenceâensuring that society is
forged around compulsory social relations along with inequities in power
and material conditionsâwould remain in place. And given capitalismâs
grow-or-die logic, small-scale capitalism would by definition unfold
into a larger scale again. Or as contemporary networked and
informational capitalistic structures indicate, allegedly localized
capitalism can be a way to hide an increasing concentration of social
control and injustice. Capitalism itself, in its totality, and because
it strives toward totality, is the root problem. Anarchists, then, look
to wholly undo the hegemony of capitalist economic structures and
values, or the many components that mark capitalism as a systemâfrom
corporations, banks, and private property, to profit, bosses, and wage
labor, to alienation and commodification.
This may boil down to projects that appear to concentrate on single
issues, but anarchists attempt to use such campaigns to demonstrate how
capitalism, say, canât fulfill its own promise of meeting needs, and how
a free society must be premised on a world without it. For instance,
capitalism often produces surpluses in things like food and housing. But
unless that surplus can be exchanged, it gets thrown away or remains
empty. Meanwhile, many people are desperately hungry or sleep on the
streets. Making that surplus available for use instead of
exchangeâreclaiming it as a commons, for those who need and want
itâreveals peopleâs ability to self-organize to meet those needs. It
also shows that being fully human would involve sharing surplus freely
and taking care of everyone, not just those who can afford to feed or
house themselves.
This revolutionary stance, though, is not implicit. Anarchists publicly
draw it out in multiple ways, illustrating how an improvement can also
gesture toward radical reconstruction. They shake up naturalized ways of
thinking under capitalism, for example, with banner slogans about
radical civic sharing (âEverything for everyone, and whatâs more for
freeâ) or literature encouraging people to âoccupy everything.â They
launch more fully developed campaigns such as âUse It or Lose It,â tying
property takeovers to the notion of usufructâour ability to use and
enjoy housing as a social good, which flies directly in the face of
capitalismâs exchange value. When the revolutionary edge gets dulled, as
it frequently does under capitalism, anarchists try to reorient projects
to underscore the irrationality of the current economic system in
contrast to various transformative possibilities in the present.
The state, though distinct from capitalism in its form and methods, must
also become a thing of the past if freedom has any chance of reigning.
Itâs not a matter of trying to make the state kinder, more
multicultural, more benign, or to follow the letter of its own law. The
stateâs very logic asserts that a few people are better suited than
everyone else to determine, as the U.S. Constitution says, âlife,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.â Itâs not just that the state has
(or increasingly doesnât) a monopoly on violence but that regardless of
how it compels people to give up their powerâwith guns, ballots, or
pacification through forms of already-circumscribed participationâit is
always engaged in a variety of social control and social engineering.
Statecraft, at its essence, is about a small body of people legislating,
administering, and policing social policy. In this way, it also sustains
other types of domination, such as institutionalized racism or
heteronormativity. Increasingly, âthe stateâ is doing this as part of a
networked structure of states collaborating in blocs or global
institutions. Thus, fewer and fewer people get to determine policies
ranging from warfare to health care to immigration. Even the notion of
representative democracy under this global regime is almost
anachronistic, given that layers of nonrepresentative statecraft now
work hand in hand with equally undemocratic international NGOs and
multinational financial bodies.
The point here is that anarchists agree on the necessity of a world
without capital and states, precisely to allow everyone to make good on
their lives, liberties, and happinessâto be able to continually define
as well as take part in the quality of these categories. In relation to
the state specifically, anarchists contend that everyone is thoroughly
capable and deserving of self-determining their lives. Anarchists
believe that together, people will likely envision, deliberate over, and
settle on more creative, multidimensional social organization. Here
again, anarchists offer a revolutionary praxis that both improves
current conditions and points past them. A project that involves
providing surplus groceries to those in need of food can also include a
directly democratic assembly, where everyone involved starts to make
collective decisions. When a vacant lot is about to be sold to the
highest bidder for luxury development, anarchists put out a call for it
to be transformed into a park, then join their neighbors to not only
beautify the space but also experience their political power in
reclaiming it. Through efforts like Anarchists against the Wall or No
One Is Illegal campaigns, anarchists directly contest the stateâs power
to divide and degrade people by setting borders and controlling
territories.[32] Even in the reformist-oriented context of a mass
demonstration, anarchists infuse a revolutionary perspectiveâfor
example, by coordinating a global day of action not via centralized
organization but using a confederation of autonomous groups and
movements.
Anarchism is distinguished as a political philosophy by its clear,
uncompromising position against both capitalism and states. There are
many ways within anarchism to explain specifically whatâs wrong with
capitalism or states, and even more ways to approach ridding the world
of them. But anarchists maintain that the pair has to go because they
each have power over the vast majority of the human and nonhuman world.
At its heart, political philosophy is about power: who has it, what they
do with it, and toward what ends.[33] Anarchism, more sweepingly than
any other political philosophy, responds that power should be made
horizontal, should be held in common.
This concentration on bottom-up power arrangements leads anarchism not
only to oppose capitalism and states but also hierarchy and domination
in general. This was always implicit, and sometimes explicit, within
anarchism from the first, but anarchism increasingly has broadened its
lens of critique. Certainly, there were classical anarchists concerned
with phenomena besides capitalism and the state, whether that was
militarism, sexuality, or organized religion. Early anarchists also
utilized categories such as hierarchy, though such voices were fewer and
further between. Even when coming from major anarchist figures, however,
such articulations were still generally subservient to a focus on
capitalism and the stateâmuch as Marxists made, and often still do, all
phenomena subservient (or âsuperstructuralâ) to the economy (âbaseâ). A
combination of historical events, theoretical insights, and the
âintrusionâ of actually existing forms of domination that fall outside
capitalism and the state pushed anarchism toward a more all-encompassing
horizontal libertarianism. Bookchinâs The Ecology of Freedom (1982),
which explores the emergence of hierarchy over the millennia and its
intricate intertwining with the legacy of freedom, is exemplary of this
rethinking of anarchism.[34] It also reflected a flowering of
experimentation with all sorts of nonhierarchical relationships and
projects, both anarchist and not, from the counterculture, New Left, and
autonomist movements of the long 1960s to the presentâall of which
transformed anarchismâs own self-understanding.
This now-pervasive shift means that more than ever, anarchism is
interrogating itself and all else for ways in which hierarchy and
domination manifest themselves, or develop new forms under new
historical conditions. That has translated into a deeper, more sincere
acknowledgment that even if capitalism and the state were abolished,
many forms of hierarchies could still exist; and that even alongside
capitalism and the state, many other egregious phenomena cause grave
suffering.
Moreover, the shift within anarchism has involved a more complex
understanding of the ways that freedom and domination interrelate. On
the one hand, anarchistic efforts to âabolish workâ dovetail easily with
contemporary capitalismâs need for fewer employees.[35] On the other
hand, capitalismâs own technology can be utilized to thwart state
surveillance or encourage nonalienated sharing. These examples point to
the importance of anarchismâs revolutionary stance, which makes such
double-edged interactions visible. Yet it goes deeper. There are
possibilities within the present, fissures in domination that point
toward freedom. The increasing inability of todayâs state to protect its
citizenry from almost anythingâranging from sickness to
violenceâundermines the very justification for its existence, while also
creating an opening for federated grassroots innovations in how to
ensure material plenty and safer communities without the state. And
deeper still: as anarchists test out their ideas, newfound freedoms
often uncover further layers of domination. Attempts to shatter the
gender binary, for instance, reveal new manifestations of hierarchies
within varied gender expression.
A host of concerns have now been brought into the matrix of anarchismâs
critiqueâand hopefully its reconstructive visionâin prominent and
meaningful ways. These range from ecology and technology to alienation
and cultural production; from sex, sexuality, gender, and kinship to
white supremacy and antiracism; and from ableism and ageism to physical
and mental health. Anarchism will need to be ever vigilant. There is no
laundry list that people can clean up once and for all. Rather than a
contest between âisms,â contemporary anarchism grapples with the complex
internalized and institutionalized ways that people oppress, hurt, and
limit each other as well as the intersections between forms of
domination and oppression. This is frequently painful work, but
anarchists generally share a commitment to facing the challenge, within
their own circles and outside them. It doesnât always go well: the fact
that anarchism hasnât tackled, say, racism with as much determination as
class for much of its history means there is a lot to learn and do, a
lot of anger, and a long way to go. But as freedom and hierarchy battle
it out, they also expose new aspects of each other.
Hierarchy and domination serve as the prism through which to see various
phenomena as both distinct in their own right and deeply interconnected.
They can produce, structure, or sustain each other, or operate
relatively independently, yet always serve to restrain a consensual,
egalitarian world. Anarchists strive to dismantle forms of social
relations and social organization that allow some people to exercise
mastery over other people and things. They contrast the use of power for
gaining something from others, for money or status, or out of privilege
or hatred, with the use of power to collectively achieve individual and
social development, mutual respect, and the meeting of everyoneâs needs.
Anarchismâs generalized critique of hierarchy and domination, even more
than its anticapitalism and antistatism, sets it apart from any other
political philosophy. It asserts that every instance of vertical and/or
centralized power over others should be reconstituted to enact
horizontal and/or decentralized power together. This grand vision serves
as a yardstick for attempts to reduce hierarchy and domination while
improving the quality of life, materially and otherwise, in the here and
now.
Implementing anarchism as a lived political project can seem a daunting
task. It takes seriously the notion that hierarchy and domination in
their many manifestations need to be torn apart, and that society needs
to be restructured along fundamentally different lines. It means
transforming the whole of life. It means overcoming alienation,
countering humanityâs estrangement from the world and each other with
nonalienated relationships and organizations. This must be an ongoing
quest, with better (and worse) approximations of freedom appearing in
various times and places, only to seemingly disappear or greatly
diminish again. Still, with each approximation, the very idea of freedom
expands along with the notion of what it means to be human and humane.
Remnants of freedom remain, in fact or in memory. Vestiges of
experiments linger. People are transformed and pass their sense of
potentiality along to others.
Coming to anarchism, taking up the mantle of imagining a world beyond
hierarchy, is like a lightbulb going off inside oneâs head. It first
offers a sense of oneâs own empowerment and liberation, and then,
hopefully, a sense of collective social power and freedom. There is
something euphoric in casting off, even if only on the level of personal
beliefs initially, the idea that hierarchy is somehow a given, and that
one has to abide by its rules. Itâs a life-altering leap when one truly
uproots the belief within oneself that, say, racism or states are normal
and necessary. The move toward increasingly nonhierarchical mind-sets,
relations, and institutions opens up a whole world of possibilityâat
least as a start, within oneself. The first act might be critical
thought, a less estranged relationship with oneself and others, or the
reappropriation of imagination as a step toward a nonalienated
society.[36]
Another shared sensibility among anarchists, then, is their attempt to
scrutinize and alter the entirety of life. Anarchism doesnât concentrate
on just the economic, political, cultural, psychological, or other
spheres. Nor does it separate any single issue from its relation to
other issues, even if one personally places emphasis on a particular
area. It concerns itself with everything that makes people human,
including the nonhuman world. The work of anarchism takes place
everywhere, every day, from within the body politic to the body itself.
The anarchist hope to transform life translates into a shared, holistic
approach to living life. Embracing anarchism is a process of
reevaluating every assumption, everything one thinks about and does, and
indeed who one is, and then basically turning oneâs life upside-down.
Upending coercive relations is a journey of remaking oneself, as part of
the project of remaking the world. But becoming an anarchist is also a
processâwithout endâof applying an ethical compass to the whole of what
one (and everyone) is and could be individually and socially. Anarchists
arenât necessarily any better, or worse, than anyone else. They are just
as damaged by the intricate web of hierarchies, hatreds, and commodified
relationships that malform everybody. Within anarchist circles, though,
valiant attempts are at least made to be open and self-reflective about
this damage, and from there to develop humane ways of addressing it.
Anarchism entails working hard at reshaping oneself as well as oneâs
society.
Anarchists interrogate the whole of life, constantly asking , âWhat is
the right thing to do?â They struggle to apply the answers to
everything, from basic needs to complex desires, from instances of
oppression to institutionalized inequalities. They donât live pure and
ethical lives. Rather, the gap between what anarchists imagine to be
fully ethical and the series of bad choices we all make under the
present conditions illustrates that hierarchical social relationships
will forever preclude our ability to be free. Anarchismâs emphasis on
the whole of life underscores that the current social order already
frames the world for everyone down to the tiniest interactions; âchoiceâ
itself is already hobbled. Anarchists critique this framework and
construct an ethical one in its place, as opposed to providing a
moralistic appraisal of whether each individual is 100 percent ethical
nowâor even close. Anarchists donât live consistently ethical lives, but
the effort to do so is a way of uncovering the possibilities of moving
away from this unethical present.
At the same time, being an anarchist isnât about sacrificing oneself to
âthe revolution.â In trying to transform the whole of life to
approximate a set of values, anarchists both reveal social
contradictions and test out new social relations. They also start to
experience how life itself could be qualitatively different in the most
intimate of ways: for oneself and among others who are doing likewise.
In this manner, anarchists share a sense of living more fully
self-determined, articulated lives on the personal and social frontsâthe
bridge from âwhat isâ to âwhat could be.â This is no small feat. The
universally felt alienation from the whole of life at this particular
historical momentâthe wasteland quality to existence under global
capitalismâcan make it seem as if the whole of life is closed off to
transformation. As Marx insightfully observed, everyone is compelled and
destroyed by capitalism, even if some benefit in far greater ways than
others. Capitalism holds out shiny possibilities for the future (we can
feed the world! your next purchase will make you happy at long last!
this social network will lessen your loneliness!), but never fulfills
them, so one needs to keep chasing after the next shiny possibility.
âAll that is solid melts into air.â[37] The latest iPhone that will meet
all your needs is, alas, now yesterdayâs inadequate shell, replaced by
the next answer to all your desires. Whether one has nothing or
everything, âlifeâ under capitalism feels empty.
Anarchist experiments expose the cracks in this edifice. They allow
people to personally feel what it could be like if life was of their own
making. This qualitative retaking of the every day reveals the
mind-numbing quantitative calculations that people are compelled to make
under capitalism. Expanding the qualitative could be the key to
capitalismâs demise, because no matter how much capitalism tries to
recuperate all that makes people human, its quantitative outlook will
always feel sterile when contrasted to a sense of what it might mean to
be truly alive.
This is a subtle shift, of course, especially under constrained and
oppressive conditions, but itâs how people frequently describe their
first encounter with anarchism in practice. It might be the exuberance
of forming a study group to reclaim education or viscerally experiencing
the power of an affinity group during a protest. It could be the pride
in communalizing skills and resources to refurbish a new social center.
Or perhaps itâs the joy of establishing collective ways to meet material
needs. Doing-it-ourselves together, not to amass fortunes or accumulate
power but to carve out rich new relations of sharing and kindness,
always entails quality over quantity, setting new terms based on how
everyone would like to see everything done, cooperatively and through
directly democratic means, voluntarily and in solidarity. Itâs about
moving away from an instrumental worldview toward one based on each
personâs intrinsic worth.
This qualitative dimension within anarchism isnât simply a feeling,
helping people to overcome the weight of alienation under capitalism.
Many anarchist projects are also models of how to meet daily needs, in
order to ultimately overcome the material deprivation that capitalism
imposes on much of humanity. Both are equally vital elements of
revolutionary transformation. Capitalism has indicated that humans might
be able to achieve a postscarcity societyâa world in which everyone has
enough of what they need to sustain life. But despite grocery stores and
dumpsters overflowing with food, billions of people go hungry; despite
labor-saving technologies, most people work more for less; despite
breakthroughs in health care, many die needlessly. Meanwhile,
consumption has been transformed into a barometer of oneâs worth, a
never-ending quest for happiness via commodity choices. And itâs always
premised on what one has to exchange for that abundance, or else itâs
denied.
Anarchist projects, in contrast, seek to reorient the whole of
production. As a direct counter to capitalism, they look to develop
self-managed forms of production that allow people to see themselves in
what they make and recognize others in what they produce. They transform
notions of production and work altogether, so that people can make
things based on their proclivities, and so that âworkâ becomes a joyful
way of collectively fulfilling the material bases of life. They aim to
ensure plenty as well, based on the belief that everyone deserves
material sustenance simply by virtue of being human. Anarchist projects
also attempt to reorient consumption. They build on the idea that when
people see themselves reflected in what they create, âgoodsâ carry a
sense of our âgoodnessââthe care and individuality that goes into making
things. They transform notions of consumption altogether, shifting the
focus toward use and reuse, via sharing, gifting, and barter.
Consumption ensures health and safety, solidarity not charity,
generosity not hoarding, enabling people to pursue a variety of
possibilities to enhance themselves and their communities. In these
ways, anarchism aspires toward new understandings of happiness, not to
mention human worth, outside the commodity form.
Anarchists design modest experiments with grand goals to allow people to
meet their needs and desires, be ecological, craft new social relations,
set up spaces and organizations, and make decisions togetherâall in
nonhierarchical ways. These are partial experiments, sometimes
short-lived, especially given the force of the current systems of
domination. Yet they form a tangible fabric of horizontalist innovation.
A single Food Not Bombs project started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in
1980, for example, has been borrowed and translated into new contexts
around the world.[38] Linked in name and sensibility, but operating
autonomously in each location, Food Not Bombs challenges peopleâs
relation to the production and consumption of meals. If further
interconnected to other such experiments, and with further innovation,
such projects could form a dual power to the powers-that-be. The idea is
that people establish counterinstitutions as well as lifeways that gain
enough forceâbecause they capture the hearts, minds, and participation
of enough peopleâto ultimately exist on a level with, or finally in
victorious contestation to, centralized power.
Efforts like Food Not Bombs (or âspin-offsâ like Food Not Lawns, Homes
Not Jails, and Books through Bars), like many anarchist projects,
sometimes operate largely within a subculture, which might be a
necessary phase in testing out ideas and developing an infrastructure.
Like any alternative, they can fall prey to co-optation or simply
comfortable routine. Yet since no one âownsâ these projects, anarchists
and others can play with and build on them. If one counted the number of
people âservedâ by various antiauthoritarian projectsâthe number of
people whose needs for food or housing, say, are met on a fairly
consistent basisâit might add up to millions globally. Hence the need
for more clear lines of interdependence and mutual aid as well as
attempts to develop them as dual powers.
The important thing about moving toward a better world is how people go
about doing it. Anarchist practices share distinct elements, even if
theyâre implemented in different ways: the lives and communities that
they attempt to establish are premised on a shared ethical compass. This
is key, given that most social forces presently deny and try to destroy
such alternatives. Reconstructive efforts to restructure everyday life
imply that people can work to destroy commodified and coercive
relations. They also sustain people for the hard work of doing just
that.
This comprehensive attempt to self-manage the whole of oneâs life and
activities, to ensure that everyone can do the same, revolves around an
ethical compass. Anarchism serves as a touchstone not simply for
anarchists but especially for those who encounter anarchismâs challenge:
âWhatâs the right thing to do?â The classical anarchists called this
simply âthe Idea.â Anarchism stands as a beacon through its history and
practices, and perhaps most especially through its ideals.
No other political philosophy keeps this vigilant voice constantly at
its center, as its core mission. Other political perspectives temper or
altogether dispense with âWhat is right?â in favor of âWhatâs
pragmatic?â They accept the status quo as a given, and then seek to
understand whatâs possible within that predetermined landscape. Even
other revolutionary political philosophies ultimately lean toward the
pragmatic, setting aside âWhatâs right?â in the supposed short-term, and
focusing on the most effective and efficient way to allegedly reach a
future revolutionary moment. They subscribe to a politics of expediency,
with pragmatism defining the present and ethics awaiting some distant
future. Tragically, as history has shown, the end never comes. This
isnât an accident, though; if you head in a different direction from
your destination, itâs unlikely that youâll reach it. This is not to say
that other political philosophies donât have their own ethical
orientations; but anarchism keeps its ethics at the forefront, as the
central question before all else.
Anarchists also want to be effective and efficient. Yet for them, ethics
shape how people pragmatically struggle for social change. For instance,
rather than asserting that itâs not feasible to include everyone within
a large region in the decisions that affect their lives, anarchists
would argue that because this goal is both desirable and ethical, we
must figure out how to move toward and ultimately ensure it. Answering
such questions determines the nature of any anarchist project or
organizing effort. This doesnât mean jumping from a state-based society
to a nonstatist one overnight; but it definitely means that anarchists
see inclusive, collective decision-making processes as integral to any
project. When anarchists join their neighbors to save a local library
branch, they suggest a general assembly, say, as the organizing body and
offer the skills to make it work. They will meet to determine the best
collective structure for their new infoshop, even if it takes a bit more
time, thereby schooling themselves in directly democratic processes on
the microlevel in order to hopefully extend such practices to the whole
of social organization.
Itâs never a matter of ethics versus pragmatism; itâs a question of
which informs the other. Humans have shown themselves capable of almost
unlimited imagination and innovationâqualities that could be said to
define human beings. People have used this capacity to do both great
good and great harm. The point is that when humans set their minds to
doing something, itâs frequently possible. It makes sense to first ask
what people want to do and why, from an ethical standpoint, and then get
to the pragmatic how-to questions. The very process of asking whatâs
right is how people fill out ethics in praxis, to meet new demands and
dilemmas, new social conditions and contexts.
Anarchism, then, brings an egalitarian ethics out into the world, making
it transparent, public, and shared. It maintains an ethical orientation,
while continually trying to put such notions into practice, as flawed as
the effort might be. When other people come into contact with this
ethical compass, they will hopefully âget itâ and incorporate the same
values into their lives, because it works. It offers directionality to
political involvement and buttresses peopleâs efforts to remake society.
It turns surviving into thriving. Thatâs the crucial difference between
a pragmatic versus ethical impulse: people, in cooperative concert,
qualitatively transform one anotherâs lives.
Of course, there is an enormous psychological barrier to taking such a
leap. Many people, after all, are struggling simply to get by. Anarchism
involves the combined project of trying to create the material
conditions that âfreeâ people up enough to make this shift. Its ethical
orientation also implies an underlying humanism and lived efforts at
humaneness. It tries to practice the good society, with others, within
the shell of the not-so-good society. The goal of anarchism isnât to
turn everyone into anarchists. Itâs to encourage people to think and act
for themselves, but to do both from a set of emancipatory values. Even
the process of evaluating values is an ethical one within anarchism.
âEthicsâ isnât some fixed entity but rather the continual questioning of
what it means to be a good person in a good society.[39] It draws from
the classical triad of philosophyâs aspirations: the good, the true, and
the beautiful. They are the starting points for anarchismâs questions as
well as its modeling of answers. In a world that feelsâthat
isâincreasingly wrong, anarchismâs ethical compass acts as an antidote.
That alone is an enormous contribution.
Still, serving as an ethical compass, while essential, is only one part
of the constellation that embodies anarchism. Another is the
directionality, or content, of those ethics. Here again, anarchists
share a set of generalized (and generalizable) ethics, and strive to
make those values tangible, even if they apply them in different ways.
In fact, a plurality of applications is precisely an anarchist value, or
what could be called âunity in ethics.â[40] Letâs look at the
parameters, in broad brushstrokes, of this communal anarchist ethic.
This isnât meant to be a complete pictureânor should it be, since an
ethics of freedom should by definition expand over time. But we can
touch on some of the most prominent aspirations that unify anarchists.
Anarchism promotes a dual notion of freedom. It asserts the idea of
liberation, or what could be called negative freedom: âfreedom from.â
But it is equally concerned with what could be called positive freedom:
âfreedom to.â It is not enough that people are free, say, from the state
telling them what they can do with their bodiesâsuch as whether they can
get an abortion or not. They also need to be free to do things with
their bodiesâfor instance, to express varied sexualities and genders,
which goes well beyond what any state can grant or take away.
If we understand this sense of negative and positive freedom, what
appears as a contradictory stance within anarchism makes perfect sense.
An anarchist might firmly believe that the Palestinian people deserve to
be liberated from occupation, even if that means that they set up their
own state. That same anarchist might also firmly believe that a
Palestinian state, like all states, should be opposed in favor of
nonstatist institutions. A complete sense of freedom would always
include both the negative and positive sensesâin this case, liberation
from occupation and simultaneously the freedom to self-determine.
Otherwise, as both actually existing Communist and liberal regimes have
demonstrated, âfreedom fromâ on its own will serve merely to enslave
human potentiality, and at its most extreme, humans themselves;
self-governance is denied in favor of a few governing over others. And
âfreedom to,â on its own, as capitalism has shown, will serve merely to
promote egotistic individualism and pit each against each;
self-determination trumps notions of collective good. Constantly working
to bring both liberation and freedom to the table, within moments of
resistance and reconstruction, is part of that same juggling act of
approximating an increasingly differentiated yet more harmonious world.
Bound up within positive freedom is the notion that people are not the
same, and thatâs a good thing. Communities, geographic and social, are
also distinct from each other. This is why humans must be free to figure
out what makes the most sense for each person and situation. Anarchism
believes in everyoneâs ability to take part in thinking through and
acting on, in compassionate ways, the world they inhabit. It maintains
that everyone deserves to shape and share in societyâa principle that
undergirds a nonhierarchical outlook, if opposition to hierarchy has any
meaning at all. But this doesnât mean that people all have equal needs
and desires, nor stable ones. People want different things over their
lifetimes, just as communities have differing demands over time.
The anarchist ethic of the equality of unequals shatters the
dehumanizing notion promulgated under capitalism that everything,
including each person, is exchangeableâequally a commodity, and thus
without inherent worthâreplacing it with the rehumanizing concept of the
value of each individual. It gives qualitative meaning to justice. Under
representative democracies, justice is blind to the uniqueness of each
person and the specificity of their circumstances. Particularities
arenât weighed, and âjusticeâ is meted out in vastly unjust ways. Within
anarchism, being just entails being clear-eyed about the differences
between people and their situations, which in turn makes it at least
possible to negotiate personal and social relations, including
conflicts, in ways that are substantively fair. Everyone and everything
has equal value, and should equally be provided sustenance in order to
fully blossom. What that sustenance looks like, however, will differ in
quantity and quality, based on differences in needs and desires. For
example, ethical health care would not be a cookie-cutter list of
services, as if peopleâs bodies are all alike. Nor would it be
apportioned in meager, exacting amounts. It would instead be tailored
toward each individualâs specific wellness as an always-available social
good, in as much abundance as possible. But the equality of unequals
isnât simply about materials needs. It is a sensibility to guide how
humans can justly apply equal worth to the rich nonequivalency of
differentiation.
Beyond a fundamental belief in the worth of each person, an anarchist
egalitarian ethic also follows the communistic notion of âfrom each
according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.â But
anarchism gives it a crucial twist: âfrom each according to their
abilities and passions, to each according to their needs and desires.â
In this view, people all contribute in various ways to each other and
their communitiesâand not simply in an economic sense. Indeed, this
ethic helps to reembed âthe economyâ into the wholeness of life. No
longer would contributions be unequally rewarded by wages or status, or
made invisible when they donât fit into an economic matrix. The plethora
of human contributions would be based on what people are good at, what
they enjoy, and also what they collectively determine is desirable as
well as necessary. One personâs needs (wool mittens, apples, or books)
might be another personâs desires. In a good society, people would want
to satisfy as much of both as possible.
All contributions have social value, from building houses to taking care
of babies to staging a theater piece. Everyone should be able to focus
on the things they want to do. Even if some people canât work at
different points in their livesâsay, as a young child or when
sickâeveryone would still get what they need and desire. Work itself
would have an altogether different meaning, perhaps a different name.
Production and distribution would involve neither compulsion nor
drudgery, nor be something distinct from âfree time.â They would be
intimate parts of what bring joy and sustenance to peopleâs lives. Time
would be freed up to make it oneâs own. Social contributions thus move
beyond the limited notion of what one gets paid (and compelled) to do.
Instead, the âfrom each, to eachâ sensibility understands that everyone
adds to society even when they canât make and distribute tangible goods
or services. It asserts that everyone is deserving of the material as
well as nonmaterial bases to fully thrive.
Without coercion, without the need to have a âjobâ to get what one needs
and wants, many âemploymentsâ would disappearâthe whole bureaucracy of
insurance companies, for instance. People would do almost everything
that communities need or want to get done, since people would freely
choose what they love to do, such as tidying up, growing food and
cooking, writing and painting, fighting fires, and developing software.
Individuals and groups would take on multiple tasks. Whatever no one
wants to doâsay, staff a sewage systemâwould be shared by everyone, or
at least by those who are physically able to do so. This isnât a pipe
dream, nor it is just an ethic; it is about applying ethics to social
organization. Anyone who has ever been involved in a voluntary
collective project knows that people can manage to get things done in
ways that account for differences in talents, proclivities, and the
common good. They can do this without force, equivalency, unhappiness,
or the state. To the contrary, such experiments viscerally point to a
sense of personal and social satisfaction that far outstrips systems of
âfrom each according to what they are forced to do, to each according to
their financial means, and otherwise people go without.â
This ethic also undergirds the idea mentioned above that everyone should
be provided and cared for, or rather, that people will provide and care
for each other. It asserts that human communities should ensure that
everyone has enough to sustain themselves, such as health care, and
enrich themselves, such as the arts. If thereâs a drought or an
earthquake, people will do their utmost to distribute limited resources
in order to care for everyone. A library is a good present-day instance
of this ethic, despite its problematic elements (say, wage work for the
staff ). Communities see libraries as something necessary and valuable
to everyday life, as something that should be freely available to all.
Anyone can use the library as much or as little as they see fit, with no
sense of scarcity. People can borrow what they want, with no judgment
(in the ideal) about the quantity or quality of their usage. They can
enjoy the library space itself, on their own or with the assistance of a
librarian. They can use it without offering anything in return, or if
desired, freely give back by donating books or volunteering time to
reshelf them. Imagine if everything from energy to education was such a
âfrom each, to eachâ institution. Many of the best anarchist experiments
todayâalbeit still within the limitations of state and capitalismâare
about trying to put this notion into practice, from bike and food coops,
to skill shares and free clinics.
A related and much-used phrase in the lexicon of anarchist ethics is
mutual aid. To some degree this simply restates the two above ideas. But
more specifically, itâs the expansive notion that humansâand for that
matter, as Kropotkin tried to show, the nonhuman worldâbest evolve
through forms of cooperation. All living things also engage in
competition, as Kropotkin also noted. Nevertheless, itâs when they work
together that they fully bloom. Mutual aid necessitates intricate,
complex relationships as well as harmonious differentiation to achieve
such reciprocal exchange. As Kropotkin argued, when people cooperate,
they are able to produce more, materially and otherwise. This benefits
both the individual and the group; it is to the mutual benefit of
everyone. Competition simplifies. When humans compete, only a few of
them win out. This makes sense and can even be fun in the context of
games; in the context of a society, where everyone should âwinâ a better
world, competition is thoroughly detrimental. This is particularly true
when it becomes naturalized as the key value within the economy, pitting
all against all. Anarchists have long held up forms of mutualism as the
basis for a noncapitalist economy, where cooperation would link all to
all.
Mutual aid is one of the most beautiful of anarchismâs ethics. It
implies a lavish, boundless sense of generosity, in which people support
each other and each otherâs projects. It expresses an openhanded spirit
of abundance, in which kindness is never in short supply. It points to
new relations of sharing and helping, mentoring and giving back, as the
very basis for social organization. Mutual aid communalizes compassion,
thereby translating into greater âsocial securityâ for everyoneâwithout
need for top-down institutions. It is solidarity in action, writ large,
whether on the local or global level.
When felt and lived out as a daily sensibility, in combination with
other anarchist ethics, cooperation creates fundamentally different
social relations, which offer humanity the best odds of transforming the
values of a hierarchical society. In a hierarchical society, charity is
a form of âgivingâ that no matter how benevolent, ends up forging
paternalistic relationships. The giver is in a position of authority;
the recipient is always at their mercy, even if the giver needs the
recipient to feel good about themselves (or as a tax write-off ). This
leads to an ethics of self-interest: one shouldnât give unless one
receives something equal in return, regardless of whether each person
has something equal to give. Mutual aid, in contrast, stresses
reciprocal relations, regardless of whether the gift is equal in kind.
Humans give back to each other in a variety of waysâthe inequality of
equals. Individuals and societies flourish because the different
contributions are not only equally valued but combine to make for a
greater whole.
Mutual aid also translates into an ecological outlook. The anarchist
perspective, however, is fundamentally at odds with environmentalism as
well as green capitalismâboth of which seek to âfixâ pieces of nonhuman
nature without challenging the root causes of ecological devastation.
The implication of mutual aid is that humans see themselves as part of
nonhuman nature (though distinct from it in certain ways), needing to
cooperate as much with the nonhuman natural world as with each other to
survive and evolve. The ecological crisis is, in fact, a social crisis:
humans believe they can dominate nonhuman nature because they believe
itâs natural to dominate other human beings.[41] But mutual aid holds
that humans, other animals, and plants all thrive best under forms of
holistic cooperationâecosystems. It suggests that people would be much
more likely to live in harmony with each other and the nonhuman worldâto
be ecologicalâin a nonhierarchical society. This ecological sensibility
has been put into practice by contemporary anarchists, as noted briefly
above, within the radical ecology movement of the 1970s onward.
Beyond revolutionary ecological activismâfrom tree sitting to
eco-sabotage to humanly scaled eco-technologiesâan ecological
orientation within anarchism implies a developmental, or dialectical,
logic to thought itself. Just as nonhuman nature unfolds over time, with
multiple (though not infinite) possibilities for what it could become,
toward a richer ecosystem, so humans unfold over their lifetimes. Their
physical bodies develop and change; humans literally grow. Humans all
exhibit the potentiality to develop themselves in numerous ways, from
their abilities to their very ideas, to how they think about the world
and all its phenomena. Social control subtly exerts itself through
dualistic thinking. Humans are taught to see the world in black and
white categoriesâgood or evil, freedom or dominationâin short, to think
uncritically. At its best, anarchism encourages social relations and
forms of organization that take account of a developmental logic,
personally and socially, allowing both to flourish; it also fosters
critical thinking about how people and the world can and do unfold.
This logicâthat humans arenât just fixed beings but are always
becomingâunderscores anarchismâs dynamism. Seeing all life as able to
evolve highlights the idea that people and society can change. That
people and the world can become more than they are, better than they
are. Of course, thereâs no guarantee. Development isnât necessarily
linear or progressive. An emancipatory world isnât assured; an
ecological society is just one possibilityâbut a real one, dependent on
people struggling to achieve it.
An ecological perspective within anarchism, then, is not only about the
relation of humanity to the nonhuman world, or a harmonizing of both. It
sees the world holistically, thinking through phenomena in nuanced ways,
attempting to follow the developmental logic of potentialities in the
present in order to anticipate how they might unfold, in terms of forms
of both freedom and domination. An ecological outlook translates into
the very openness that characterizes anarchism. By being able to
critically explore possibilities in the here and now, anarchism beckons
toward a brighter future, yet only if it remains open to whatâs outside
the given.
The fact that Kropotkin and others pointed to how cooperation or mutual
aid occurs âin natureâ doesnât mean that humans act from unthinking
instinct or some basically good human nature. Humans are perhaps most
distinguished from nonhuman nature by their ability to innovate and
imagine. They are set apart from, though not above, other forms of life
in their expansive ability to reason, make judgments, and intervene with
intentionality. Thus, another shared anarchist ethic highlights the
human capacity for free choice, or voluntary association, toward various
forms of noncoercive, or consensual, relationships and organizations.
Voluntary association doesnât mean that individuals will always get
their own way, or that people will like each task or every person in a
project. They might even feel tired at the end of the day. Yet overall,
it does mean joining together with others not due to force or compulsion
but because everyone has freely chosen to do so. Free choice, though,
involves promises to each other. It entails interconnections and caring,
in the same way that friends are bound togetherânot âuntil death do us
partâ but rather until it doesnât make good sense to associate, after
careful and honest consideration. Itâs about doing things because
overall it feels satisfying in a variety of ways, because it meets
personal and community needs and desires, and because people arenât
compelled to engage but want to do so.
This means accountability. Voluntary association only carries weight
when intimately linked with forms of responsibility and solidarity.
Voluntary association and accountability are, at heart, about freely
given promises that people make to each other, with no outside force
compelling them to follow through aside from the power of their mutual
commitments. These promises arenât lightly broken, on a whim, or when
individuals donât get their way; that is the logic of domination, where
some have the ability to leave others in the lurch. People may choose to
freely disassociate, and will likely do so many times over their lives.
Still, anarchists take both association and disassociation seriously,
because they take inclusive processes and how people treat each other
seriously.
Mutual promises require various agreements, whether unspoken but fully
understood, or written down to revisit when needed. Such agreements
apply to a host of things, including what will happen when someone
doesnât follow through on their tasks and how to handle conflict.
Individuals wonât leave each other in an unsupported position once
theyâve agreed to implement a collective decision. Anarchists may
disagree when a voluntary association has outlived its usefulness in
particular situations, but they all grapple with the rewarding tension
between the two sides of this intertwined equation.
Like all of anarchismâs juggling acts, finding the balance between
freely associating and sticking by free agreements is much harder in
practice, especially beyond the level of small groups. But this balance
is crucial. It goes straight to the core problematic of anarchism: how
to encourage a world where individuals and society are simultaneously
free. Anarchist political organizations test out this dual notion, in
part, by composing principles of unity and mission statements. They hash
out why they are freely associating. Maybe itâs around values such as
anticapitalism; perhaps itâs because they believe in setting up directly
democratic institutions. They also figure out the parameters, if any, of
group membership. This could range from simply showing up and pitching
in, to having to attend a certain number of meetings before being
allowed to participate in decision making. Anarchists also concern
themselves with humane ways of breaking their associations, from
spelled-out processes of dialogue to clear standards of accountability
that one has to meet to stay involved.
This is how anarchists practice what it might mean to âconstituteâ
voluntary association and accountability on a societal level. Of course,
an ethic of voluntary association canât be universally applied. Free
associations to perpetrate violence against queer-identified people, for
example, are completely at odds with other anarchist ethics. The
balancing act, then, is not only between voluntary association and
accountability. It doesnât simply counter an âanything goesâ sensibility
with the idea that weâre all in this together. It concerns the entirety
of anarchismâs aspirations.
Voluntarily association and accountability arenât dreary obligations to
get things done. Part of the revolutionary project, for anarchism, is to
institute manifold beauty and strive toward substantive happiness, and
encourage the spontaneity necessary to realize both. Pleasure and love
are what motivate people to aspire toward a better world. These and
other feelings arenât luxuries separate from peopleâs material needs.
They are part and parcel of the need for a full, individuated, and
genuinely social life. We need enough food to eat and we need food we
like to eat. We need pleasurable ways to grow food and cook meals for
each other, to do the dishes, and if needed, figure out accountability
mechanisms when the dirty dishes pile up. Thereâs joy in the process
too. Or there would be joy in it, if the processes that routinely shape
the world belonged to everyone.
It may sound naive to struggle for revolutionary social transformation
so that people can find exhilaration in their lives, so they can create
and take satisfaction in all thatâs lovely. But this is the essence of a
good society: that people are able to feel goodness in themselves and
each other as much as possible; that even when things are difficult or
life is painful, people have the support of others; that the ways we get
things done are also the ways we carve out spaces to fully see and
appreciate each other. And have fun.
Like all anarchist ethics, this isnât something to put off until âthe
revolution,â meanwhile allowing most of humanity to live miserably or
wallow in depression. It means bringing pleasure and play, kindness and
compassion, into all that people do. It doesnât mean pretending that
everything is OK. Even in a better society, people will still experience
sorrow. Anarchists vigilantly resist the world that is, while
simultaneously engaging in those hopeful behaviors that point toward new
social relations. They practice the beauty that human beings are
striving to achieve in the world that could be. Anarchist activities
emphasize the aesthetic and the joyful. Contemporary protests combine
street parties and puppets with direct action; potlucks are regular
parts of many anarchist meetings; gorgeous posters usually announce
anarchist bookfairs, which often include soccer matches alongside
workshops. Savoring play is just as much part of a revolutionary impulse
within anarchism as is struggleâand both are essential to qualitative
freedom.
Another anarchist ethic is the commitment to balancing the seemingly
incompatible. Anarchists attempt to find harmony in dissonance, like
instruments in an orchestra. They do it in all contexts; it is the stuff
of real life, or as noted above, the recognition that things unfold in
complex, interconnected ways. Whether itâs contradictions between the
local and the global, independence and interdependence, autonomy or
direct democracy, anarchists honestly and transparently struggle to find
unities that donât deny differences. This ethical commitment is
essential to anarchist experiments, since it intimately relates to
anarchismâs definition. Much of what anarchists do in practice involves
crafting relationships, processes, and agreements, personally and within
self-organized institutions, that are precisely about finding the
balance of a unity in diversity.
One prominent example is the âdiversity of tacticsâ approach to mass
mobilizations, developed by anarchists in Canada during the heyday of
the anticapitalist movement at the turn of this century. The notion was
to devise a set of agreements for a specific demonstrationâbased on its
contextâthat would allow for different tactics, strategies, and even
specific geographic zones of engagement, all under the shared banner of
an opposition to capitalism and advocacy of directly democratic,
nonstatist forms of organization. This didnât mean âanything goes,â nor
did it mean âconsensus.â Those who lived in the city and had done months
of organizing work before the mobilization settled on the diversity of
tactics agreements, through a process of debate and consultas.
Spokescouncils during the mobilization were both informational and made
minor, last-minute decisions, through a process that sought consensus
but resorted to voting when necessary. At the height of this movement,
the diversity of tactics approach really did open up space for a
powerfully felt interconnected pluralism.[42] This is but one example of
a much broader ethic that encompasses a range of efforts to ensure that
shared commitments respect and concretely make room for people with
divergent ideas and tactics.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment ... but as
an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent
society. We donât have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate
in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of
people, can transform the world.
âHoward Zinn, âThe Optimism of Uncertainty,â 2004
There are three other crucial things that anarchists have in common.
They emerge from anarchismâs cry against all thatâs unjust in society
and evolve out of its anger toward everything that hinders substantive
freedom. They also embody its exuberance for all thatâs possible in the
world, its joyous advocacy of the ethics that shape its variegated
praxes. These three are anarchismâs reconstructive visions,
prefigurative politics, and forms of self-organization.
Anarchists are used to loss. The history of struggle for nonhierarchical
values is a tragic and bloody one. Yet, to quote Moxie Marlinspike,
anarchists âknow there are moments in time, even preceding defeat, where
people learn more about themselves, and feel a greater sense of
inspiration from what theyâre experiencing, than from all the George
Washingtons victoriously sailing across all the Delaware rivers of the
world.â[43] The uneven process of building a better world means
remembering that anarchism is a beautiful traditionâone that embraces
other beautiful traditions. Itâs about remembering what anarchists and
other like-minded people have created throughout history. Yes, the goal
is to win, but in various ways, large and small, we have already won a
lot. Anarchism asks the right questions about social transformation, and
then explores multiple ways to approach answering them, even if it never
finds âthe answer.â
Important as such things are, anarchism is more than a vibrant and
ethical social conscience, and itâs more than a social critique and
vision.[44] Anarchists donât just talk about better forms of social
organization. They throw themselves into modeling new worlds, even when
that means building castlesâor collectives, communes, and
cooperativesâin the sands of contemporary society. Anarchists believe
that people will âgetâ anarchism viscerally and intellectually in the
process of seeing it in action, or better yet, experimenting with its
values themselves.[45] This necessitates praxis. People wonât give up
the comfort (or discomfort) of the status quo without some idea(s) of
why they should.
In various ways, anarchists present reconstructive visions that map the
way toward a society beyond hierarchy. Envisioning such a world is, of
course, part of prefiguration and self-organization. I want to highlight
the notion of reconstructive visions, though, to underscore the fact
that anarchism, unlike other political philosophies, retains a utopian
impulse. The concept of utopia within anarchism isnât some faraway,
never-neverland; nor is it a way to ignore material needs or desires.
Rather, itâs precisely a means of taking full account of material as
well as nonmaterial needs and desiresânot simply bread and butter, but
bread, butter, and also rosesâand imagining ways that everyone can fully
satisfy them. Anarchism looks to the past, when people lived out
communal and self-governed forms of organization; it sees potentialities
in the present; and it sustains the clear-eyed trust that humans can
always do better in the future. The utopian sensibility in anarchism is
this curious faith that humanity can not only demand the impossible but
also realize it. It is a leap of faith, but grounded in and indeed
gleaned from actual experiences, large and small, when people gift
egalitarian lifeways to each other by creating them collectively.
Anarchism is not just an ideal; it is not merely a thought experiment.
Nor is it a blueprint or rigid plan. Its reconstructive stance dreams up
ways to embody its ethics, and then tries to implement them. Many
actually existing practices, anarchist or not, illustrate that
horizontal social relations are already possibleâand work better than
vertical ones. Such experiments are partial, circumscribed by everything
from capitalism to internalized forms of oppression. But they also
create the breathing room to play with new social relations and social
organization; they provide examples to borrow and expand on, perhaps
eventually developing into more literal and institutionalized forms of
dual power, which can, in turn, serve as further examples.
There are many ways to put reconstructive visions into place. Anarchists
devise do-it-yourself and âopen-sourceâ cultural production to depict
imaginative ideas that inspire others to act. They document peoplesâ
histories on posters; they stencil windows into other worlds on public
walls or record them in zines; they use indie music and media to
disseminate liberatory aspirations. Anarchists create spaces to
celebrate alternate ways of being and organizing, from carnivals against
capitalism to âreally, really free marketsâ to anarchist bookfairs and
infoshops. They develop counterinstitutions like self-directed schools
and self-managed workplaces. In these and other ways, anarchists try out
and link up innovations that indicate the potentialities for wider
social transformation.
For anarchists, this boils down to engaging in prefigurative politics:
the idea that there should be an ethically consistent relationship
between the means and ends. Means and ends arenât the same, but
anarchists utilize means that point in the direction of their ends. They
choose actions or projects based on how these fit into longer-term aims.
Anarchists participate in the present in the ways that they would like
to participate, much more fully and with much more self-determination,
in the futureâand encourage others to do so as well. Prefigurative
politics thus aligns oneâs values to oneâs practice and practices the
new society before it is fully in place.
Still, the âendâ of anarchism is not a final destination. Itâs neither
predetermined nor singular, nor a revolution after which all becomes and
remains perfect. Ends for anarchists are instead the constellation of
ethics, tested time and again, that offer greater amounts of lived
freedom, even as people continue to fill out what freedom looks like in
praxis. The means involve the journey itself, which is also an intimate,
interconnected part of the ends. The ethically consistent relationship
between the means and ends is, quite simply, embodied in the process
itself, and the continually improving ways of getting from âhereâ to
âthereâ is whatâs revolutionary. In the best-case scenario, people can
look back over their shoulders to realize thereâs been enough of a
widespread transformation to constitute a revolution, which will again
need to be challenged through new processes of expansive
transformations.
Revolution becomes both a grandiose notionâthat leap of faith to a
fundamentally remade worldâand something imminently graspable that we
can also attempt now. Anarchism asks that people âbuild the road as they
travel.â[46] Even if people have an idea of where they want that road to
goâand they must have some sense of this to figure out which path(s) to
takeâthey may be surprised when they âarrive.â They will need to adjust
their course and venture forward again. It is in the process of
constructing new worlds that transformation happens, in how people set
about making their way toward something appreciably better.
Revolution entails evolution. Anarchists, like everyone else, need to
become people capable of sustaining a new society. The organization and
institutions of a new society need to develop into forms that are
likewise capable of structuring new social relations. Anarchists infuse
all they do with gestures, sometimes flamboyant, at what would replace,
among other things, capitalism and the state, heteronormativity and
ableism. Such acts prefigure, or show likenesses of âin advance,â
egalitarian social relations and social organization. As such, they
demonstrate and embody the power of the imagination, substantive
participation, and the worth of all living thingsâall of which, at their
most collectively self-generated, might truly break the spell of
top-down power arrangements.
Hereâs where we put the icing on the cake: prefigurative forms of
self-organization, in all their innovative variety. Fortunately, though,
everyone gets to eat the cake. Anarchismâs reconstructive visions
practice how to reorganize society. They put direct action into, well,
action.
Direct action takes two forms. Its âpositiveâ or proactive form is the
power to create. People do things now the way that they want to see them
done, increasingly, in the future, without representative and vertical
forms of power. They ignore the âhigherâ powers, and flex their own
collective muscles to make and implement decisions over their lives. The
ânegativeâ or reactive form of direct action, the power to resist, uses
direct means to challenge the bad stuffâfor example, a general strike to
stop a war. Both types of direct action are useful, of course. They also
go hand in hand. Students, faculty, and support staff at a university,
for instance, can occupy an administration building to protest budget
cuts and at the same time utilize directly democratic processes to
self-determine their course of action (which may then embolden the
occupiers to want an altogether different form of education). A Cop
Watch project can use free and open-source communication technologies,
such as pirate radio, as a way for people to directly report on and
hinder police abuses, and at the same time develop neighborhood-run
media.[47] But itâs when people increasingly take charge, instituting
and participating in nonhierarchical organization, that they begin to
have the power to reshape society, rather than simply the âpowerâ to
react against those forces that ultimately have power over them.
Weâve come full circle to the conception of anarchism as aspiring toward
free individuals within a free society. Weâre fully in the realm of
self-determination, self-management, and self-governance, as living
realities, even if in embryonic forms. The only way to build such new
social relationships and institutions is to birth and nurture them
ourselves. Anarchists are always involved in all manner of
self-organized projects, both at the subterranean level, operating
beneath the surface to craft new bases for social and ecological life,
and with a powerfully relevant visibility that reflects commonsense
notions of how everyone could live their lives together, and the many
inchoate ways we already do.[48]
Many anarchist projects happen within anarchist circles or are geared
toward other anarchists. This allows anarchists to experiment with forms
of organizations among relatively like-minded people who are already
committed to them. It also facilitates the development of a much-needed
self-managed infrastructure to develop ideas, build skills, and mentor
future generations of anarchists. For example, the resource listing in
the annual Slingshot Organizerâa self-organized project in its own
rightâreveals the informal global confederation of collectively run
anarchist bookstores and infoshops.[49] The three groups involved in
publishing this bookâthe Institute for Anarchist Studies, AK Press, and
Justseeds Artistsâ Cooperativeârun on internally egalitarian models and
are practicing forms of mutual aid in this collaborative book
series.[50] Anarchist political organizations, ranging here in North
America from the city-based Pittsburgh Organizing Group to the
regionally based North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists,
practice face-to-face decision making even as they cooperate with other
groups on everything from mass mobilizations to organizing campaigns.
There are loose networks of individuals, such as Anarchist People of
Color, that strive to craft decentralist yet interdependent structures,
as well as experiments in the self-management of cultural production by
groups like Riotfolk, an antiprofit mutual aid collective of radical
artists and musicians.[51] Every anarchist project is marked by this
cooperativist spirit. Even so-called antiorganization anarchists engage
in self-organization, operating collectively as an affinity group or
self-managing a micropublishing project.
Equally, many anarchists find commonality and work with all manner of
nonanarchist projects that experiment with directly democratic forms.
These run the gamut from the Zapatistas and Popular Assembly of the
Peoples of Oaxaca in Mexico to occupied factories in Argentina and the
Balkans, from Brazilâs Landless Workers and Floridaâs Take Back the Land
movements to the anticapitalist wing of the global justice movement,
from the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine to the
Revolutionary Autonomous Communities in Los Angeles.[52] Most anarchists
would agree that the goal isnât to build an anarchist world but rather
an egalitarian one in which everyone learns toâand wants toâthink and
act for themselves collectively. Anarchists bring this sensibility along
with their skills at self-governance to struggles around the world,
ranging from tent cities for those who are homeless to cooperatives set
up by community land trusts for those who want to control their housing.
As mentioned above, anarchism is a compelling political philosophy
because it is a way of asking the right questions without seeking a
monopoly on the right answers. The point is to destroy monopolies, along
with all other singular choke holds on peopleâs collective ability to be
free. Self-organization is the key to ensuring the nonexclusive
ownershipâor rather, the ownership in commonâof freedom. As anarchism
thoroughly grasps, freedom is only possible when people all share the
ability to determine and shape social relations and social organization.
The only way to create such far-reaching forms of justice is to ensure
that everyone has an equal portion of power, that we not only discuss,
debate, and dialogue about what kind of society and everyday life we
want but also problem solve, implement, evaluate, and revisit those
decisions over the whole of life. How such forms of self-organization
would look and work in practice is precisely the stuff of anarchism;
itâs what we doâin essence, voluntary research and development, drawing
from good ideas both within and outside anarchist milieus. Anarchism
borrows from the seemingly impossible possibilities of the past and
present. It then gifts such potentialities to everyone, supplying hope
by pointing toward an increasingly liberatory future.
Anarchismâs laboratory is the whole of life. It explores what
self-determination would look like in relation to sex, sexuality, and
gender; it articulates strategies and countervisions for oppressed,
colonized, or occupied peoples around the world. It tests new forms of
workplace self-management, while reimagining the idea of âworkâ itself
in terms of how people materially produce and distribute everything from
food and clothing to energy and communication technologies. Anarchists
self-organize what are now seen as âservices,â from education and
mental/physical health, to cafes and libraries, to rescue operations.
They devise new mechanisms of self-governance, from collectives and
affinity groups, to neighborhood assemblies, councils, and
confederationsâall premised on experimentation with consensual and
directly democratic decision-making methods. In these ways and untold
others, anarchists give tangible meaning to a form of social
organization premised on freedom.
We might not see the outcomes
Though we might see the clues
But when you plant a seed
Itâs gotta grow before it blooms
âRyan Harvey, âAinât Gonna Come Today,â 2006
The past forty-plus years have ushered in a new era, variously labeled
the network society, the information age, or simply globalization. The
sweeping transformations in capitalism, nation-states, technology, and
culture open up new possibilities. But they are also cause for grave
concern. Capitalism is suddenly âgreenâ; social networking and
communication technologies further reduce actual human ties;
representative democracies offer public relations campaigns instead of
âsafety nets,â alongside ubiquitous surveillance and neo-torture. For
better and for worse, globalization is qualitatively altering social
relations, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps nowhere is this coupling of promise and peril best captured than
by two defining moments in North America at the millenniumâs turn, as
distant as they now seem: the hope reawakened in 1999 by the anarchistic
actions in Seattle, and the fear inculcated in 2001 by the terroristic
attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York.
The exacerbation of insecurity is now the prime means by which
relatively small networks of global elites and/or thugs attempt to
consolidate differing versions of social control. For many outside these
networks, this involves living in the crossfire of occupations, civil
wars, and suicide bombings, and/or suffering greater hardship due to
economic and ecological crises. The notion of citizens protected by a
state, as flawed as that is, almost seems antiquated, as billions of
refugees exist in the precarious space of illegality. For most people,
daily life itself is a source of anxietyânot only materially but also in
terms of sheer dehumanization. Itâs almost as if the world is letting
out a dispirited sigh of collective depression.
In contrast, anarchism has reemerged as one of the most potent currents
within todayâs radical milieus. A variety of antiauthoritarian movements
have sprung up worldwide over the past two decades, but anarchism
appears to be the only form of libertarian socialism that speaks to the
times and peopleâs dreams. Indeed, anarchism may well have been ahead of
its nineteenth-century day in advocating a world of transnational and
multidimensional identities, in struggling for a substantive humanism
based on mutualism and differentiation. Anarchist values are oddly
similar to many of the structural changes occurring under
globalizationâsuch as decentralization and cooperationâmaking them both
more practical and potentially more appealing than ever. The state, long
anarchismâs prime concern alongside capitalism, is also being forever
altered, if not undermined. It may not hold a monopoly on violence
anymore, nor can it likely provide enough social welfare to ensure
passivity on the part of its electorate, and this offers new openings
for mutualism and self-governance. As globalization increasingly allows
homogeneity and heterogeneity to coexist, albeit often for instrumental
ends, anarchismâs ongoing efforts to craft a unity in our diversity more
than ever suggest a revolutionary praxis.
This may in fact be remembered as âthe anarchist century,â as David
Graeber and Andrej Grubacic claim.[53] The number of people identifying
with anarchism has grown exponentially over the recent past. Like their
comrades of days gone by, these nouveau anarchists have been busily
trying to prefigure their ideals. The better society is hinted at in
do-it-yourself cultural productions, inclusive organizational forms,
autonomous yet webbed infrastructures, and the numerous attempts to
de-commodify needs and desires. Twenty-first-century anarchism has shown
itself to be increasingly dynamic and expansive. Additional schools have
joined the beautiful adjectival anarchism to further bring out the
fullness of self and societyâfrom anarchist people of color to techie
anarchists, from poststructuralist to queer-identified anarchists and
those concentrating on concerns previously ignored within anarchism such
as mental health. People are coming into anarchism from other
traditions, like postcolonial struggles, and other scenes, like
straight-edge punk. They are also bringing anarchism into their own
traditions, reshaping it in the process. Anarchists are open to, allies
for, and in critical solidarity withâand attempt to learn fromâall sorts
of grassroots movements around the world. They are, more than ever,
practicing forms of self-organization on micro, continental, and global
levels. Most important perhaps, anarchistic forms of organization and
social relations have become the âsoftâ position, the implicit and
usually unacknowledged logic, within radical and progressive movements
globally.
Iâve concentrated here on what anarchism strives for in its most lofty
visions, asserting that such beautiful aspirations serve as an
increasingly necessary conscience in an increasingly unconscionable
world. Iâve argued that even if anarchism were only an ethical
sensibility, the idea of an expansive freedom can sometimes be enough to
push the envelope of how people, anarchist or not, try to constitute
freedom in practice. Happily, when all is said and done, anarchism is
the grand yet modest belief, embraced by people throughout human
history, that we can imagine and also implement a wholly marvelous and
materially abundant society. That is the spirit of anarchism, the ghost
that haunts humanity: that our lives and communities really can be
appreciably better. And better, and then better still.
For many, a ânew anarchismâ seemed to have been birthed amid the cold
rain and toxic fog that greeted the November 1999 World Trade
Organization protest. Yet rather than the bastard child of an emergent
social movement, this radical politics of resistance and reconstruction
had been transforming itself for decades. Seattleâs direct action only
succeeded in making it visible again. Anarchism, for its part, supplied
a compelling praxis for this historical moment. And in so doing, it not
only helped shape the present anticapitalist movement; it also
illuminated principles of freedom that could potentially displace the
hegemony of representative democracy and capitalism.
From its nineteenth-century beginnings on, anarchism has always held out
a set of ethical notions that it contends best approximates a free
society. In the parlance of his period, Italian anarchist Errico
Malatesta (1853â1932) long ago described anarchism as âa form of social
life in which men live as brothers, where nobody is in a position to
oppress or exploit anyone else, and in which all the means to achieve
maximum moral and material development are available to everyone.â[54]
This pithy definition still captures anarchismâs overarching aims.
Nevertheless, this libertarian form of socialism may well have been
ahead of its day in advocating a world of transnational and
multidimensional identities, in struggling for a qualitative humanism
based on cooperation and differentiation. It is only in the context of
globalization that anarchism may finally be able to speak to the times
and thus peoplesâ hopes. Whether it can fulfill its own aspirations
remains to be seen.
While the forms of organization and values advanced by anarchists can be
found in embryo around the world in many different eras, anarchismâs
debut as a distinct philosophy was in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. The
English âphilosopher of freedomâ William Godwin (1756â1836) was the
first Enlightenment thinker to scribe a sustained theory of a society
without states in his An Inquiry concerning Political Justice in 1793,
but it wasnât until Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809â65) wrote âsociety
seeks order in anarchyâ in his What Is Property? in 1840, that the term
âanarchismâ slowly began to congeal over the next several decades around
a recognizable core of principles.[55] Godwinâs political theory didnât
live up to the liberatory character of his cultural sentiments; and
Proudhon should be roundly condemned on many fronts, from his failure to
contend with capitalismâs inherent logic to his patriarchal and
anti-Semitic beliefs. It would in fact take others, from the Russian
aristocrat Peter Kropotkin (1842â1921) to the German Jewish intellectual
Gustav Landauer (1870â1919) and many prominent as well as lesser-known
radicals, to fill out a more pleasing portrait of classical anarchism: a
utopian political philosophy decrying all forms of imposed authority or
coercion.
As socialists, anarchists were particularly concerned with capitalism,
which during the Industrial Revolution was causing suffering on a
hitherto-unimaginable scale. Anarchists primarily pinned their hopes for
transforming social relations on workers, utilizing economic categories
ranging from class struggle to an end to private property. All those on
the revolutionary Left agreed that capitalism couldnât be reformed; it
must instead be abolished. But unlike other socialists, anarchists felt
that the state was just as complicit in enslaving humanity, and so one
couldnât employ statecraftâeven in a transitional mannerâto move from
capitalism to socialism. A classless yet still statist society,
anarchists argued, would still constitute a world marked for most by
domination. As anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker (1873â1958) proclaimed
in 1938, âSocialism will be free, or it will not be at all.â[56] For
this reason and others, anarchism evolved out of socialism to indicate
an opposition not just to capitalism but also to states and other
compulsory, interlinked institutions, such as organized religion,
mandatory schooling, militarism, and marriage. Thus it is said of
anarchism in the most general sense that âall anarchists are socialists,
but not all socialists are anarchists.â Or as Joseph A. Labadie put it,
âAnarchism is voluntary Socialism. There are two kinds of Socialism ...
authoritarian and libertarian, state and free.â[57]
This sentiment could also be seen as relating to questions of strategy.
Many socialists, at least the radical ones, were not adverse to the
âwithering awayâ of the state, it was just a matter of when and how. For
anarchists, a âdictatorship of the proletariatâ steering the state until
it withered couldnât be counted on to actually push that process along.
Instead of top-down social organization, anarchists championed various
types of horizontal models that could prefigure the good society in the
present. That is, anarchists maintained that people could attempt to
build the new world in the shell of the old through self-organization
rather than passively waiting until some postrevolutionary period. Hence
anarchismâs emphasis on praxis. Anarchist alternatives were grounded in
such key concepts as voluntary association, personal and social freedom,
confederated yet decentralized communities, equality of conditions,
human solidarity, and spontaneity. As the European invention known as
anarchism traveled via intellectual and agitator circuits to everywhere
from the United States and China to Latin America and Africa, anarchists
experimented with everything from communal living, federations, and free
schools to workersâ councils, local currencies, and mutual aid
societies.
Anarchism was part of a fairly large internationalist Left from the
1880s through the Red Scare of the 1920s and the Spanish Revolution of
the 1930s. Then, discredited, disenchanted, or killed, anarchists seemed
to disappear, and with them, the philosophy itself. After World War II
and the defeat of Nazism, it appeared the two political choices were
âdemocracyâ (free market capitalism) or âcommunismâ (state capitalism).
Lost in this equation, among other things, was the questioning of
authority and concurrent assertion of utopia posed by anarchism.
The distant nineteenth-century is, of course, formative for anarchismâs
reinvention. But the dilemmas and openings of that timeâfor instance,
the rise of liberalism, colonialism, and industrial productionâare far
removed from those of the twenty-first century. Beyond this, classical
anarchism leaves a lot to be desired: its naïveté concerning human
nature as basically good, say, or its aversion to any political
replacement for statist governments. When anarchism began to be
rediscovered in the 1950s by leftists searching for an alternative to
orthodox Marxism, it therefore tried hard to remake itself. Anarchist
thinkers grappled with new concerns from conspicuous consumption to
urbanization; new possibilities such as feminism and cultural
liberation; and old ghosts of its own from a workerist orientation to
authoritarian, even terroristic tactics. The renewed anarchism that
finally emerged was, in fact, a convergence of various postwar
antiauthoritarian impulses. Though the libertarian sensibility of the
1960s and New Left is foundational, five phenomena are especially
crucial to the praxis made (in)famous in Seattle.
First, there is the Situationist International (1962â72), a small group
of intellectuals and avant-garde artists that attempted to describe a
changing capitalism. According to the Situationists, the alienation
basic to capitalist production that Karl Marx had observed now filled
every crevice; people were alienated not only from the goods they
produced but also their own lives, their own desires. The commodity form
had colonized the previously separate sphere of daily life. As Guy
Debord (1931â94) of the Situationist International quipped, modern
capitalism forged âa society of the spectacleâ or consumer society that
promised satisfaction yet never delivered, with us as passive
spectators.[58] The Situationists advocated playful disruptions of the
everyday, from media to cityscapes, in order to shatter the spectacle
via imagination and replace drudgery with pleasure. During the May 1968
near-revolution in Paris, Situationist International slogans were
ubiquitous as graffiti such as âLive without dead time! Enjoy without
restraint.â Ironically, even though the Situationists were critical of
anarchists, anarchists lifted from the Situationistsâ critique,
especially the preoccupation with cultural alterations.
From the 1970s on, the interdisciplinary works of theorist Murray
Bookchin (1921â2006) also helped transform anarchism into a modern
political philosophy. Bridging the Old and New Left, Bookchin did more
than anyone to widen anarchismâs anticapitalism/antistatism to a
critique of hierarchy per se. He also brought ecology as a concern to
anarchism by connecting it to domination. In a nutshell, to paraphrase
him, the ecological crisis is a social crisis. Bookchin emphasized the
possibility nascent in the present of an ecological and postscarcity
society, in which the ârationalâ use of technology, to use his language,
could free humanity to fulfill its potentiality in harmony with the
natural world. Most significantly, he drew out the institutional
replacement for the state hinted at in nineteenth-century anarchism:
directly democratic self-government, or as he phrased it, âlibertarian
municipalism.â Bookchinâs writings pointed to the city or neighborhood
as the site of struggle, radicalization, dual power, and finally
revolution, with confederations of free citizensâ assemblies replacing
state and capital. They also inspired a radical ecology movement,
experiments in anarchist federations such as the Youth Greens, and a new
generation of anarchist intellectuals.
Bookchinâs unearthing of the affinity group model in his research on the
Spanish anarchists, sketched in his Post-Scarcity Anarchism, was
influential to the antinuclear movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the
United States.[59] Emerging from the rural counterculture in New England
and then on the West Coastâa counterculture that included radical
pacifists of both anarchist and religious persuasionsâthe antinuke
movement used civil disobedience, but infused it with an anarchist and
feminist sensibility: a rejection of all hierarchy, a preference for
directly democratic process, a stress on spontaneity and creativity.
Varying levels of nonviolent confrontation at nuclear power plants, from
blockades to occupations, along with the use of pageantry, puppets, and
jail solidarity, were decided on in affinity groups and spokescouncils.
Quaker activists, not anarchists, added consensus to the blend, with
mixed results (false unity, for instance). Notwithstanding the
difficulty of moving beyond a single issue and what had become an
insular community, the tactics and organizational form of the U.S. as
well as international antinuclear movement were soon picked up by the
peace, womenâs, gay and lesbian, radical ecology, and anti-intervention
movements.
Beginning in the 1980s, the West German Autonomen made a mark on
anarchism too. Viewing European New Leftists as discredited, though
affected by their critique of authoritarianism on the Left (Soviet-style
âcommunismâ) and the Right (âdemocraticâ capitalism), the Autonomen
rejected everything from the existing system to ideological labels,
including that of anarchism. As a spontaneous, decentralized network of
antiauthoritarian revolutionaries, they were autonomous from political
parties and trade unions; they also attempted to be autonomous from
structures and attitudes imposed from âoutside.â This entailed a twofold
strategy. First, to create liberated, communal free spaces such as
squats in which to make their own lives. And second, to utilize militant
confrontation both to defend their counterculture and take the offensive
against what they saw as repressive, even fascistic elements. The
deployment of a masked black blocâfor one, at a demonstration in Berlin
in 1988 during an International Monetary Fund/World Bank
meetingâautonomous neighborhoods and âinfo-stores,â and street battles
with police and neo-Nazis became emblematic of the Autonomen. Anarchists
felt an affinity and imported the trappings of autonomous politics into
their own, thereby linking and modifying the two in the process.
Last but not least, the dramatic January 1, 1994, appearance of the
Zapatistas on the world stage to contest the North American Free Trade
Agreement keyed anarchists into the importance of globalization as a
contemporary concern of often life-and-death proportions. A decade in
the making through the grassroots efforts of some thirty indigenous
communities in southern Mexico, and intentionally tied to struggles
elsewhere, the uprising illustrated the power of solidarity. The
Zapatistasâ bold takeover of villages in Chiapas also reignited the
notion that resistance was possible, in poor and rich regions alike. âIf
you ask us what we want, we will unashamedly answer: âTo open a crack in
history, ââ Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos declared. âWeâll build
another world.... Democracy! Freedom! Justice!â[60] For anarchists, the
Zapatistasâ inventive, blended usage of high-tech such as the Internet
and low-tech such as jungle encuentros, principled communiqués and
practical gains, and the attempt to reclaim popular power through
autonomous municipalities was especially electrifyingâthe concurrent
appeals to the Mexican state less so. Still, anarchists flocked to
Chiapas to support this rebellion, carrying home lessons to apply to a
global anticapitalist movement that a refashioned anarchism would
shortly help initiate.
Such strands of resistance, themselves pulling from earlier moments,
interwove into the fabric of contemporary anarchism. From the
Situationists, anarchism embraced the critique of alienation and
consumer society, and faith in imagination; from Bookchin, the
connection between anticapitalism, direct democracy, ecology, and
postscarcity; from the antinuke movement, the stress on affinity groups
and spokescouncils as well as nonviolent direct action; from the
Autonomen, militant confrontation, the black bloc strategy, and an
expansive do-it-yourself emphasis; and from the Zapatistas, the power of
the Internet, cross-cultural solidarity, and âglobalizationâ for
transnational resistance. But the anarchism that received notoriety in
November 1999 is more than the sum of these parts. It is the only
political philosophy today aspiring to balance a variety of social
change agents and strategiesâor ultimately, a diversity of tactics,
visions, and peopleâwith universalistic notions of participatory freedom
outside all imposed institutions and behaviors.
For months before Seattle, anarchists worked diligently behind the
scenes to set the tenor of the direct action that would stun the world.
As the key initiators and organizers, even if not recognized as such,
anarchists had been able to structure the demonstration along
libertarian principles. Like numerous other direct actions shaped
largely by anarchists, such as the antinuke protests of the 1970s and
the Wall Street action of 1990, Seattleâs too would have gone unremarked
if not for its success in shutting down the World Trade Organization in
tandem with a vicious police response. Anarchists and anarchism were
suddenly thrust into the limelight. What had always been a minoritarian
voice of conscience within the Left suddenly got a majoritarian public
hearing. In turn, anarchismâs philosophy became both cutting edge and
normative for a powerful new global social movement.
This is not to say that anarchism or anarchists alone are responsible
for the movement(s) contesting globalizationâs brutal side, that such a
movement(s) started in Seattle, or even that the goal is to turn
everyone into anarchists. Like the Zapatistas, anarchists humbly
understand themselves (at least in theory) as acting in concert with the
multiple struggles for freedom waged over time by a variety of
antiauthoritarians. Nonetheless, perhaps because they did it on the
dominant superpowerâs own turf, anarchists were able to firmly establish
a form of resistance that actually prefigures a joyful politics of, by,
and for all the people of a globalizing humanity. And as such, to lay
down the flexible contours of an empowering movement, while unexpectedly
elevating anarchism to its avant-garde.
This means that anarchismâs principles along with its culture and forms
of organization are, for the first time, at the forefront rather than
the margins of a transnational social movement. In the broadest sense,
anarchism has brought a unique, inseparable bundle of qualities to this
movement: an openly revolutionary stance, colored by an eminently
ethical orientation, made out-of-the-ordinary by a playful though
directly democratic utopianism.
But still, why anarchism?
Because anarchism has set the terms of the debate. Its emphasis on
social revolution coupled with transparency has meant that anarchists
havenât been afraid to name the concrete reality masked by the term
globalization: that is, capitalist society. Once Seattleâs type of
direct action became a benchmark, though, anarchists received a tacit
green light from most other activists to design similar protests, and so
carnivals against capitalism became commonplace. For example, when
people converged together at mass actions, they now did so under an
anticapitalist bannerâone held up by anarchists, who compellingly
carried it to the symbolic heart of each contestation.[61] Since this
made tangible what was most disturbing to many about globalization,
numerous people were radicalized by or at least became sympathetic to a
focus on the market economy. While still considered subversive, it has
thus become more acceptable to speak of capitalism and even explicitly
identify as an anticapitalist.[62] Anticapitalism, however, now
frequently implies an antiauthoritarian perspective. And vice versa, an
anarchistic outlook now permeates anticapitalist work.
But still, why now?
Because globalization makes anarchismâs aspirations increasingly
apropos. Far from being anti-globalization per se, anarchists have long
dreamed of the world without borders made potentially feasible by the
transformations now under way. Indeed, the means utilized by
globalization are quite amenable to anarchist values, such as
decentralization and interconnectedness, elastic identities and the
shattering of binaries, creative borrowings, cooperation, and openness.
Most strikingly, globalization is structurally undermining the
centrality of states.
In his day, Karl Marx (1818â83) foresaw the rising hegemony of
capitalism and its cancerous ability to (re)structure all social
relations in its own contorted image. Yet for Marx, this also hailed a
certain promise. Freedom and domination were both bound up in the
developmental logic that was and unfortunately still is capitalism. It
was up to the right social actors, given the right conditions, to âmake
historyââthat is, to make revolution and achieve communism in its best,
most general sense. Much of what Marx unmasked holds true to the
present; much more has become evident, sadly so, to the point where
there is almost no outside anymore to the capitalism that manufactures
society as well as self. The heroic project of Marx and multiple
socialistic others to abolish capitalism remains more poignant than
ever, as does the need for a revolutionary movement to do so. Hence, the
power of âanticapitalism.â
Anarchism has traditionally foreseen another potentially hegemonic
development that Marx ignored: statecraft. But unlike capitalism, it
took statism many more decades to gain the same naturalistic status as
the market economy, and so anarchismâs critique, while correct, held
less of an imperative for most radicals. In an ironic twist for statists
and anarchists alike, just as U.S.-style representative democracy has
finally achieved hegemony as the singular âlegitimateâ form of
governance, globalization has begun its work of lessening the power of
states in certain waysâways that may afford openings for horizontal
forms of politics instead.[63] Thinking outside the statist box now both
makes increasing sense to many people and is fast becoming a reality,
potentially offering anarchism the relevance it has long desired. As
national economies give way to global ones, for example, states are less
able to (allegedly) provide their citizenry any sort of social safety
net; as more of humanity is forced into refugee status, states are less
able to (allegedly) supply legal protections and human rights. Of
necessity, people are compelled to turn elsewhereâoften to a variety of
âself-helpâ approaches. The relatively widespread embrace, in and
outside antiauthoritarian Left circles, of anarchistic experiments in
directly democratic organization, confederation, and mutual aid, among
others, evidences how fitting such forms are to todayâs decreasingly
statist, increasingly interdependent world. They tentatively prefigure
the self-governance institutions that anarchism envisions under a humane
version of the present social transformation.
In this globalizing world, though, ânonstatistâ can mean everything from
supranational institutions governed by business elites and international
nongovernmental organizations to world courts and regional trade zones
to networks of free-floating individuals willing to employ terror
tactics. Globalization within a capitalistic framework is just as likely
to birth new hierarchies and deepen alienation, shaping all in its own
imageâthe state, but also anarchism included. If anything, the changing
social landscape and its many new dangers compel anarchists to take
themselves and their ideas more seriously, particularly given
anarchismâs avant-garde role in the anticapitalist movement of
movements. So, on the one hand, as state-based geopolitics loses ground
to a more diffuse though cruel nonstatist one, anarchismâs critique of
the state could quickly become irrelevant. On the other hand, just as
Marxism had to be rethought in the mid-twentieth century in light of
state socialismâs failure to achieve human emancipationâresulting, for
one, in the Frankfurt schoolâs uncovering of new forms of
domination[64]âanarchism needs to be retheorized in response to the
shift toward nonstatism that bodes both scary and multicultural
reconfigurations of political monopolies as well as possible fissures
for an ethical alternative. The highly participatory practices of
todayâs anarchism have to be continually reimagined both to keep three
steps ahead of those that would contain or co-opt it, and to be up to
the task of remaking society. This entails understanding the specific
forms that contemporary governance is taking, in order to ensure that
anarchism is reaching the right mark in its ongoing effort to dismantle
the state. Both theory and practice thus need to catch up to the present
if an anarchist politics is to become more than a historical footnote
about a missed moment.
Still, as the only political tradition that has consistently grappled
with the tension between the individual and society, contemporary
anarchism has valiantly tried to meld the universalistic aims of the
Left and its expansive understanding of freedom with the particularistic
goals of the new social movements in areas such as gender, sexuality,
ethnicity, and ableism. The extraordinary human mix that appeared on the
streets of Seattle could find unity in diversity precisely because
anarchists attempted to put this theoretical merger into practice. The
affinity group and spokescouncil model, for instance, allowed hundreds
of disparate concerns to also find an intimate connectivity.
Globalization has facilitated this by making the world smaller every
day, bringing the macro and micro into closer contact. Under capitalism,
homogeneity and heterogenity will always be linked at the expensive of
both the community and self. The substantive inclusiveness tenuously
achieved by anarchistic organizing suggests a structural framework that
could serve first as a revolutionary dual power, then later as the basis
for âa world where many worlds fit,â as the Zapatistas demand.[65]
Hence, the power of âanarchismâ for anticapitalist resistance.
We may not win this time around; everything from the rise of a
politicized fundamentalism and the post- September 11 âwar on terrorismâ
to seemingly insolvable tragedies like the Middle East to the increased
suffering caused by the âcrisisâ of capitalism all indicate the gravity
and near impossibility of our task. Everyone from global policing
agencies to the authoritarian Left to those who pin their hopes on a
Barack Obama will try to thwart our efforts. But the project of the
present anticapitalist movement, and anarchismâs strong suit in general,
is to provide a guiding light, even if we arenât the ones to finally
bask in it.
In 1919, anarchists held power in Munich for one week during the course
of the German Revolution and hurriedly initiated all sorts of
imaginative projects to empower society at large. Yet Landauer knew that
the best they could do was to construct a model for future generations:
âThough it is possible that the council republic will only be short, I
have the desireâand so do all my comradesâthat we leave behind lasting
effects in Bavaria, so that we may hope, when an idle government returns
(which has to be expected), wise circles will say that we did not make a
bad beginning, and that it would not have been a bad thing if we had
been permitted to continue our work.â[66] Landauer was trampled to death
in a wave of right-wing reaction soon after this, and fourteen years
later the Nazis came to power. Still, the grand experiments of the past
aimed at a free and self-governing society have not been
extinguishedâthey have reemerged in the anarchistic strains charted here
and, most promisingly, the current contest against capitalism fought
along antiauthoritarian lines.
Not a bad beginning to the twenty-first century.
These days, words seem to be thrown around like so much loose change.
âDemocracyâ is no exception.
We hear demands to democraticize everything from international or
supranational organizations to certain countries to technology. Many
contend that democracy is the standard for good government. Still others
allege that âmore,â âbetter,â or even âparticipatoryâ democracy is the
needed antidote to our woes. At the heart of these well-intentioned but
misguided sentiments beats a genuine desire: to gain control over our
lives.
This is certainly understandable given the world in which we live.
Anonymous, often-distant events and institutionsânearly impossible to
describe, much less confrontâdetermine whether we work, drink clean
water, or have a roof over our heads. Most people feel that life isnât
what it should be; many go so far as to complain about âthe governmentâ
or âcorporations.â But beyond that, the sources of social misery are so
masked they may even look friendly: starting with the Ben & Jerryâs ice
cream cone of âcaringâ capitalism to todayâs âgreenâ version, from the
âhumanitarianâ interventions of Western superpowers to a âchange we can
believe inâ presidency.
Since the real causes appear untouchable and incomprehensible, people
tend to displace blame onto imaginary targets with a face: individuals
rather than institutions, people rather than power. The list of
scapegoats is long: from Muslims and blacks and Jews, to immigrants and
queers, and so on. Itâs much easier to lash out at those who, like us,
have little or no power. Hatred of the visible âotherâ replaces social
struggle against seemingly invisible systems of oppression. A longing
for communityâa place where we can take hold of our own life, share it
with others, and build something together of our own choosingâis being
distorted around the globe into nationalisms, fundamentalisms,
separatisms, and the resultant hate crimes, suicide bombings, and
genocides. Community no longer implies a rich recognition of the self
and society; it translates into a battle unto death between one tiny
âusâ against another small âthem,â as the wheels of domination roll over
us all. The powerless trample the powerless, while the powerful go
largely unscathed.
We are left with a few bad choices, framed for us by the powers that be.
Slavoj ĆœiĆŸek termed this âthe double blackmail.â He used this concept in
relation to Yugoslavia in the late 1990s: âif you are against NATO
strikes, you are for [Slobodan] Milosevicâs proto-fascist rĂ©gime of
ethnic cleansing, and if you are against Milosevic, you support the
global capitalist New World Order.â[67] But this choiceless choice all
too easily applies to many other contemporary crises. Global economic
recession seems to necessitate nation-state interventions; human rights
violations seem to call for international regulatory bodies. If the
right answer, from an ethical point of view, lies outside this picture
altogether, what of it? Itâs all talk when people are dying or the
climate is being irreversibly destroyed. At least thatâs what common
wisdom purports, from government officials to news commentators to the
person on the street.
Even much of the Left can see no other ârealisticâ choices to control an
out-of-control world than those that are presented to us from on high.
Given this, the leftist horizon narrows to whatâs allegedly achievable:
nongovernmental organization or global South participation in
international decision-making bodies, or for that matter, Left-leaning
heads of state in the global South or a Barack Obama in the global
North; or the rectification and greening of the wrongs of capitalism.
These and other such demands are bare minimums within the current
system. Still, they are a far cry from any sort of liberatory response.
They work with a circumscribed and neutralized notion of democracy,
where democracy is neither of the people, by the people, nor for the
people, but rather, only in the supposed name of the people. What gets
dubbed democracy, then, is mere representation, and the best that
progressives and leftists can advocate for within the confines of this
prepackaged definition are improved versions of a fundamentally flawed
system.
âThe instant a People gives itself Representatives, it ceases to be
free,â famously proclaimed Jean-Jacques Rousseau in On the Social
Contract.[68] Freedom, particularly social freedom, is indeed utterly
antithetical to a state, even a representative one. At the most basic
level, representation âasksâ that we give our freedom away to another;
it assumes, in essence, that some should have power and many others
shouldnât. Without power, equally distributed to all, we renounce our
very capacity to join with everyone else in meaningfully shaping our
society. We renounce our ability to self-determine, and thus our
liberty. And so, no matter how enlightened leaders may be, they are
governing as tyrants nonetheless, since weââthe peopleââare servile to
their decisions.
This is not to say that representative government is comparable with
more authoritarian forms of rule. A representative system that fails in
its promise of, say, universal human rights is clearly preferable to a
government that makes no such pretensions at all. Yet even the kindest
of representative systems necessarily entails a loss of liberty. Like
capitalism, a grow-or-die imperative is built into the stateâs very
structure. As Karl Marx explained in Capital, capitalismâs aim isâin
fact, has to beââthe unceasing movement of profit-making.â[69] So, too,
is there such an aim underlying the state: the unceasing movement of
power making. The drive for profit and the drive for power,
respectively, must become ends in themselves. For without these drives,
we have neither capitalism nor the state; these âgoalsâ are part of
their inherent makeup. Hence, the two frequently interlinked systems of
exploitation and domination must do whatever is necessary to sustain
themselves, otherwise they are unable to fulfill their unceasing
momentum.
Whatever a state does, then, has to be in its own interests. Sometimes,
of course, the stateâs interests coincide with those of various groups
or people; they may even overlap with concepts such as justice or
compassion. But these convergences are in no way central or even
essential to its smooth functioning. They are merely instrumental
stepping-stones as the state continually moves to maintain, solidify,
and consolidate its power.
Because, like it or not, all states are forced to strive for a monopoly
on power. âThe same competition,â wrote Mikhail Bakunin in Statism and
Anarchism, âwhich in the economic field annihilates and swallows up
small and even medium-sized capital ... in favor of vast capital ... is
also operative in the lives of the States, leading to the destruction
and absorption of small and medium-sized States for the benefit of
empires.â States must, as Bakunin noted, âdevour others in order not to
be devoured.â[70] Such a power-taking game will almost invariably tend
toward centralization, hegemony, and increasingly sophisticated methods
of command, coercion, and control. Plainly, in this quest to monopolize
power, there will always have to be dominated subjects.
As institutionalized systems of domination, then, neither state nor
capital are controllable. Nor can they be mended or made benign. Thus,
the rallying cry of any kind of leftist or progressive activism that
accepts the terms of the nation-state and/or capitalism is ultimately
only this: âNo exploitation without representation! No domination
without representation!â
Direct democracy, on the other hand, is completely at odds with both the
state and capitalism. For as ârule of the peopleâ (the etymological root
of democracy), democracyâs underlying logic is essentially the unceasing
movement of freedom making. And freedom, as we have seen, must be
jettisoned in even the best of representative systems.
Not coincidentally, direct democracyâs opponents have generally been
those in power. Whenever the people spokeâas in the majority of those
who were disenfranchised, disempowered, or even starvedâit usually took
a revolution to work through a âdialogueâ about democracyâs value. As a
direct form of governance, therefore, democracy can be nothing but a
threat to those small groups who wish to rule over others: whether they
be monarchs, aristocrats, dictators, or even federal administrations as
in the United States.
Indeed, we forget that democracy finds its radical edge in the great
revolutions of the past, the American Revolution included. Given that
the United States is held up as the pinnacle of democracy, it seems
particularly appropriate to hark back to those strains of a radicalized
democracy that fought so valiantly and lost so crushingly in the
American Revolution. We need to take up that unfinished projectâof
struggling for âa free life in the free city,â in contrast to accepting
âthe stateâ as the only form of government, as Peter Kropotkin argued in
his book of the same nameâif we have any hope of contesting domination
itself.[71]
This does not mean that the numerous injustices tied to the founding of
the United States should be ignored or, to use a particularly
appropriate word, whitewashed. The fact that native peoples, blacks,
women, and others were (and often continue to be) exploited, brutalized,
and/or murdered wasnât just a sideshow to the historic event that
created this country. Any movement for direct democracy has to grapple
with the relation between this oppression and the liberatory moments of
the American Revolution.
At the same time, one needs to view the revolution in the context of its
times and ask, In what ways was it an advance? Did it offer glimpses of
new freedoms, ones that we should ultimately extend to everyone? Like
all the great modern revolutions, the American Revolution spawned a
politics based on face-to-face assemblies confederated within and
between cities.
âAmerican democratic polity was developed out of genuine community
life.... The township or some not much larger area was the political
unit, the town meeting the political medium, and roads, schools, the
peace of the community, were the political objectives,â according to
John Dewey in The Public and Its Problems.[72] This outline of
self-governance did not suddenly appear in 1776. It literally arrived
with the first settlers, who in being freed from the bonds of Old World
authority, decided to constitute the rules of their society anew in the
Mayflower Compact. This and a host of other subsequent compacts were
considered mutual promisesâof both rights and dutiesâon the part of each
person to their communityâa promise initially emanating out of newfound
egalitarian religious values. The idea caught on, and many New England
villages drafted their own charters and institutionalized direct
democracy through town meetings, where citizens met regularly to
determine their communityâs public policy and needs.
Participating in the debates, deliberations, and decisions of oneâs
community became part of a full and vibrant life; it not only gave
colonists (albeit mostly men, and albeit as settlers) the experience and
institutions that would later support their revolution but also a
tangible form of freedom worth fighting for. Hence, they struggled to
preserve control over their daily lives: first with the British over
independence, and later, among themselves over competing forms of
governance. The final constitution, of course, set up a federal republic
not a direct democracy. But before, during, and after the revolution,
time and again, town meetings, confederated assemblies, and militias
either exerted their established powers of self-management or created
new ones when they were blockedâin both legal and extralegal
institutionsâbecoming ever more radical in the process.
Those of us living in the United States have inherited this
self-schooling in direct democracy, even if only in vague echoes like
New Hampshireâs âlive free or dieâ motto or Vermontâs yearly Town
Meeting Day. Such institutional and cultural fragments, however, bespeak
deep-seated values that many still hold dear: independence, initiative,
liberty, equality. They continue to create a very real tension between
grassroots self-governance and top-down representationâa tension that
we, as modern-day revolutionaries, need to build on.
Such values resonate through the history of the U.S. libertarian Left:
ranging from late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century experiments in
utopian communities and labor organizing; to the civil rights movement
starting in the mid-1950s; to the Black Power, American Indian, radical
feminist, and queer liberation movementsâ struggles for social freedom
as well as the Students for a Democratic Societyâs demands for a
participatory democracy in the 1960s; to the anarchist-inspired affinity
group and spokescouncil organizing of the 1970sâ antinuke movement; and
then again with the anticapitalist movementâs mass direct actions in the
1990s and early 2000s. In both its principles and practices,
antiauthoritarian leftists in the United States have been inventive and
dynamic, particularly in the postwar era. Weâve challenged multiple
âisms,â calling into question old privileges and dangerous exclusions.
Weâve created a culture within our own organizations that nearly
mandates, even if it doesnât always work, an internally democratic
process. Weâre pretty good at organizing everything from demonstrations
to counterinstitutions.
This is not to romanticize the past or present work of the libertarian
Left; rather, it is to point out that we, too, havenât lacked a striving
for the values underpinning this countryâs birth. Then and now, however,
one of our biggest mistakes has been to ignore politics per seâthat is,
the need for a guaranteed place for freedom to emerge.
The Clash sang years ago of ârebels dancing on air,â and it seems we
have modeled our political struggles on this. We may feel free or
powerful in the streets or during building occupations, at our
infoshops, and within our collective meetings, but this is a momentary
and often private sensation. It allows us to be political, as in
reacting to, opposing, countering, or even trying to work outside public
policy. But it does not let us do politics, as in making public policy
itself. It is only âfreedom fromâ those things we donât like, or more
accurately, liberation.
âLiberation and freedom are not the same,â contended Hannah Arendt in On
Revolution. Certainly, liberation is a basic necessity: people need to
be free from harm, hunger, and hatred. But liberation falls far short of
freedom. If we are ever to fulfill both our needs and desires, if we are
ever to take control of our lives, each and every one of us needs the
âfreedom toâ self-developâindividually, socially, and politically. As
Arendt added, â[Liberation] is incapable of even grasping, let alone
realizing, the central idea of revolution, which is the foundation of
freedom.â[73]
The revolutionary question becomes: Where do decisions that affect
society as a whole get made? For this is where power resides. It is time
that we rediscover the âlost treasureâ that arises spontaneously during
all revolutionsâthe council, in all its imaginative varietiesâas the
basis for constituting places of power for everyone.[74] For only when
we all have equal and ongoing access to participate in the space where
public policy is madeâthe political sphereâwill freedom have a fighting
chance to gain a footing.
Montesquieu, one of the most influential theorists for the American
revolutionists, tried to wrestle with âthe constitution of political
freedomâ in his monumental The Spirit of the Laws.[75] He came to the
conclusion that âpower must check power.â[76] In the postrevolutionary
United States, this idea eventually made its way into the Constitution
as a system of checks and balances. Yet Montesquieuâs notion was much
more expansive, touching on the very essence of power itself. The
problem is not power per se but rather power without limits. Or to press
Montesquieuâs concept, the problem is power as an end in itself. Power
needs to be forever linked to freedom; freedom needs to be the limit
placed on power. Tom Paine, for one, brought this home to the American
Revolution in The Rights of Man: âGovernment on the old system is an
assumption of power for the aggrandizement of itself; on the new, a
delegation of power for the common benefit of society.â[77]
If freedom is the social aim, power must be held horizontally. We must
all be both rulers and ruled simultaneously, or a system of rulers and
subjects is the only alternative. We must all hold power equally in our
hands if freedom is to coexist with power. Freedom, in other words, can
only be maintained through a sharing of political power, and this
sharing happens through political institutions. Rather than being made a
monopoly, power should be distributed to us all, thereby allowing all
our varied âpowersâ (of reason, persuasion, decision making, and so on)
to blossom. This is the power to create rather than dominate.
Of course, institutionalizing direct democracy assures only the barest
bones of a free society. Freedom is never a done deal, nor is it a fixed
notion. New forms of domination will probably always rear their ugly
heads. Yet minimally, directly democratic institutions open a public
space in which everyone, if they so choose, can come together in a
deliberative and decision-making body; a space where everyone has the
opportunity to persuade and be persuaded; a space where no discussion or
decision is ever hidden, and where it can always be returned to for
scrutiny, accountability, or rethinking. Embryonic within direct
democracy, if only to function as a truly open policymaking mechanism,
are values such as equality, diversity, cooperation, and respect for
human worthâhopefully, the building blocks of a liberatory ethics as we
begin to self-manage our communities, the economy, and society in an
ever-widening circle of confederated assemblies.
As a practice, direct democracy will have to be learned. As a principle,
it will have to undergird all decision making. As an institution, it
will have to be fought for. It will not appear magically overnight. It
will instead emerge little by little out of struggles to, as Murray
Bookchin phrased it, âdemocratize our republic and radicalize our
democracy.â[78]
We must infuse all our political activities with politics. It is time to
call for a second âAmerican Revolution,â but this time, one that breaks
the bonds of nation-states, one that knows no borders or masters, and
one that draws the potentiality of libertarian self-governance to its
limits, fully enfranchising all with the power to act democratically.
This begins with reclaiming the word democracy itselfânot as a better
version of representation but as a radical process to directly remake
our world.
âDirect action gets the goods,âproclaimed the Industrial Workers of the
World nearly a century ago. And in the relatively short time since
Seattle, this has certainly proven to be the case. Indeed, âthe goodsâ
reaped by the direct action movement here in North America have included
creating doubt as to the nature of globalization, shedding light on the
nearly unknown workings of international trade and supranational
governance bodies, and making anarchism and anticapitalism almost
household words.[79] As if that werenât enough, we find ourselves on the
streets of twenty-first-century metropolises demonstrating our power to
resist in a way that models the good society we envision: a truly
democratic one.
But is this really what democracy looks like?
The impulse to âreclaim the streetsâ is an understandable one. When
industrial capitalism first started to emerge in the early nineteenth
century, its machinations were relatively visible. Take, for instance,
the enclosures. Pasturelands that had been used in common for centuries
to provide villages with their very sustenance were systematically
fenced offâenclosedâin order to graze sheep, whose wool was needed for
the burgeoning textile industry. Communal life was briskly thrust aside
in favor of privatization, forcing people into harsh factories and
crowded cities.
Advanced capitalism, as it pushes past the fetters of even nation-states
in its insatiable quest for growth, encloses life in a much more
expansive yet generally invisible way: fences are replaced by consumer
culture. We are raised in an almost totally commodified world where
nothing comes for free, even futile attempts to remove oneself from the
market economy. This commodification seeps into not only what we eat,
wear, or do for fun but also into our language, relationships, and even
our very biology and minds. We have lost not only our communities and
public spaces but control over our own lives; we have lost the ability
to define ourselves outside capitalismâs grip, and thus genuine meaning
itself begins to dissolve.
âWhose Streets? Our Streets!â then, is a legitimate emotional response
to the feeling that even the most minimal of public, noncommodified
spheres has been taken from us. Yet in the end, it is simply a frantic
cry from our cage. We have become so confined, so thoroughly damaged, by
capitalism as well as state control that crumbs appear to make a
nourishing meal.
Temporarily closing off the streets during direct actions does provide
momentary spaces in which to practice democratic process, and even
offers a sense of empowerment, but such events leave power for powerâs
sake, like the very pavement beneath our feet, unchanged. Only when the
serial protest mode is escalated into a struggle for popular or
horizontal power can we create cracks in the figurative concrete,
thereby opening up ways to challenge capitalism, nation-states, and
other systems of domination.
This is not to denigrate the contemporary direct action movement in the
United States and elsewhere; just the opposite. Besides a long overdue
and necessary critique of numerous institutions of command and
obedience, it is quietly yet crucially supplying the outlines of a freer
society. This prefigurative politics is, in fact, the very strength and
vision of direct action, where the means themselves are understood to
intimately relate to the ends. Weâre not putting off the good society
until some distant future but attempting to carve out room for it in the
here and now, however tentative and contorted under the given social
order. In turn, this consistency of means and ends implies an ethical
approach to politics. How we act now is how we want others to begin to
act, too. We try to model a notion of goodness even as we fight for it.
This can implicitly be seen in the affinity group and spokescouncil
structures for decision making at direct actions. Both supply much
needed spaces in which to school ourselves in direct democracy. Here, in
the best of cases, we can proactively set the agenda, carefully
deliberate together over questions, and come to decisions that strive to
take everyoneâs needs and desires into account. Substantive discussion
replaces checking boxes on a ballot; face-to-face participation replaces
handing over our lives to so-called representatives; nuanced and
reasoned solutions replace lesser-of-two-(or-three-)evils thinking. The
democratic process utilized during demonstrations decentralizes power
even as it offers tangible solidarity; for example, affinity groups
afford greater and more diverse numbers of people a real share in
decision making, while spokescouncils allow for intricate
coordinationâeven on a global level. This is, as 1960sâ activists put
it, the power to create rather than to destroy.
The beauty of the direct action movement, it could be said, is that it
strives to take its own ideals to heart. In doing so, it has perhaps
unwittingly created the demand for such directly democratic practices on
a permanent basis. Yet the perplexing question underlying episodic
âstreet democracyâ remains unaddressed: How can everyone come together
to make decisions that affect society as a whole in participatory,
mutualistic, and ethical ways? In other words, how can each and every
one of usânot just a counterculture or a protest movementâreally
transform and ultimately control our lives and that of our communities?
This is, in essence, a question of powerâwho has it, how it is used, and
to what ends. To varying degrees, we all know the answer in relation to
current institutions and systems. We can generally explain what we are
against. That is exactly why we are protesting, whether it is against
capitalism or climate change, summits or war. What we have largely
failed to articulate, however, is any sort of response in relation to
liberatory institutions and systems. We often canât express, especially
in any coherent and utopian manner, what we are for. Even as we
prefigure a way of making power horizontal, equitable, and hence,
hopefully an essential part of a free society, we ignore the
reconstructive vision that a directly democratic process holds up right
in front of our noses.
For all intents and purposes, direct action protests remain trapped. On
the one hand, they reveal and confront domination and exploitation. The
political pressure exerted by such widespread agitation may even be able
to influence current power structures to amend some of the worst
excesses of their ways; the powers that be have to listen, and respond
to some extent, when the voices become too numerous and too loud.
Nevertheless, most people are still shut out of the decision-making
process itself, and consequently, have little tangible power over their
lives at all. Without this ability to self-govern, street actions
translate into nothing more than a countercultural version of interest
group lobbying, albeit far more radical than most and generally unpaid.
What gets forgotten in relation to direct action mobilizations is the
promise implicit in their own structure: that power not only needs to be
contested; it must also be constituted anew in liberatory and
egalitarian forms. This entails taking directly democratic processes
seriouslyânot simply as a tactic to organize protests but as the very
way we organize society, specifically the political realm. The issue
then becomes: How do we begin to shift the strategy, structure, and
values of direct action in the streets to the most grassroots level of
public policy making?
The most fundamental level of decision making in a demonstration is the
affinity group. Here, we come together as friends or because of a common
identity, or a combination of the two. We share something in particular;
indeed, this common identity is often reflected in the name we choose
for our groups. We may not always agree with each other, but there is a
fair amount of homogeneity precisely because weâve consciously chosen to
come together for a specific reasonâusually having little to do with
mere geography. This sense of a shared identity allows for the smooth
functioning of a consensus decision-making process, since we start from
a place of commonality. In an affinity group, almost by definition, our
unity needs to take precedence over our diversity, or our supposed
affinity breaks down altogether.
Compare this to what could be the most fundamental level of decision
making in a society: a neighborhood or town. Now, geography plays a much
larger role. Out of historic, economic, cultural, religious, and other
reasons, we may find ourselves living side by side with a wide range of
individuals and their various identities. Most of these people are not
our friends per se. Still, the very diversity we encounter is the life
of a vibrant city itself. The accidents and/or numerous personal
decisions that have brought us together frequently create a fair amount
of heterogeneity precisely because we havenât all chosen to come
together for a specific reason. In this context, where we start from a
place of difference, decision-making mechanisms need to be much more
capable of allowing for dissent; that is, diversity needs to be clearly
retained within any notions of unity. As such, majoritarian
decision-making processes begin to make more sense.
Then, too, there is the question of scale. It is hard to imagine being
friends with hundreds, or even thousands, of people, nor maintaining a
single-issue identity with that many individuals. But we can share a
feeling of community and a striving toward some common good that allows
each of us to flourish. In turn, when greater numbers of people come
together on a face-to-face basis to reshape their neighborhoods and
towns, the issues as well as the viewpoints will multiply, and alliances
will no doubt change depending on the specific topic under discussion.
Thus the need for a place where we can meet as human beings at the most
face-to-face levelâthat is, an assembly of active political beingsâto
share our many identities and interests in hopes of balancing both the
individual and community in all we do.
As well, trust and accountability function differently at the affinity
group versus civic level. We generally reveal more of ourselves to
friends; and such unwritten bonds of love and affection hold us more
closely together, or at least give us added impetus to work things out.
Underlying this is a higher-than-average degree of trust, which serves
to make us accountable to each other.
On a community-wide level, the reverse is more often true:
accountability allows us to trust each other. Hopefully, we share bonds
of solidarity and respect; yet since we canât all know each other well,
such bonds only make sense if we first determine them together, and then
record them, write them down, for all to refer back to in the future,
and even revisit if need be. Accountable, democratic structures of our
own making, in short, provide the foundation for trust, since the power
to decide is both transparent and ever-amenable to scrutiny.
There are also issues of time and space. Affinity groups, in the scheme
of things, are generally temporary configurationsâthey may last a few
months, or a few years, but often not much longer. Once the particular
reasons why weâve come together have less of an immediate imperative, or
as our friendships falter, such groups frequently fall by the wayside.
And even during a groupâs life span, in the interim between direct
actions, there is frequently no fixed place or face to decision making,
nor any regularity, nor much of a record of who decided what and how.
Moreover, affinity groups are not open to everyone but only those who
share a specific identity or attachment. As such, although an affinity
group can certainly choose to shut down a street, there is ultimately
something slightly authoritarian in small groups taking matters into
their own hands, no matter what their political persuasion.
Deciding what to do with streets in generalâsay, how to organize
transportation, encourage street life, or provide green spaceâshould be
a matter open to everyone interested if it is to be truly participatory
and nonhierarchical. This implies ongoing and open institutions of
direct democracy, for everything from decision making to conflict
resolution. We need to be able to know when and where popular assemblies
are meeting; we need to meet regularly and make use of nonarbitrary
procedures; we need to keep track of what decisions have been made. But
more important, if we so choose, we all need to have access to the power
to discuss, deliberate, and make decisions about matters that affect our
communities and beyond.
Indeed, many decisions have a much wider impact than on just one city;
transforming streets, for example, would probably entail coordination on
a regional, continental, or even global level. Radicals have long
understood such mutualistic self-reliance as a âcommune of communes,â or
confederation. The spokescouncil model used during direct actions hints
at such an alternative view of globalization. During a spokescouncil
meeting, mandated delegates from our affinity groups gather for the
purpose of coordination, the sharing of resources/skills, the building
of solidarity, and so forth, always returning to the grassroots level as
the ultimate arbiter. If popular assemblies were our basic unit of
decision making, confederations of communities could serve as a way to
both transcend parochialism and create interdependence where desirable.
For instance, rather than global capitalism and international regulatory
bodies, where trade is top-down and profit-oriented, confederations
could coordinate distribution between regions in ecological and humane
ways, while allowing policy in regard to production, say, to remain at
the grassroots.
This more expansive understanding of a prefigurative politics would
necessarily involve creating institutions that could potentially replace
capitalism and nation-states. Such directly democratic institutions are
compatible with, and could certainly grow out of, the ones we use during
demonstrations, but they very likely wonât be mirror images once we
reach the level of society. This does not mean abandoning the principles
and ideals underpinning direct action mobilizations (such as freedom,
cooperation, decentralism, solidarity, diversity, and face-to-face
participation); it merely means recognizing the limits of direct
democracy as it is practiced in the context of an anticapitalist
convergence.
The Zapatistas, along with other revolutionaries before them, have
already shown that declarations of freedom âtouch the hearts of humble
and simple people like ourselves, but people who are also, like
ourselves, dignified and rebel.â Yet starting in 2001, they have proved
as well that municipalities can strive to become autonomous from
statecraft and capital, to put human and ecological concerns first,
while retaining regional and global links of solidarity and mutual aid.
âThis method of autonomous government was not simply invented by the
EZLN [Zapatista Army of National Liberation], but rather it comes from
several centuries of indigenous resistance and from the Zapatistasâ own
experience. It is the self-governance of the communities. In other
words, no one from outside comes to govern, but the peoples themselves
decide, among themselves, who governs and how.... And, also through the
Good Government Juntas, coordination has been improved between the
Autonomous Municipalities.â Among other achievements, these
self-governments also facilitated âmuch improvement in the projects in
the communities. Health and education have improved, although there is
still a good deal lacking for it to be what it should be. The same is
true for housing and food.â[80]
Another recent example was the neighborhood assembly movement that
sprang up in Argentina in 2001â2, in response to an economic crisis that
simultaneously delegitimized parliamentary politics. In late December
2001, a spiraling sense of desperation and powerless combined to force
people not only out onto the streets to loudly protest by banging on
pots and pans (and destroying ATMs) but also into an empowering dialogue
with their neighbors about what to do nextâon the local, national, and
global levels. Some fifty neighborhoods in Buenos Aires began holding
weekly meetings and sending delegates every Sunday to an
interneighborhood general coordinating gathering. The anarchist
Argentine Libertarian Federation Local Council explains that the
assemblies were âformed by the unemployed, the underemployed, and people
marginalized and excluded from capitalist society: including
professionals, workers, small retailers, artists, craftspeople, all of
them also neighbors.â As the Libertarian Federation notes, âThe meetings
are open and anyone who wishes can participate,â and common to all
assemblies was the ânon-delegation of power, self-management, [and a]
horizontal structure.â While these assemblies didnât end up replacing
the state structure, they did supply Argentineans with a glimpse of
their own ability to make public policy together. âThe fear in our
society has turned into courage,â the Libertarian Federation reports.
âThere is reason to hope that all Argentineans now know for certain who
has been blocking our freedoms.â[81]
Indeed, such innovative efforts, even when they fall short of social
transformation, end up inspiring other attempts. The current series of
building occupations on college campuses across the state of California,
sparked by dramatic tuition increases and budget cuts to public
education in fall 2009, draws on the recent Oaxacan rebellion of 2006.
As La Ventana Collective, made up of students at San Francisco State
University, writes, âThe APPO (the Popular Peopleâs Assembly of Oaxaca)
organized large general assemblies held in the midst of the occupation
of the zocalo of the capital city of the state of Oaxaca. The
âplantonââor occupationâwas a space where meetings took up to 3 days in
many cases due to the horizontal nature and directly democratic
principles of the APPO, which functioned as guidelines and principles of
the movement.â These students assert in relation to their own ongoing
resistance that âa general assembly is, for us, a large gathering of
people willing to talk about the issues through discussion in order to
formulate plans for moving forward.â Looking ahead as students, faculty,
staff, workers, and community supporters around California gear up for
further contestation, including a âStrike and Day of Action in Defense
of Public Educationâ called for March 4, 2010, La Ventana points to the
significance of âthe communization of the struggle.... This is a
philosophy that was stressed during the 2001 horizontalist movement in
Argentina after the collapse of the economy. Once again, during the
actions that followed the collapse of the government, the people
self-organized.â[82] For the San Francisco State University students,
the lived reality of directly democratic processes during their own
struggle is just as important as winning that struggle; it is, in fact,
part and parcel of winning.
Such instantiations of self-governance donât appear out of thin air.
They take, among other things, patience, deliberation, self-reflection,
and imagination. They take courage. The Zapatistas spent ten years
âtalking with and listening to other people like us,â joining âforces in
silence,â learning and getting âorganized in order to defend ourselves
and to fight for justice.â Then, âwhen the rich were throwing their New
Yearâs Eve parties, we fell upon their cities and just took them overâ
on December 31, 1993. âAnd then the people from the cities went out into
the streets and began shouting for an end to the war. And then we
stopped our war, and we listened to those brothers and sisters.... And
so we set aside the fire and took up the word.â Still, it would take
another seven years, until 2001, before the EZLN would begin
âencouraging the autonomous rebel zapatista municipalitiesâwhich is how
the peoples are organized in order to govern and to govern themselvesâin
order to make themselves stronger.â[83]
At worst, such fragile yet exceedingly beautiful experiments will
forever change those people who participate in them, for the better, by
âself-mentoringâ a new generation of rebels through the lived practice
of freely constituting oneâs community collectively. They will provide
material and moral support, and serve as the continuity between other
similar efforts, in other parts of the world. And they will also supply
messages in bottles to future generations that directly democratic,
confederated ways of making social, economic, political, and cultural
decisions are a tangible alternative. This is a pretty good âworst-case
scenario,â as the horizontal movement of movements of the past couple
decades attests toâfrom Chiapas to Buenos Aires to Oaxaca, from Greece
to North America. At best, though, such forms of freedom will widen into
dual powers that can contest and ultimately replace forms of domination.
They will become the basis for a new politics of self-legislation,
self-management, and self-adjudication, forever shattering the bleak
world of states, capital, and prisons.
Any vision of a free society, if it is to be truly democratic, must of
course be worked out by all of usâfirst in movements, and later, in our
communities and federations. Even so, we will probably discover that
newly defined understandings of what it means to be a politically
engaged person are needed in place of affinity groups; hybrid
consensus-seeking and majoritarian methods of decision making that
strive to retain diversity are preferable to simple consensus and
informal models; written compacts articulating rights and duties are
crucial to fill out the unspoken culture of protests; and
institutionalized spaces for policymaking are key to guaranteeing that
our freedom to make decisions doesnât disappear with a line of riot
police.
It is time to push beyond the oppositional character of the direct
action movement by infusing it with a reconstructive vision. That means
beginning, right now, to translate movement structures into institutions
that embody the good society; in short, cultivating direct democracy in
the places we call home. This will involve the harder work of
reinvigorating or initiating civic gatherings, town meetings,
neighborhood assemblies, community mediation boards, any and all forums
where we can come together to decide our lives, even if only in
extralegal institutions at first. Then, too, it will mean reclaiming
globalization, not as a new phase of capitalism, but as its replacement
by confederated, directly democratic communities coordinated for mutual
benefit.
It is time to move from protest to politics, from shutting down streets
to opening up public space, from demanding scraps from those few in
power to holding power firmly in all our hands. Ultimately, this means
moving beyond the question of âWhose Streets?â We should ask instead
âWhose Cities?â Then, and only then, will we be able to remake them as
our own.
Paths are never straight lines. They zigzag, journey uphill & down. They
reach dead-ends. But when we put our best foot forward, we just might
venture in utopiaâs direction, toward a world from below, by & for all.
We gingerly find stepping-stones to more marvelous destinations. Then
strive to cobble together whole landscapes out of nonhierarchical
practices. We kick broken glass from our way. Sometimes get lost. But
the precarious passage itself is our road map to a liberatory society.
We hold hands, desiring to traverse anew. When darkness descends, we
build campfires from the embers of possibility, & see other flames in
the distance.[84]
Cindy Milstein
Cindy is an IAS board member and a co-organizer of the Renewing the
Anarchist Tradition conference. She has been an active collective member
in anarchist projects in her longtime home base, Vermont, ranging from
Black Sheep Books and the Free Society Collective, to the Last Elm Café
and the Old North End Community Food Project; and has been involved in
continental and global efforts, like the Left Greens, the Donât Just
(Not) Vote and Hope from People, Not Presidents initiatives, and the
anticapitalist movement. For many years, she taught at the anarchist
summer school known as the Institute for Social Ecology, and has long
engaged in community organizing campaigns and study groups where she
lives, and popular educationâtalks and panelsâin places she doesnât. Her
writings have appeared in various periodicals, some long dead and others
still thriving, and several anthologies: Confronting Capitalism (Soft
Skull, 2005), Globalize Liberation (City Lights, 2005), Only a Beginning
(Arsenal Pulp, 2005), and Realizing the Impossible: Art against
Authority (AK Press, 2007). Cindy dreams of revolution, and in the
meantime, copyedits books for money while working to end capitalism. She
can be reached at cbmilstein@yahoo.com.
Institute for Anarchist studies
The IAS, a nonprofit foundation established in 1996, aims to support the
development of anarchism by creating spaces for independent, politically
engaged scholarship that explores social domination and reconstructive
visions of a free society. All IAS projects strive to encourage public
intellectuals and collective self-reflection within revolutionary and/or
movement contexts. To this end, the IAS awards grants twice a year to
radical writers and translators worldwide, and has funded some seventy
projects over the years by authors from numerous countries, including
Argentina, Lebanon, Canada, Chile, Ireland, Nigeria, Germany, South
Africa, and the United States. It also publishes the online and print
journal Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, organizes the Renewing the
Anarchist Tradition conference, offers the Mutual Aid Speakers List, and
collaborates on this book series, among other projects. The IAS is part
of a larger movement seeking to create a nonhierarchical society. It is
internally democratic and works in solidarity with people around the
globe who share its values. The IAS is completely supported by donations
from anarchists and other antiauthoritariansâlike youâand/or their
projects, with any contributions exclusively funding grants and IAS
operating expenses; for more information or to contribute to the work of
the IAS, see
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AK Press
AK Press is a worker-run collective that publishes and distributes
radical books, visual and audio media, and other material. Weâre small:
a dozen people who work long hours for short money, because we believe
in what we do. Weâre anarchists, which is reflected both in the books we
provide and the way we organize our business. Decisions at AK Press are
made collectively, from what we publish, to what we distribute and how
we structure our labor. All the work, from sweeping floors to answering
phones, is shared. When the telemarketers call and ask, âwhoâs in
charge?â the answer is: everyone. Our goal isnât profit (although we do
have to pay the rent). Our goal is supplying radical words and images to
as many people as possible. The books and other media we distribute are
published by independent presses, not the corporate giants. We make them
widely available to help you make positive (or hell, revolutionary)
changes in the world. For more information on AK Press, or to place an
order, see
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Justseeds Artistsâ Cooperative
Justseeds Artistsâ Cooperative is a decentralized community of
twenty-two artists who have banded together to both sell their work, and
collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Our Web
site is not just a place to shop but also a destination to find out
about current events in radical art and culture. We regularly
collaborate on exhibitions and group projects as well as produce
graphics and culture for social justice movements. We believe in the
power of personal expression in concert with collective action to
transform society. For more information on Justseeds Artistsâ
Cooperative or to order work, see
.
[1] This definition of âghost,â as a noun, is from Merriam-Webster
Collegiate.com.
[2] One such work is Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism (1929;
repr., Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005), but there are many other
primary texts from the early days of anarchism, ranging from Michael
Bakunin, God and the State (1882; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover
Publications, 1970) and Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism: A Collection of
Revolutionary Writings (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002) to Emma
Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications,
1969) and Errico Malatesta, Anarchy (London: Freedom Press, 1995). Some
secondary-source overviews, several of which include much primary
material, include: Daniel Guerin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970); Daniel Guerin, No Gods, No
Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005); Peter
Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (Oakland, CA:
PM Press, 2009); Clifford Harper, Anarchy: A Graphic Guide (London:
Camden Press, 1987); Robert Graham, ed., Anarchism: A Documentary
History of Libertarian Ideas, 2 volumes (Montreal: Black Rose Books,
2004, 2009). For a contemporary look at anarchism, see Uri Gordon,
Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory
(London: Pluto Press, 2008).
[3] My vantage point is also shaped, for better or worse, by my
geographic location: North America, and the United States in particular.
[4] In principle, anarchism eschews dogmatisms, or viewpoints that are
arrived at without carefully examined premises. Ethics within anarchism
are not about accepting god-given values, for instance, or any values
that are imposed or blindly followed because of tradition. Instead,
anarchism advocates a thought-filled ethics, where people voluntarily
come to a shared set of overarching values, which they also continually
(re)evaluate in relation to human practices and behaviors. Ethics within
anarchism thus entail actively thinking through and trying to implement
notions of goodness and badness, rightness and wrongnessâeven as people
remain open to discovering new forms of goodness and badness.
[5] There are probably as many ways of defining anarchism as there are
anarchists, given the openness of this âism.â Yet that opennessâto new
ideas, practices, and phenomenaâis still bound to a fairly specific set
of beliefs, as I hope to show in this chapter. At its best, the openness
within anarchism implies both a dynamism and inclusiveness, grounded in
a profoundly egalitarian sensibility.
[6] âAuthorityâ can be a good thing at times, in the sense of someone
having expertise, yet without the ability to use that expertise to
control others. âRulerâ implies more of a dominant-subordinate relation
between people, but in a self-governing society, people might all be
both rulers and ruled, in a noncoercive and collective sense. Thus, the
absence of domination and hierarchy are more precise. Martin Buber
suggests in his Paths in Utopia (1949; repr., Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 1996) that classical anarchists like Kropotkin wanted
to restructure society in the direction of âmore self-government,â and
as such a better word in Buberâs view is ââanocracyâ (αÏÏαÏÎčα); not
absence of government but absence of dominationâ (see Paths in Utopia,
chapter 5, âKropotkinâ).
[7] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property? (1840; repr., Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 209.
[8] The libertarian Left includes all those revolutionaries, both
Marxist and anarchist, striving toward a variety of bottom-up social
organization. For an excellent work, sadly out of print, tracing this
history, see Richard Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism (London:
Penguin, 1975), and The Radical Tradition: A Study in Modern
Revolutionary Thought (London: Methuen, 1978), both available in the
online library at
. Rather than the tired debate about Marxism versus anarchism, which
ignores the authoritarian as well as antiauthoritarian strains within
each tradition, itâs much more accurate to see the divide as being,
broadly, between those on the libertarian versus nonlibertarian side of
social transformation. This also allows for productive collaborations
between libertarian leftists, whereby a diversity of theories as well as
strategies can blend into much more relevant and effective forms of
social reconstruction, as in the case of the Zapatistas, for instance.
[9] In the case of liberalism, in its most participatory form it
advocates a minimal state as mere âprotection,â so that people can
basically be left alone to run their own lives. This is backed up by
small-scale property ownership as a means of self-sustenance, thereby
providing enough independence that no one can hold the means of life
over another person. Here, thinkers like Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, and Thomas Paine stand out as articulating the best of
liberalismâs potentiality, at least in theory. In the case of communism,
in its most participatory form it advocates workersâ councils or a
workersâ state, which will ultimately be unnecessary, and workplace
self-management. The common ownership of the means of production ensures
that no one can exploit anyone else. Here, Karl Marxâs social theory is
key, but as drawn out by Georg LukĂĄcs, the Frankfurt school, and the
Situationist International, among others of the so-called Western (or
dissident) Marxists.
[10] See
. shtml.
[11] And hence, at its most âantiauthoritarian,â having more in common
with the values of liberalism than anarchism, in that it privileges
individual liberty over all else. Even liberalism advocates something
outside the individualâsadly, a state or private propertyâto (allegedly)
protect each of us against the other. An anything goes sensibility is
ultimately âauthoritarianâ in that it privileges oneâs desires above all
else. This is âanarchy,â as in chaos, rather than âanarchism,â as in
forms of social organization that value both individual liberty and
collective freedom. Indeed, a libertine outlook can make for unwanted
bedfellows, from anarcho-capitalists to anarcho-fascists, at its most
extreme, or simply a lack of solidarity or concern for forms of
accountability. Either way, it flies in the face of the initial
definition here: anarchism as a free society of free individuals.
[12] Because of the renewed interest in anarchism, slowly but surely
anarchist scholarship is focusing on hitherto-ignored histories of
anarchism within Europe and as migrating to places ranging from the Asia
Pacific region to the Americas to Africa. âTraveling anarchismâ was a
phenomenon from the start, and indeed was essential to its diasporic
unfolding and openness. A few examples here are: Arif Dirlik, Anarchism
in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991); Frank FernĂĄndez, Cuban Anarchism: A History of the Movement
(Tucson, AZ : See Sharp Press, 2001); Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der
Walt, Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and
Syndicalism (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009); Chaz Bufe and Mitchell Cohen
Verter, eds., Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores MagĂłn Reader (Oakland,
CA: AK Press, 2009); James Horrox, A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the
Kibbutz Movement (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009). in the Kibbutz Movement
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009).
[13] For one example, see Winstanley, the âtruly stunning and hauntingly
beautiful [1975] film, telling the little-known story of Gerrard
Winstanley and the Diggers, a short-lived radical movement that emerged
during the British Civil Wars/Revolution in the late 1640sâ (
).
[14] The Enlightenment can be critiqued on many levels; the point here
is that like all pervasive intellectual traditions that develop out of
certain social conditions, it can involve innovations, some of which can
be emancipatoryâor which at least inadvertently lead to contestations
over emancipation. The classical anarchists were also schooled in
Enlightenment thought, either through their actual education or simply
by virtue of the times in which they lived.
[15] See, for example, Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748; repr.,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); J. S. Mills, On Liberty
and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political
Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Thomas Paine,
Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Mary
Wollestone Craft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
William Godwin, Enquiry concerning Political Justice and Its Influence
on Morals and Modern Happiness (1793; repr., Bel Air, CA: Dodo Press,
2009).
[16] Beyond republics, later revolutions ended in other types of new and
arguably more deadly political forms: dictatorships, authoritarian or
totalitarian regimes, or fascism. But for the purposes of describing
anarchismâs emergence in the 1840s and onward, the predominant move at
that time was from an absolutist church and state, to nations premised
on parliamentarianism and capitalism.
[17] Bookchin, of course, hoped to show that in the power vacuum created
after the âfirst revolution,â forms of self-organization spring up, and
itâs up to the libertarian Left to struggle to maintain this âsecond
revolutionâ against the forces that would attempt to reinstate new forms
of top-down governance. Murray Bookchin, The Third Revolution, 4 volumes
(London: Cassell, 1996â2005).
[18] See, in particular, Karl Marx, Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of
Political Economy (1867; repr., London: Penguin, 1990), and the
Manuscripts section on alienation in Early Writings (London: Penguin,
1992).
[19] Marx, Capital: Volume 1, 90.
[20] See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black and Red,
1977). Ken Knabbâs translation (2002) is available at
.
[21] Karl Polyani, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic
Origins of Our Time (1944; repr., Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).
[22] Peter Kropotkin, âAnarchism,â Encyclopedia Britannica (1905),
available at
.
[23] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848;
repr., London: Penguin, 2002), 219.
[24] Allan Antliff, ed., Only a Beginning: An Anarchist Anthology
(Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004).
[25] For more on these various tendencies, see the anthologies by
Guerin, Marshall, Harper, and Graham cited above in the notes section.
[26] Save for smaller milieus such as the one around Gustav Landauer and
his more community-oriented socialism. See Gustav Landauer, Revolution
and Other Writings: A Political Reader, ed. Gabriel Kuhn (Oakland, CA:
PM Press, 2010).
[27] There are probably more books on the Spanish Revolution than any
other single event in anarchist history, but one of the loveliest and
saddest, by a sympathetic libertarian socialist, is George Orwellâs
Homage to Catalonia (1938; repr., Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 1980),
loosely depicted in the equally lovely and sad film Land and Freedom, by
Ken Loach.
[28] A sampler of some histories of these movements includes Alice
Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967â1975
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Andy Cornell,
âAnarchism and the Movement for a New Society: Direct Action and
Prefigurative Community in the 1970s and 1980s,â Perspectives (2009),
available at http://anarchiststudies. org/node/292; Tommi Avicolli
Mecca, ed., Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay
Liberation (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2009); George
Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social
Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life (Oakland, CA: AK
Press, 2006); Ćœiga Vodovnik, ed., YA BASTA! Ten Years of the Zapatista
Uprising: Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Oakland, CA: AK
Press, 2004); Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdamâs Anarchist Revolt
(Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007); Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and
Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Earth First! Journal,
available at
; Danny Burns, Poll Tax Rebellion (Scotland: AK Press, 1992).
[29] While there are numerous books, articles, films, and news accounts
about this mobilization, many written soon after Seattle 1999, the most
recent one is David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit, The Battle of the Story
of the âBattle of Seattleâ (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009), timed for the
tenth anniversary.
[30] For more on black blocs, see
; David van Deusen and Xavier Massot, eds., The Black Bloc Papers,
2^(nd) ed. (Shawnee Mission, KS: Breaking Glass Press, 2010), available
at
. For more on affinity groups and spokescouncils, see
.
[31] Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1938;
repr., Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 73.
[32] For more on Anarchists against the Wall, see
/ . For a sampler of No One Is Illegal projects, here are three from
Canada:
/;
/;
nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com
/.
[33] My thanks to Todd May for illuminating this notion for me.
[34] Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and
Dissolution of Hierarchy (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005).
[35] On the abolition of work, see, for example, the writings of the
Zerowork Collective, available at
.
[36] As Chris Dixon noted in his comments on this chapter, âThe efforts
of individuals to do this are, of course, always significantly limited
by existing social relations and institutions. For this reason, I think
itâs important to always keep in mind the dynamic relationship between
individuals and the larger collectivities in which we are situated.â
[37] This phrase is from Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 223.
For a related exploration of this phrase, see Marshall Berman, All That
Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Penguin,
1988).
[38] For more on Food Not Bombs, see
/.
[39] Anarchists also ask such questions of each other, but unlike most
other radical circles, they do this publicly, so as to grapple in the
light of day with the dilemmas of our behaviors and actions. One recent
example is the debate over strategy and tactics raised just after the
G-20 protests in Pittsburgh by Ryan Harvey in his piece âAre We Addicted
to Rioting?â and the responses, including an addendum of sorts by Harvey
(all available at
), plus a countering piece by Alex Bradley of the Pittsburgh Organizing
Group that will appear in issue 4 of the Steel City Revolt! (forthcoming
at
).
[40] Thanks, again, to Chris Dixon for offering this phrase in his
commentary on a draft of this chapter.
[41] For more on the relation of humans to the nonhuman world, see works
by anarcho-communists Peter Kropotkin (such as Mutual Aid: A Factor in
Evolution or The Conquest of Bread) and Murray Bookchin (such as The
Ecology of Freedom or Toward an Ecological Society) as well as The
Eclipse of Reason by Max Horkheimer of the Marxist Frankfurt school.
[42] See my essay âSomething Did Start in Quebec City: North Americaâs
Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Movement,â in Only a Beginning, ed. Allan
Antliff (Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004), 138â40; also
available at http://theanarchistlibrary.
org/something-did-start-quebec-city-north-americas-revolutionary-anti-capitalist-movement.
Since Quebec, and especially when this notion migrated to the U.S.
anarchist milieu, a diversity of tactics has been used by some to signal
the end of voluntary agreements. That is, everyone can do what they
want, regardless of how that impacts others. While this is true in some
cases, Iâd argue that overall it has still opened up more space for
nonradicals or those newly politicized to join in anarchist-initiated
actions while maintaining a unified, revolutionary message. Still,
anarchists need to be vigilant about forms of domination wherever they
occur, even within their own circles. When a diversity of tactics notion
lacks the anarchist ethic of voluntary association and accountability,
and sets some peopleâs desires above the good of others, it should be
contested.
[43] Moxie Marlinspike, âThe Promise of Defeat,â available at
.
[44] For more on the idea of anarchism as social critique and social
vision, see my essay âReappropriate the Imagination!â in Realizing the
Impossible: Art against Authority, ed. Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007), 296â307, or available at
.
[45] This does not negate the need for politically engaged theoretical
work. Anarchists create everything from books, zines, and periodicals,
to Web sites, archives, and libraries, to popular education, free
schools, and study groups as well as films, artwork, and storytelling.
Of course, more needs to be done to develop social theory and political
philosophy, for instance, from an anarchist perspective; and more needs
to be done by anarchists to document and analyze their history and
projectsâareas that are beginning to gain more attention within
anarchist circles.
[46] This is the motto of the Mondragon Cooperative system, founded by
JosĂ© MarĂa Arizmendiarrieta in the Basque Country in the 1950sâa system
interesting both for its experimentation at contesting capitalism and
inability, sadly, to do so. For a somewhat rosy history, see Roy
Morrison, We Build the Road as We Travel (Philadelphia: New Society
Publishers, 1991).
[47] See, for example,
/.
[48] Iâd like to thank an anonymous anarchist from the
ten-year-old-strong Long Haul anarchist discussion group in Berkeley for
reminding me that anarchistic values are, in fact, commonsensical, or
how most people would want to probably live their lives, if not
compelled, coerced, and oppressed by forces outside their personal and
social control. Anarchism, in short, makes sense to many people; itâs
thus our âjobâ as anarchists to show that itâs also possible, including
by interconnecting and radicalizing those many bits of practices that
already emulate the ethics espoused within anarchism.
[49] For more information on the Slingshot Organizer and the related
Slingshot newspaper, see
.
[50] Additional anarchist and antiauthoritarian publishing projects
include Autonomedia, PM Press, Eberhardt Press, Microcosm Publishing,
Freedom Press, Ardent Press, Black and Red, Charles H. Kerr, South End
Press, and Black Cat Press, among numerous others. These, in turn, along
with bookstores, infoshops, periodical and zine publishers, anarchist
artists, and others combine their collective efforts to table at the
increasing number of anarchist bookfairs globally, which are also
collectively developed spaces that serve as infrastructure, education,
and alternate modes of social relations and exchange, albeit still
within capitalism.
[51] For more information, see
/ (Pittsburgh Organizing Group);
(North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists);
(Anarchist People of Color);
/ (Riotfolk).
[52] See, for example, Gloria Muñoz RamĂrez, The Fire and the Word: A
History of the Zapatista Movement (San Francisco: City Lights
Publishers, 2008); Diana Denham and the C.A.S.A. Collective, eds.,
Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca
(Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2008); The Take, a film by Avi Lewis and Naomi
Klein on Argentinaâs occupied factories, with more information available
at
/; âAnti-Privatization Protests in Serbia; Global Balkans Interviews
Milenko Sreckovic (Freedom Fight), available at
;
/ (Brazilâs Landless Workers movement);
/ (Take Back the Land); Daniel Burton-Rose, Eddie Yuen, and George
Katsiaficas, eds., Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global
Movement (Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press, 2004); Notes from Nowhere, ed., We
Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism (London:
Verso, 2003);
/ (International Solidarity Movement);
revolutionaryautonomouscommunities.blogspot.com
/ (Revolutionary Autonomous Communities).
[53] David Graeber and Andrej Grubacic, âAnarchism, or the Revolutionary
Movement of the 21^(st) Century,â available at
.
[54] Errico Malatesta, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, ed. Vernon
Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1974); originally appeared in Pensiero
e VolontĂ , September 1, 1925.
[55] William Godwin, Enquiry concerning Political Justice and Its
Influence on Morals and Modern Happiness (1793; repr., Bel Air, CA: Dodo
Press, 2009); Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property? (1840; repr.,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 209.
[56] Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1937;
repr., Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 14.
[57] Joseph A. Labadie, âAnarchism: What It Is and What It Is Not,â
dandelion 3, no 12 (Winter 1979).
[58] Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (1967; repr., Oakland, CA: AK
Press, 2006). For another key Situationist International text, see Raoul
Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life (1967; repr., London: Rebel
Press, 2001).
[59] Murray Bookchin, âNote on Affinity Groups,â in Post-Scarcity
Anarchism (1970; repr., Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 144â46.
[60] Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected
Writings, ed. Juana Ponce de Leon (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002),
216, 190â91.
[61] The same was true at the recent G-20 protests in Pittsburgh in
September 2009, where anarchists displayed such banners as âNo Hope in
Capitalismâ and âNo Bailout, No Capitalism.â
[62] After the economic upheaval of the late 2000s, there is now an
ever-greater suspicion of capitalismâas those in power use this âcrisisâ
to further consolidate wealth at the expense of impoverishing more and
more people. At the same time, social democratic and progressive types
are increasingly attempting to dampen the revolutionary potential of
this suspicion, basically arguing that capitalism can be made less
corrupt; witness Michael Mooreâs recent documentary Capitalism: A Love
Story. More than ever, itâs up to anarchists and like-minded radical
others to explain that capitalism canât be reformed while also offering
alternatives to it. A glimmer of hope in this regard is the current
contestation around access to education and knowledgeâcrucial in this
information age. Around the globe, through university occupations but
also the establishment of counterinstitutions of learning, there is a
push to de-commodify education, to make it free for everyone as well as
self-managed and cooperative. See the EduFactory listserv, reporting on
âconflicts and transformations of the universityâ around the world,
available at
.
[63] Of course, as states lose some of their powers, other actors
besides anarchists and grassroots social movements will step into the
breach as wellâunsavory ones, from neoconservatives and neofascists to
various politicized religious fundamentalists. Nation-states, too, will
struggle to gain different powers as they lose old onesâsay, rather than
being able to supply economic protectionism and social welfare as part
of their justification for existence, they seem to be increasingly
turning toward policing writ large as one of their raisons dâĂȘtre.
[64] See, for example, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, The
Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944; repr., Palo Alto, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2002).
[65] Marcos, Our Word Is Our Weapon, 169.
[66] Gustav Landauer, in a meeting of the Bavarian Councilâs Republic
Central Revolutionary Council on April 12, 1919, according to the report
âDie politische, militĂ€rische und wirtschaftliche Lage der RĂ€terepublik
/ Sitzung des RevolutionĂ€ren Zentralrats am 12. April 1919â [The
Political, Military, and Economic Situation of the Council Republic /
Meeting of the Central Revolutionary Council, April 12, 1919], in Ulrich
Linse, ed., Gustav Landauer und die Revolutionszeit 1918/19. Die
politischen Reden, Schriften, Erlasse und Briefe Landauers aus der
Novemberrevolution 1918/19 [Gustav Landauer and the German Revolution,
1918â19: Gustav Landauerâs Political Speeches, Writings, Proclamations,
and Letters in the November Revolution, 1918â19] (Berlin: Karin Kramer
Verlag , 1974), 230. My heartfelt thanks to Sven-Oliver Buchwald, of
Berlinâs Library of the Free, who diligently searched for this quote in
its original German, and Gabriel Kuhn, who then meticulously translated
the quotation into English. Gabriel notes that âan idle governmentâ
could also be translated literally as âa government that doesnât do
anything.â
[67] Slavoj ĆœiĆŸek, âAgainst the Double Blackmail,â New Left Review I/234
(March-April 1999): 76â82, available at
.
[68] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later
Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 115.
[69] Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1,
trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin Books, 1976), 254.
[70] Michael Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, cited in G. P. Maximoff, ed.,
The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism (New York:
Free Press, 1953), 211, 138.
[71] Peter Kropotkin, The State: Its Historic Role, trans. Vernon
Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1987), 31.
[72] John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: Swallow Press,
1954), 111.
[73] Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1963), 22,
121â22.
[74] Ibid., 284.
[75] Ibid., 148.
[76] Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. and ed. Anne Cohler,
Basia Miller, and Harold Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), 155.
[77] Thomas Paine, Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 161.
[78] Murray Bookchin, âThe Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of
Political Practice,â Green Perspectives 1 (January 1986), available at
.
[79] Throughout this chapter, the âdirect action movementâ refers to the
time period ranging, approximately, from the Zapatista uprising in
January 1994 and the subsequent global anticapitalist movement of
movements, to todayâs climate justice movement, Greek rebellion, and
wave of occupations.
[80] Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona ( June 2005), introduction
and âII. Where We Are Now,â available at
.
[81] Argentine Libertarian Federation Local Council, âArgentina: Between
Poverty and Protest,â translated from the Spanish original by Robby
Barnes and Sylvie Kashdan, available at
.
[82] La Ventana Collective, âOn the Actions of December 10^(th) and in
Defense of the SFSU Occupationâ (December 12, 2009), available at
ventanacollective.blogspot.com
/.
[83] Sixth Declaration, âI. â What We Areâ and âII. â Where We Are Now.â
[84] The text here is an excerpt from the collaborative project âPaths
toward Utopia,â a six-panel piece with illustrations by Erik Ruin and
words by Cindy Milstein, for the winter 2010 issue of the periodical
World War Three Illustrated.