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Title: “New Anarchism”: Some Thoughts
Author: Teoman Gee
Date: 2003
Language: en
Topics: Europe, leftism, post-left, Seattle, United States
Source: Retrieved on 8 May 2011 from http://www.alpineanarchist.org/r_new_anarchism.html

Teoman Gee

“New Anarchism”: Some Thoughts

First Words

No one could seriously argue that the aftermath of the 1999 WTO protests

in Seattle didn’t bring a significant change in the way the term

‘anarchism’ came to function in the media, academic discourse, and

public dialogue. Inevitably, this affected the ideological debates

within the anarchist movement itself. It is in this historic context

that the newly coined term ‘New Anarchism’ seems to have descriptive

legitimacy. [1] This, however, doesn’t say much about its value for

anarchist politics in general. Four years after Seattle and the

emergence of New Anarchism, an investigation into the phenomenon’s

impact on the international anarchist movement can just about begin. The

following thoughts don’t want to be more than humble contributions to

this task. They will focus on 1) the specifically US-American character

of New Anarchism (especially in comparison to the European continent),

and 2) the relationship between the ‘new’ and — for the lack of a better

term — the oddly dubbed ‘classical’ anarchism.

1) New Anarchism as a US-American PhenomenonFor my Canadian

comrades: I was torn between speaking of New Anarchism as a US-American

or a North American phenomenon in this essay. On the one hand, by no

means do I want to leave the contribution of Canadian activists for the

movement unacknowledged. At the same time, a lot of what’s gonna be

pointed out here is indeed US-specific, and so speaking of North

American would often subsume Canada once again under what actually only

applies to the US. So, in the end, I decided that US-American, all in

all, seemed more appropriate than North American. It’ll be up to the

individual comrade to conclude how the contents of this essay apply to

Canada.

My personal involvement in the anarchist movement dates back to 1989,

being a high school student in western Austria. I don’t mention this to

unnecessarily personalize this essay, but because it seems to make sense

to point out that much of what I’ll feel like saying will have its roots

in my European background and my political socialization in the European

autonomist movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

New Anarchism is mainly a US-American invention. This is neither said to

flatter the US-American comrades, nor to dismiss the phenomenon. It’s

pure observation. November 1999 in Seattle was the defining moment for

New Anarchism, and — despite of the international participation — the

Seattle WTO protests were a very US-American event. As has been analyzed

often enough, both orchestration and impact of the protests were

determined by the specific nature of US activism (sophisticated media

use, theatrics, drama) and the global dominance of the US-based media.

In historical continuity of associating anarchism with violence, the

corporate media labeled the protesters who participated in the

destruction of corporate property at the WTO meeting as anarchists. In

another historical continuity, after the protests, pacifist anarchists

were more eager than ever to point out that their means of resistance

differed dramatically from those attributed to the overnight infamous

‘black bloc’. As an outcome of the following internal, public, and

academic debates on anarchist identity, ‘the anarchist’ became the new

prototype of a political radical. This seemed to happen simultaneously

in the processes of self-definition of radical activists and in public

discourse. Once it was agreed upon that anarchists could be militant as

well as peaceful, could wear black masks as well as tie-dyed shirts,

could live in squats as well as intentional rural communities, could be

work resisters as well as teachers, etc., radical activists and critics

alike embraced the term ‘anarchist’ as the now apparently most

appropriate label for pretty much any politically active person left [2]

of Al Gore (or at least Ralph Nader). Considering the old radical labels

of ‘red’, ‘Marxist’, even ‘socialist’, as historically outdated (or, at

least, ideologically unfit), most radicals felt good as ‘anarchists’,

and those talking and writing about them had a fancy and strong term to

talk and write about. Everyone seemed happy. From Boston to Berkeley

anarchist reading groups emerged, anarchist poet nights, anarchist radio

shows, anarchist teach-ins, anarchist garden workshops, anarchist

cooking courses. Suddenly, anarchists where everywhere: “hi, I’m Dave,

an anarchist from...”, “speaking as an anarchist...”, “we as

anarchists...”, “from an anarchist perspective...”, etc. At the same

time, the coverage on ‘anarchism’ and ‘anarchist politics’ in the

corporate media must have risen by about 1000% compared to, let’s say,

the mid-90s, and in terms of academic interest in anarchist subject

matter as expressed in academic papers, research grants, and

conferences, the number would probably be similar. In short, in a

combined effort of activists, media personnel, and academics,

‘anarchism’ escaped its almost complete obscurity and became a household

name pretty much overnight.

However, this mainly remained a US-American phenomenon. Even though in

other continents explicit discourses about anarchism have without doubt

picked up as well since November 99, these remain mainly reduced to

observing — or, in some cases, adapting to — developments in the US. In

Europe, for example, the anarchist scene/movement and its role and

status in the wider context of European radicalism, European politics,

and European society, have changed far less than in the US. (I’m

actually tempted to say they’ve hardly changed at all. This also seems

true for Australasia and Africa. As far as Latin America is concerned, I

can’t make any assessments since I know too little.) I think there are

various reasons for this, which, I hope, will also help to further

explain why I have called New Anarchism a US-American phenomenon:

European culture can’t (yet) measure up to the near-perfect

US-American installment of the society of the spectacle that allows for

near all-encompassing capitalist commodification of, well, just about

anything. To a large degree, the ‘New Anarchist’ is a pop-cultural hero.

And the concept of turning a political radical into a pop-cultural hero

simply works much better in the US-American socio-economic model than in

the context of European social realities.

US-American academics work under much more competitive and corporate

pressure than academics in Europe. The need to be ‘productive’ and

‘original’ is much higher. Hence, the temptation to jump on and thereby

reinforce public (‘pop-cultural’) bandwagons in order to exploit them

scholarly is much bigger. I dare say that most European intellectuals

would frown upon most of the papers currently presented as either

‘anarchist research’ or ‘research on anarchism’ at conferences in North

America. That’s not to say that they necessarily have valid reason to do

so. It’s just to say that they would.

Even though there were radical leftist mass movements in the US in the

19^(th) and early 20^(th) century [3], Europe has an overall stronger

and — particularly significant in this context — more alive radical

leftist tradition than the US. As one consequence of this, any terms

referring to such a tradition — from the pretty innocent ‘socialist’ to

the usually frightening ‘Maoist’ — could pretty easily be disposed of in

the US, and not only by conservatives and liberals, but also by

political radicals amongst whom many are proudly anti-leftist today.

This could not happen in the same way in Europe. Even though there were

drastic adjustments to the new political landscape amongst the radical

European left after the political changes in Eastern Europe in the late

80s (the most obvious of those adjustments having been the changes of

leadership, policies, and names of radical leftist parties), leftist

terms experienced redefinition rather than disposal. So, while in the US

it was easy for a new label for radical political activism to take over,

it was not in Europe. While there was a vacuum of (self-)identification

of political radicals in the US, most political radicals in Europe were

still ‘socialist’, ‘Trotskyist’, ‘autonomist’, whatever. There was

simply less need for anarchism (or any other radical political label) to

fill a void. [4]

The fourth reason seems more like one of those historic coincidences

that end up casting long shadows: Whatever one might think of John

Zerzan and the anarcho-primitivist movement — ideologically or

concerning its actual representative value with respect to today’s

US-American anarchist movement — , if it hadn’t been for the impact this

scene had on radical politics in Eugene and on the riots related to the

Reclaim The Streets event there in June ‘99, the media might have very

well not picked up so readily on the term ‘anarchists’ as a label for

those involved in the corporate property destruction in Seattle. If the

image of the dangerous, masked, black-clad, and violent anarchist had

still been completely absent from corporate media, Seattle might have

never born any New Anarchism. Again, maybe the primitivists have never

been more than a small minority and might have never been very

representative of the anarchist movement in the US as a whole; yet, for

quite some time now they’ve been amongst the loudest. And in a society

where being loud counts for a lot, this goes a long way — amongst

radicals (‘anarchists’) as much as anywhere else.

Identifying New Anarchism as a US-American phenomenon had primarily

analytical purposes. I didn’t mean to suggest that the New Anarchism

phenomenon has no impact on anarchist movements elsewhere. US-American

culture exports well and, to a certain degree, permeates global culture,

and this is true for radical politics too. Being an anarchist today

doesn’t mean what it meant ten years ago. Definitely not in the US, but

neither in Europe, nor, I guess, elsewhere.

2) ‘New’ vs. ‘Classical’ Anarchism

The first ten years of my involvement in anarchist politics (from 1989

to 1999) being an anarchist was an oddity, and the scene pretty much

resembled a social ghetto that was often enough only subject to ridicule

and despise, even amongst non-anarchist political radicals. At best, we

were seen as incurable idealists, chasing dreams of a just society made

for fairytales much rather than the real world. Maybe with the exception

of a couple of countries in which historical anarchist struggles earned

the anarchist belief system at least some kind of political credibility

and acceptance (Spain and Greece probably remain the most prominent

examples), one often didn’t dare declare oneself an anarchist in radical

networks geared towards single-issue political activism, just to avoid

the danger of not being taken seriously. (Like in the context of my

political socialization, I always found it curious that even though the

politics of the European autonomist movement heralded largely anarchist

principles, ‘anarchism’ was almost entirely absent as a self-identifying

political term. We were ‘autonomist’, not ‘anarchist’.) Of course there

are historic reasons for this, but tracing these seems not essential for

the purpose of this paper. What does seem essential is to recall the

isolated and disregarded socio-political space we found ourselves in as

anarchists for almost all of the 1980s and 1990s.

As suggested above, this has changed drastically since November 1999,

especially in the US. It’s common now to read about anarchists in the

media, to introduce oneself as an anarchist, to refer to your neighbor

as an anarchist. Anarchists finally seem to have recognition. The lack

of which used to be heavily bemoaned within the anarchist scene, to the

point where our position as ‘misunderstood social outcasts’ became part

of our oh so tragic anarchist identities. So, given the recent

developments, everyone should be happy. But a lot of ‘classical’

anarchists are not. In fact, a lot of ‘classical’ anarchists don’t feel

very close to the ‘new’ anarchists who seem solely responsible for

having turned anarchism into a household name. In the strongest forms of

disapproval, ‘classical’ anarchists even disassociate themselves from

New Anarchism, or even claim there’s nothing anarchist about it.

A somewhat ironic aspect of the classical anarchists’ skepticism in

regard to new anarchism is that the latter seems too popular. While, on

the one hand, expanding the movement has always been one of us

anarchists’ biggest desires and being socially ostracized one of our

biggest woes, there lay, on the other hand, a certain comfort in the

intimate social circles of a selected revolutionary few we moved around

in. To a certain degree, our extreme minority status guaranteed our

righteousness in a world in which the masses were brainwashed by the

evil ruling elite. Part of this (rarely openly admitted) rationale was

that anything popular was suspicious. And, for a fair amount of

classical anarchists, this logic now applies to New Anarchism as well:

New Anarchism attracts a fairly big crowd, hence something’s gotta be

wrong with it.

I guess it’s clear that where this suspicion only stems from the fear of

losing the comfortable elitist grounds one could settle in before as an

enlightened obscure anarchist, we don’t have to spend much time dealing

with it, since we can’t let such revolutionary vanity dictate our

debates. However, where certain anarchists are simply afraid that the

inflationary use of the term ‘anarchism’ will water its contents down to

a degree where it loses all revolutionary substance and where many

long-time anarchists will hence find themselves in a sudden political

identity crisis, there, I think, we find a valid point in discussing the

possible problems of New Anarchism’s widespread popularity. And I for

one do actually believe that once anarchism has fully degenerated into a

fashion show on MTV, we might have to look for other terms to position

ourselves as anti-Statist political radicals in this society. However,

as long as there is a serious anarchist movement alive, anarchism will

never fully degenerate into an MTV fashion show (just like punk never

fully degenerated into one just because of The Offspring or Blink 182).

Where exactly the line runs beyond which the term won’t be any more but

a mere fad seems impossible to determine, and it must be defined by each

anarchist comrade herself. As far as I am concerned, though, we are

still far from crossing that line. There is still enough ‘true’

anarchist spirit out there not to let the enemy take our identity away,

as cunning as its current attempts might be.

As a possible compromise for the time being, I’d suggest the following:

Classical anarchists accept first that the anarchist movement has

undergone major changes in recent years, changes that inevitably affect

their perception and identity as anarchists; and they accept secondly

that — despite of all possible historical credit — no one can ever have

a monopoly on how to define anarchism, so that in the end the recent

developments cease to be seen as a mere nuisance but become accepted as

a healthy challenge.

At the same time, New Anarchists make a certain commitment to trying to

prevent turning anarchism into a mere fad; they’d commit themselves to

filling the term with meaning rather than throwing it around loosely.

I think that if we followed these notions, all anarchists, ‘classical’

and ‘new’, would uphold anarchism as a strong and meaningful political

term to signify a radical anti-Statist movement. And we would prevent it

from being nullified by a capitalist axiomatic geared for nothing but

commercial exploitation and (hence) preservation of the sickening status

quo.

However, back to the more ideological differences between ‘classical’

and ‘new’ anarchism. In order to explain the (often wide) gap that

exists between the two, and in order to attempt an assessment of the

State and the current potential of the anarchist movement (especially in

regard to its (dis)unity), we need to try to define what’s actually new

in New Anarchism. I see mainly three defining aspects (the first two

being directly linked to defining New Anarchism as a predominantly

US-American phenomenon — and all three of them being closely linked to

each other):

New Anarchism is anti-historical. Even though references to Bakunin or

Kropotkin can be found here and there, and Sacco&Vanzetti as well as

Emma Goldman have risen to pop-cultural political idols, and even though

some young anarchists know to praise the anarchist heroics of the

Spanish Civil War, not much time in the New Anarchist scene is dedicated

to theoretical study, especially not of historical anarchist figures and

movements. Part of this has to do with ‘classical anarchism’ supposedly

belonging to a rejected leftist tradition (see point 2 below), but

another part probably simply with the fact that most New Anarchists are

very young (mostly late teens, early twenties), and, even though radical

and all, don’t seem to differ too much from their square peers in the

curious assumption that the arrival of their generation coincided with

the birth of a new era. (One could also argue here — in relation to New

Anarchism being described as a mainly US-American phenomenon above —

that US-American society has strong anti-historical dimensions in

general, but I’m afraid such a discussion would lead too far in the

context of this essay.) As a result, studying classical anarchist texts

is often enough regarded as a waste of time, older long-term anarchist

activists suspected to be dangerous leftists, and any historical

attempts at creating anarchist communities/societies brushed off as

obvious failures.

As mentioned above, leftism has a weaker recent tradition in the US

than in Europe, and it is therefore more easily discredited and disposed

of. It is true that there’ve always been strains of anarchism that saw

themselves outside of any political left-right-scheme and were outright

opposed to socialist ideas and politics, but even these were (and are)

mainly US-American (from Tucker to quasi-anarchist militias — one could

argue that this is a reflection of US-society’s deep embeddedness in an

individualist ideology crossing the line to capitalist Social Darwinism

if taken to the extreme, but it’s not the purpose of this paper to make

such an argument either). As stated before, in the European context

anarchists have always been part of the left since the emergence of

anarchism as a political movement in the context of trying to solve the

Social Question of the 19^(th) century by radically progressive means.

And even though there have been (again, this was mentioned before) major

redefinitions of what the left is and can still stand for in Europe, I

think very few European anarchists would bother to passionately

disassociate themselves from the left. In fact, even though some might

not care either way (regarding the left-right-scheme as obsolete in

‘post-political’ postmodern times), some without doubt remain proud of a

radical left-wing identity, or remain at least sentimentally attached to

it. Now, whether it’s due to the difference in traditional strength and

complexity in the respective countries or not, it seems obvious that

there is an apparent difference in defining leftism among US-American

and European anarchist circles: Listening to or reading anti-leftist

US-American comrades’ denunciations of leftism, it always seems that for

them leftism equals what I’d probably just call Stalinism:

institutionalized authority, oppression, brutality, intolerance,

totalitarianism, dictatorship, rigidness, bureaucracy, party structure,

etc. I think that if this really defined leftism as a whole, one would

be hard pressed to find an anarchist feeling any kind of affiliation

with it. However, having been politicized in a European context, leftism

has always been a very broadly defined and complex term to me. In its

core it meant nothing but a commitment to the creation of a society of

equals without the hierarchies that necessarily imply oppression and

exploitation; a commitment to the creation of a society that would allow

the individual to grow and develop as a unique creature in solidarity

with others, rather than it being condemned to an existence of

egocentric survivalist (bourgeois) competition. That was what leftism

was all about. And that was what, ultimately, all anarchists with a

social conscience (as opposed to the somewhat goofy ‘individualist

anarchists’) wanted. So, of course you were a leftist as an anarchist.

Only that, unfortunately, there were other leftists (the vast majority,

in fact) that had different ideas of achieving the ideals mentioned

above: while you believed in decentralized, extra-parliamentarian,

autonomous, independent, self-determined resistance based on

anti-authoritarianism and spontaneity, other leftists demanded — in

varying degrees — organization, discipline, coercion, education, and

leadership. But this never meant that we were less left-wing than they

were. It only meant that there was a non-authoritarian (‘libertarian’,

‘autonomous’) left, and an authoritarian left (from orthodox academic

Marxists to young urban Maoist guerrilleros and guerrilleras), and that,

as anarchists, we belonged to the former. And that was that. And in my

impression, this hasn’t changed much to this day. (New Anarchism’s

anti-leftism seems to have an interesting and valid point in its

critique of class struggle reductionism (where it actually develops such

a critique — often enough it seems to exhaust itself in defamations of

quasi-fascist leftist bogeymen). However, class struggle reductionism

has been critiqued within the ‘leftist’ anarchist tradition itself for a

very long time. I will say a little more about this further down.)

To use terms that have been discussed widely within the anarchist

scene in the last decade, for most people (again, activists and critics

alike) New Anarchism embraces the values of ‘lifestyle anarchism’ much

more so than those of ‘class struggle (or social) anarchism’. [5] I

think we’d have to agree with this assessment. If class struggle

anarchism means an attachment to Marxist class analysis as the main tool

for understanding oppression in a capitalist society, and if it demands

political activism focusing on attacking (and ultimately dismantling)

the economic forces shaping our world while hoping that an anarchist

society would then emerge from the capitalist ashes; and if lifestyle

anarchism stands for the belief in a social transformation that begins

in your private life by going vegan, growing vegetables, boycotting

Nike, joining community groups, forming collectives, etc., then New

Anarchism seems to accommodate and represent lifestyle anarchists much

more so than their class struggle counterparts.

According to the above, the conflict between ‘classical’ and ‘new’

anarchism can be summed up as: trying to prolong an anti-authoritarian

political trajectory marked by at least 150 years of political agitation

in the name of anarchist ideals vs. reinventing anarchism as a political

movement by a new generation; remaining attached to a leftist identity

(and, hence, remaining open to political work within a leftist context,

including alliances with non-anarchist leftists, especially in

single-issue campaigns) vs. employing a militant anti-leftism,

suggesting leftists are as integral a part of the system to be

overthrown as capitalists, the bourgeoisie, or even the extreme right;

holding on to ideological roots in history’s class struggle and working

class movements vs. embracing the slogan of “the private is political”

as the primary dictum for becoming engaged in the struggle for social

change.

Me, personally, I find myself sitting on the fence here. I’ve always

enjoyed reading the classical anarchist texts and studying the anarchist

movement’s history — yet, I’ve always been vehemently opposed to

comrades regarding this essential to an ‘anarchist consciousness’ or

belittling those who “act without thought”. I have no problem whatsoever

being associated with leftism; in fact, I even feel a sentimental

attachment to the historical leftist project of revolting against and

trying to overthrow an economic/political/social system of oppression

and exploitation — yet, I’ve never joined any kind of political

organization (as in: a body that demands membership, adherence to a

certain set of prescribed rules, and an at least temporary commitment),

as harmless as it might have seemed (for example, when many anarchist

comrades joined a “left list” contesting elections for the students’

council at the university I attended in Austria — where, at least at the

time, students’ councils were quite influential — it wouldn’t have even

occurred to me to do so as well). Finally, I have enough respect for

working class struggles to be genuinely offended when comrades talk them

down as “old Marxist stuff” — yet, when the debates between class

struggle and lifestyle anarchists first started, I always sided with the

latter.

I’ll try to be more specific in regard to the points laid out before:

Ad 1) I think the study of anarchist theory and history still holds a

lot of value, since it can inspire action, stimulate thought, and be the

incentive to put yourself, your times, and your struggles into

perspective. At the same time, this is, of course, by no means necessary

to be ‘a comrade’. One of the beauties of anarchism is meant to be

diversity, and this notion includes a diversity of comrades and their

interests, needs, backgrounds, and expressions of anarchist identity.

However, many individuals before our time have given a lot of sweat and

tears, and sometimes their lives, to the anarchist cause, and even if

there can’t be any denial that times change and certain forms of thought

and action might lose their immediate significance for the struggle,

those individuals’ sweat and tears and lives remain essential

contributions to the anarchist cause, ‘classical’ or ‘new’, and — in one

way or another — we all stand on their shoulders. So, as a simple matter

of respect, it just doesn’t seem cool to diss former generations of

anarchists, whether we wanna bother studying them or not. Demands like

the one “to forget about the men with the beards” might have their funny

dimensions, yet, in the end, they are just pretentious and silly, and,

furthermore, counterproductive (in various ways) to an intellectually

open-minded and reflective movement that, I hope, we all want to have.

Ad 2) The question of leftism and anti-leftism is, I think, merely a

question of words and definition and, all in all, of hardly any real

importance. Once most anarchists, whether stern leftists or decided

anti-leftists, presented their respective definitions of leftism and

hence explained their position in the terminological dispute, I think

very little actual friction would remain. I assume that most anarchists

would agree that authoritarian leftism sucks, while what some define as

anti-authoritarian leftism, and others as anti-leftism, is surprisingly

similar. Whatever label individuals then choose for their radical

identity will depend on socio-cultural questions, I suppose, and is of

as little significance as most disputes over words. So, while there lies

very little actual problem in the dispute itself, the significance some

people give it can be rather problematic. My concern is simple: In some

radically anti-leftist anarchist rants, ‘the leftist’ seems to have

become our biggest enemy. Never mind the government, never mind the

capitalists, never mind the bourgeoisie, never mind even the extreme

right: it’s the evil leftist we are after! Where is this supposed to

lead to? To throw our ‘leftist enemies’ together with conservative

political leaders, corporate bosses, cops, or skinheads? To not even

make a distinction anymore between our real enemies and the libertarian

Marxist working in a not-for-profit bookstore, or the pacifist

Rosa-Luxemburg-reading librarian, or the genuine social democrat trying

to save retired workers’ pensions? Come on. There is only one place such

an attitude can lead us to: the isolation of the supposedly superior

revolutionary avantgarde that becomes so alienated from the masses that

in the end it can play no role in their liberation anymore whatsoever.

(Interestingly enough, a position ‘leftists’ are so often accused of.)

Besides, a healthy common sense seems to suggest that such an

undifferentiated view of the enemy is simply stupid and unfair. How can

one seriously claim that a racist bully, a fascist party leader, or a

rich multinational manager, are the same as a wobbly? Debate is good.

Even over words. But I think that at some point it becomes fair enough

to question both the importance of certain debates for the movement and

the impact these debates have on it. If 90% of a comrade’s time and

energy goes into fighting ‘leftists’ (or, once again, I’m afraid often

enough mere leftist bogeymen), where is the movement supposed to go, and

in what kind of unity? It’s one of the most unfortunate aspects of

leftist history that sectarian and factionalist in-fighting has so often

put a halt to its progression and growth, has divided and weakened it,

has robbed it of its revolutionary potential, and has allowed the enemy

to prevent its historic victory. It’d be a shame if we had to witness

the irony of anti-leftists doing the same to the anarchist movement.

Ad 3) As far as the class struggle vs. lifestyle anarchism question is

concerned, this has been debated long enough, and the rather simple

conclusion to me seems to be the following: Where class struggle

anarchism means Marxist economic reductionism, it is probably of little

use in the anarchist struggle against a system of oppression that has

become very multi-faceted; and that changing your own life has to be an

essential component of the wider struggle for social change seems to be

pretty much self-explanatory too (with many self-declared New Anarchists

remaining very hypocritical in this respect, but that’s kinda besides

the point here). But does this mean that we have to rid ourselves of the

historical struggles of the working class and the deep revolutionary

knowledge acquired in these struggles? I don’t think so. Rather, I think

that integrating the historical struggle between the classes in our

personal lives and our personal attempts to change, would do both their

revolutionary historical significance justice and help us avoid personal

retreat and bourgeois privatization which seem to be lifestyle

anarchism’s biggest inherent dangers (and here I agree with its

critics).

Final Words

There is no conclusion at the end of this essay. I never promised one. I

only wanted to offer ideas that might be of interest in the debates on

the issues discussed. Fortunately, debates are always better than

conclusions anyway. Flow, change, and transformation characterize a free

society of diversity — and therefore what I’d call anarchist life. So,

instead of a conclusion, nothing more but a final personal summary:

New Anarchism is good ‘cause new is always exciting. But ‘classical

anarchism’ is not obsolete, because, well, “the past didn’t go anywhere,

did it?” The important thing seems to be to keep the anarchist movement

flowing, changing, and transforming, without denying the strength of its

historical continuity. Strength in diversity. Diversity in unity.

Strength in unity. (Or something like that.) If some of the thoughts

presented in this essay can contribute to this strength, it’s all I

could have possibly wished for.

[1] I do not specifically refer to David Graeber’s use of the term here

in his New Left Review article “The New Anarchists”. I am referring to

its wider usage within contemporary anarchist scenes. I hope this will

become clearer in the course of the text.

[2] Even though a lot of anarchists nowadays wanna distance themselves

viciously from ‘leftisms’ of any sort — but more about this later.

[3] Of course there was also a component of radical leftism in the

protest movements of the 1960s. However, what I refer to as radical

leftist mass movements in the 19^(th) and early 20^(th) century were

movements that were carried by the working class, had a specific focus

on the social question (the question of labor, if you will), and were

explicitly ‘socialist’, ‘communist, ‘syndicalist’ or ‘anarchist’ in

orientation. The protest movements of the 1960s — without denying the

influence of radical leftist politics on the SDS, the Panthers, the

Weathermen, etc. — were to a large degree about a wider ‘cultural’

revolution, and were not carried by the working class. I hope this

distinction makes sense (especially in the context of this text).

[4] The fact that — apart from being a defining moment for New Anarchism

— Seattle also became a milestone in the anti-globalization movement,

which, obviously, is a global phenomenon that goes way beyond

US-American confinements, does, in my eyes, not contradict this. While

the entire anti-globalization agenda had constituted a worldwide

movement long before Seattle, and while certain forms of resistance

employed in Seattle without doubt inspired non-US-American activists

(Seattle caused, for example, a resurgence of the originally European

black bloc phenomenon on the European continent itself), the anarchist

(self)labeling remained almost exclusively reduced to the US. European

anti-globalization activists, for example, talk little about anarchism,

are very rarely referred to as anarchists, and refer to themselves as

such probably even less so. (The reasons for this are, I think, akin to

the ones I tried to sketch above historically.)

[5] I generally agree with those who think that the distinction between

class struggle and lifestyle anarchism falls short of a complex analysis

of the anarchist scene due to its simplistic dichotomy. However, at the

same time I believe that the distinction has analytical value, and since

it has furthermore become very influential I still consider it a useful

terminological tool in the context of this text.