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Title: Anarchy and Nihilism: Consequences Author: Aragorn! Language: en Topics: nihilist, nihilism Source: Retrieved on March 2nd, 2009 from http://pistolsdrawn.org/index.php/Consequences:Anarchy][pistolsdrawn.org]]. Proofread online source [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=4617, retrieved on July 12, 2020.
This is the second in a series of pamphlets that draw connections
between the tradition of the political nihilist tendency of 19^(th)
century Czarist Russia and current anarchist thought.
As Nihilism, Anarchy, and the 21^(st) Century (the first pamphlet in the
series) begged the question of what relevance nihilism has to anarchy it
could be argued that these essays beg the opposite question. What does
anarchy have to offer nihilism?
That the range of anarchists includes the clowns from protest alley,
micrometer-toting specialists of oppression-identification, and Marxists
who wear black flags isnât a condemnation of anarchist ideas but is a
significant reason for pause. In that pause we have to challenge our
assumptions about anarchy. What do we really share with others in the
big-tent (or should it be called a circus tent) of anarchism?
These essays are increasingly specific. Perhaps this will give more
people a toe-hold so that they scale their own heights. At the end of
these essays there is a specific invitation.
There have been several opportunities for me to speak on nihilism over
the past two years. What has been surprising in that time hasnât been
the apparent antagonism but the quiet interest and excitement. It is
still unclear how this interest is going to materialize into a discrete
practice, but I wonât be alone in answering that question.
Aragorn!
PO Box 3920, Berkeley CA 94703
A nihilist is a person who does not bow down to any authority, who does
not accept any principle on faith, however much that principle may be
revered.
Arkady
revolutionary at best fails and at worst establishes yet another
fiefdom. The rhetoric of liberation makes for great bedtime stories,
keeps starry-eyed dreamers warm at night, and should be seen for exactly
what it is. Charlatans either believe that they speak for the oppressed
and that the weight of their opinion is greater because they summon the
power of representation, or that they are the first ones to come up with
the ideas that they have.
social change works better in a classroom than in lived experience. The
kind of social science that results from these explorations resembles a
secular monotheism. As an organization of society, or a modeling of the
transformation of society, apocalypse has a long track record and it is
entirely reactionary. This is to say that whether called an
insurrection, a revolution, a singularity, or a collapse, a similar
thing is intended: more of the same.
The lesson of the German Revolution (1918â1919) is the lesson of
historical Anarchism: glorious failure. Whether it is France, Spain,
Germany, or Russia the story of social revolution has not been one of
triumph. Instead, and at best, it has been a set of stories about
moments worth living.
stack them for barricades? Fill the trenches with them after the tanks
roll in? Use their blood to write the history books that tell of our
glorious time?
army, or even a secret society, of revolutionary supermen is laughable,
but perhaps the reason for laughter isnât immediately clear. Lenin was
clear how much the Catechism influenced his thought. It was The Prince
for the revolutionary set. The Catechism provides a moral roadmap, an
action plan that has demonstrable results. List your human targets in
order of their crimes, harden yourself, and eliminate these targets in
order. The greatest criminals are the first eliminated.
social milieu of radicalism only allows room for sensitive inhuman
success stories. Broken people are highly favored as long as they are
broken along the lines of survival and politeness. The Nechayevs of
today fade out of sight after no greater crimes than petty larceny and
broken hearts. The Machiavellis implement simple strategies to make sure
the supermen stay occupied with irrelevancies.
a mechanism to get from here to there. This is not to say that there is
not the possibility of wide social transformation but that to the extent
that it follows the lead of the glorious losers (anarchists), Nechys, or
Micheals of the past it will fail in succeeding either on its own terms
or on the terms of being a liberated social change.
impasse. This impasse is one part frustration at the rhetoric of
transition available to us (without words it is hard to understand where
one is or where others are), another part anger at the grinding death of
a denatured daily life and another part ennui at the futility of our
social or political power. Without the ability to control our own life,
political action, and social relationships, our vivid imagination lay
fallow. There is nothing to eat here but a gray paste that keeps us
alive. But for what?
formulations are out of date. We lack for new ones.
the humanist West. They are, to put it gently, more severe than the
values and theory of modernity allow for. They are, ultimately,
goalless. These are actions that are interpreted by others but move so
rapidly as to be entirely chased by the mullahs, fatwas, and analysts.
These new efforts are the language of the disenfranchised humanity.
There is no hope. There are only casualties.
sing of freedom, justice, and dignity but of consequence.
There is the history of nihilism that idealized natural sciences as a
single solution to the question of material existence without God and
another that would critique science upon empirical, ideological, and
ethical grounds.
âA decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet,â
Bazarov
The history of nihilism is of a moment in time. Russia in the 1860s was
a suffocating place. The majority of the population were serfs breaking
under their new freedom (to make payments to their former lords by
decree of the Czar in exchange for working their land) or choking under
the superstition and conservatism of the Orthodox Church. Russia was
also at a crossroads: having proven itself among the great empires of
Europe after the defeat of Napoleon it also found itself an intellectual
backwater. Very little of the democratic unrest that had affected the
Continent had consequence in Russia. Even Czar Alexander IIâs dramatic
move of freeing the serfs was more motivated by his romantic sensibility
after having read Turgenevâs âA Sportsmanâs Sketchesâ than an urge to
transform Russian society.
As a consequence of this environment historic nihilism embraced
positions that we could largely understand as reactionary rather than as
intentional. (This is something that is endemic to revolutionary
traditions and, arguably, should be included in their definition.) Given
how short the life span of the historic nihilist period was (spanning
both the foundational and revolutionary period) it is hard to imagine
what the consequence of a rigorous universal skepticism would have been
if it had had the time to develop and transform. What would a group of
people with nothing to lose have been capable of?
If philosophy is the practice of tilling the earth then it is no wonder
that most thinkers spend their time wandering overturned soil searching
for lost seeds and replanting. If nihilism was the political philosophy
of skepticism in a time when society was framed by the Orthodox Church
and Czarist regime itâs no wonder that it left very little room for
tradition. If the Church represented spiritualism, superstition and
sentimentality then a philosophy for the modern time would have to
reject all of these things. If the Czar represented the ossified
autocratic bigotry of a monarchy then freedom would have to be the
progressive, democratic republicanism of France. This is the limitation
of parochial skepticism.
The history of science is a semantic journey through eras. Science was
once concerned with the formation of the world along with how we should
live in it and was indistinguishable from Philosophy. The terms were
synonymous. Later there was fragmentation: understanding the world
through experimentation and sense perception (empiricism) became a
discipline distinct from understanding the world through reasoning
(Rationalism). This dialectic was resolved in the scientific world by
Newtonâs combining of the axiomatic proof with the mechanical discipline
of physical observation resulting in the system of verifiable prediction
that largely remains intact.
Science became a codified and bureaucratic process that involved the
relationship between the practitioners of science, financiers of
science, and an increasing number of Scientific Societies (post-16^(th)
century). The role of a Scientist became distinct from that of one who
sought knowledge about the natural world. A Scientist was one who both
went through training that framed the scope of their inquiry but, to
succeed, because adroit at the political machinations of court, papal,
and eventually secular society.
There were discontents to this normalization of inquiry. Alchemists
blended understandings of multiple theoretical and spiritual traditions
in the pursuit of solutions to speculatively enormous problems
(transmutation, age, disease). The heterodoxy that alchemists relied
upon was eliminated by the emphasis on quantitative experimentation, and
reproducible results.
Technology, in the form of the Industrial Revolution, as an organization
of social life insulated homogeneity by delivering results. Technology
is best understood as a separate but related field of inquiry from
Science with a field of vision further narrowed by the motivation of
creating applications. The mass production of technology has never been
the result of any other force than the desires of power. In terms of the
Industrial Revolution of the late 18^(th) century this looked like the
transformation of the social life of England into one of an urban
population dominated by factories. It also involved the extraction of
resources across half the globe (India being a generous source of
capital for industrial England) into the control of very few.
In the name of efficiency the product is the goal not the process of
discovery and examination.
What is the limitation of specialization? Questions are no longer the
pursuit of technicians or philosophers, answers are. Solutions to human
problems are framed in material terms along entirely different lines
than the cause. Corrective lenses do not cure bad eyesight, or stop one
from watching television or staring at a computer screen, but allow one
to continue exactly the pursuits that eyesight is good for. This kind of
leveling exemplifies the motivation of specialization. If the structure
of daily life forces certain kind of behavior (for instance the ability
to see books and screens) then the kind of characteristics that could
develop by people without sight are left undiscovered. As daily life
constrains our options further we are forced into narrower and narrow
tunnels. Eventually we find that we have chosen one thing, at the cost
of every other thing, and in the name of survival.
There is an active conversation among radicals and greens that begs
response. The classic presentation would be a dichotomy between the
allegation that technology is neutral on the one hand and that it embeds
an essential ânegativeâ value on the other. Clearly technology is
neutral only to the extent that you assume the values of the present
order. If those values are not assumed then technology is not any
different than history, philosophy, or science. They are the weapons
that power use to fragment and control the population. One cannot
understand our society without having a working, theoretical, and
practical knowledge of technology and as a result most will choose to.
The value of understanding our society is up for debate though.
If, following the nihilists of the 1860âs, we were to advocate for a
parochial skepticism then it would be enough to revolt against rent,
usury, asphalt, bureaucrats and their henchmen, etc, etc. If we were to
respond even further in kind it would be against the excessive aspects
of our society that most resemble Czarist Russia. Our response would
look like the opposite of the moral majoritarians and large government
fetishists. Instead of valorizing natural science it is possible that
this line of thought would lead to an ascetic ethical system along the
lines of anarchists that eschew digital technology for analog. This far,
and no further! would be their motto.
Assuming that parochialism is a limitation, which is probably true in
the light of the failure of revolutionary movements of the
counter-culture, then what is next for contrarians. What would a
universal skepticism look like as a method of inquiry, social form, and
practice? Would the nihilist practice of today look more like the
obsessive scientist of Fathers and Sons or the paranoid murderer of
Crime and Punishment.
If a political nihilism is a specific rejection of the world as-it-is it
is still make priorities. Nihilism still has a legacy. The reason that
the positive program of a Nihilism today wouldnât include a DIY
naturalist science isnât just because of the implication of science
having changed over the past 150 years but because the very notion of a
positive program has changed in the eye of radicals. Any evaluation of a
nihilist program has to take into account exactly how tentative it would
be. A universal skepticism runs into similar problems that a universal
positivism does, who exactly does the universalizing?
We will begin, with this limitation in mind, an evaluation of three
specific approaches that both overlap and are contained within a
nihilist perspective: Critique as practice, Avocation of the Deed, and
Negation â as rhetoric, practice, and form.
Rhetorical negation is not the existential navel-gazing that appears
indistinguishable from ennui. It is the position that political
engagement with the present order is inconsequential but that
articulating that political position is not. The writings of Tristan
Tzara exemplify this position.
The practice of negation may very well be an artifact of the denatured
intellectual environment of North America but represents the active
non-activism that confuses participation in political projects without
tying them to political (and politicized) social movements as an
âarmchairâ activity. This is a practice without strategy, possibly done
for its own reward. The activities of many anarchist reading groups
qualify for the position.
Formal negation is likely the most widely held political nihilist
position. It is the practice of not submitting to the aggression of the
dominant order by avoiding it. The sentiment that one does not attend
political protests because they do not enjoy the presence of the police
or do not vote because every choice on a ballot is shit are examples of
this position.
The thread that runs through all of the negation approaches is the
stance of non-participation as political practice. This lends itself to
the criticism of nihilism as solipsism which serves as a nice
counter-point to the criticism of leftists as rhetorically
self-sacrificing moralists.
Avocation of the Deed would be the most stereotypical nihilist political
position. Many would-be-nihilists use the claim of strategic avocation
as a shield to discuss their desires. Knocking over electrical towers
and phone lines are their own reward, linking them to The Generalized
Struggle for Human Emancipation⢠is window dressing. The question of
sensational actions, of horrific deeds, remains a central question for
radicals of all stripes.
The legacy of Propaganda by the Deed is evaluated incorrectly. On the
one hand the vast majority of PbtD actions were not violent actions
against capitalists, leaders, and bureaucrats but the practice of daily
life. On the other there is an argument that if the revolutionary
struggle was doomed to failure, due to lack of preparation and a
thousand other reasons, that going out shooting (which PbtD could safely
be described as) was a valid exit strategy. What were the alternatives?
Life as an exile chasing every hint of Revolution like the Communards?
Chasing every summit hoping for another Seattle?
Todayâs avocation differs from PbtD by placing the emphasis on the deed
rather than the history or public relations consequence. This may entail
giving up a certain kind of power, since others become the managers of
your message, as in the case of suicide bombers but the clarity of the
deed speaks louder than any politicianâs message.
The practice of Critique entails using a suite of empirical and
intellectual tools to evaluate the behavior and actions of others. It is
a practice that does not stand alone but leans on others and in that way
is the most social nihilist practice. The idea that nothing should
stand: belief, value, or paradigm and no positive program installed in
their place is at the core of the nihilist project.
Nihilism in the 21^(st) century differs from that of the 19^(th) on one
important question. Rather than being a reactionary political practice
resulting from a specific political context (Czarist Russia) it now
draws its inspiration from an understanding of the philosophical
trajectory of 20^(th) century, the revolutionary movements of the
19^(th) and 20^(th), and a sober understanding of exactly how little
these well-springs offer one who would resist.
In hindsight natural science was the liberating response to a society
dominated by mystical reverence for leader and God. In the absence of a
simple response to todayâs similar and extended problems an anarchist
nihilism offers a category, a frame of reference, rather than the pat
answer political discourse tends to favor. Nihilists will not become
black-clad boy scouts, summit hoppers, or politicize thriving off of the
detritus of an excessive society. There will not be a comfort for those
of us whose rejection of this society includes its opposition.
We are necessarily impatient. We canât stand paying rent one more month.
Being forced from cradle to toilet to classroom to cubicle to grave
makes us boring. We hate ourselves and our condition even more.
But what to do? We are not so naĂŻve as to believe the leftist line about
ârevolutionaryâ groups like the Weatherman. We donât accept that the
problem with their strategy was a lack of mass base. We see their
problem as lack of ambition.
Not only can you not bring down the castle walls by running full speed
into them but it may be that this world has become sophisticated enough
to no longer need castles or even physical presence to a large degree.
This is the problem with most critiques of postmodernity. They assume
that the postmodern would be a device used by the dispossessed in our
arsenal against this world. This is not the case. What is the case is
that the postmodern (and its accompanying condition) is yet another tool
in the arsenal of this order. Postmodernism is the terrain upon which
this orderâs current travels can be mapped. This can particularly be
seen in discussions of virtuality, identity, and the politics of
deconstruction (as relevant tenure track pursuit and little else).
The first premise of postmodernism is that there are no âmetaâ
narratives. There is no single history or anthropology or system that
enables us to know the real. While this is great news if youâre sick of
the blowhard Marxist and Republican orators of the workersâ or
entrepreneursâ Coming Emancipation, it also leaves us very alone. On the
one hand we now have a language to understand that every truth coming
out of the mouth of our leaders, teachers, and specialists is suspect
but on the other we are no longer presented with a Golden Brick Road
towards the world of our desires.
The group who is best prepared to take advantage of this information is
not the group with nothing to lose but the group with the most resources
to bring to bear. If we are no longer interested in combining ourselves
with others into shapes that can be placed on the board of politics and
business, then those who do can have the board to themselves. They
understand that the postmodern condition keeps us apart. Alone. They
have trained us to believe in nothing and to accept the conditions of
this world as universal.
The second premise builds on the first. If history is no longer a âtrueâ
story (in the grand epic sense that Western Civilization classes or
Marxists speak of), then progress is no longer that story extended into
the future. If progress is no longer assumed on the world stage it may
be that it wasnât the right mechanism (or meta-narrative) to understand
the material world, humansâ role in it, or much of anything at all.
Where does that leave evolution? Isnât evolution just an
idealist-materialist âproofâ of progress in biological systems?
If we abandon progressive notions then we should, it would stand to
reason (sic), abandon inclinations toward democratic institution
building (as a partial step towards what we want), including
participation in humanizing such institutions. Instead we are informed
by the specialists of knowledge, if we donât accept the progress
modality, that we are at âthe end of historyâ where the present
conditions are universal, fixed, and unconditional. This is another
example of those who control ideology planting their value system onto
the space burnt out by the postmodern controlled fire.
Another premise of postmodernism is that culture is the means of social
transformation in a media rich world. This is mostly a rhetorical device
alluding to something obvious (if you accept the premise). If the world
is indeed media rich, cybernetic, illusory, and entirely without mooring
on the foundations of the 19^(th) century, including 19^(th) century
prejudices about labor and progress, then engaging with it must be in
this new vocabulary. If you do not accept this, if you recognize it as a
tragic misreading of Debord, most of the consequences of thinking of
culture-asâtransformative-lever can be seen as based on a faulty
premise.
This is how postmodernism works. It takes a premise, letâs say that
âEverything that was directly lived has receded into a representationâ
(Debord) and turn it around âRepresentation is everything directly
livedâ and you have a clear argument for non-engagement. Why bother
living in time and space? If life is merely representation then media is
living on a greater scale than would be otherwise possible.
I recently attended a speech where one of the questions asked of the
presenter, who was arguing against representation generally, went along
these lines. âI am a computer graphics student and I have spent long
days precisely measuring and evaluating a blade of grass with the goal
of reproducing the form within the computer environment. How can you say
that my work, both in the observing and the reproducing, is wrong?â This
is a classic example of accepting the premise and basing, in this case,
an entire career and life path on it. If we live in a media environment
then oh, what a time savings that I myself do not have to go to a field
to experience something called field. Instead I can download the Field
Experience volume 1 and know field. Who are you to tell me differently?
Do you have ownership of the concept of field that you would lord over
me?
The point being made here is simply this: abandonment of understanding
the mechanisms of control disarms us. In the case of postmodernism,
confusing a set of academics with the actual power brokers who enact
their ideas is a paralyzing problem.
Whatâs next then? If there are no castle walls because domination has
found a way to succeed without necessarily materializing, then our
project no longer looks like a siege. If virtualization has become part
and parcel of the dominance matrix then single points of attack are no
longer effective. There is no letter bomb large enough.
The simple answer is that we have to be patient. We have to have an
engaged patience that is incomprehensible to the lethargy of the
revolutionary left. Our role should not be to lay in wait for some mark
to come stumbling along because that is never going to happen. Instead
we must have total engagement in the social and political processes
around us. Nothing should escape our attention. This could look like,
and is not limited to, attending church (especially politically active
churches), going to shareholder meetings, attending city council,
toasters, Elks lodges, civic organizations and even leftist meetings.
The idea is not that our efforts should be particularly supportive or
even destructive to these groups (although pushing the boundary in both
directions should be part of the process) but to understand how it is
that modern acculturated civil society works. What does a social group
look like and how does it react to the kind of stimulus that can be
brought to bear? If you play the game how easy is it to integrate into
an organizational form? To what extent do these forms accrue power,
negligence and momentum? We need more information.
As foretold by Raoul Vaneigem in Revolution of Everyday Life, âThere is
no consciousness of transcendence without consciousness of
decomposition.â The active nihilist sees in the unknown future and
despair at our current situation, a call to arms. An active nihilist
finds energy, a will to act, in the hopelessness of the conforming,
rigid, asphyxiation of our society. Meaning is found in approaching the
void rather than in the false knowledge of what is on the other side of
it.
The primary modality of class society, whether it is by violence,
hunger, or the threat of the elements. If every object, person, and
moment is for sale, if there is nothing outside, then there is abject
terror. When living is a contemptible act, it is terror. What is the
opposite of this?
We are not drifts of snow moving through reality. Things have happened.
Choices have been made. These choices can be evaluated, not from a
timeless doctrine but from a human scale. By this human scale the size,
the scope, of the choices made is beyond comprehension. This being the
case, and as the desire of conscious bodies is to understand, a frame of
reference to begin to impact the world can be based on one of two
options. Either shrink the world that you desire to understand and touch
or assert yourself onto a world gone mad in such a way as to transform
scale. Institutions, ideologies, systems, schools, family, capital,
government and revolutionary movements have all developed beyond the
body. Nihilist anarchism isnât concerned with a social revolution that
adds a new chapter to an old history but the ending of history
altogether. If not revolutionaries then possibly epochanaries, for the
transformation of society without a positive program.
The answer to the existential question about what is knowable is,
nothing.
If the future is unknowable we are confronted with a choice. When all we
know is terror many stop making choices. People break. If you have ever
been confronted by the alarm clock and just shut it off and pulled the
cover over your head you know passive nihilism. The pain of resisting,
of being the false opposition, or the purged, justifies a thousand noâs.
A million. The passive nihilist no longer has hope that their
participation is necessary for the world to keep spinning.
Is a terrorized body living?
Hyphenated power doesnât avoid the problem that power raises but tries
to shift it somewhere else. We can, do, and will continue to hurt,
dominate, and manipulate one another. We are creatures of power. To the
extent that we do take responsibility for this it looks like shame. This
confuses power with Christianity.
This coin has two sides that canât be separated: expectation and desire.
An existential nihilist remains at an impasse regarding a variety of
core issues. If we cannot know anything then how can we make choices?
When Nietzsche talked of nihilism this is what he was referring to. The
trajectory of Western thought leads to unknowable questions and
paralysis.
Revolutionary programs deserve the snickers that they get. The idea that
yet another manifesto (YAM) or mission statement or action plan is going
to make the tired activism of a new generation smells less of the death
it wraps around its neck is ludicrous. Strategic nihilism argues for a
new approach to social transformation that resembles the burning of a
field rather than building the new world within the shell of the old or
one last push by the working class to seize the means of production. An
approach that concerns itself with exactly what the forms of social
control are and their suppression falls far astray from models of
recruitment, education, progress, or the crossed fingers that the next
riot will be the Big one.
Shorthand for a positive program for social change, a positive program
is one that confuses desire with reality and extends that confusion into
the future. In the case of radicals this usually takes the form of
stating programs along the lines of âATR there will be no hungerâ at
worst and âThe abolishment of class society will result in relations
without limitâ at its best. A positive program is an idealist legacy
that forms the core of most revolutionary thought.
The belief that one event following another necessitates their
relationship is erroneous, as posited by Hume. If causality cannot be
assumed, or even accepted if argued, the efficacy of most political
forms is limited, particularly as a way to transform the world.
After the Revolution
The limited desire to change the world as modeled by the French
Revolution. The Good News: Heads will roll. The Bad: The Bureaucrats win
in the end.
A body can be an individual. It can be a group of individuals. It can be
a cultural or social unit. It can also be understood as a philosophical
unit, a black box that accepts input from the world and responds in
kind. It is not known but knowing.