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Title: Peter Gelderloos Visits Boston Author: James Herod Date: June 2010 Language: en Topics: review Source: Retrieved on 2017/3/8 from http://jamesherod.info/index.php?sec=blog&id=28
Peter Gelderloos Visits Boston
A Review of Anarchy Works
James Herod, June 2010
I suspect that over time Anarchy Works will come to be known as one of
the finest books ever written about anarchy. Its author, Peter
Gelderloos, had been thinking about writing a book about what anarchy
would look like, but then, in a slight shift of focus, thought it better
to write first about what anarchy has looked like. So he scoured the
historical and anthropological literature for examples of lived anarchy.
Then he mined these case studies (around ninety altogether he says) for
insights about the whole range of theoretical and practical problems
facing anarchists, everything from crime to exchange to work. This is a
book that is thoroughly grounded in reality, in actually existing
anarchy, both past and present. It can be put on the shelf along side
Colin Ward's 1973 classic, Anarchy in Action, which was also based on
existing concrete social practices. As the title suggests, the book is
an attempt (and a successful one) to refute the oft-voiced objection:
Anarchy could never work.
Peter was on tour promoting this book. He came to Boston in late May,
and then headed on up to Vermont, and then to Canada. He gave two talks,
on May 25 and 26, both at the Encuentro Five space in Chinatown. In the
first talk, which was attended by about thirty-five people, he presented
various themes from the book. During the second evening, with about
twenty present, he told the story of the squatter's movement in
Barcelona. Lively discussion followed each presentation.
Peter Gelderloos was born in Morristown, New Jersey, but grew up
variously in Tokyo, Seoul, and a suburb of Washington, D.C., ending up
in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. After high school
he enrolled in James Madison University in Harrisonburg, but bolted
after only three semesters for more engaging activities elsewhere,
including a six month stint in the slammer for his 2001 arrest for
protesting the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. In recent years,
he has spent considerable time in Europe. From July 2006 to April 2007
he biked and hitchhiked from Berlin to Barcelona, via Russia, Ukraine,
and Greece.[1] Just as he was about to leave Spain to return to the
United States, he was arrested on April 23, 2007 on trumped up charges
of public disorder. This involved him in a two-year legal battle, during
which time he was obliged to stay in Spain. He was finally cleared of
all charges in March 2009 and was free to leave the country.[2]
Gelderloos is most famously the author (notoriously in some circles) of
How Nonviolence Protects the State, first published in 2005.[3] This is
a blistering critique of the ideology of nonviolence, an ideology which
is pushed relentlessly by the (very violent) ruling class and its
corporate media, and adopted by large swaths of the opposition movement.
He exposes the conservative functions this ideology serves. But the book
is not necessarily an explicit argument for violence, especially as a
matter of principle. In fact, one of the main themes of the book is that
the habit of claiming that our choice is between violence or nonviolence
is a bad one. This is a false distinction which must be abandoned. Yet,
the elimination of violence, even as traditionally defined, as a matter
of principle, as demanded by pacifists, is also unacceptable. Moreover,
standard definitions of what constitutes violence are especially skewed,
as are comparisons of the relative weight and incidence of state
violence versus revolutionary violence. His objective is to break the
stranglehold that the ideology of nonviolence has over questions of
strategy and to open up the debate, thus allowing consideration for a
variety of tactics.
Peter has also written one of the better manuals on consensus decision
making, which is quite popular in anarchist circles. It's called:
Consensus: A New Handbook for Grassroots Social, Political, and
Environmental Groups, published in 2006 by See Sharp Press. There is an
archive of essays by Peter Gelderloos since 2003 on the web at The
Anarchist Library (19 items so far).
Now back to Anarchy Works. After an Introduction in which the basic
principles of anarchism are briefly described – autonomy and
horizontality, mutual aid, voluntary association, direct action,
revolution, and self-liberation – the book is organized into eight
chapters, as follows: human nature, decisions, economy, environment,
crime, revolution, neighboring societies, and the future. In each
chapter a series of questions is asked, such as: Aren't people naturally
competitive? Who will settle disputes? How will people get healthcare?
Who will protect us without police? How could people organized
horizontally possibly overcome the state? What will prevent constant
warfare and feuding? Won't the state just reemerge over time? It would
be pointless here to recap his answers to these questions, that is, to
summarize the substance of the book. You will need to read it for
yourself. Let me just say though that overall his answers are spot on.
One of the things that I find most attractive about the book is the
author's clear and uncompromising insistence that the existing society
must be deliberately and vigorously attacked in every way possible. We
can't just let things ride. We can't remain passive. We need to go after
our oppressors. In fact, the book might be seen as a catalog of all the
various ways different peoples have invented, over the centuries, to
resist their oppressors.
There is one novel idea in the book I'd like to call attention to, one
I've heard only once or twice before, and quite recently at that. The
still existing so-called archaic societies (what used to be called
"primitive" peoples) sprinkled around the world, especially those living
in hill country or on other marginalized land, may not after all be just
remnants of ancient societies that have somehow escaped the influences
of civilization. Some of them may be contemporary instances of people
who have deliberately rejected and escaped from nearby states.
Gelderloos pays particular attention to how these various peoples have
organized themselves and to the tactics they have invented to avoid
domination by their authoritarian neighbors.
This is a hard book to fault. But after careful scrutiny I find that I
do have a few quibbles, a couple of which I'll mention here. First, this
is a very positive book, but I'm wondering if it is maybe a bit too
optimistic. Gelderloos may be making it seem like we are farther along
than we are (which actually may be a valid balance to the usual
exaggerated negativism, and in particular, to my own personal propensity
for doom and gloom). Sure, you can weave these ninety some-odd cases
into a coherent whole in a book, but are they coalescing like that in
reality? I had the same feeling after reading Chris Carlsson's Nowtopia.
That book described a number of contemporary initiatives, like urban
gardening, permaculture, outlaw bicycling, and the internet commons. My
questions were: Okay, these are all worthy projects, but will they ever
converge or jell into a movement that can defeat capitalists? What would
have to happen for them to do so? I have the same questions about
Anarchy Works.
Second, throughout the book, Gelderloos treats capitalism and the state
as separate entities. This happens in part of course because states
existed long before capitalism appeared on the scene, so we get in the
habit of thinking of them as separate things, especially in a book which
makes a broad historical sweep, collecting cases from all ages. But for
the past five hundred years, this conceptual separation is a mistake and
hinders the anti-capitalist struggle. Capitalism does not refer just to
an "economy," but to an entire social order. The international
nation-state system is an integral part of capitalism (profit-takers +
politicians = capitalism). So defeating capitalists means abolishing
their states, without which the private ownership of the means of
production would be impossible. Whatever.
It seemed that Peter enjoyed his visit to Boston. He likes to party and
dance and stay up late. We threw a couple of good ones for him. Maybe he
will come back some day. In the meantime, good luck with your current
projects, Peter, and thanks for an outstanding and very stimulating
book.
[1] His travelogue of this trip, To Get to the Other Side, was published
online in 2010 (222 pages) at: <
http://togettotheotherside.org
.
[2] Links to accounts of this episode can be found in the Wikipedia
article about him.
[3] The first edition in 2005 was self-published under an imprint
Gelderloos created, Signalfire Press. The second edition was published
in 2007 by South End Press in Cambridge, MA. (SEP has now moved to New
York City.) This is a much revised and expanded version. It includes a
new chapter, now the longest in the book, about anarchist revolutionary
strategy.