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Title: Author and Authority Author: Matt Black Date: 1995 Language: en Topics: authority, subjectivity, Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation Source: 1995 Mar/Apr issue of L&R. Retrieved on 2016-06-13 from https://web.archive.org/web/20160322154653/http://loveandrage.org/?q=node/50
Anarchism is in trouble. Despite the gradual growth and strengthening of
the anarchist movement over the past 10 years—more newspapers, journals,
bookstores, actions, etc.—we aren’t really engaged in changing the
society. This failure isn’t caused simply because we aren’t working hard
enough, but because we are adrift ideologically. In fact we are working
hard, but with very little idea of why we are doing what we are doing.
Contemporary anarchist politics seems to be based on a kind of loose
pragmatism: forming a political organization seems like a good idea,
opening a bookstore seems like a good idea, publishing newspapers and
journals seems like a good idea. But our “good ideas” haven’t matured
into a course of action. To quote old what’s-his-name, we are doing a
lot, but with no real idea of what is to be done.
To be effective revolutionaries—to change the world—we need to believe
that we are part of the revolution now. I think that we will only be
able to believe this preposterous idea if we have developed a strategic
vision of the process of revolution that begins today and continues into
the new society.
I think that the “revolutionary anarchist” section of the anarchist
movement is the group most likely to develop such a strategic vision. I
think that this rough revolutionary anarchist politics is fairly close
to coalescing into a coherent, if not totally worked out, strategy. But
I think that there are several barriers in the way, two of the most
important being: our reliance on a loose and somewhat flimsy set of
philosophical ideas to justify our politics, and a lack of a theory of
the process of empowerment. In other words, we lack convincing arguments
both about why people might throw off their chains, and about how they
might do so. It is these two questions that I attempt to address in this
article.
Politics is based on philosophy. For each idea we have about what is
happening in the world, we have some idea about why we think it is
happening. Our criticisms of this society, and our vision of a possible
future society, are based on ideas about human nature, justice,
morality, subjectivity, etc.
Clearly, if our ideas about these subjects are not correct, then our
politics will not succeed: if people are really greedy, violent and
selfish by nature, we will not be able to build a society based on
mutual aid and cooperation. If we want to change the world, we cannot
rely uncritically on our philosophical assumptions; we have to
ruthlessly challenge and correct them. Equally important, we have to be
able to argue for our ideas and defend them against attacks by people
with other ideas.
The problem is, most of the most important philosophical ideas on which
we base our politics are not provable. Is there a god? Who knows? Is
there a determined human nature? How would we prove this one way of the
other? Are there such things as justice and morality? Is there a
knowable “reality,” or is our concept of the real created by the
fictions we use to explain things?
We can’t answer these questions, but we also can’t fall into the trap of
inaction: that we cannot act because we cannot base our actions on
anything because we cannot be sure of anything. It seems to me that our
goal should not be to stop believing because we cannot prove the
existence of the things we believe in, but to believe in a way that does
not make us prisoners of our preconceptions. That is, I think we need to
believe critically.
I’m not arguing that we should believe in any bullshit if it looks like
it might allow us to destroy this society; just the opposite, I am
arguing that what we believe and how we believe will determine whether
or not we are able to build the new society out of the old.
A necessary condition for making revolution is what I call the
“actualization” of subjectivity. That is, unless people become convinced
of their own power to evaluate the world around them, come to
conclusions about taking action, and take effective action, it will not
be possible to destroy this society and make a new one.
This happens two ways. First, the experience of living under new,
directly democratic social conditions—through creating social movements
and counter institutions. Second, through the conscious adoption of
revolutionary politics and theory that advocate the creation of a
society based on the full expression of subjectivity.
This actualization of subjectivity is essential to revolution. A body of
revolutionary ideas without a belief in one’s power to act is
meaningless. It is only as people come to believe that they are capable
of acting in matters that affect them that they become able to
participate in the destruction of this society and the creation of a new
one.
I think that there is one major obstacle to the actualization of
subjectivity: authority.
All systems of thought that we think of as authoritarian have in common
a reference, either explicit or implicit, back to some “higher power.”
This is most obvious in the case in which the reference is back to an
actual, living God. However, this same kind of reference back to a
higher power also underlies ideas that are ostensibly neutral—or even
hostile—to the idea of a God.
For example, the idea of natural rights—that human beings have certain
inalienable rights, such as to life and liberty—implies necessarily that
there is some “higher” source that has deemed it so. If these “rights”
cannot be taken away by humans, they cannot have been granted by humans.
These various “higher powers”—god, nature, morality, natural right—can
be grouped together under a general metaphor of “author.” The author of
any work is the conscious, intentional presence at its root. Thus any
kind of “higher power”—either one named explicitly or one whose
existence is implied—can be thought of as the “author” of systems of
philosophy based on references back to this higher power.
The authors that are at the root of “authoritarian” systems of thought
all share two features: transcendence and intentionality.
By transcendence I mean that the influence of the “authors” extends to
all people, in all places, at all times, and is beyond human intention
or control. For example, murder in our society is seen both as a crime
and a sin. It is a crime because it is contrary to the laws humans have
created. But, even in a society in which murder were not a crime—or if
there were no longer any society to so define it—murder would still be a
sin. Why? Because sin is a violation of God’s law (or the murdered
person’s “natural right” to life), which is not bound by time, place,
person or human intentionality: it is transcendental.
By intentionality I mean that it is through their acts of intention
(authoring) that the authors affect human beings. For example, it is
“wrong” to bear false witness because, effectively, God said so.
Similarly, humans have a right to life, liberty, etc. not because of
some law, or because of any social convention, but because the author
intended it to be so, or so the ideas necessarily imply.
The converse is also true: ideas that are transcendental and intentional
(or require intentionality) are authors or root themselves in an author.
For example, gravity is transcendental, but it is not intentional—it
needs no one to intend its existence for it to exist. It may be argued
that gravity exists because of some prior intention, but such an
intention is not strictly necessary for gravity’s existence.
However, the entire idea of rights is rooted in authority: rights are
fundamental aspects of human existence, which may be abridged and
ignored, but continue in their transcendent existence not because they
are honored, but because they were intended to exist. Every “fundamental
human right” may be denied to each of us, but that doesn’t mean, so the
argument goes, that they don’t exist—i.e. that they exist beyond, and
despite, any human intention or act.
Secular authority—the authority of the state—and transcendental
authority—god’s authority—are different in name only. Both root
themselves, either implicitly or explicitly, in transcendental,
intentional authority. For example, that the preamble of the US
Constitution cites our inalienable rights as having been conferred upon
us by our creator is not simply a concession on the part of the founding
fathers to the mythology of the day: they firmly believed that the
authority of the new United States sprang from god’s authority.
Subjectivity—the power to act for oneself and, perhaps more importantly,
the belief in that power—is central to the revolutionary project. It is
this actual and potential power to act that underlies both the
possibility of destroying the inherited society and the possibility of
creating one in which people act consciously on all matters that affect
them.
A necessary condition for revolution is the desire and ability (belief)
to act to change this society, despite the enormous pressure against
such acts. A necessary condition for creating a new society is the
desire to act and the belief that such acts could result in something
new.
While subjectivity is necessary to revolution, it is not sufficient.
People who fully believe in their power to act need to be able to
conceive of actions worth taking. A mass of people whose subjectivity
had been actualized would not automatically make the kind of revolution
that we are interested in. They may well decide to form some other kind
of society. It is only when people who are acting as subjects embrace
anarchist politics and build a society based on those politics that we
will have an anarchist society.
The existence of and belief in authority is destructive to subjectivity
in two main ways:
First, authoritarian societies seek to deny subjectivity—the only real
threat to their continued existence—by perpetuating social conditions
that prevent people from acting, and from developing a belief in their
own capacity to act.
Second, belief in authority destroys subjectivity because it asserts
that people are not truly free to act in all matters that concern them.
Many important areas of subjective activity are reserved for the author,
and we are constantly told that we have no possibility of control over
these aspects of our lives. Thus we can be free in many ways, but never
totally: we may change the world, but not the moral structure of the
universe. It will only be possible to both destroy this society and
create a new one if the people involved in that process come to see
themselves as able to exercise their conscious intentionality over all
matters that affect them. The act of belief in the author destroys our
ability to believe ourselves capable of making decisions solely on our
own authority.
Even if it were possible to destroy the material conditions of
oppression, we would not necessarily then be free. We participate in our
own oppression by believing the core values of our oppressors: that
transcendental authority exists and is valid. We need to destroy both
the material conditions and the philosophical bases. We can’t really do
either unless we are doing both.
I would argue that, in fact, it is the process of re-creating our
subjectivity that is “the revolution.” The revolution starts long before
even the first bureaucrat is hung with the guts of the first capitalist;
the heart of the revolution is the on-going process of people
actualizing their subjectivity.
If we agree that the actualization of subjectivity is the central aim of
a revolutionary movement, and that ideas rooted in transcendental
authority are destructive to subjectivity, then clearly we must have
politics that are anti-authoritarian. The problem, I argue, is that
anarchist politics are not anti-authoritarian.
Anarchists have historically identified ourselves as opposed to all
forms of authority—the state and its assertion of being authorized by
the social contract; the heterosexual family and its assertion of being
authorized by Nature; capital and its assertion of being authorized by
human nature; God and his claim of being the transcendental author at
the root of it all, etc. But, despite this rejection of concrete forms
of authority, anarchists have consistently re-invested our politics with
authority and implicit references to a transcendental, intentional
author.
For example, anarchist politics makes constant reference to ideas such
as rights (human and natural), justice (as a transcendental system of
fairness), and morality (as a transcendental system of right and wrong).
All of these ideas, and many more, necessarily make implicit reference
back to a transcendental author.
What the anarchist tradition rightly recognizes is that people need to
run their own struggles; not just because of the tendency for leaders to
become rulers, but because the struggle is fundamentally about running
our own lives: the structure is the content. The anarchist tradition’s
rejection of leaders and the trappings of hierarchy and authority are
not simply a “good idea,” they are the beginnings of a fundamental break
with authority.
But it is anarchism’s implicit belief in authoritarian ideology that
implicates and involves us in the project of authority. Thus, like the
existing society, anarchism discourages the development of the
subjectivity necessary for destroying this society and creating a new
one. As it exists, anarchism has no hope of creating the society it
claims to be fighting for. In order to be successful on its own terms,
anarchism must abandon its reliance on ideas that are rooted in
authority.
To rid itself of ideas based in authority, anarchism would need to give
up the following concepts: rights (human and natural); justice (as it
refers to a transcendental arbitration of fairness; not as it refers to
the creation of social contracts about acceptable behavior); morality
(universal concepts of right and wrong, good and evil).
A politics without these ideas is not easy to conceive. It would need to
abandon all claims to moral superiority (an anarchist society is
fundamentally better than a non-anarchist society), rootedness in nature
(an anarchist society is more natural), and rootedness in the moral
structure of the universe (an anarchist society would ensure that human
rights were protected, and is thus better/more desirable).
It seems to me that this change would not really affect the basic
description of anarchism: a political philosophy that advocates the
creation of a society in which people participate directly in making all
the decisions that affect them, and in which social power is distributed
evenly among the citizenry. What it would affect is the reasons why we
are in favor of such a society. We would need to abandon all reasons
that make claims to any authority other than our own.
A brief digression. One problem is that most traditional anarchist ideas
could be maintained if we believed in a biologically determined human
nature. Sadly, this is another argument for which there is no definitive
answer.
I think that I have been able to show how belief in transcendental
authority, the non-existence of which cannot be proven, is destructive
to the psychological conditions necessary to make anarchist revolution.
Reference to a determined human nature seems to me to have some of the
same problems. Rather than relying on our conscious, intentional
activity to justify our ideas and hopes, we are again seeking to ground
our politics in something transcendental and beyond our control. In
effect, we would be saying that, while we may be able to make a new
society, the underlying force of that change is beyond our control.
This, too, seems to me to be destructive to the process of developing an
actualized subjectivity.
If we agree that we need to shed transcendental authority as the basis
of our politics, and that we need to discover a defensible source of
personal (not just individual, but both individual and collective)
authority, then we need to examine what the sources of such authority
might be.
It seems to me that the only personal authority we can safely claim is
desire: we wish to destroy this society and create a new one simply
because we desire to live in that other society. We desire this
individually and collectively, and we believe that there are other
people who also desire it.
We cannot, for example, argue that we are fighting for an anarchist
society because we “personally” think such a society would be right and
good. Such an argument is only thinly disguised transcendental
authority: we would really be saying that we are relying on our personal
interpretation of authority, and rejecting that of the church and state.
I think there are two problems with this. First, it is individualism,
which I think is contrary to the collectivist project of building a new
society. Second, it paradoxically removes from our hands the real power
to make the very decisions we claim to be making. That we have the power
to interpret transcendental authority is a very different claim than
that we have the power to exercise our own authority; the first limits
our subjectivity, the second expands it.
I have some very basic ideas about a general model of the process of
politicization and radicalization, and the role of revolutionaries in
this process.
For a variety of reasons, a lot of people are in opposition to this
society. These people do some or all of the following things, not
necessarily “in order,” nor necessarily at the same time: (1) remain in
relatively isolated opposition, (2) cease to be in opposition—or cease
to identify themselves as in opposition, (3) become part of a group of
people in more or less organized opposition, or (4) become part of a
group of people in more or less organized opposition, and move, with
some other members of that group, into revolt against society.
Groups in revolt against society have several options: cease to be in
revolt, returning to opposition or even ceasing to be in opposition at
all; remain in revolt; move from revolt to revolution—from the
willingness to disrupt the existing social order to being willing to
build a new social order.
The process of the progression from opposition to revolt to revolution
is a process of increasing subjectivity—the power to act, and the belief
in one’s power to act (and be effective)—along with a development of
politics and ideas about what actions might be worth taking. The
increase of subjectivity is the result of a dialectical interaction
between the experience of living within a new set of social relations
and developing ideas about the possibility of new social relations.
At all the stages of radicalization—developing an identity of being in
opposition to the society; moving from opposition to revolt; and moving
from revolt to revolution—self-conscious revolutionaries play a role.
First, in identifying conditions and struggles that place people in
opposition. Second, by arguing for democratic structures within
organized opposition or revolt, thus creating new social relations. And
finally, by arguing for a broad analysis that identifies other similarly
positioned groups, argues for building coalitions and new institutions
with them, and for creating and believing in a vision of a different
society.
If we accept that people who find themselves in opposition to the
society are likely, through that experience, to be developing their
critical interpretation of the world, their desire to act, and their
belief in their capacity to act, then clearly we should attempt to
relate to these people as likely revolutionaries. In particular, we
should orient towards social movements as the most likely locations of
these processes.
At the same time, we should be participating in the creation of new
social institutions that both pose a threat to this society, and hold
out the possibility of becoming the bases of a new society. By this I
mean self-organized institutions of communities in revolt—free schools,
liberated zones, worker-run shops, etc.
I’m not arguing that we are trying to create a society in which everyone
believes the same things. Just the opposite, I am arguing that
subjectivity is developed as people participate in the various struggles
that they find important: you can’t make someone actualize their
subjectivity.
None of my argument is especially new. Most of it has been covered in
much greater depth by other people. Rather than trying to break new
philosophical or theoretical ground, I am trying to show how I think
these ideas fit together.
I am asking that we be consistent in ideas that we have already adopted.
I try to carry that consistency to its logical conclusion. Not even that
conclusion is new—it has been covered pretty thoroughly by the
existentialists. What may be new is the perspective: the inconsistencies
in our ideas may be fatal.
I am making some damning criticisms of anarchism as it currently exists.
In following these criticisms to what seem to me to be their logical
conclusions, I have no doubt made omissions and errors. I look forward
to debate around these issues.
Finally, if we decide that we need to reject a whole bunch of anarchist
theory, are we still anarchists? Hopefully, this article can provide a
small starting point for both of those discussions: the project of
finding a substantial basis for anarchist theory, and the project of
deciding whether or not anarchism as a tradition/movement is capable of
incorporating the conclusions it leads us to.