The Political Economy of Anarchism, Short and Loose
We might define the economic goal of anarchism as the progressive reduction of intermediary steps between the experience of creative, social desire and the expression of that desire into material (social, aesthetic, technical, organic) form.
Thus, the most appropriate anarchist economic projects are those that most readily shift a singular instant of desire into a concrete, transmissible form.
What could this mean, practically?
In production, DIY networks based on the sharing of skills and home-based, decentralized manufacturing technologies.
In distribution, cooperatives and collectives of interested users.
In innovation, participatory design and constant feedback.
In knowledge, the dynamic stability of a community of learners.
Anarchism is often invoked in terms of what it is not, what it is against- the state, big business, private property, imperialism, the conquest of nature, exploitations- but it is difficult to see thereby what it is “for,” or rather upon what we base it.
There is a simple reason for this, that anarchism is based upon a fundamentally alternative logic to that of society as we generally know it. Our world is based on the control of space. Our economy is based on privately held and amassed property. Our politics is based on borders, on regimenting them, on deciding who is allowed to be in group X and who is allowed to be in group Y and what We’re going to do to members of either group; and who We are.
The problem with this type of logic is that it is utterly arbitrary and false, an expedient individually and in terms of society as a whole, a hallucination. There are no boundaries, only vague regions formed by habits of movement and interaction between beings. We invent them.
America, for instance, is based upon space. Boundary lines, all the way down, from landlords to border patrols. We pretend an economy by shifting the ownership of things more than actually producing them.
Anarchism is foundationally tied to time rather than space, and an identity of “movement.” Ontological speed. How much mediation is there between desire and realization? How much distance is there between authority and implementation, between power and action, thought and deed? How wide is the gulf between humanity and nature, men and women, owners and workers, beings and other beings? How can we reduce that gulf so that different beings can interact and create together? How direct, how fast?
The anarchist ideal is a small community of skilled craftspeople, constantly creating as the sun constantly creates light and heat.
Note: as communication technology increases its speed, anarchist forms start to crop up.
Via MonkeyWrench
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