Archive for category A Starting Place: Anarchism Explained

“White youth must choose sides now. They must either fight on the side of the oppressed, or be on the side of the oppressor.” -Bernardine Dohrn (member of the Weathermen)

The People of the World are starving. The masters of racist empire (the politicians and corporate ceo’s of amerika) are murdering, maiming, and raping the People of Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, Palestine. Those are just a few of the Peoples that are Truly Suffering under the racist, imperialist, and colonialist forces of the amerikan regime. These People are hungry. They’re hungry for Justice! They’re hungry for Equality! They’re hungry for Freedom! They’re screaming for these things. We have to stop sitting around, We have to stop begging our “leaders” to “fix” these “problems”, We have to Wake Up.

Time To Stop Sleeping On Black Liberation

In mainstream “white” society and even in some so called Revolutionary circles (or more accurately “white” Revolutionary circles) the Civil Rights Era (read Black Liberation Movements era) is considered a bygone time. A bygone time of “rare” “radicalism” in the Black Community.

This assumption is completely wrong. First off it was not rare; in fact Black Revolutionary movements or organizations had been evolving for decades.

The notion that it was a radically “tinged” movement is also false, from the very start there were many individuals who realized the truth about the Liberation of Black People, it could/can only be achieved through nothing short of a Revolution (I believe Malcolm X came upon this realization very early on and understood its implications), in the later years of the movement when organizations such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which arose out of Oakland,CA in 1966 with the help of founding members Huey P. Newton (Minister of Defense) and Bobby Seale (Party Chairman), they (the later organizations such as the BPP) sought this as their ultimate goal (Social Revolution). Although later on because of inner conflicts there was a sort of schism in the BPP, the split revolved around how exactly Socialist Revolution/Black Liberation would be achieved (members such as Huey Newton and Bobby Seale favoring non-violent Direct Action and members such as Eldridge Cleaver seeing that the time to engage in Armed Struggle had arrived).

Most ex-Panthers started taking refuge in the Black Liberation Army which was dedicated to much more aggressive tactics (personally I favor the views of both organizations, I believe in both the necessity of non-violent Direct Action and Armed Struggle or violent Direct Action if that’s what you want to call it) This, along with the counter-Revolutionary actions of Cointelpro agents, the assassination of Fred Hampton which was carried out by the Chicago police department (pig department is a more accurate description), along with many other cold blooded murders of Panther members carried out by the pigs, rising legal costs, and inner conflict led to the collapse of the BPP.

Another misconception is that the Revolutionary movements of the 60’s/70’s were only Black movements — this is wrong. There were many radical white student organizations such as the Students for a Democratic Society, and the infamous Weather Underground Organization (or the Weathermen), there were also Chicano, Women, and Native American organizations which were part of a much wider Global Revolutionary Movement. The Black/Brown Liberation movement was dealt a huge blow and it has been almost unconscious for many years but was never defeated. Some key figures that “white” anarchists should study are Fred Hampton (R.I.P Comrade), Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton (R.I.P Huey), Kuwasi Balagoon (Anarchist member of the BLA and a Brave Comrade, R.I.P), Mumia Abu Jamal (Free Mumia!!), Ali Khalid Abdullah (also an Anarchist), Lorenzo Komboa Ervin (Anarchist and former member of the BPP), Assata Shakur (Hands Off Assata!!), George Jackson (A true Soldier of the Black Revolution, R.I.P), and Frantz Fanon (read his book Wretched Of The Earth). Those are just a handful of courageous Black Revolutionaries. Now, in the interest of getting to the main topic of which this essay revolves around I’m not going to lay out the entire history of Black/Chicano/First Nations/Women’s/white Revolutionary currents in amerika.

The main topic I’m talking about is white supremacy, or the white power structure. White domination is very real in this world that we live in, in reality the forces of kapitalism (the amerikan empire/government, and amerikan corporations) revolve around and rely on white domination. Think about it, if the white working People broke down the racial divisions that separate them from the Black/Chicano Community and joined with the Black/Chicano working class in actual Solidarity it would be very difficult for the state to conduct fascist attacks on Black and Chicano People not only in amerika but in the greater part of the world.

What has become very clear to me is that the Catalyst for Social Revolution in amerika would be a renewed Black Revolutionary movement and Solidarity between Black/white working People and Solidarity between “white” Anarchists/Socialists and Black/Brown Liberation movements and organizations. Revolutionaries such as Anarchists (which are mostly white middle class People) and other Socialists, as well as Progressives (who aren’t necessarily for Revolution) must realize this.

As a (“white”) anarchist myself I feel the need to address the fact that the majority of Anarchists (the majority being “white”) in amerika continue to brush white supremacy off to the side. Now many might argue that anarchists are adamantly anti-racist and I believe this to be true but lets be honest you don’t see pigs going into “white” suburban nieghborhood’s and murdering/harassing/torturing innocent People as they are so fond of doing in the ghettos and barrios. It’s time to take the anti-racist ideals of the anarchist movement and evolve it into an explicitly militant anti-white supremacist stance. The destruction of the white power structure should be one of the main objectives of anarchists in amerika. One of the many ways “white” anarchists can achieve this is by expressing Solidarity with already existing African Liberation organizations such as the International Peoples Democratic Uhuru Movement as well as future movements regardless of whether or not they are explicitly anarchist. “White” anarchists should make it a priority to study Black Revolutionary literature instead of just “white” anarchist literature so they can better understand the struggles of Black Liberation movements, they should also study the literature of Chicano/Latino/Native American/Asian Revolutionary movements.

It is ridiculous to think that you can lump everyone’s economic/social struggles into “common struggles of the People” or “common economic problems”. The existence of white domination has serious effects on Black and Brown People in amerika and across the world. These racial struggles that white People don’t have to worry about create oppressions directed at the Black and Brown working communities that make their struggles a hell of a lot worse than what white working People experience, such as, pig brutality, racist imprisonment, racist economic oppression, racist employers and attacks on affirmative action (last hired, first fired), and racist drug operations conducted by local pig departments or the C.I.A. That’s just a few of the struggles that poor Black/Brown communities experience and whites don’t have to live through.

“White” anarchists must build new and stronger anti-fascist movements, We must push anti-white supremacy and Solidarity with Black communities/Black Liberation movements to the forefront of our struggle against kapitalism with the realization that Solidarity between white People and Black People is a must if we are to inspire a Revolutionary movement in amerika. Anti-white domination, anti-colonialism, and anti-fascism must join with anti-corporate, earth/animal liberation,and anti- imperialism as the main struggles of the anarchist movement.

In reality the white power structure is one of the main components of kapitalism and must be dealt with head on with Direct Action if we are serious about Social Revolution. Anarchists should organize Black/white Solidarity Direct Action events in both white working communities and Black working communities. We have to realize that the amerikan government as well as corporations are institutions of white supremacy and kapitalism itself relies on white supremacy. Direct Action must be used against white supremacy! I’m not just talking about fist fighting with neo-nazi skinheads and disrupting racist Klan/christian events either, although those organizations should be dealt with by any means necessary. Anarchists and other Socialists have to realize that the masters of the white power structure are the politicians, corporate CEOs and other kapitalists. Neo-nazi organizations and other similiar movements advocate the white power structure but they don’t run the show. In effect “white” anarchists must publicly/verbally/physically display and organize true Solidarity with the Black community and Black Liberation movements, we must expose the white power structure to the masses and the fact that kapitalism relies on it and feeds on it.

The severe lack of Black/Brown anarchists is primarily because of the reluctance displayed by a majority of “white” anarchists to express Solidarity with the racial struggles of the Black community. The anarchist movement must no longer ignore racial divisions and the racial struggles of Black People, if we are truly dedicated to the Liberation of all Peoples we have to support organizations like the Uhuru movement and other future movements, we must respect African Peoples right to Self-Determination, we must help break down racial divisions among working class People, we must use and rely on the power of Direct Action and propaganda by the deed as well as visual propaganda, we must support the Black community, we must embrace militant protest/activities.

I believe being a Militant Activist means realizing both the necessity of non-violent Direct Action and Armed Struggle. Non-violent Direct Action protest (which I believe includes property destruction) and grassroots community organizing/support is most effective for inspiring and building a mass movement, but once that mass movement gets strong enough and organized enough the white power structure/state/corporations will feel threatened by it and they will try to destroy it through covert operations and violent means (by violent I mean switching their rubber bullets for the real bullets!), this is where Armed Struggle will be necessary. Then again I can’t predict the future, but I do know that if anarchists are serious about Revolution they will make Direct Action, community organizing, and Solidarity with Black Liberation, against the white power structure and colonialism as important as anti-corporate, anti-imperialist, earth liberation, and other anarchist goals!

Brought To You By Mr. Anonymous “white” Anarchist
All Power To The People!

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By Kim Fyke & Gabriel Sayegh

The Dispossessed, a well-known novel by Ursula LeGuin, details a functioning society built upon anarchist principles.(1) Anarchists are often adept at imagining a new and different world, and, inevitably, we must ask ourselves: how are we going to achieve this? Visions such as LeGuin’s are often borne from rigorous anti-authoritarian, multi-dimensional critiques of current society- its problems, failures, and contradictions. Yet within the current U.S. anarchist trend, there is a painful absence of articulate strategy to help move us towards such a world.

The question of how to move forward forces us to examine a number of weaknesses and contradictions within contemporary anarchism: U.S. anarchism is predominantly white, upper/middle class, and led by men; consistently avoids leadership issues; and has an unhealthy aversion to building or participating in organizations. These weaknesses contribute to anarchism’s incredibly isolated position on the Left, its perceived irrelevance to many people who might otherwise identify with anarchist principles, and has yielded an anarchism rooted in activism.

All too often, we assume that simply being anarchists means we are against oppression, and thereby we willfully overlook the complex problems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and classism. We often mistake activism for building a free society. And we create informal hierarchies by failing to deal with issues of leadership and power. To move forward we must address these- our greater weaknesses- in order to develop the intermediary structures necessary to bring about an anti-authoritarian world.

Activism and Organizing – Where Anarchists Stand
Throughout this article, we use the terms activism and organizing in opposition to each other, as a way to illustrate the necessity of organizing, not to create strict dichotomies between the two. We can think of activism this way: Activism: a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue. (emphasis ours) (Definition from Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http:// www.m-w.com” href=”http://www.m-w.com”>www.m-w.com)

We can also learn about activism from June 18 organizer Andrew X: Defining ourselves as activists means defining *our* actions as the ones which will bring about social change, thus disregarding the activity of thousands upon thousands of other non-activists. Activism is based on this misconception that it is only activists who do social change-whereas of course class struggle is happening all the time. (2)

Over the last three decades, anarchist activism has taken form through many dynamic projects and issue-based campaigns. By definition, though, activism has not- and can not- be the way through which the revolutionary project is built, because activism elevates issues over relationships with human beings. (3) While the politic of anarchism emphasizes relationships, our commitment to activism has been developed with an almost oppositional stance towards organizing, which is, at its root, about building relationships: Organizing: An organizer is a person who is responsible to a defined constituency and who helps build that constituency through leadership development collective action, and the development of democratic structures. (definition by National Organizers Alliance) (4)

We need to reexamine what it means to be an ‘activist’, and what we tend to think of as an ‘organizer’. Many anarchists who utilize organizing methods may identify themselves as activists simply because they do not know about the idea of organizing. It is important to examine how we practice our politics and who we are working with, because to achieve collective liberation we will need to work with the mass of society. Doing this will require us to prioritize relationships with others, i.e. organizing, rather than prioritizing issues, i.e. activism.

Breakdown: racism, sexism, and classism in the U.S. anarchist movement The U.S. anarchist ‘movement’ is dominated by white people, and its politics and practice are currently rooted in white privilege. (5) As a result, anarchism in the U.S. has become defined by white privilege and white supremacy. As a group, white anarchists are largely without an anti-racist analysis of, and practice against, white supremacy and white privilege. Critiques of capitalism put forth from the anarchist movement are largely void of any analysis of white supremacy. This is particularly problematic, as the two cannot be separated. (6)

By internalizing sexism, men often silence and marginalize women’s voices. The history and current work of anarchist women has been largely relegated to obscurity by a patriarchal political practice wherein women are both undervalued and made invisible. Anarchist men do not come together enough (or at all) to discuss how male power and privilege shapes the anarchist trend. And while anarchist men sometimes prioritize the voices and histories of women, this becomes quickly tokenistic when such prioritization is not coupled with active work to change the underlying social and institutional structures, which afford men both privileges and a sense of entitlement.

The majority of self-declared anarchists come from upper/middle class backgrounds, but are largely without a complex-analysis of class. By complex-analysis, we mean an analysis which digs further than that of ‘owning class/working class’—an analysis which stems from, and engages in, the voices and experiences of working class/poor people. One brief example of this lack of class analysis can be seen within some anarchist cultural practices: perhaps in attempt to find autonomy from wealth and privilege, many anarchists from upper/middle class backgrounds take on roles of voluntary ‘poverty’, creating entire subcultures wherein ‘poverty’ is an aesthetic of value. While ostensibly rooted in a desire for simplicity, this so-called poverty, taken on as a cultural attribute, often itself becomes the expression of class analysis. This volunteer ‘poverty’ quickly mocks the struggles facing many working class/poor people, and can be terribly alienating to anyone whose been forced to live in poverty. We must develop a radical, complex class analysis if we are to work with working class/working poor people in constructing viable, class-conscious economic alternatives.

In this self-imposed isolation, we have chosen to build activist projects, which are severely limited in that they have been largely thought of, designed, built, and implemented by white upper/middle class people to attract, draw in, and politicize other white, middle class people, most of whom already sympathize or identify explicitly with anarchist politics. Rather than build an anti-authoritarian revolutionary project in the U.S., this strategy has instead served to build an isolated sub-movement of white activists who join forces around a common adherence to anarchist politics and perpetuate the very structures instigated by capitalist society.

The anarchist movement is in dire need of an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist analysis and a commitment to bring that theory into action. This commitment must be to challenge oppression by transforming the institutions and structural mechanisms that give oppression power. We must also address how, as individuals, we perpetuate male supremacy, white supremacy, and classist ideas and behaviors. These are expressions of both institutional realities and psychological socializations, under which every person in the U.S. is subjected to and often benefits from or is targeted by (or both). Devising plans to address these problems can be found by examining anarchist leadership and the complexities of becoming more organized.

There’s No Anarchist Leadership or Let’s Ignore that Big Pink Elephant in the Room The question of leadership in anarchist circles brings up a host of contradictions, which anarchists too often avoid by denying that leadership exists. This is complete hogwash. As Love and Rage points out: “Anarchism tends to assume a theoretical posture of total hostility towards leadership. But every anarchist group or project that lasts any length of time has clearly identifiable, if informal, leadership.” (7)

When we deny that leadership exists, we allow for informal hierarchies rooted in racism, classism, and sexism to form. These hierarchies are built on power, and in their construction, people with privilege take on leadership roles. In these ‘invisible’ hierarchies, some people exercise power over others, rather than exercising power with others.

Critiques of power may be at the heart of anarchist theory but there is a disturbing trend to deny that power exists in anarchist spaces, and to utilize anarchist rhetoric to deny the existence of leaders and power. Furthermore, many anarchists define their politics by the destruction of power- a view that is flawed and rooted in privilege. Power can be given away, take away, reclaimed, and exercised- but it cannot be destroyed. It is the way in which power can be reclaimed and exercised collectively that anarchists should devote themselves to.

If we deny the existence of leaders in our work, we create a perfect environment for the creation of internal hierarchies while at the same time limiting our capacity to challenge those who abuse power. This question of how power is used- power over people or power with people- is crucial to address when thinking about leadership.

Rethinking Leadership
“A position of leadership is in some sense unavoidably a position of authority. As Anti-authoritarians, we need to create systems that make leaders accountable to the broader body of people who make up a movement or organization. We must also develop a practice of leadership that consciously subverts those authoritarian tendencies, and assists in generalizing leadership skills among the people.” (8)

What anarchists are missing is a conception of leadership that we find relevant; one that defines leadership by the processes, activities, and relationships in which people engage, rather than as the individual in a specific role, having authoritarian power over others.

Organizers throughout history have struggled with this question of non-hierarchical leadership. Civil rights/ SNCC organizer Ella Baker demonstrated one different form of leadership. As Chris Crass writes, “Ms. Baker had an innovative understanding of leadership, an idea which she thought of in multiple ways: as facilitator, creating processes and methods for others to express themselves and make decisions; as coordinator, creating events, situations and dynamics that build and strengthen collective efforts; and as teacher/educator, working with others to develop their own sense of power, capacity to organize and analyze, visions of liberation and ability to act in the world for justice. Ella believed that good leadership created opportunities for others to realize and expand their own talents, skills and potential to be leaders themselves. This did not mean that she didn’t challenge people or struggle with people over political questions and strategies. Rather, this meant that she struggled with people over these questions to help develop principled and strategic leadership capable of organizing for social transformation.” (9)

Baker did not believe in the ‘single’ leader, which anarchists rightly criticize. Instead she sought to develop new types of leadership. Baker described good leadership as group-centered leadership, meaning that leaders form in groups and are committed to building collective power and struggling for collective goals. This is different than leader-centered groups, in which the group is dedicated to the goals and power of that leader. (10)

As Crass deftly notes in his article, Baker’s practice as an organizer was infused with principles and ethics that could be considered anarchist, though Baker herself probably never identified as such. Such models of leadership are crucial points of study for anarchists.

‘Group Leadership’ can only be realized through building relationships. Building relationships and taking collective action is the root of what it means to organize people. But to consider building relationships, we must consider the material, social, and psychological reality of power. To build libratory relationships with people, it is crucial to have an analysis of power as it relates to our social status, material access, and psychological development. As James Mumm writes, “Relationships are always political, and as such are the foundation of all conceptions of power.” (11)

Organizations: a historical necessity in the struggle for social transformation We would not be wrong to assert that in today’s anarchist trend, most anarchists hold a strong reservation to any formally organized structure. We would argue, however, that it is precisely this lack of structure that has weakened Anarchism and caused many anarchists, like the now-defunct Love and Rage, to doubt “the viability of anarchism as a theoretical framework for revolutionary politics in the 21st century, in some cases to the point of saying they were no longer anarchists.” (12) Many anarchists incorrectly equate organizations with authoritarianism, but structured organization does not necessarily contradict anarchism. The authoritarianism of some organizations is due to the politics, principles, and people that make up the organization, not in the idea of organization itself.

Organizations have been central to liberation movements throughout U.S. history. Interestingly, when examining these movements, we find that many of them were influenced or driven by concepts familiar to anarchists. Self-determination was a central element to the struggles of Black, Native American, Puerto Rican, et al nationalist struggles. Movements like the Civil Rights and student movements of the 60’s were committed to direct action. The labor movements of the teens and thirties, the queer liberation movement of the 60’s and 70’s, and the women’s’ liberation movement all incorporated ideas and practices which anarchists call mutual aid.

Organizations are necessary because they serve as the structure within which radical or revolutionary ideas can unfold. The direction and fuel for these ideas comes from the people who make up the organization- the base, the constituency of the group. The role of the organization should be to bring about improvements in the lives of people, and to develop leadership of all members. Organizers- many of whom are radicals participating in the revolutionary project through the structure of an organization- organize people and develop leadership in the people they organize with.

Organizations can also be useful in developing both a person’s political analysis and long-term political goals. Consider the perspective of Frantz Fanon, who argued that a defined organization is absolutely crucial to aid in the transformation of the consciousness of human beings, where genuine revolution arises. He writes, “The success of the struggle presupposes clear objectives, a definite methodology and above all the need for the mass of the people to realize that their unorganized efforts can only be a temporary dynamic. You can hold out for three days- maybe even for three months- on the strength of the ad-mixture of sheer resentment contained in the mass of the people; but you’ll… never overthrow the terrible enemy machine, and you won’t change human beings if you forget to raise the consciousness of the rank-and-file. Neither stubborn courage nor fine slogans are enough.” (13)

Building organization does more than just give a place for people to practice politics. It establishes structures that shape the relationships people have with each other- as in power with others or power over others. Within these structures, accountability- an element anarchists have much to learn about- can be built into the processes. With organization, structures can be built and processes developed to prevent the creation of hierarchies and to develop accountable leadership.

Moving Forward- Where to begin?
“There is no “pure” Anarchism. There is only the application of Anarchist principles to the realities of social living. The aim of Anarchism is to stimulate forces that propel society in a libertarian direction.” —Sam Dolgoff (14)

Without ideas and strategies to get us ‘from here to there’, we fall back on an often unspoken, but readily existent, assumption that if everybody became anarchists, or believed in anarchism, we’d all of a sudden reach our goals. This is both dangerous and naive. When we talk about transforming society, we’re talking about transforming people’s lives, and about this we must be serious, respectful, and fully aware of our impacts.

We are poised at a potentially revolutionary moment. We must consider how we will harvest the building libratory energy and contribute anarchist ideas and principles to its formation. We do not need to create explicitly anarchist organizations to do this. In fact, we would argue against such. We need to work with existing groups, or work with others outside of our anarchist sub-group to create new organizations. We have to confront the fact of leadership and to work on developing different forms of leadership which are anti-authoritarian and ‘group centered’. We need to engage in vigorous educational campaigns, build relationships with the people we are organizing with, and support the development of individuals that they might begin to act on their own behalf and become organizers (leaders) in their own right. The politics of anarchism are in many ways rooted in building relationships. It is our task to develop these politics in such a way that we are engaged in organizing people, and not just committed to issues.

As anarchists, we understand that transforming society will require a means that reflect the ends we wish to achieve: breaking down hierarchy, consensus building, and personal transformation- the very processes that spoke to us and brought many of us to anarchism in the first place. It is our task now to develop strategic methods to move us closer to liberation. Moving forward means first being clear about where we stand- having a grasp of our weaknesses, our strengths, and our politics. In this way, we can make clear decisions about how to proceed. In the words of James Mumm, we would do better to “stop trying to build a movement of anarchists, and instead build an anarchistic movement.” (15) ~

If you have any comments or would like discuss the article with
the authors, contact at: anarchiststrategy@hotmail.com

Footnotes

1. LeGuin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed. New York: HarperPrism, 1974.

2. Andrew X. Give up Activism. Available online at www.infoshop.org/octo/j18_rts1.html#give_up” href=”http://www.infoshop.org/octo/j18_rts1.html#give_up”>www.infoshop.org/octo/j18_rts1.html#give_up.

3. For more on the contradictions between activism and organizing, see Mumm, James. Active Revolution: New Directions in Revolutionary Social Change Chicago: Active Resistance, 1998.

4. National Organizers Alliance. “What is an Organizer?” Online. Internet. Available online at: www.noacentral.org” href=”http://www.noacentral.org”>www.noacentral.org

5. For in-depth analysis of white supremacy in the anarchist trend and the anti-globalization movement, see Colours of Resistance. Available Online at www.tao.ca/~colours” href=”http://www.tao.ca/~colours”>www.tao.ca/~colours.

6. For detailed analysis of the connections between white supremacy and capitalism, see the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop web page. Available online at www.cwsworkshop.org/” href=”http://www.cwsworkshop.org/”>www.cwsworkshop.org/.

7. Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation. After Winter Must Come Spring. Oakland: self-published, 2000, p. 25

8. Love and Rage, page 26

9. Crass, Chris. Looking to the Light of Freedom. May 2001. Available at www.tao.ca/~colours/crass8.htm” href=”http://www.tao.ca/~colours/crass8.htm”>www.tao.ca/~colours/crass8.htm

10. Crass, Looking to the Light of Freedom

11. Mumm, Active Revolution

12. Love and Rage, p. 28

13. Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. pg 136

14. Dolgoff, Sam. The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society. 1970. Online. Available online at flag.blackened.net/liberty/spunk/Spunk191.txt.-” href=”http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/spunk/Spunk191.txt.-”>http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/spunk/Spunk191.txt.-

15. Mumm, Active Revolution

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By m(A)tt

Introduction

Every election year, and this one in particular, I feel the urgency of articulating an alternative narrative and different ideas about how to make sense of the increasingly-chaotic world around us. With so many of my friends and comrades jumping on the Obama bandwagon, with admirable hope and ambition, I feel at the same time both great sympathy as well as great concern.

Looking at history, I walk away with the unshakeable belief that electoral work does more to stunt the growth of popular upsurges for change than it does to serve them. As I will argue at length, the political system we live under is not set up to be a vehicle for change. It is an investment, or more accurately, a gamble, and because the house makes the rules, ultimately the house always wins. So when a movement of regular people, with scarce resources and energy gets behind an electoral campaign, it is reminiscent of a working class parent with a gambling problem. What I believe is that change is a process that is forced upon the system from the outside, harnessing the greatest strengths we have: our numbers and our creativity.

Anarchism is a global political movement with its roots in the labor struggles of over a hundred years past, and has profoundly influenced many progressive movements since. We have led strikes, revolutions, street actions, and festivals. In that period of time, it would be impossible to capture every idea expressed by all the anarchist thinkers and groups in this small pamphlet; this is merely a snapshot of the thoughts of this one contemporary anarchist activist. The purpose of this is to familiarize a new generation of advocates for change with our politics, not solely to proselytize, but to create a common understanding for mutual cooperation, and dispel any myths or disinformation that may exist.

Who we are

“If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together.” – Lila Watson, aboriginal activist

I identify not only with anarchism, but also a very selective interpretation of all the various schools of anarchist thought and radical social theory. I tend to take bits and pieces from each tendency, recognizing that each one brings something unique to the table, but generally I fall within the category of “social anarchism.” I also draw from radical feminism, critical race theory, social ecology, Marxist economics, youth liberation, radical queer and trans praxis, among other things, for the purpose of understanding all the intersections and overlapping of the oppressions that we find in reality. The priority is not to decide who is the most oppressed, but to look at oppressive dynamics and systems objectively, to tailor our methods and processes appropriately, and make strategic interventions where it makes most sense.

This can be done not only at key points of societal tension, but within our own movement as well. Simply adopting the label of “anarchist,” or “revolutionary,” or what have you, does not mean you are suddenly free from all the oppressive and submissive behavioral tendencies we’ve all been socialized with. When we are conscious of these tendencies, we can alter our group process and level the playing field a bit, to ensure that all of the people we are struggling alongside are enfranchised and respected members of the movement, regardless of their age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability or whatever their identity might be. This is done with the recognition that we all carry a part of the answer to the problems we are grappling with. When we can all contribute as free individuals, our collective knowledge thus gives us a more complete picture of the world as it is, as it should be, and how to get there.

So, for example, during meetings we pay attention to who is speaking, for how long, who is not speaking, if they are being prevented from speaking, why, and what can be done to make sure everyone is heard. If men are speaking over women, if whites are being dismissive of the concerns of people of color, if sexist or homophobic language is being used, then clearly we have a space where some are inclined to speak their mind, and others will most likely remain silent or leave. What about the people who can’t make it to meetings? What about working people and/or parents with major time constraints? If meetings drag on without productivity, someone whose free hours are an extremely precious commodity can be very disinclined to participate.

Do we write off these concerns as petty and unavoidable? Or do we work out a process that limits the amount of time a person can speak, prioritize who should be heard first, mandate that timely decisions be made, and even go so far as to provide childcare for parents? If we really want a social revolution, isn’t it reasonable to say that maybe we need to revolutionize our basic interactions with one another? In a society where we are all cut off from one another-arguably by design in order to divide and conquer-we need to start demolishing walls with everything in our arsenal.

But even these accommodations are only a part of the equation. Yes, our process must be all-inclusive, within the context of our agreed-upon politics. But then it only follows that this process must be reflected in our political work. Let’s say for example, we are engaged in a campaign to win union recognition from an employer. Usually the demands center on wages, hours and safety. But if a significant number of the workers are upset about racist or sexist behavior from management, do we brush that aside as divisive or as not a union-related issue? If we do, what are the consequences? Will these workers take the union seriously? Will other workers resent them for not showing enough support for the campaign? It would be impossible to give a blanket solution to all such problems, but I think the best approach is to spend energy on building bridges rather than to repress the concerns of people with whom you share a common cause. While this may seem like simplistic reasoning, in the end, regardless of which way you go there is always a chance of losing the battle; the important thing to remember is that we are at war, and the only thing that will allow us to win is building solidarity over the long haul. As much as anything, anarchism is about building a common bond between all regular people. If the best we can do is to build up institutions, such as unions, based upon the domination of one group or another, then all we are doing is reproducing the very oppressive systems we are seeking to dismantle; such cynicism will surely smother our liberatory impulses.

Like most anarchists, I see nothing particularly enlightened or progressive about representative democracy, and like most anti-capitalists, recognize the social and ecological destruction that is inherent under free market capitalism. Realistically, the government we live under is far better to its subjects than many, if not most other states around the world. However, with a sober appraisal of the history of the United States, not to mention the way it has conducted itself internationally, it is clear that its seemingly-benevolent face has more to do with defusing social upheaval and protecting the status quo (”the state of things”) rather than some kind of altruistic desire to improve the lot of the masses.(1)

I believe strongly in an “us-and-them” dichotomy between those who govern and those who are governed (as has always been the case). There is an entire class of people who exclusively wield the political machinery of this society, at the behest of the wealthy elite. They are generally called politicians, but could also be described as managers, supervisors, school administrators, bureaucrats, academics, small business owners, et cetera. They are sometimes generalized by the term, “middle class,” while some of us call them the “coordinator class.” These are essentially working class people who made enough sacrifices and are granted the privilege of managing others (instead of being saddled with actual productive labor) with the promise that they will uphold the status quo. The faces comprising this class change over time, but the ruling class, directly above them, always controls who takes their place, and whose interests they will serve. Many working people are convinced they are “middle class,” because they may have picked up some skills or accumulated some privileges. But the important distinction to make is that real coordinators don’t actually produce anything, they merely manage labor and wealth. Under bad economic conditions, a working class person can be one job termination away from poverty or homelessness. Coordinators seem to have the uncanny ability to find employment no matter how many times they are fired.

The ruling class owns vast properties, finance political campaigns, and exclusively sit on the boards of the world’s most influential institutions. They own capital, which is wealth and property that they do not personally need or use. They accumulate capital for the sole purpose of wielding it against anyone who would try to take it from them; this is demonstrated by the state’s slavish devotion to upholding property rights, long before it ever considers the human rights of regular people without wealth. Their primary interest is to indefinitely accumulate more wealth and power; wars, trade, and elections all essentially have the same goal in mind, by different means. Working class people, on the other hand, have a tendency to be concerned mainly with raising themselves out of a precarious, miserable existence, second only to subsistence.

In short, you will find that anarchists tend to oppose most of society’s institutions, or at least, believe a radical restructuring is necessary. To me, anarchism means that all authority must justify itself in order to exist, and if it cannot, it should be abolished to make way for new institutions that serve the people, which means they must be accountable to the people they are serving.

What we want

It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute. – Buenaventura Durruti, Iberian Anarchist Federation and Anti-Fascist.

Without an alternative, a critique would be nothing more than an exercise in cynicism and depression. Lots of people would probably agree with what I have to say about the state of the world, but tend not to think too much about it because of the overwhelming enormity of it all. The reason why this critique is so all-encompassing is because anarchists are also unique in what we advocate. Fundamentally, we believe in the human potential for self-governance. Drawing on the various schools of thought described above, we must understand that our potential is something that is squandered and battered down from the time we are children, right up until the day we die. Society’s notions of education, history, gender roles, work habits, the value we attach to one another, discipline and structure are all completely backwards, geared solely toward making good workers, “professionals,” or inmates out of us; with a liberatory approach, our full potential can be reached, and all of these things can be radically altered to foster new generations of free-thinking, self-directed revolutionaries.(2)

A common criticism of anarchism is that it’s unworkable, on the basis that a strict division and hierarchy of labor are necessary in order to make society function. But in reality, there is almost no task or job in the economy that is so specialized that anyone else could not be taught to do it. With an equal opportunity to direct one’s own learning and development, all the academic disciplines, trades and the coordinator class are rendered completely impotent and useless, and the entire argument for a hierarchical division of labor collapses like a house of cards.(3) Why would we have specialists when we can do things ourselves? In essence, this is what is considered to be socialism through an anarchist lens. Now clearly there needs to be some level of specialization, what with things such as surgery, but my point is that with equal access to real education, there is almost no basis for exclusion from any job, and therefore, there is no real basis whatsoever for labor shortages or scarcity of any kind. And as I will elaborate on further, management is a task that can easily be carried out by those who are doing the actual productive labor, via election and/or rotation.(4)

Unlike most Marxists, anarchists see nothing potentially liberatory about any state apparatus, whether it’s a socialist government, or a hierarchical political party that would like to control the government. Even in the short-term, we generally consider any orientation toward capturing control of the state to be backwards; it is an institution created by and for the ruling class, for very specific ends; that is, the protection of privilege and controlling property. There is nothing neutral about it, and we believe that the repressive nature of the socialist state reflects that reality.(5) Subjugating popular movements-be it feminist or labor-to the “be-all/end-all” pursuit of state power is not only shortsighted, it is also detrimental to their immediate strength and versatility. To win elections, you must make concessions to the coordinator class. Ultimately, it is the ruling class who determines who enters or leaves power, and this particular government has survived for 219 years by selectively bringing potential rebels to the table, and isolating those in rebellion. In fact, it has built a global empire on this basis.

As an alternative process by which society could function, social anarchists believe in and practice a radical form of democratic process; the core concept is that people should have a direct say in the decisions that affect them, proportionate to how they are affected. Therefore, we consider most hierarchical decision-making bodies to be inherently anti-democratic, regardless of whether or not it was elected, appointed, or imposed itself upon the people. While I am not categorically opposed to electing people to an office in some future society, or even in one of our own organizations, a fundamental principle is that of accountability. If office-holders can unilaterally make decisions, without necessarily having to consult her or his constituents (as in representative democracy) then that would be considered unaccountable and likely to become entrenched power. Case in point, the US political system has an incumbency rate well over 90%.(6) Our preference, where possible, is to appoint recallable, rotating delegates to decision-making bodies; these delegates have varyingly specific mandates, and there may be a number of checks and balances to ensure her or his actions reflect the will of the constituency. It is in this process that we break down the dichotomy between coordinators and the rest, and put the tools of governance into as many hands as possible.

Overall, our alternative is an economically self-managed society that integrates the liberation of women, people of color, youth, queer and gender non-conforming people, sustainable ecology, and strives to understand the entire spectrum of liberatory and oppressive social dynamics, for a self-directed culture. This is not entirely utopian; not only do we practice these principles in our organizations and projects, there are also people all over the world carving out space for a new world in the shell of the old, today, and fighting with all their might to preserve it. While anarchists are constantly experimenting with process and building new institutions that reflect our ideals, indigenous communities frequently share our principles in their centuries-old traditions, and anarchists are often entering into alliances with them.(7)

What we do

While ultimately I believe in revolution, my day-to-day work is not some strange fixation upon armed struggle in the immediate future, nor am I part of a millenarian cult that wants your devotion. My co-thinkers and I are activists involved in a variety of struggles, from different backgrounds and experiences, looking to foster and intervene in movements that can increase the autonomous power of oppressed people everywhere. When we talk about autonomy, it’s not meant that we should be isolated from each other. Rather, that our power and freedom should be derived from the unity of people who recognize the things they have in common with one another, and directed by our own collective values, needs and desires. To depend upon a state, or a party, or any other hierarchical institution primarily concerned with preserving its own dominance, is to cede the agency and autonomy from our struggles for self-determination. Anarchists emphasize the consistency of ends and means. Sometimes called “pre-figurative politics,” we recognize that the methods and models we use today have a direct bearing upon the new world we seek to create, as well as movements we are building to make that world a reality. This is less a moralistic view than a practical one; how, after all, are we to create a world so radically different from this one if we don’t get in some practice before the revolution?

In practice, most of our work doesn’t look so different from conventional political groups, particularly compared to youth organizations. In other ways, we have stark differences. While organizations like the Young Democrats of America groom their members for a career in political maneuvering and power consolidation, our projects tend to equip participants with the tools to effectively resist the status quo wherever they go in life. The practice of “pre-figurative politics,” then, is not limited to anarchists (and feminists), though we are fairly unique in our grasp of its importance. Marxists and other leftists tend to ignore the concept entirely, believing that the instrument of mass violence known as the state can be used to make progress; and unlike most leftists, we take the conventional wisdom of the political mainstream (resembling social Darwinism, or maybe more aptly termed, political Darwinism) and flip it on its head with a process that engenders camaraderie and cooperation.

We organize around issues that are immediately important: US military aggression in Iraq and elsewhere; repression on immigrant communities; harassment against women, people of color, trans and queer folk, or anyone else that is seen as, “undesirable,” by dominant opinion. And while oppositional political activity is a time-consuming but necessary use of our energy, we do manage to do productive work as well. Anarchists have historically made great cultural contributions and today are involved in countless musical, theatrical and artistic projects that embody our ideas and create space for popular participation. We tend to organize wherever we find ourselves; if we get a job, we might organize a union; if we’re students, we organize on campus; if we live in an area where there’s a sense of community, we’ll organize with our neighbors. The landscape may change, but the basic ideas are the same. Ultimately, a social anarchist strategy relies upon the long-term building of popular power in industries and communities of oppressed peoples, and this requires more focus than jumping from issue to issue in the hopes of siphoning off new recruits to our cause.

The decision-making process tends toward building consensus and unanimity, coupled with an understanding that in order to be relevant, we need to be active. When we pursue our objectives in the public sphere, we do so as directly and confrontationally as possible. Recognizing that we have nothing to gain from collaboration with entrenched hierarchies, we focus on direct action and disruptiveness as a way to avoid being ignored.

There is substantial evidence that the fear of domestic disruption has inhibited murderous plans. One documented case concerns Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recognized the need that ‘sufficient forces would still be available for civil disorder control.’ If they sent troops to Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, and Pentagon officials feared that escalation might lead to massive civil disobedience, in view of the large-scale popular opposition to the war, running the risk of ‘provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions.’ A review of the internal documents released in the Pentagon Papers shows that considerations of cost were the sole factor inhibiting planners, a fact that should be noted by citizens concerned to restrain the violence of the state. In such cases as these, and many others, popular demonstrations and civil disobedience may, under appropriate circumstances, encourage others to undertake a broader range of conventional action by extending the range of the thinkable, and where there is real popular understanding of the legitimacy of direct action to confront institutional violence, may serve as a catalyst to constructive organization and action that will pave the way to more fundamental change. – Noam Chomsky, anarchist scholar of politics and linguistics.

In a society where power is very centralized into the hands of a few, our everyday, relative social peace depends upon the masses’ general tolerance of the status quo. Our job, then, is to make it possible for all the various groups of oppressed peoples to express their needs and desires in a way that brings them into a direct (un-armed) conflict with the state. One way of looking at our politics is to contrast the terms, “social peace,” with “social anarchism;” we’re not against a peaceful social order, but you might say that our emphasis is on a just one, and therefore we incite and engage in social conflict. We do this with the recognition that capitalism can never be peaceful; the fact that it is a system which necessitates social hierarchy and unfulfilled basic needs means that it will always ultimately rely upon force or the threat thereof to maintain the current order. So regardless of whether or not we choose to fight back, we are being assaulted on a daily basis. So long as capitalism and hierarchy exist, this will be our reality, which is why they must ultimately be abolished through social revolution. What form it takes is another question altogether, but an old pamphlet from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or the “Wobblies” gives us a hint at an ideal situation:

The answer is that, as the I.W.W. conceives of the General Strike, it would be so perfectly organized by workers and technicians and effectually used that the feeding, supplying and transportation of [counter-revolutionary] armed mercenaries would be practically impossible. The strikes at Seattle and Winnipeg gave some indication of the ability of strikers to organize, picket and police their strike and, at the same time arrange for the adequate distribution of food stuffs to the population. As for machine guns, tanks, airplanes and bombs of asphyxiating or incendiary character, it is well to remember that such things are only available when they are manufactured and transported by labor… – Ralph Chaplin, “The General Strike,” 1933.

In other words, the better organized you are, the less violence is necessary or possible.

The best-known example of anarchist resistance to the status quo was the 1999 mobilization against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, WA. While a number of anarchists engaged in targeted property destruction, the main emphasis was on shutting down the entire downtown area where the WTO was holding its meetings. The latter of these tactics included street blockades, with approaches including both non-violent civil disobedience, as well as fighting back against police repression, and were carried out very much along anarchist or “anti-authoritarian” organizational models, as described above. As tens of thousands of people from all walks of life poured into the city-workers, students, poor farmers, queers, people of color, environmentalists and more-the state quickly realized that it was going to lose the “Battle of Seattle,” as it became known, which it finally did when the WTO meetings collapsed due to corporate delegates’ inability to do so much as move from one building to another, because the people were in control of the streets. Eventually, the National Guard was called in at the infuriated demands of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Attorney General Janet Reno, martial law was declared, and the world looked on in wonder as the most powerful government on the planet was reduced to declaring war on its own people. While many were injured and/or jailed, no one was killed and no one was convicted on serious charges, due to the creativity and solidarity of the people on the street and behind the scenes.(8) Whether it’s in the streets or at work or in your neighborhood, direct action is a way to get things done without going through official channels that are otherwise corrupt, or at best, inefficient. Not only is it practical, but it is also through direct action that we begin to recognize the unstable, weak position of the current power structures, and on the flip side, our own strength and potential.

Understanding our role in fomenting militant social movements as a path to revolution, the specific form my anarchism takes has to do with how best to interact with the rest of the world, specifically people who are struggling to improve their lives. It is through involvement in these struggles that we can become relevant to people outside our circles, and more importantly, to the people who will ultimately be the only ones who can make our vision for a better world a reality. Unlike many liberal and Marxist groups, the goal is not to become the center of the movement, or to force it in any one direction or the other. I do, however, very much make my views known, argue for them in discussions about strategy, and open up space for radical thought and militant action where there is none already. And again, radical democratic process is at the center of our orientation, and so this is something I push for in all activist work.

In the course of creating a new social order, there are inevitably people of other persuasions who want to see things move in a different direction. Some have very different ideas about what is and is not principled behavior, and sometimes, said parties are not as well-meaning as others. Therefore, I believe the final role of social anarchists is to minimize the influence of a minority over the majority; specifically fascists, liberal politicians, and some Marxist-Leninists of authoritarian persuasions on a case-by-case basis. It is my conviction that the inability of anarchists and similar revolutionaries to stem the influence of these factions has been the downfall of almost every modern revolution in history. On the other hand, we should be very careful not to exert undue influence over social movements beyond what has been described above.

With these tasks in mind, the question for social anarchists then is how to best organize ourselves, specifically as a grouping of anarchists involved in larger struggles that generally do not define themselves as “anarchist.” The inclination of many anarchists, even those who are very close to my thinking, is to form a grouping as loose as possible, while neglecting efficiency, self-discipline and unity. So on the one hand, I prioritize having a well-defined process and division of tasks (on a rotating basis) but on the other, I know that our ideas are constantly evolving, and to ensure that the group continues to exist as a force for good, we must cooperatively shape our understanding of the world around us. While independent thought and creativity need to be encouraged, we also must constantly discuss all the different political and theoretical questions concerning us in order to maintain our unity in action. Otherwise, we may wake up one day and find we have little in common, and no basis for collective activity.

Conclusion

I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, light for every intellect. I am convinced that the human history has not yet begun–that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused with rays of the new millennium. – Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian anarchist executed by the State of Massachusetts.

To be a revolutionary in the United States today, means that your history is constantly bearing down upon you, and the future is always coming at you too fast. As a result, we tend to be awfully… anxious much of the time. At the very least I know I am. But the most important part of this to grasp is recognizing your own power and agency. The dominant narrative says that we are all subjects of history, tossed about by forces beyond our control, or at best, some of us may rise to lead the nation to greatness by standing on the shoulders of the unwashed masses. In my mind, we are all potential agents for change, and the whole “Great Men of History” narrative is complete fallacy, be it Left, Right or Center. We can be agents of change in society, yes, but perhaps most importantly, change in the people around us. Societal change takes decades, but the up-close changes you see in the people you struggle alongside, that is something that is a testament to human potential, which is what this is really all about.

Notes

1. Fresia, Jerry. Toward an American Revolution. Cambridge, Ma.: South End Press, 1988.

2. Mercogliano, Chris. Making It Up as We Go Along: The Story of the Albany Free School. Portsmouth, NH.: Heinemann, 1998.

3. Albert, Michael. Parecon: Life After Capitalism. New York.: Verso, 2003.

4. Anonymous. “Common Sense Reasons for Worker Self-Management.” zinelibrary.info

5. Goldman, Emma. My Disillusionment in Russia. New York. : Crowell, 1970.

6. Malbin, Michael J. Life After Reform: When the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Meets Politics. Lanham, Md.: Rowland & Littlefield, 2003.

7. Andalusia. “Bolivian Anarchism and Indigenous Resistance.” www.leftturn.org October 14, 2007

8. Starhawk. “How We Really Shut Down the WTO.” www.starhawk.org December, 1999

Via Queers Without Borders

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By Dr. Charles Thorpe and Dr. Ian Welsh
From Anarchist Studies Volume 16, Number 1 2008

ABSTRACT

The authoritarian and ecologically destructive juggernaut of state-supported big science and technology in the twentieth century understandably fostered a deep pessimism and suspicion towards science and technology among many in the green, anarchist, and libertarian left milieu. This reaction has been crystallized in the “anti-civilization” primitivist anarchism of John Zerzan. In opposition to this drift towards primitivism, this paper argues that a vision of a liberatory and participative science and technology was an essential element of classical anarchism and that this vision remains vital to the development of liberatory political theory and praxis today. The paper suggests that an anarchist model of science and technology is implicit in the knowledge-producing and organizing activities of new social movements and is exemplified in recent developments in world, regional, and local social forums.

INTRODUCTION

This article develops an anarchist political theory of science and technology that highlights the latent forms of anarchist praxis present within a diverse range of social movement engagements with contemporary techno-science. We argue that there is a marked congruence between contemporary social movement engagement and the key concepts and principles underpinning anarchist writing on science and technology from the nineteenth century onwards.

By exploring the tensions and ambivalences in established anarchist approaches towards science (cf. Restivo 1994) we demonstrate that classical nineteenth-century anarchism emphasised the centrality of socially accountable science within libertarian thinking. Elements of this tradition are discernible in the emphasis on liberatory technics by twentieth-century writers such as Lewis Mumford, Murray Bookchin, and Paul Goodman. This later work on liberatory technics developed during a period dominated by state-sponsored big science. The twenty-first century, however, is dominated by neo-liberal ascendancy characterised by the early transfer of “near market” science to the private sector. This transition to a neo-liberal era requires clarification of, and debate on, the relationship of anarchism to science. Further, such debate must address the global movement milieu in which traditionally conceived social movements combine with network movement actors to form an antagonistic and proactive social force emphasising autonomy.

Important features of this movement milieu are unqualified opposition to: the alignment of capitalist and state forces through global institutions such as the World Bank and IMF; the military sequestration of public corporate scientific research and development (R&D) budgets; the imposition of “market solutions” across all areas of “public provision” and the pursuit of modernisation agendas which simultaneously degrade ecological and human integrity. Global social movements also challenge the prevailing cognitive order by defining key knowledge stakes regarded as vital to “the other worlds that are possible”. The recognition and respect for difference is a central part of these linked political and epistemological objectives raising significant challenges for conceptions of science based on universal laws. Key questions explored here are what does the philosophical and political tradition of anarchism have to contribute to such contemporary challenges to dominant social-epistemic orders and is there a theory of science embedded in anarchist political thought that is relevant and applicable to contemporary struggles?

Given the continuing importance of science to modern states and the neo-liberal “global knowledge economy”, a critical anarchist theory of science and technology needs to overcome the limitations within various forms of “primitivism” exemplified by the writings of John Zerzan (1996). Zerzan’s criticisms of alienation in modern life and of the nihilism of contemporary technological culture are trenchant. But, from this critique, Zerzan leads his readers to a quasi-religious ideal of a return to a wild Eden (cf. Aufheben, 1995). Primitiism neglects the anarchist intellectual tradition examined here.

Rather than a return to simpler technics, we argue that the ideas and the epistemic practices of contemporary social movements constitute the basis for non-totalising forms of scientific knowledge and scientific practices resonating with anarchist emphases on decentralisation, horizontal structures, and diversity. This emergent anarchist or proto-anarchist politics of science and technology is necessary to transcend the limits of contemporary state-corporate science which has reached a “plateau” (Mumford 1934/1972) encountering “paradigm limits”, which can only be transcended through alternative epistemic practices consistent with the autonomous self-organization of society.

We deliberately re-emphasise the potential for the socially shaped and negotiated “democratic technics” advanced by Mumford (1964). As Bookchin argued, resistance to authoritarian science and technology makes the formulation of an alternative liberatory conceptualization of science a critical political task. Indeed, whilst many contemporary social struggles are perceived as against established science, they also contain liberatory promise and alternative epistemic practices and priorities. Such struggles hold out the promise of a liberatory science with an affinity toward anarchist modes of self-organization as an increasingly diverse range of citizens learn to combine observational, recording, and analytical capacities constituting a potential for proactive grassroots initiatives. An anarchistic organization of science requires such decentralized, network-ordered and bottom-up cognitive and material structures consistent with the political of anarchist(ic) social freedom.

SCIENCE, STATIST MODERNITY AND OPPOSITIONAL MOVEMENTS

Our contemporary focus combined with the use of anarchist theory from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries makes a concise account of key state-science-society relations important for purposes of clarity. This section not only identifies key analytical objectives but also offers some explanation for the retreat from anarchist accounts of liberatory science and technology into primitivism.

The centuries-old relationship between science and the military and political power of the state (Carroll 2006, Bennet and Johnston 1996) was transformed with the scientization of warfare during the twentieth century. Unprecedented levels of state funding of science, combined with large bureaucratic establishments, marked a transition to big science (Galison & Hevly 1992). Big science is widely theorised as part of a “military-industrial complex” and best known for the atomic bomb and large-scale civilian nuclear power programmes; and it requires cadres of technocratic experts to administer complex systems. The “success” of the US Manhattan project in building an atomic bomb (Welsh, 2000; Thorpe, 2004, 2006) and the subsequent application of general systems theory within post-war military nuclear projects were central in consolidating and aligning politics and science around a shared belief in technocratic solutions to problems of both technical and social order. Faith in the institutional ability of science to ensure progress by producing technical and social order, the use of scientific prowess as a measure of state legitimacy and the importance of technology as a strategic state resource resulted in a period of “peak modernity” (Welsh 2000).

The commitment to large-scale techno-scientific approaches was not confined to the West but found forms of expression within Soviet Communism. Despite ideological differences and clear distinguishing features such as Lysenkoism, the commitment to national techno-scientific projects in the US and the USSR had many similarities. In both West and East nuclear techno-science agendas in particular were pursued irrespective of local opposition, general population risks, and scientific uncertainty by utilising secrecy and surveillance techniques combined with high profile symbolic declarations of national prominence and world leadership. The associated practices included denying any significant risks from the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and asserting the categorical safety of nuclear reactors, whilst at the same time injecting unknowing citizens with plutonium to assess the actual health effects (Welsome, 1999).

The sciences most closely intertwined with the military-industrial complex were characterized by increasing technological dependence upon the state as the scale, complexity, and cost of the necessary apparatus increased exponentially. Science became deeply embedded within the state-military nexus as an expression of a hierarchical social order extending far into the fabric of civil society. The rise of corporate big science – often in partnership with state big science projects – grew in the post-war era. In the late twentieth century the ascendancy of neo-liberalism resulted in the transfer of “near market science” to the public sector and “free market competition” replaced ideological competition. Neo-liberal ascendancy consolidated state sponsorship of computing and bio-technology within the knowledge economy whilst the cost of pursuing big science physics agendas like nuclear fusion required multi-state partnerships.

A free market/multi-state phase shift reconfiguring techno-science has taken place whilst residual examples of multi-state big science persist. Near market sciences, like human genetic engineering, thus carry both technical and social risks through the exercise of individual market choices raising the prospect of “neo-liberal eugenics” (Habermas 2003). Simultaneously, state legal and security resources are used to protect companies and research facilities linking environmental activism with terrorism (Welsh 2007) as global trade agreements structure and secure global markets for GM crops.

Critical commentary on the associated science and technics in all but this most recent phase shift are well established within the anarchist canon. Lewis Mumford captured the essential features of the centralised high-modern state and large-scale complex technological systems with his notions of “authoritarian technics” and “the megamachine” (Mumford 1964). Deeply affected by the use of the atomic bomb, Mumford argued that democratic culture was being eroded by the development of socio-technological systems embedding authoritarian relations of command and control and the rise of centralised global power over life and death (Mumford 1953). The existence of nuclear weapons states led by men able to unleash devastation threatening centuries of human civilization called for an urgent re-ordering of relations between science and society. Mumford’s central guide to this re-ordering was the evaluation of all scientific and technical developments in terms of the potential to enhance life and human welfare and “the restoration of the organic, the human and the personal to a central place in economics” (Mumford 1954: 290).

Mumford’s emphasis upon agency in the face of the megamachine deserves re-examination within the contemporary milieu where the totalising accounts of science and technology as technique, such as those of Jacques Ellul, tend to dominate. Ellul’s notion of “autonomous technique” (Ellul 1965) and its centrality to what he saw – after Nietzsche – as that “coldest of all cold monsters”, the modern state (Ellul 1988: 2) are important. However, the influential focus on autonomous technique as the precursor of “autonomous technology” (Winner 1978) pre-empts the potential for social shaping of techno-science, neglecting the ways in which social actors reject, subvert and hybridise techniques vital to state-corporate initiatives (Welsh 2000: 26-27).

The techno-scientific projects of peak modernity drew on cultural narratives of rational progress which simultaneously legitimised state authority. State-centric attempts to mobilise modernity stalled in the latter part of the twentieth century as the associated narratives were increasingly undercut and challenged by new social movements, confronted by technological disasters such as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. The increased public awareness of risk, and the fiscal burden that continued support for big science imposed on states. The decline of the nuclear industry in Britain and the US in the latter decades of the twentieth century vividly illustrates the erosion of legitimacy of narratives and forms of peak modernity. Welsh (2000) has demonstrated how the epistemic issues underpinning this process were initially formalised by citizens at a local level during the 1950s before accumulating sufficient social force to counter official pronouncements and thereby making social acceptability a central feature of science policy.

Rather than the universal acceptance of technique and the imposition of autonomous technology it is important not to lose sight of science and technology as socially contested and socially constructed enterprises. The process of contestation and construction is continuous and iterative in practise and difficult to divide up into distinct phases. Zygmunt Bauman, for example, has argued that the collapse of the USSR represented “the end of modernity, because what collapsed was the most decisive attempt to make modernity work” (Bauman 1992: 222). Whilst the end of the Cold War also threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the American military-industrial complex and associated big science projects, pronouncements of the death of modernity were premature. Modernity was in effect reinvented in the guise of neo-liberal market efficiency and rationality recasting state alignment with techno-science. The pursuit of post-Cold War American hegemony beginning with the first Gulf War in 1990 and the post 9/11 “war on terror” have seen the construction of new “grand narratives” and renewed state support for science as a component of the military-industrial complex, with projects from the missile shield to “total information awareness”. In the European Union, the bio-society was initially defined as “the conscious management of self-organizing systems for sustenance and enrichment of human life and purposes” and vital to the knowledge economy (Green & Griffith-Jones 1984:9). The mapping of the human genome in 2000 implicitly extends the potential for management and efficiency to human life itself (Welsh 2007a).

The contemporary situation is thus characterised both by the attempt to re-legitimise techno-scientific state projects of “peak modernity”, such as nuclear power, and promote emergent market forms of techno-science. The accompanying grand narratives simultaneously support state power and the efficacy of the market. The failure of these new grand narratives (whether the export of “democracy”, or biotech visions of progress associated with GMOs) to become hegemonic owes much to the challenges posed by social movements. The scientific and technocratic claims of neo-liberalism in economics, development, R&D, and wider social policy domains have been increasingly challenged and contested by established and emergent collective actors. From trades unions to a third generation of social movements of advancing a non-representational politics prioritising direct interest representation and action there are few areas of the so-called Washington consensus that have not been challenged (Chesters & Welsh 2006, Notes from Nowhere 2003).

Whilst the vitality of this movement of movements is attributed to the “new anarchists” (Graeber 2002) and actively addressed within contemporary anarchist debates (e.g. Welsh & Purkis 2003, Chesters 2003) the contemporary relationship between anarchism and techno-science receives little attention. We aim to redress this by showing how the key concepts and analytical concerns of Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin relate to the work of twentieth-century writers emphasising the liberatory potential of science and technology and by examining contemporary examples of engagements with techno-science.

BAKUNIN’S CRITIQUE OF THE “SAVANTS”

Bakunin’s most systematic sociology of knowledge appears in his 1871 essay God and the State (Bakunin 1970). The essay presents a classic critique of religion as ideology and alienation, exposing the function of religion in pacifying society, mystifying social relations, and legitimating domination by elites. However, what makes God and the State as intellectually original, and provides its chief continuing relevance is Bakunin’s analysis of science and the relationship between science and the revolutionary project of anarchism.

The primary targets of Bakunin’s critique of science were Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, both of whom Bakunin saw as constructing blueprints for the government of society by “scientific” elites (or as Bakunin labelled them, “savants”). The idea of scientists as a “new priesthood” put forward by Comte as a programme for social and political reform was adopted as a critical term by Bakunin. The idea of a scientific priesthood for Bakunin epitomized the potential for science to become a force of hierarchy and reaction. Bakunin saw similar authoritarian and reactionary potential in Marx’s notion of “scientific socialism”, particularly when combined with the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This combination, Bakunin argued, would tend towards the dictatorship of intellectuals and bureaucrats, justified as acting on behalf of the proletariat. These were not just critiques of the particular political programmes of Comte and Marx, but more broadly applicable formulations of a “new class theory”, i.e., a theory of the potential for intellectuals and knowledge elites to constitute themselves as a new dominant class (King and Szelenyi 2004, esp. 21-34). We would suggest that Bakunin’s critique of government-by-science and his political scepticism regarding expert authority can be applied not only to Comtean and Marxian social engineering, but also to the ways in which the natural sciences have frequently been partnered with the state in the government of both natural and social orders.

Bakunin celebrates science as a humanizing force expressive of humanity’s break with its animal origins, and indeed a rebellious force overturning traditional and religious preconceptions (Bakunin 1970: 20-21). Yet he suggests that over time, science has tended to become routinized and incorporated into structures of power: a process akin to Max Weber’s “routinization of charisma”. The revolutionary prophet of science gives way to the institutionalized member of a new scientific priesthood.

Bakunin made a distinction between the absolute laws of nature discovered by science and the laws of government: the former being descriptive, the latter prescriptive (cf. Morris 1993: 130-131). Laws of nature, he suggested, encompassed not only causal regularities of Newtonian physisc, but also regularities of human behaviour and patterns of history (although the “science of history” was in its infancy). Nevertheless, Bakunin rejected any role for scientists as philosopher kings, as a Baconian-Comtean “learned academy”, or as Marxist scientific party intellectuals, handing down directives to the masses based on knowledge of these natural and social regularities (Bakunin 1970: 30-31). In rejecting these institutionalizations of scientific authority, he provided the key insights of his political theory of science.

Bakunin asserts that there is a difference between accepting a fact of nature based on one’s individual reason and sense experience, and accepting it on the basis of deference to the authority of the expert. But his critique is more complex and sophisticated than just the liberal empiricist idea that individuals should trust experience over authority. He recognized that it is not always possible to rely on one’s own senses and that there therefore exists a cognitive division of labour. So his writing acknowledges the “authority” of a variety of “savants” or experts whilst emphasising that the acceptance of this authority is an act of individual rationality, not subordination (Bakunin 1970: 33). The key distinction is between being “an authority” and being “in authority” (Friedman 1990: 76-80). The scientific thinker is legitimately “an authority” in their field, but the Comtean idea of the “new priesthood” illegitimately seeks to place scientific intellectuals “in authority” as rulers of society.

Bakunin argues that any attempt to translate scientific knowledge into governmental omniscience faces insuperable barriers. These are firstly limits on the knowledge of any individual. There can be no “universal man”, no genuine polymath (Bakunin 1970: 34). The growth and increasing complexity of the stock of knowledge makes us increasingly interdependent, fostering mutual aid. But even more fundamentally for Bakunin, it is one thing to know abstract science, but it is another thing to apply that science to life.

This distinction between science and life is the key axis around which Bakunin’s epistemology and sociology of science and his defence of freedom against the dominance of experts turns (Knowles 2002: 10-11). Science is abstract and general, but life is concrete and particular. For Bakunin, “[s]cience comprehends the thought of the reality, not reality itself; the thought of life, not life. That is its limit, its only really insuperable limit” (Bakunin 1970: 54). All knowledge is mediated through human perceptual and interpretative faculties, introducing an inescapable element of contingency. The ordering of the world into categories involves a process of abstraction. Such abstraction is necessary for the generation of knowledge, but we ought not to think that our abstract acounts of reality can capture the complexity of reality itself (Bakunin 1970: 54-55).

For Bakunin, this gulf between science and life means that the technocratic ideal of a society legislated for and ordered by savants would be unworkable (as well as being tyrannical). The Comtean ideal of a system of government based on a universal science of sociology runs into the problem of the inherent limits of abstract social science faced with the particularity of individuals within society:

Positive science, recognizing its absolute inability to conceive real individuals and interest itself in their lot, must definitely and absolutely renounce all claim to the government of societies; for if it should meddle therein, it would only sacrifice continually the living men whom it ignores to the abstractions which constitute the object of its legitimate preoccupations (Bakunin 1970: 60-61).

Individual freedom eludes the determinism of scientific law precisely because of the particularity and concreteness of the individual which escapes abstraction. The complexity and richness of the concrete and particular life always escapes scientific description: “Life,” Bakunin writes, “is wholly fugitive and temporary, but also wholly palpitating with reality and individuality, sensibility, sufferings, joys, aspirations, needs, and passions” (Bakunin 1970: 55). All science, whether natural or social, is inherently limited by its abstractness.

However, Bakunin suggests that the scientific intellectual is wedded to abstractness, indeed that the very mark of such an intellectual is the fetishism of abstract knowledge. This fetishism can involve the confusion of description for reality, in the assumption that life is just as it is described by science. It can involve also the privileging of abstract knowledge over concrete life. For this reason, Bakunin describes scientific intellectuals, alongside theologians, as “priests of abstractions” (Bakunin 1970: 59-60). He suggests that the scientific intellectual posits abstact or codified knowledge as superior to concrete life in a similar manner to the fetishism of religious doctrine or of a transcendent divine order. The fetishism of abstract knowledge constitutes a social group of intellectuals, a new priesthood, outside and above concrete life. Science has been ‘constituted outside of life, it is represented by a privileged body; and…it has posited itself as an absolute and final object of all human development” (Bakunin 1970: 60).

The prioritisation of abstract knowledge over concrete life tends towards the governance of the concrete, particular, and quotidian by the representatives of abstraction. Further, Bakunin suggests that where the gap between scientific abstract ideas and reality becomes apparent, the scientific priesthood attempts to mould reality in the image of the abstract idea. As science feels its “vital impotence” (Bakunin 1970: 55) in the face of the intractable complexity of life, it seeks to discipline life (social life and nature) to fit its abstract models. Hence, the scientific will to knowledge becomes a will to power. Science becomes, therefore, “the perpetual immolation of life, fugitive, temporary, but real, on the altar of eternal abstractions” (Bakunin 1970: 57). For Bakunin, vivisection, as a literal sacrifice of life, embodied this tendency. Whilst Bakunin thought it “well nigh certain that a savant would not dare to treat a man today as he treats a rabbit”, he suggested that if science was denied access to “the bodies of individuals, they will ask nothing better than to perform [experiments] on the social body”

Bakunin’s ue of experiments “on the social body” was aimed at Comtean and Marxian schemes to reorder society according to a social scientific model. However, a 21st century perspective extends the scope of the idea with critical science studies scholars in India using the term “vivisectionism” to refer to the Western project of dominating nature through science and technology in combination with a colonial arrogance, as exemplified in the Bhopal disaster (Nandy, 1988). The big science ambitions of democratic states have resulted in experiments on citizens such as injecting human subjects with doses of plutonium and ordering soldiers to march towards atomic mushroom cloods akin to those which Bakunin thought even the savant would eschew (Welcome, 1999; Moreno, 2000). Experiments on the social body have been conducted by both social and natural scientists. High-risk, complex technological systems such as nuclear power stations are always “real-world experiments” since theoretical laboratory-based models can neither adequately predict the complex interactions of their components with the subjectivity of human operators nor the behaviour of radionuclides in open environments. Significant reactor accidents at Windscale in 1957, Three MIle Island in 1979, and Chernobyl in 1986 all involved gaps in scientific and/or technical knowledge, combined with operator actions or errors, underlining the way in which modern techno-science routinely jeopardises the natural and social world (Krolin and Weingart, 1987; Weingart, 1991, Welsh 2000). The introduction of genetically modified organisms into open ecological systems is similarly an experiment conducted in and with the real natural and social world (Levidow 2007).

Further, Bakunin’s idea of attempts to subjugate life to abstract ideas could be applied to the techno-scientific re-engineering of nature. The reduction of ecological complexity to monoculture in agricultural biotechnology, which reaches its apotheosis in cloning (Bowring 2003), brings to mind Bakunin’s statement that “every time that scientific men, emerging from their abstract world, mingle with living creation in the real world, all that they propose or create is poor, ridiculously abstract, bloodless and lifeless, still-born.” (Bakunin 1970: 55). Whether intended or not, a powerful and strikingly contemporary ecological message can be found in Bakunin’s conception of “life”, just as it can be found also in Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid (1902).

This dominatory aspect of modern science, for Bakunin, derived from its hierarchical organization and relationship to the broader society. In that sense, Bakunin was describing what Bookchin termed an “epistemology of rule” – structures of thought or “mentalities” that are patterned after and reinforce “lines of command and obedience” (Bookchin 1982: 89). The separateness of science from life and the quest of science to master life, derive, Bakunin suggests, from the position of science in a structure of social hierarchy and domination. The impulse toward the domination of life is driven by the existence of science as a privileged class or professional monopoly, with institutionalized interests in maintainig hierarchy and power (Bakunin 1970: 63).

TOWARD A LIBERATORY SCIENCE

Bakunin called for “the revolt of life against science, or rather against the government of science” (Bakunin 1970: 59, emphases in original). But he explained that what he meant was “not to destroy science – that would be high treason to humanity – but to remand it to its place” (Bakunin 1970: 59). Remanding science to its place means abolishing the hierarchical relationship between science and the life of society. Against the monopolisation of scientific knowledge by a priestly hierarchy, Bakunin urged a Reformation of science targeting the established social institutions which simultaneously consolidate its power base and ossify its theories.

The tension between recognizing science as “indispensable to the rational organization of society”, on the one hand, and strenuously avoiding government by science, on the other, can, Bakunin says, “be solved only in one way: by the liquidation of science as a moral being existing outside the life of all.” Instead, science “must be spread among the masses”. This social democratization of science, Bakunin suggests, will tend to break down the epistemic separation of knowledge from life: “it will become one in fact with the immediate and real life of all individuals.” Through this process of democratization, science can begin to play its genuine historical role as “the property of everybody”, science can “represent society’s collective consciousness” (Bakunin 1970: 62).

But is Bakunin’s conception of a democratized science and the dissolution of the divide between science and life merely utopian fantasy? Bakunin suggested that rebelling bourgeois students could act as “fraternal instructors of the people” (Bakunin 1970: 64). Yet, characteristically, he left the detail of an anarchistic organization of science unspecified. The key concrete measure discussed is the extension of scientific education to the mass of the population and the development of an “integral education” breaking down the division between mental and manual work (Bakunin 1869). This is consistent with anarchist aversion to laying out blueprints and the desire to let emancipated people discover modes of association for themselves. Bakunin probably thought that a liberatory science would organically emerge from a society in which hierarchy had been dissolved. Yet, it is clear to us that the development of liberatory and participatory forms of science and technology cannot be projected idealistically into the future, but must develop simultaneously and hand-in-hand with any broader liberatory movement. As we go on to argue below, participatory forms are indeed discernible within contemporary social movement milieux.

Whilst liberal thinkers such as the American philosopher John Dewey call for the dissemination of scientific knowledge, method, and habits throughout the polity, Bakunin’s vision was that science itself would be transformed in this process with radical democratization fundamentally reordering the epistemic values and goals of science and the relationship between theory and phenomena. So whereas liberal philosophers have frequently treated science as a model polity, for Bakunin, science and its epistemic values were to be modelled on (and thereby assimilated into) the ideal polity.

The notion of the transformation of science in line with anarchist principles is also found in the work of Peter Kropotkin. As a naturalist, Kropotkin emphasized the role of scientific knowledge in providing an empirical and theoretical foundation for anarchist political ideas (Todes 1993, Morris 2002, 2003). To Kropotkin, the political ideal of mutual aid could be scientifically demonstrated to ba a fundamental principle of nature, in that way naturalizing the anarchist polity. He asserted that anarchism as a political movement was founded on scientific principles: “Anarchism is a world-concept based on a a mechanical explanation of all phenomena…its method of investigation is that of the exact natural sciences, and…every conclusion it comes to must be verified by the method by which every scientific conclusion must be verified” (Kropotkin 1976: 60).

His rejection of metaphysics and the Hegelian and Marxist dialectic favored “natural-scientific method based on induction and deduction” (Kropotkin 1976: 62). Much of his discussion of science in “Modern Science and Anarchism” appears to be naive empiricism and hints at latter-day logical positivism (however, see Morris 2003). But in other ways, Kropotkin’s views on science can be seen to echo Bakunin’s. Kropotkin’s avowed privileging of the inductive method – building theory via the accumulation of empirical evidence and subjecting it to empirical verification – can be seen as equivalent to Bakunin’s prioritization of concrete life over abstract theory. So, while Kropotkin describes anarchism as following the scientific method, he also asserts that “the anarchist movement sprang up in response to the lessons of actual life and originated from the practical tendencies of events.” Anarchism was not an attempt to model politics and society on theory; rather, it “originated…from the demands of practical life” (Kropotkin 1976: 64,63). Interestingly, the inductive method also mirrors the structure of Kropotkin’s ideal political structure of anarchist federalism. Just as in an anarchist federation of communes, where primacy is given to the grassroots, in the cognitive structure of induction – the concrete grassroots of observation is privileged over the autocracy of high theory. Kropotkin could therefore be seen to be constructing a conception of science congruent with the political order of anarchism.

It is also clear that Kropotkin shares Bakunin’s view that the professional monopoly of sciency by the “savants” has to be broken. So, despite his assertion of the close relationship between science and anarchism, Kropotkin emphasized that “[n]ot out of the universities…does anarchism come…anarchism was born among the people; and it will continue to be full of life and creative power only as long as it remains a thing of the people” (Kropotkin 1976: 57). Science was not born among the people: “most [men of science] either belong by descent to the possessing classes and are steeped in the prejudices of their class, or else are in the actual serivce of the government” (Kropotkin 1976: 57). But Kropotkin thought that science too had to become “a thing of the people”. In other words, the possessing classes had to be dispossessed of science. Like Bakunin, Kropotkin saw that the social extension of science required its epistemic transformation. Crucially, this would require and make possible the breakdown of the division between mental and manual labour, the “pretext” (Kropotkin 1998: 169), around which science was constructed in class society resulting in a fundamental distortion of the scientific ideal (Kropotkin 1927: 101). Whilst the early modern science of Galileo and Newton “did not despise manual work and handicraft” (Kropotkin 1998: 169), modern science becomes compromised through the class-based separation of science from manual labour and the related distinction between pure and applied science. Kropotkin therefore calls for the collective and popular organization of scientific work (Kropotkin 1998: 182; Smith, 1989). For Kropotkin, science should not be the property of an elite, but a participatory-democratic activity practised in common in free association. In this way, Kropotkin, like Bakunin, sought to root science in life, and in the common life of society.

Bakunin’s critique of a science separate from life also finds more recent echo in Murray Bookchin’s The Ecology of Freedom. Bakunin’s protest of life against a mechanized, hierarchical, and alienating science is ecologized by Bookchin. Bookchin puts forward an epistemology that privileges the concreteness of nature against abstractions of theory or reductionism in language reminiscent of Bakunin, Bookchin writes: “To recover the supremacy of the concrete – with its rich wealth of qualities, differentia and solidity – over and beyond a transcendental concept of science as method is to slap the face of an arrogant intellectualism with the ungloved hand of reality” (Bookchin 1982: 308). Bookchin’s presentation is even vaguer than Bakunin’s or Kropotkin’s when it comes to setting out what this new approach would actually entail. Presumably, Bookchin, with his influences from Hegel and Marx, would not accept a narrowly empiricist or inductivist account of science as just the accumulation of facts. His presentation in The Ecology of Freedom is somewhat allusive. Nevertheless, Bookchin sums up the essential purpose and spirit of the anarchist engagement with science when he asserts that the critique of existing science does not entail a flight to irrationalism: “Just as we can justifiably distinguish between an authoritarian and a libertarian technics, so too can we distinguish between authoritarian and libertarian modes of reason” (Bookchin 1982: 302-303).

Bookchin has little to say about how this liberatory science would be organised, although it is fair to assume that the breaking down of professional monopoly is a requisite for him also, following from his firm rejection of any “environmentalistic technocracy” (Bookchin 1982: 314). Sociologist of science Brian Martin has set out more concrete and practical proposals for achieving an anarchistic approach to science. He has made practical proposals for activists to confront, challenge, and debunk expert testimony (Martin 1991) and has gone some way to setting out an “anarchist science policy” aimed precisely at rescuing science from “professional monopoly”. Like Bakunin and Kropotkin, Martin is optimistic about the possibility of a science collectivized, popularised, and distributed as a common “self-managing” social activity. Martin’s work emphasises the significance of social movement actors as social forces constitutive of a peoples science, capable of challenging technocratic legitimations of state agencies. His work thus highlights the importance of the interaction between such actors and the prevailing institutional structures of science (Martin 1979, 1980, 1994).

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND SCIENCE

A philosophical manifesto for new social movement engagement with science, and an updating of some of Bakunin’s key arguments, can be seen in the work of the philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend. Whilst Feyerabend’s work on the philosophy and history of science is best known for the catchphrase “anything goes”, (Feyerabend 1975/80), his response to the ensuing debates, Science in a Free Society (Feyerabend 1978/82), remains less well known. In this book, he self-identifies as an “epistemological anarchist” but not as an advocate of “political anarchism”. Despite this, Science in a Free Society does go beyond epistemology to develop a libertarian political philosophy of science.

Feyerabend’s writing pre-figured contemporary debates and experiments in citizen science, arguing that “participating in citizens’ initiatives” was the minimum requirement to achieve wisdom and justice in dealings in this area (Feyerabend 1982: 107). His argument that “[l]aymen can and must supervise science” (Feyerabend 1982: 96-97) recognised that discipline-based scientific knowledge acting in conjunction with other influences of “standpoint” (e.g. employment in particular commercial, industrial, or political organisations) tended towards a closed circuit of elite communication. His point that “[o]nly rarely does it occur to them that it is not their business but the business of those immediately concerned to decide the matter” (Feyerabend 1982: 118) recognises the anarchist principle of direct representation (Franks 2003).

Mature democratic behaviour “is learned by active participation in decisions that are still to be made” (Feyerabend 1982: 87) based on the disclosure of all available and necessary information and due time for the necessary deliberation, however frustrating the necessary timescales may be for technocratic and authoritarian demands for snap decision-making. This process of iterative and incremental learning and transformative engagement is Feyerabend’s preferred mode of social change towards his free society rather than revolution (Feyerabend 1982: 107). Again, this is consistent with the elements of the anarchist tradition reflected in the emphasis on libertarian education as a path for social change, for example in Francisco Ferrer, or the peaceful gradualism advocated by anarchist thinkers such as Paul Goodman (Woodcock, 1986 and Ward 1982). Popular engagement and deliberation in relation to science and technology could be regarded as a potential feature of what George Lawson has termed “negotiated revolution” (2005).

Epistemologically, Feyerabend recognised that there are many sciences with different sets of standards and rules (Feyerabend 1982: 23), arguing that scientific practitioners should act as guides to, rather than authorities on, their specific terrains within open deliberative forums. As guide, a practitioner’s role includes recognition of the limits of established theorising and the necessity of developing new methods and means of engagement. Recognising the limitation of scientific models, particularly in the face of complex open systems, results in the common-sense view that theoretical or laboratory science is insufficient to render social and political decisions, which depend much more on practical reason.

Further, in posthumously published work, Feyerabend advances a critique of the fetishism of abstract knowledge which echoes Bakunin’s critique in God and the State. The echo is presumably unwitting, although the Hegelian notion of “totality” seems to be a shared influence. Conceptual and theoretical abstractions, Feyerabend argues, remove entities from the totality in which they exist. When abstract knowledge is fetishized and reified “the remains are called ‘real’, which means they are regarded as more important than the totality itseld” (Feyerabend 1999: 5). As one interpreter of Feyerabend’s account puts it:

There is no escape: understanding a subject means transforming it, lifting it out of a natural habitat and inserting it into a model or theory or a poetic accout of it.” What Feyerabend objects to is the commitment to the results of this procedure of abstraction as a reality, to the exclusion not only of other abstractions…but of features of experience that may be important to us for many sorts of reasons (Munevar 2002: 522).

This is strikingly close to Bakunin’s account of “life” as constantly escaping attempts to capture it through abstract reasoning. And it has a political implication in line with Bakunin’s emphasis on the need to “remand science to its place” through breaking down institutionalized hierarchies of epistemic authority. The critique of abstraction supports Feyerabend’s earlier claims for democratic involvement of laypeople, and supports the kinds of initiatives carried forward by new social movements. For these initiatives operate precisely to counteract the tendency by professionals to fetishize abstractions. So Feyerabend’s decentring – not rejection – of scientific authority supports the argument that the voices of the citizens’ initiatives do not have to be expressed in the language and terms of established scientific disciplines. The declaratory posture of citizen groups formalises sets of claims and relationships which in a democratic society should be granted legitimacy and access to the necessary resources required to evaluate them.

Feyerabend’s account of lay supervision of science has little to say about how these social forces can be constituted, i.e. what types of collective action can generate momentum towards an inclusive democratic process of the kind which he advocates. Since Feyerabend wrote, however, there has been an explosion i the kind of incremental citizen initiatives he proposed and a consideration of this experience permits some modification of an anarchist praxis for a participatory public science.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, SCIENCE, THE ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH

Environmental integrity and human health are co-dependent and the increasing synergy between environmental and health social movements (Brown and Zavestoski 2004) through justice frames underlines this point (Plows & Boddington 2006). Anarchism’s ambivalent relationship with science (Restivo 1994) is reflected in activists’ experience and practices in both areas. Whilst establishment depictions of publics as “innovation resistant” may be ideologically useful they are difficult to sustain. Sociologist of science, Steve Yearley, is amongst those who show that environmental movements employ scientific techniques to challenge and contest dominant epistemological claims made by science (Yearly 1991). Increasingly patient groups are recognised as examples of “collective action” playing a critical role in defining relevant scientific knowledge (Rabeharisoa & Callon 2004). Such movements draw on, mobilize, and give social force to scientific knowledge claims while simultaneously challenging commercial and industrial interests, established hierarchies within and between scientific professions, regulatory, and political authorities. In terms of our argument, cases like these underline the importance of direct interest representation in the definition of scientific stakes and the scientific work necessary to explore them.

Within the sociology of science, the notion of the “co-production” of knowledge and political order (Jasanoff ed. 2004; cf. Shapin and Schaffer 1985), combined with the notion of social or political imaginaries (Ezrahi 2004), are prominent approaches addressing citizen involvement. Whilst there is a great deal of value within these approaches, it is important to recognise the dominance within such work of abstract social science categories such as “the citizen”, “democracy” and “polity”. A paradox thus arises as the “citizen” whose participation is sought can also be the “citizen” feared as the source of a public backlash against science.

Such fears are particularly prominent in the UK folowing categorical, though false, political assurances about the safety of humans consuming beef during the BSE outbreak, and subsequent media portrayals of GM crops as “Frankenstein Food” (Hughes 2007). Ezrahi argues that “contemporary mass electronic media culture” is central in “spreading public distrust of public authorities and institutions and the decline of mass political activism”, undermining the epistemological and institutional authority of science (Ezrahi 2004: 272-273).

Depicting a “crisis” in the social authority of science as a contemporary phenomenon constituted through changes in techniques of visual representation overlooks the historically contested power relations surrounding science-society relations. Beyond issues of science communication and representation the more fundamental issue is to realise the “other science” advanced within the anarchist canon. This has the consequence of differentiating the inclusive liberal notion of the citizen, disaggregating a public or general good, and foregrounding significant biological and social differences. Sciences thus interact with publics differentially constituted through age, “race” gender, sexuality and class as well as spatial-ecological location and differing belief and value systems. Universal laws of science and universally applicable regulatory models simultaneously confront difference and the increasing capacity to communicate knowledge associated with difference via electronic media. Numerous case studies within the sociology of science (e.g. Tesh 2000) reveal how environmental social movement actors operate against scientific and regulatory stances based on high order abstractions claimed to be the basis of universal standards underpinning global regulatory reach (Welsh 2000). The basic principle in such contestations is the prioritisation of situated (Haraway 1995) or local knowledge (Wynne 1996) frequently based upon the empirical observation of categories excluded or inadequately incorporated into abstract theoretical models, models which are frequently used as the basis of complex computer-based simulations or predictive mathematical equations. Tesh, for ecample, details how activists accumulated data on cancer incidence in the USA based on local observation resulting in revisions to Federal level “gold standard” regulation.

In these conflicts we can see the tensions between a science of life which acknowledges the specificity of local conditions and relations and the science of abstract universal law or statistical average (McKechnie 1996). Independent direct observation and popular epidemiology (Brown 1992) can often challenge the dominant wisdom consolidated within the institutions of science inhabited by the contemporary descendants of Bakunin’s “savants”. “Radiological protection” is one of the better-documented examples.

Epidemiologist Alice Stewart’s examination of the medical records of women subject to x-ray examination during pregnancy revealed a correspondence between exposure to radiation and foetal abnormalities confounding International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) dose response models (Greene 2001). Stewart’s work suggested that the linear threshold dose model used to set official radiological protection standards ignored low-level dose effects. The idea of a threshold dose, beneath which no health effects attributable to radiation occurred, was central to the global regulatory regime covering nuclear facilities. Abandoning the threshold model and adopting more stringent standards had major implications for the economic viability of nuclear power and state liability to military personnel. Stewart and other scientists associated with the low-level radiation case became the subject of a classic scientific “controversy” verging on professional vilification lasting decades. At the same time as Stewart was collecting data on the medical uses of radiation, managers at the UK’s nuclear weapons site at Windscale, Cumbria were deliberately discharging significant amounts of radiation into the environment to enable scientific assessment (Caulfied 1990: 218-219). Stewart’s work finally received open acknowledgement within the radiological community in 2006, by which time a combination of viral contagion and poulation mobility was being used to officially explain cancer clusters around nuclear installations. Stewart’s methodology stands as a clear example of how the systematic assessment of individual cases can result in findings which confound those derived from quantitative statistical techniques.

In the UK, long-standing engagement with radiological protection issues through groups like the Low Level Radiation Campaign, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and numerous “anti-nuclear alliances” has included the independent collection of data, often in collaboration with university-based teams. Such work has related to radon gas within homes, tritium levels in fish and fruit and strontium levels in children’s milk teeth. Combined with the associated media attention it has attracted, such work has been part of the background to the institutional re-evaluation of radiological protection standards. Like many other “radical” causes in the UK, an insider, in this case the former Government Minister Michael Meacher, played a key role.

Meacher established the Committee Examining the Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) “on a balanced basis with all oposing views fully represented” by Chris Busby, a physical chemist by training and member of Green Audit (Busby 1995, 2007). The combination of independent observation, critical science, and this advocacy cannot be separated from the subsequent revisions in the official dose models for tritium derived from ICRP models by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) (Edwards 1999, Fairlie 1992). Differences over the required magnitude of revisions in radiological protection standards, the necessary programme of further scientific work, and the need to adopt a precautionary approach in the facing of uncertainty, were formalised in a “minority report” (CERRIE Minority Report: 2004).

Such critical scientific moves remain isolated within epistemic communities unless they become amplified witin the bourgeois public sphere through social movement activity (Welsh 2000). Declaring collective stakes through the mobilisation of social force via a wide range of campaigning activities, up to and including forms of direct action adds to critical scientific and technical arguments. It is important not to conflate such expressions with “anti-science” stances. Unless social force is mobilized behind scientific dissenters, critical voices can easily be marginalized and dismissed on normative social, cultural and political grounds (Martin 1999) which are exploited by contemporary “savants” defending the status quo.

This reflects Bakunin’s emphasis on popular scientific literacy, a formulation implicit in the contemporary emphasis on public understanding and acceptance of science. The complexity of the contemporary stock of scientific knowledge and its applications exceeds the capacity of any individual member of a public to be literate in “science” sui generis. The crucial points here for anarchism lie in the importance of breaking down professional boundaries and building grass-roots collective actions aimed at understanding and engaging with science and technology in practice. Such praxis prioritises both the acquisition of fluency in expert debates and a focus upon the social contexts and relations required to apply that science.

Claims-making by informed and engaged citizens in effect constitutes the expression of a critical sub-group within a society which can intervene at the intersection of scientific advance, commercial application and prevailing regulatory standards. These struggles over environmental and health issues should not be regarded as disconnected purely local phenomena. Unfortunately, the tradition of case studies focussing primarily on epistemological stakes rather than broader theoretical issues relating to power within the sociology of science and technology has contributed to a lack of pattern recognition in terms of repetition of forms of controversy across different social and geographical contexts. Rather than being isolated phenomena, these struggles over environmental and health issues mobilizing lay expertise share common forms of struggle and patterns of organization. Together, they present a new conception of citizen science (Irwin & Michael 2003) and, potentially, a radical re-working of civil society (Chesters and Welsh 2006).

The importance of these movements in terms of anarchist praxis and social movement engagement with science lies in their ontological or social distance from the institutional habits of mind operating within institutionalised science. Whilst social movement organisations stray far into state space in their engagement with big science, social movement actors mobilizing local knowledges formalise the relevant objects of knowledge from a cognitive, political, and moral stance not primarily influenced by prevailing habits of mind. The pressure towards the democratization of science arising from such myriad local contestations remains to be adequately recognised as an emergent systemic process revealing the significance and relevance of difference in the face of “universal” laws and regulatory standards. Irrespective of whether the social groups doing this work self-define as anarchist, their praxis embodies basic anarchist principles prioritising the local or proximate over the universal or distanciated. Methodologically, the actions of citizen groups can be thought of as codifying the anomalies central to Kuhnian notions of paradigm change by prioritising observation informed by situated, lived experience.

Whilst prominent left critiques continue to grant the state an important position in terms of regulatory activities, there are reasons to doubt the capacity of states to act in the collective global good due to institutionalized interests and habits of mind prioritising the national or “domestic” economy and so on. This point is underlined by the inter-state wrangling which, combined with powerful corporate lobbying over the Kyoto protocols, resulted in the dilution of the original climate change targets. Global social movements and sub-nation state actors have adopted more proactive stances as key agents of change. This is perhaps clearest in the USA where the postponement of federal-level action on climate change has been justified by a faith in the possibility of a future technological fix. Confronted by this inaction a coalition of US states have declared their own action programmes orientated towards the specific needs and political will of their citizenry. What began as a series of declarations by West Coast cities is reportedly consolidating into a North Eastern coalition of states from New Jersey to Maine with green house gas emissions equivalent to those of Germany. California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico and Arizona (the latter a state with recent experience of extreme temperature deaths) are, at the time of writing, exploring the potential to form similar coalitions (Welsh 2007).

The implicit recognition of bio-regionalism inherent within these steps and the recognition of the value of pursuing local electoral politics by deep green social movement actors situate these initiatives within the remit of the kind of progressive anarchism for a global era advanced by Purkis and Bowen (2005). The appearance of candidates standing on anti-GM tickets across the corn belts of North America stands as another example of the fragmentary and “shifting ground” that is reconfiguring and undermining the historic political anatomy of state forms (Welsh 2006).

Far from pessimism and rejection of technological advance along primitivist lines this is an era where the potential for interventions consistent with anarchist principles is perhaps greater than ever before. The challenge for anarchist praxis is to develop non-hierarchical, horizontally democratic forms of engagement with these dynamics in pursuit of the social shaping of scientific and technological trajectories. This is entirely consistent with Lewis Mumford’s classic formulations (Mumford 1934). Mumford’s critique of the megamachine has been a prominent justification of primitivist stances towards science and technology but this emphasis neglects the continuing capacity for human agency to direct and redirect both techno-scientific trajectories and economic priorities (Mumford 1954). Mumford recognised that the “conversion of the sun’s energies” represented “the prime fact of all economic activity” (1934/1972: 375), a theme returned to by Bokchin (1974: 122-127).

Harnessing these “free goods” remains central to the reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gases driving climate change which has been labelled “the widest ranging market failure ever seen” (Stern, 2007, i). The post-war techno-scientific “plateau” (Mumford 1934/1972: 430), based on national grid systems delivering nuclear electricity “too cheap to meter” (Welsh, 2000), remains based on the transmission and sale of energy, not the utilisation of free energy at the point of use. The technical means of delivering clean local energy are widely available, yet the British state is amongst those using climate change to justify retaiing the nuclear option.

Here, we are faced with a clear civilizational choice. Climate change can be allowed to legitimize new forms of state techno-authoritarianism, seeing the emergence of authoritarian state regimes of environmental management regulating us in the name of the scarcities of an ever-degraded environment (Welsh 2007). Or, climate change can be responded to along the lines which thinkers such as Mumford, Bookchin and Paul Goodman have long advocated – with regional, decentralized, liberatory, renewable technologies (Bookchin 1974; Illich 1973; Goodman and Goodman 1989). This is a clear case where our technological choices are shaped by our political and social vision. An anarchist social theory of science and technology has never been more relevant. The anarchist vision of a liberatory science and technology is now of crucial importance as a line of flight to escape the iron cage of Cold War statist techno-authoritarianism and the asserted imperatives of post-Cold War neo-liberal market rationality. Creative engagement, social deliberation and social shaping of scientific and technological trajectories are central to an anarchist engagement in the twenty-first century.

CONCLUSIONS: ANARCHIST PRACTICE AND SCIENCE

Contemporary anarchism exists amidst new forms of technology of communications constituting the capacity for both virtual and face-work communities. The origins of the internet as a means of maintaining control of nuclear weapons capability underlines the manner in which state science’s quest for control enables decentralized innovation within the very interstices of the megamachine. These developments can be coloinised by social movements and radical actors who can further reconfigure such technologies and imbue them with new social and political potential. Such appropriations of technology facilitate the principles underlying Bakunin’s critique, and ambitions for a science of the people.

Central here is the principle of unmediated interest representation and thus direct engagement of affected parties (Franks 2003), as well as the obligation and commitment to education of wider communities int he associated stakes. New communication technologies and networks can facilitate meaningful deliberation and democratic decision-making following non-hierarchical procedures. Realizing the social potential of existing and emerging technologies requires embedding technology withinsocial milieu capable of changing the institutional uses and social practices surrounding the technologies. This appropriation of technology by creative and progressive social movements is necessary to fulfil the liberatory potential of techno-science inherent within the formulation of anarchist thinkers such as Bookchin.

The necessary practices already exist in protean form and engage thousands of individuals through the network of networks constituting the World Social Forum (WSF) and its constituent geo-regional and city social forums (Chesters & Welsh 2006; Sen et.al., 2004). Nascent within these networks lie a myriad of weak ties which have the potential to engage a diverse range of social movement actors (properly understood). At the 2004 European Social Forum (ESF) in London sessions addressing science involved individuals and representatives from unions, science social movements, genetic interest groups, and ecological and environmental groups from across the continent (Welsh Evans & Plows, 2007). Democratic direction of the European science base represented a recurrent theme of the multiple strands within the 2004 ESF. The meeting further consolidated a Europe-wide network forged at the Florence ESF meeting in 2002. The ongoing European Science Forum with ambitions to forge both professional interest networks and peoples’ science forums are examples of the organisation of social force with the potential to re-work and transcend more formalised experiments intended to engage “the public” in science after the fact. By asking the question “what kind of science do we want and what do we want it for?” voices from within the ESF simultaneously articulate questions of generic importance whilst engaging with specific issues in a sophisticated and informed manner.

This is a dissipative process requiring immense amounts of time and energy, which like all decentralized processes appears inefficient in terms of the megamachine. The dissipative character of such convergence spaces is however intentional and embedded in the organising principles. Unlike formal bourgeois representative political systems, which are designed to reduce complexity, the WSF and ESF aim to work with complexity in the pursuit of alternative formulations in recognition of the importance of free acts (Eve et al. 1997).

Complexity theory suggests that critical sub-groups and individual free acts are key in producing significant changes in systems far from equilibrium. Mumford’s argument that, in both physical systems and wider life, “there occur, at rare umpredictable intervals, moments when an infinitesimally small force, because of its character and its position in the whole constellation of events, was able to effect a very large transformation” (1955:475) is an early expression of such thought. Against technocratic domination he thus asserted the capacity “for the direct impact of the human personality in history, not only by organised movements and group actions, but by individuals who are sufficiently alert to intervene at the right time and the right place for the right purpose” (1955: 476). Mumford’s optimism is theoretically supported by complexity theory which concurs that individuals are historically significant agents of change (Eve et al. 1997). In the radiological cases we have used in this paper significant individuals were central in advancing and sustaining critical science stances. Their voices were heard in part through the accretion of social force around their epistemic claims.

Unlike focus groups, citizen juries and representative samples, the social forum process creates “convergence spaces” within which the voices of those most directly affected by issues of moment perform the work of critical sub-groups, defining initial stakes for debate in wider deliberative forums within which they gain mediated expression. There is no panacea here and the cooperation representing the founding commitment of the forum process also contains conflict. An important area here is the process of recognising and allowing critical free individuals to work whilst maintaining accountability (Barker et al. 2001). This should be part of debating and promoting strategic concerns and the necessary organisational forms. The social forum movement provides an organisational example which can be built on to promote popular democratic control of scientific and technological decision-making and agendas.

The current fashion for “public consultation” over science policy engages an abstract public in ways which are too readily open to legitimating the agendas of established elites and institutions, and too far removed from direct influence. In contrast, we suggest that new social movement engagement contains models for a people’s science forum which would challenge elite dominance of techno-scientific agendas and re-orientate scientific and technological inquiry towards far-reaching democratic and liberatory social change. In contrast to dominant “engagement” agendas in science policy, what we are advocating is not a patching-up of the legitimacy of current state-science regimes, but the grassroots development of forums for a people’s science presenting a radical challenge to the megamachine agendas of state-corporate science.

ENDNOTE
1. Kropotkin was a naturalist in all the relevant senses of the word. He was a biologist and zoologist. He was also a naturalist in the epistemological sense of one who believes that knowledge has to be based on the observation of natural phenomena. And he was what philosophers call an “ethical naturalist”, i.e. someone who regards moral ideas or critieria as based on observable features of the world.

Dr. Charles Thorpe
Department of Sociology
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Ian Welsh
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University

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On March 11, 2007, downtown Bogotá was filled with soldiers, snipers, undercover cops, and riot police on account of George Bush’s visit to Colombia. Nevertheless, hundreds gathered at the police barricades to burn flags and express their opposition to neoliberal capitalism. When the police turned water cannons, tear gas, and batons upon the crowd, the protesters tore lampposts and park benches out of the sidewalk to defend themselves and smashed the windows of banks and shops.

Thanks to the internet, many anarchists in the United States have seen photos of clashes like this one, but few understand the context in which they take place. We paid a visit to Bogotá recently to get more background on the political and social climate there and the role of anarchists within it. With the helpful guidance of our Colombian friends and the understanding that we can only offer limited insight into the complexities of their situation, we’d like to share some of what we learned. Colombia is located at the junction of North and South America, a strategic position that has brought dire misfortune upon Colombians since the first colonial invasions. A century ago, the US forced the secession of Panama from Colombia to obtain control of trade passing from Atlantic to Pacific, and today the rich ecosystems south of Panama are being devastated to open the way for pan-American highway traffic. Unlike practically every other major South American nation, Colombia was not explicitly ruled by a dictatorship in the latter part of the 20th century—instead, the pretense of democracy was maintained, with representatives of the Liberal and Conservative parties alternating rule under the Frente Nacional between 1958 and 1974. This means that today, unlike Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, Colombia has yet to enter the post-dictatorship era; it is a “democracy,” but one in which every serious opposition candidate has been murdered or bought off and corporate rule is maintained as often by brute force as by political machination.

Having not entered the post-dictatorship era, Colombia is still wracked by the kind of internal armed conflict that other Latin American countries suffered between the 1960s and 1980s. Politics in Colombia are framed by the brutal forty-year civil war between the US-supported government—and its paramilitary supporters, who are interlinked with the drug cartels the US claims to oppose—and guerrilla insurgents, who are also now involved in narcotrafficking. The two primary guerrilla factions are the FARC and the ELN, both communist groups formed in 1964; the FARC is descended from Liberal and communist guerrilla groups formed by campesinos in the late 1940s, while the ELN was organized by students returning from Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Every year thousands of Colombians die violently in this struggle, but Bogotá is the eye of the storm: a space of relative calm in which the conflict takes more subtle forms. Latin America has megapolises like nothing in North America—Brazil’s Sao Paulo is twice the size of New York, and Mexico City is the biggest in the world—and Bogotá is as sprawling and heavily populated as any city in the United States. The north is known for its wealthier districts, while in other areas some neighborhoods still retain their “popular”—that is to say, class conscious and defiant—character[1][1] The expression “Barrios Populares” is also used to denote the shantytowns around the periphery of the city; it is an alternative to “Barrios de Invasión,” the bourgeois slur for the same areas. In Latin America, the “suburbs” are not the enclave of the wealthy, but the poorest neighborhoods built by refugees driven from their rural homelands.. The government has moved paramilitaries from their rural territories into some of these neighborhoods in recent years, ostensibly in an effort to demobilize them but certainly with an eye to destabilizing centers of urban resistance as well; locals describe the atmosphere of fear created by gangs of shaven-headed belligerents drinking on the streets all day. The paramilitaries were withdrawn from one neighborhood after a bombing directed at them, showing that perhaps there is a proper time and place for every tactic.

Like other Latin American metropolises, Bogotá excels all its North American counterparts in graffiti. Everywhere you walk—and people do a lot of walking—you can see exhortations from various communist and anarchist groups painted in three-foot-high letters.

The city only cleans the walls on rare occasions, and vigilante interference is limited to covering up the name of President Uribe wherever it appears in a negative light; this seems to have increased recently, perhaps due to the relocation of paramilitaries to the city. Other than this, the paramilitary presence in Bogotá is largely invisible on the walls, perhaps because the right wing controls the officially sanctioned media; in Ecuador, where leftist Correa just came to power, the walls of Quito bear more swastikas than circle-As.

Walking through Bogotá’s lovely downtown district early in our stay, passing the Justice building occupied by the M-19 urban guerrillas in 1985, we came upon a packed concert in the main square calling for an exchange of guerrilla prisoners for soldiers held hostage in the countryside. The city government of Bogotá has recently swung to the left, perhaps following the trend sweeping Latin America for which Venezuela’s Chavez would like to take credit[2][2] To hear our Colombian friends tell it, horizontal structures were all the rage around the continent in the wake of the Argentinean crisis of 2001-2002, while now that left wing candidates have come to power in several nations electoral politics is back in vogue. To anarchists, this chronology suggests the familiar cycle of co-optation: people build up grass-roots power until the rulers are forced to concede to some of their demands and offer them an institutionalized version of their movement; consequently, people invest energy in participating in the system rather than further grass-roots organizing, thus losing their leverage.. For city officials to permit such an event is doubtless a slight to the right wing national government, which has vowed never to parley with the guerrillas. This intra-government tension has resulted in the public investigation of some officials involved in paramilitary groups—as of this writing, six congressmen from Uribe’s political party are in jail because of their links with paramilitaries—but doesn’t seem to have changed anything in the daily lives of Colombians.

Universities in Latin America, especially public ones, differ dramatically from their counterparts in the US in that they are taken for granted as hotbeds of dissent and social struggle. The campuses of Colombia’s largest university, like the walls of all adjacent neighborhoods, are adorned with spray paint urging people to “DEFEND THE UNIVERSITY!” and threatening “THE UNIVERSITY IS FROM THE STREET AND IN THE STREET WE WILL DEFEND IT,” a claim that would be doubly false anywhere north of Mexico. This talk of “defense” addresses the government’s immediate efforts to privatize the university system, but also extends to a more general notion of the university as a safe space for dissent: parodying her own feisty radicalism, one filmmaker explained that she documented anticapitalist protests “because wee are stoodents in a pooblique ooniversitee!” in the same tone in which an anarcho-punk from Minneapolis might joke “because we are THE ENEMIES OF CIVILIZATION!”

Indeed, the university is widely known to serve as a recruiting ground for radical groups of all stripes, both public and clandestine. As in Chile and Greece, police officers are not permitted on campus; in the militant demonstrations that erupt once or twice a semester, police gather outside the gates, firing tear gas into the university while students throw back papas bombas—projectiles made with black powder and coins or rocks, which can disable armored water cannons if used correctly[3][3] Papas bombas can be very dangerous; we were told of a woman who died transporting them, and another person who lost a hand in a more recent conflict outside the university.—and build bonfires to neutralize the chemical irritants. An enormous mural of El Che, looking somewhat younger than usual, gazes upon the central student plaza; university officials have ordered it painted over a thousand times, but never succeeded in eradicating it. Passing through the university at dusk one evening, we beheld half a dozen masked figures in black dashing from wall to wall with stencils and spray paint, past other students who took this apparently regular occurrence nonchalantly in stride.

Both the FARC and the ELN maintain clandestine student groups in the universities, from which some of their membership is derived. The ELN student groups appear to be experimenting with more horizontal structures, though our sources doubt this extends to their rural cadres. It is rumored that the two guerrilla groups have clashed violently in the countryside recently, though the details of this remain obscure; in any case, those clashes haven’t extended to the university.

The guerrillas are not in a powerful position in Colombia right now; decades of conflict with the US-backed government have taken their toll, and in much of Colombia the zeitgeist seems to be that people are exhausted and disillusioned by the ongoing armed struggle. Their reliance upon kidnapping and narcotrafficking to raise funds have compromised them in many people’s eyes, and some say they have lost touch with the needs of common people in the course of their fight for resources and survival. To North American anarchist eyes, these are simply the inevitable results of a militaristic strategy predicated upon hierarchical organization. Despite all this, many who seek social change still see the guerrillas as the most “serious” opposition to the government, and those who wish to be “serious” themselves often end up collaborating—or at least sympathizing—with them. Groups who organize against the government, corporations, and paramilitaries without working with the guerrillas are isolated from both sides. The government still regards them as terrorists, and can explain away repression by presenting them as a front group; the guerrillas still see them as enemies of The People, in traditional communist fashion. Villages in the countryside such as Cacarica have put up walls and declared themselves autonomous from all armed groups, government and paramilitary and guerrilla alike, but this stance is not easy to maintain.

All this makes the position of Colombian anarchists very difficult. Most who have been active for any length of time have had friends murdered by the police or forced to flee the country. As in other nations in the Americas, anarchists in Colombia are able to maintain a handful of social centers, a presence in punk rock and other countercultures, some social programs, and sporadic eruptions of protest and resistance; but all this comes at great cost, and it’s hard to maintain consistency. These activities can seem unimpressive next to kidnappings and bombings coordinated by clandestine groups, and more confrontational direct action is extremely dangerous because it is interpreted as guerrilla activity.

In this context, some—including some anarchists—see what they describe as “purist” anarchist approaches as dogmatic, isolationist, and insufficiently effective. In the US, the default setting for dissident thought is left liberalism, but in Colombia it’s Marxism, and the circle-A’s spraypainted around Bogotá with crossed hammers and sickles are just one example of anarchists trying to accommodate themselves to the dominant paradigm of resistance. In stark contrast to most parts of the world, in Colombia the anarchists who consider themselves flexible and willing to collaborate with authoritarian groups are often the ones most interested in militant confrontation, while some of the anarchists we met who limit themselves to strictly horizontal, autonomous activity believe the guerrillas have spoiled any possibility of progress through armed struggle. Throughout Colombia, there are many indigenous and civil society groups that are de facto antiauthoritarian, and the latter anarchists see these groups as their natural allies.

Relations between Colombian anarchists and anarchists in neighboring countries are sometimes strained on account of these internal tensions. For example, the anarchists in Venezuela who publish El Libertario explicitly oppose Chavez, the socialist President who has bolstered social programs with funds from environmentally destructive oil extraction, and suspect some Colombian anarchists of supporting Chavez. In fact, there are Colombian anarchists who feel it is better to organize under a Left regime than a Right one, who prioritize working with people in popular movements even if they are “Chavistas” or receive funding from Chavez over struggling against his government. We were also surprised to learn that Chavez and the FARC are seen as sharing similar ideological positions; all this, not to mention the difficulties of open political debate under repressive conditions, make it very complicated for anarchists in northern South America to resolve their differences.

Considering all they are up against, we were impressed with the range of activities anarchists and other anti-authoritarians have organized in Colombia. Early in our visit, our friends made a list of all the groups we should visit during our stay in Bogotá; we scarcely made it to a fourth of those, and that kept us quite busy for well over a week. Here are a few brief descriptions of what we did see.

Anarchism in Colombia: www.nodo50.org/anarcol CreAcción Espacios

The largest social center we saw is in a big building at the edge of downtown, on the middle floor between a goth bar and a countercultural venue. Though not limited to anarchists, CreAcción is organized by consensus process and explicitly autonomous and anti-authoritarian. It includes a screenprinting workshop, an infoshop stocked with Spanish-language anarchist material from around the world, a library of thousands of books (with an emphasis on Trotskyism, on account of the politics of the primary donor), a kitchen and small bar, and several rooms that host meetings for many different groups and organizations. As of this report, CreAcción has existed for a year; the rent is paid from sales of food at the bar and similar small benefit projects, and also—like most projects in Colombia—out of the pockets of the members of the collective.

We presented a total of four workshops at CreAcción in the course of our visit, covering the “anti-globalization” movement in the US, confrontational unemployment as a tactic in the North American context, autonomy, and women’s sexual and reproductive health. Attendance ranged from two dozen people to almost fifty, and everyone was very patient with the inconveniences of translation.

Just about every time we went to CreAcción we saw Yuri, the father of Nicolas, the fifteen-year-old anarchist beaten to death by riot police at the 2005 Mayday demonstration. Yuri helps to organize a group for survivors whose loved ones have been killed by police violence; they meet regularly at the space. Since his son’s death, Yuri has put a great deal of energy into social activism, and he is loved and admired by others who frequent CreAcción. creaccion.espacios@gmail.com

Mujeres Libres and Mujeres por la Resistencia

These two collectives developed several years ago around issues of women’s autonomy and resistance culture—focusing on access to reproductive care, women’s health, gender, and sexuality. The campaign for abortion access has been a powerful force in Colombia, bringing together women from a wide range of backgrounds. At first, the women of these collectives were subsumed within the mainstream campaign for abortion access; they then broke from the larger campaign, and now have earned respect and space within it for autonomous and horizontal organizing. Mujeres Libres is now defunct, while Mujeres por la Resistencia still meets, creating a space for women in punk. The women of these collectives are also working together on the campaign for reproductive access and to organize radically feminist programming in CreAcción Espacios. polaviciosa@gmail.com

Centro de la Cultura Libertaria

We presented a workshop on direct action at CCL, another social center a little farther north. CCL is smaller and has a more punk-oriented atmosphere. It, too, includes a screenprinting workshop, an infoshop, and a library, the last of which is much better stocked with anarchist materials than the one at CreAcción; there are also records for sale and a space for bands to practice. It seems to be frequented by a younger, feistier crowd. celibres@gmail.com

Kino Pravda

Kino Pravda—named after an early Soviet school of filmmaking, literally “cinema truth”—is a radical documentary collective that began in the university eight years ago and has managed to maintain the same eight or so members ever since. We saw some of their work from the beginning of the decade, a blend of street footage and video collage following and explicating the anti-globalization movement in Colombia. Their more recent projects include a documentary on the participation of a youth group of clowns and puppeteers in last year’s official Carnival parade and an inside view of the secret ELN training camps that spring up in the countryside. The filmmaker responsible for the latter described the harrowing process of sneaking into a region of the countryside almost entirely surrounded by soldiers and paramilitaries in order to shoot the documentary; afterwards, when he was smuggling his footage out, the bus he was in was stopped by men in uniforms and he had to spin an elaborate story about his work as a geology student. Apparently persuading the guerrillas to let him film them was the least difficult part of the project. The broad range of the three topics described—anticapitalist protest, popular arts, and guerrilla activity—indicates the broad-ranging approach the group takes to radical documentary work. Like others in Colombia, members of Kino Pravda spoke of the difficulties of maintaining autonomy in a context in which every faction wants either to absorb you into their camp or else lump you in with the opposition. kino_pravda@yahoo.com kino_pravda@hotmail.com

Mefistófeles Collective

Before we knew what it meant, we saw impressive graffiti signed “Mefisto” in the streets downtown, inside the university, and on the walls of CreAcción. Later, we met members of the collective responsible for some of the most impressive street art in metropolitan Bogotá. They simultaneously provide the public with illegal art and publish a magazine promoting it, a risky combination that has not yet resulted in serious complications. They believe that youth countercultures in Bogotá are growing, and they’re committed to sharing new techniques and technologies while encouraging radical political content in graffiti. They shared a story with us about the reclamation of public space in downtown Bogotá. They obtained permission from the city to paint one wall on one block of a street there for one week; now both walls of the entire street are constantly painted and repainted, and the police don’t hassle anyone because the painting began on a legal footing. www.revistamefisto.tk; a review of their ’zine appears below.

Sinaltrainal

Sinaltrainal is the national union in Colombia that focuses on taking on multinational corporations, specifically Coca-Cola and Nestle. Perhaps you’ve heard of the union organizers murdered in Colombia for attempting to organize Coca-Cola employees? They were from Sinaltrainal. In the past couple decades of their existence, two dozen people have been murdered, thousands of workers have lost their jobs, and workers and organizers have endured constant death threats. Now, Coca-Cola is shifting from contracted to precarious (i.e., temporary) labor as a way to offset the power of the union. In our conversation, their spokesperson downplayed the centrality of workplace organizing, perhaps because it is inevitable that they will eventually be forced out by this shift. Official union status gives them some legitimacy in the public eye and a modicum of legal protection, but our impression was that they seem to be betting on international anticapitalist solidarity campaigns as their best hope to exert a counter-force against the corporations; to this end, they are organizing a series of popular “tribunals” around the world, at which workers bring the misdeeds of these corporations to light. If our first impression was correct, labor-oriented activists in the United States who truly want to be pro-worker had better not let our comrades in Latin America down by remaining focused on workplace organizing alone when they need us to get serious about organizing anticapitalist resistance outside the workplace too. www.sinaltrainal.org

Comité en Solidaridad con los Presos Políticos

We went to visit a group that does legal support work for Colombian political prisoners; they’re situated near the top of a high-rise office building, in a markedly different environment than most of the people with whom we spoke. Nonetheless, their spokesperson impressed us with her spirit, declaring from the outset that under the current Colombian government everyone is a potential target of government repression and expressing approval when we identified ourselves to her as anarchists.

There are over 5000 political prisoners in Colombia. Arrestees can be held for up to three years without trial. The prison system is run by the military, and money from the United States has paid for both the construction of the six high security prisons and the training of the soldiers who guard them—on top of that, the US DEA sends agents to Colombian prisons to interrogate inmates. It is routine for such agents to threaten that inmates’ families will be killed if they don’t cooperate in US investigations inside Colombia. Thanks to lengthy struggles, political prisoners in many Colombian prisons have won the right to be held together in a separate section of the prison. In other prisons where paramilitaries and political prisoners are held together, the lives of political prisoners are in constant danger.

There is also a Colombian Anarchist Black Cross group in the circles of people involved in CCL; every Saturday they visit political prisoners, providing support regardless of affiliation. fcspp@etb.net.co Cruz Negra Anarquista (ABC): cruznegrabogota@hotmail.com

Colectivo por la Objeción de Conciencia

Military conscription is enforced in Colombia, though as usual the wealthy are able to find ways to excuse themselves. Every man is required to serve for one year unless he can pay his way out, obtain a medical exemption, or avoid being caught. There are fifteen groups in ten regions of Colombia opposing conscription, and we spoke with a volunteer involved in one of these. She told us that few people are currently in prison for noncompliance; the pressure such groups exert on the government when a draft-dodger is arrested generally makes it easier for the government to release the arrestee quietly than to keep them in prison. In addition to supporting people in that situation, this anti-conscription group works to emphasize the economic and corporate foundations of militarism and to emphasize alternative means for young people to sustain themselves besides military careers. To that end, she was also involved in the Mercado Orgánico we visited. colectivo@neutel.net.co

Mercado Orgánico

Our friends from CreAcción took us to a collectively organized organic market composed of four major fruit and vegetable farms and a great number of smaller producers. The market is coordinated horizontally among the participants, and emphasizes healthy, natural food; volunteers offer trainings to farmers who want to learn more about strictly organic horticulture. On account of this approach, the market has developed a relationship with CreAcción and other similar groups; additionally, when one family retired from its farm, other members of the collective took it over.

We asked around about collective gardens in Bogotá, and were told that there are over one thousand; many of these are started by campesinos who arrive as refugees from rural areas of Colombia.
mercadorganicosolidario@yahoo.es Colectivo Contracultura

Contracultura is an anarchist collective arising out of the hardcore and punk communities in Bogotá; they publish texts on radical theory and strategy and organize countercultural activities such as shows, presentations, and video showings. Their most recent publication, the seventh in a series of pamphlets that have included a text by the Argentinean group Colectivo Situaciones and a communiqué by the EZLN, is a translation of the CrimethInc. text “Déclassé War.” CrimethInc. texts have been published in Colombia before in the newspaper Heraldo, which was produced by Crimental, a node of the loosely-organized Spanish-language CrimethInc. network that spans three continents. That network is known as Guerrilla Latina CrimethInc. everywhere else, but for obvious reasons the Colombian group opted for a different name.

One of the participants in Contracultura has a book distribution called Distribuidora Afinitat, basically consisting of books from Colectivo Situaciones; these are not strictly anarchist books, but cover horizontal, autonomous movements around Latin America. www.contracultura.cjb.net kontrakulturahcp@yahoo.com www.afinitat.8m.com afinitat@yahoo.com

Piromanía

One of the people involved in CCL and the Anarchist Black Cross in Bogotá also has a publishing imprint, on which he has released ’zines about the armed anarchist opposition to the Argentinean dictatorship and the famous anarchist criminal Alexandre Marius Jacob. He also has a wide-ranging collection of anarchist texts. atarka@nodo50.org

Punk and Hardcore in Bogotá

Before going to Colombia, we were already familiar with Res Gestae and Reaccion Propria, two first rate hardcore bands that have released full-length CDs. During our visit, Reaccion Propria was working on new material rather than playing out, but we got to see Res Gestae play a superb handful of songs at an all-afternoon punk show in an outlying neighborhood. Other highlights of the show included the grind band Xtermino and a street punk band whose name I didn’t catch whose last song remains stuck in my head to this day—picture a hundred Colombian punks of various genders in a circle pit, all bellowing “ANTI, ANTI MILITAR” in unison. Unfortunately, macho one-note hardcore has made its way to Colombia, along with the associated corporate fashion and violent “dancing.” A couple of those bands played that show as well, and we didn’t need to speak Spanish to know what they were going to sound like as soon as the singers picked up the microphone.

The best introduction to Colombian punk and hardcore is probably the “Sonidos para Activar la Revolución” compilation CD that came out in 2004. In addition to ten Colombian bands, it includes legendary groups such as Abuso Sonoro, No Violence, Dir Yassin, and Los Crudos, not to mention a full booklet of lyrics and political statements from all the bands. We were also given an excellent CD by Resplandor, a frenetic, metallic hardcore band who combine Krishna consciousness with the rhetoric of anticapitalist liberation. www.myspace.com/filibusterosdistro www.direccionpositiva.tk www.myspace.com/xresgestaex www.persistencia.8m.com xresplandorx@hotmail.com

Further Contacts, Resources, and Reading

Taller de Estudios Anarquistas (TEA): tallerdeestudiosanarquistas@yahoo.es These people are working on urban agricultural activities in a popular neighborhood. They publish a fanzine called ¡A Rocheliar! and organize cultural and political projects.

El Piojo Editorial: edipiojo@gmail.com This is a collective from Bucaramanga. They have an anarchist social center and d.i.y. publishing group.

Resistencia Natural: resistencia_natural@yahoo.com Animal rights is not a common issue in Colombia; with the exception of a couple hardcore bands, this is the only group we could find oriented towards vegetarianism and animal liberation. We also saw graffiti and stickers opposing bullfighting, similar to those which can be found in Spain.

A few years ago the US-based Beehive Collective produced a breathtaking, nuanced poster on Plan Colombia, the US government strategy in Colombia. Both the artwork and explanations in several languages can be found online; they also appeared in the first issue of Rolling Thunder. Whenever our friends in Bogotá talked about the Beehive Collective, it sounded to us like they were talking about “the Behave Collective,” a misunderstanding that first produced confusion and then hilarity. www.rebelion.org (section on Colombia) www.lahaine.org (section on Colombia) www.prensarural.org colombia.indymedia.org

Arturo Alape Las Vidas de Pedro Antonio Marín, Manuel Marulanda Vélez, Tirofijo (The Lives of Pedro Antonio Marín, Manuel Marulanda Vélez, Tirofijo) Alfredo Molano Trochas y Fusiles These books offer background on the history of the guerrillas in Colombia. It’s also worth noting that many Colombians interpret the works of Gabriel García Márquez as allegories of Colombian history. Some ’Zines & Periodicals from Colombia, Ecuador, & Venezuela

(reviewed in Spanish, as they are only useful to those who understand it)

La Conspiración de la Sospecha (The Conspiracy of Suspicion) Este es un zine contracultural escrito desde la comunidad hardcore/punk, pero no exclusiva para ella. Con un diseño muy bello en papel de color café, “La conspiración de la sospecha” es una combinación cohesiva de entrevistas y reseñas de bandas y películas, con escritos sobre la política de nuestra vida diaria y con un arte increíble. ¡Muy poética! En conclusión, este zine existe como una estimulación visual que pregunta cuestiones relacionadas con lo político y lo personal. Contacto: conspiracioninternacional@yahoo.es

El Libertario: Mayo-Junio 2006 (Libertario basically means anarchist, but it doesn’t translate easily to English. Thanks a lot, Libertarian Party…) Este es el principal periódico anarquista de Venezuela realizado por la Comisión de Relaciones Anarquistas (CRA). Con una muy buena diagramación, este periódico presenta secciones sobre la historia libertaria, noticias, contactos para otros grupos radicales y una crítica constante y muy oportuna del gobierno de Chávez desde una perspectiva anarquista. En el caso específico de las políticas chavistas que son perjudiciales para los indígenas y la tierra, el Libertario presenta el poder del estado como un problema y no como una solución. Contacto: ellibertario@hotmail.com

La Pepa No.4 (The Seed) Esta gruesa revista de Quito, Ecuador, es una mezcla de arte increíble y artículos sobre la guerra y el imperio, luchas antimilitaristas, feministas e indígenas. Tiene como tema recurrente la exploración del concepto de “democracia” en todos sus aspectos positivos y negativos. El arte posee la calidad del arte callejero, sin dejar de ser auténtico en el formato de la revista. Un artículo en particular sobre los últimos veinte años del contexto político de Ecuador sirve bastante para los extranjeros que tienen interés en el futuro de las luchas protagonizadas en dicho país. Contacto: escribe@lapepa.org

¡A Rocheliar! (Rochela was a community of rebellious people in the eighteenth century, at the time of resistance against the Spanish Crown) Como un “cuadernillo” irregular de antimilitarismo, ¡A Rocheliar! reúne muchas voces contra el militarismo y paramilitarismo de las políticas de derecha e izquierda en Colombia. No tiene la diagramación bella de los otros zines reseñados aquí, pero en este cuadernillo hay más de 40 páginas de teoría, análisis e historia del militarismo en Colombia; todo desde una perspectiva anarquista, anticapitalista y autonomista. Aunque hay partes que no son muy legibles, el zine presenta una voz muy oportuna contra la violencia presente en el contexto político colombiano. Contacto: tallerdeestudiosanarquistas@yahoo.es

Revista Mefistófeles: jóvenes, comunicación, y contracultura (Mephistopheles Review: Youth, Communication, and Counterculture) Esta revista de Bogotá, Colombia, por y para los jóvenes, tiene poco contenido textual, pero, en su lugar, mucho arte. Hay artículos cortos, entre ellos una crítica del “graffiti como moda” y un intento por repensar la alineación del sistema de escuelas. Los artículos, que están insertados entre varias explosiones de arte, pueden ser leídos en una hora o menos, pero las perspectivas y el arte en su conjunto son inteligentes y bien pensados. Además, “Mefistófeles” no contiene el dogmatismo de algunas revistas más políticas y formales. No lo he oído, ¡pero hay un CD-ROM multimedia junto con unos afiches! Contacto: www.revistamefisto.tk

Sitiadas: Un Trabajo de Mujeres Hartas de su Situación (Women Besieged: A Work of Women Fed Up with Their Situation) Esta larga revista es realizada por “mujeres de frente, externas e internas en la cárcel de mujeres de Quito, Ecuador,” con la asistencia del mismo colectivo feminista que realiza La Pepa. Incluye un panfleto pequeño acerca de la salud de la mujer, un disco multimedia, entrevistas, un artículo escrito por el colectivo anarko-feminista “Mujeres Creando” (de Bolivia), y mucha escritura por mujeres encarceladas en Quito. Sitiadas pone un énfasis especial en lo personal junto con el tema central de las experiencias directas de mujeres de razas diferentes en la cárcel de Quito. Los artículos incluyen los problemas de ser una madre dentro y fuera de la cárcel y la lucha contra el silencio frente el abuso, el poder y la opresión. Hay muchas fotos bellas que también enfatizan este tema. En esta mezcla increíble de lo político y lo personal, mi frase favorita es, “¿por qué callar si nací gritando?” Contacto: mujeressitiadas@yahoo.es

[1] The expression “Barrios Populares” is also used to denote the shantytowns around the periphery of the city; it is an alternative to “Barrios de Invasión,” the bourgeois slur for the same areas. In Latin America, the “suburbs” are not the enclave of the wealthy, but the poorest neighborhoods built by refugees driven from their rural homelands.

[2] To hear our Colombian friends tell it, horizontal structures were all the rage around the continent in the wake of the Argentinean crisis of 2001-2002, while now that left wing candidates have come to power in several nations electoral politics is back in vogue. To anarchists, this chronology suggests the familiar cycle of co-optation: people build up grass-roots power until the rulers are forced to concede to some of their demands and offer them an institutionalized version of their movement; consequently, people invest energy in participating in the system rather than further grass-roots organizing, thus losing their leverage.

[3] Papas bombas can be very dangerous; we were told of a woman who died transporting them, and another person who lost a hand in a more recent conflict outside the university.

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This article was written back in 2003 and was part of the Chilean discussion on the coming local elections at the time and the way many comrades wanted to dedicate the bulk of our resources (both financial and human) to anti-electoralism. As well, there was a debate as we were starting to run into elections in universities, schools, trade unions and community organisations and some said that anarchists were against voting in any form. Some of the issues involved in these debates appear again and again, and they reflect deeper political questions. This article was originally published in the Chilean anarchist-communist magazine “Hombre y Sociedad”, No.18-19, second term of 2004.

Every time there are elections, the walls of the streets are all painted with the name of this or that candidate, with this or that slogan, with promises that, this time we mean it, things will change. The people passing by are well accustomed to this familiar view, repeated every couple of years: the streets end up filthy with all that rubbish that will only be washed away by winter’s rain.

And among all that bunch of candidates and slogans, there are, of course, the always present slogans calling not to vote: in this camp it is almost all of the left that proclaims itself to be revolutionary. That said, many among them are calling not to vote because of their own inability to carry their own candidates and not really for any deeper political issues (the recent experience of PODEMOS is good proof of that, where once champions of the no vote, are turned into candidates of the brand new political coalition). Some others will have more reasons than purely logistical issues. And there again we can find a wide range of reasons for calling not to vote: from those who do not want to give any credit to this Constitution manufactured under Pinochet, to those who oppose any form of “power”.

And among those arguments, we find frequently some more or less well known slogans, over-repeated, signed up with a circled A. Those are the anarchists to be sure. No one can be really surprised that anarchists adopt this position; so we are not even asked for our reasons behind this, usually, only visceral rejection. No, there’s no need of that: being an anarchist, in fact, seemingly means not to run into elections (please not the emphasis). As a matter of fact, often anarchism is reduced, whether in bad faith or ignorance, to anti-parliamentarism. And, it has to be said, there are too many among those who claim to be anarchists that reduce their activity only to that.

When it comes to elections, we have to recognize, as anarchists, that this is usually dealt with in an abstract fashion, without any analysis of the context. This is all quite odd, if we take into account the fact that elections have traditionally been used by many anarchists as a pretext to go to the streets to demonstrate or to do some agitation… just not to forget the good old custom. However, the lack of reflection is usually appalling: political analysis is bartered in exchange for a couple of pre-manufactured and visceral formulas, for dogmatism short in words (generally consisting of insults to left and right). In such a situation, it is easy for the slogan to displace reflection while taking its place. This is a worrying situation, for when the lack of arguments and of solid thought become hegemonic, when the theoretical misery becomes the norm, there’s often fertile ground for opportunism, simplistic views and for all the sorts of deviations that they can carry in their bag. Thus, the foundations have been laid for an erratic practice.

Among the arguments we encounter which “justify” the anarchist position of rejection of elections, we find, first of all, those who have a “moralizing” nature. These are the weakest ones… dealing with the personal qualities of the individuals that run as candidates (they are thieves, they lie, etc.), and thus, they can be counter-argued on the same grounds, avoiding the really political issues. Whether politicians are thieves or not (and the majority, in fact, are) is not the relevant issue; at most, this argument can be used as a weapon between rival candidates, but it fails to get to the root of the problem.

Other times there’s a gross view of the problem, by giving it an abstract consideration, in which the “method” (voting) is confused with the institutions where it is exercised. Therefore, all sorts of elections (whether in an assembly, in a trade union, in a sports club, as well as presidential ones, of course) appear to be basically the same, and “impurity” is contained in the very act of voting. We, anarchists, do not get stained in any kind of elections, so we can keep are “purity”… How to make decisions, how to elect delegates and representatives, something what is above everything else a matter of practical order, is something never to be clarified satisfactorily by those who advocate this position (always consensus?! Arbitrarily picking people?!). There’s supposes to be something “evil”, some impure and corrupting essence in the very act of voting, independent of its context. Voting, as a mechanism, is seen to take a magic and evil dimension in the mythological minds of some anarchists who give in a certain type of “voting fetishism”.

Anarchism, first of all, has nothing against voting as a mechanism, as a method to decide practical matters, as it is making some decisions once the different positions have been debated and exposed, or as it is the election of some delegate or representative. What’s really important is the context where this mechanism is exercised[1]. Anarchists are not, by definition, against “elections” as a mechanism; if in local or national elections we call not to vote, is because of the context in which this vote is exercised; within the framework of the State, which thus can validate its domination over those of us who are excluded from decision making (who coincidentally, happen to be the same people who are excluded from the businessmen feast). When we call not to vote in this kind of elections, what we are really calling for is the struggle against State and Capitalism, not against “elections” as an event. Our opposition, so, is not so much against to voting as to the whole of the State apparatus.

This is what leads us to the root of the problem, is it the managing of the system what’s wrong? Or is it necessary to overcome in a revolutionary way the current system? And this is, precisely, the central issue from which the bourgeois elections always take us apart, helping in the way to clean the ugly face of capitalism.

Another perverse effect of bourgeois elections is to create dissociation in our very existence; elections create an artificial, ad-hoc, fictitious space for politics, for the power share. This is precisely the underlying logic of the State. And it is at this point that a radical criticism from the anarchists should be made against this understanding of politics: because in our conception, power should be exercised by the people themselves, in its own spaces, in all areas of our lives, and not only in “ready-made-spaces”.

For bourgeois power, though ideologically denies this, though ideologically manifests itself only in certain artificial spaces, in spite of their ideological platitudes of “free-will”, it penetrates deep in our lives, sneaks in every single aspect of our existence. Because of this, popular power has to face it in the same fashion, mastering our whole lives, completely.

Therefore, elections take us apart from our concrete problems (with the illusion of solving them) and generate a space for what is “political” that is alien to the masses. However, without noticing it, many anarchists fall into this trap as the rest of the reformist left which carries on this narrow framework of what’s “political” most of its activity, leaving aside or channelling grassroots work for the sake of the electoral circus. Thus, they validate the bourgeois conception of politics. Many anarchists, to be opposition, act in a similar way: they appear, just like the candidates, only in election times to tell people not to vote. And instead of counting votes, they count people not voting or spoilt votes, as if that mattered any more than struggle and real organisation.

Just like candidates, they have their own electoral option: no vote. But thus they contribute to the reduction of the framework of what is political to the State, more so than to a real work in the grassroots, a daily work, a work to strengthen the class and social actors with a revolutionary prospect. Our action, turns into a spectacle ad-hoc to the spaces generated by the bourgeoisie to express politics.

Does this mean to be indifferent to elections? Does it mean not to take a stand? Not at all. Surely, we need a clear stand against the democratic-bourgeois machine, and therefore, against any form of management of oppression and misery; but we need to be as clear as possible. IT IS NO GOOD to have that many people not voting; effectiveness of anarchist propaganda should be measured not by people not turning out to vote, but by our influence over the degree of combativeness and organisation of the popular masses. The system is already discredited; our real work is to show, through propaganda and deeds, that this system should and ought to be changed.

Our propaganda should be focused, before anything else, towards strengthening struggle and organisation of people; popular organisation and struggle are the best weapons against the State and Capital at their very foundations. This means for anarchist to pass from activism towards militancy (what implies, obviously, more of a systematic, constant and coordinated work, tending to develop the different actors of popular struggle, whereas activism goes always behind the contingency).

From the above mentioned, we can deduce the frivolous misconception implied in such declarations “we are anarchists for we do not run into elections”, what is an impoverished and gross version of the basic tenets of anarchism. Our politics do NOT derive from the fact of not participating in elections, but is the non participation in the elections what is derived from our politics. And the crucial point in question is, precisely, how to build popular power.

Not participating into bourgeois elections cannot be considered one of the political tenets of anarchist revolutionary militancy, but this should derive naturally from a strategy of construction in the heart of the working class.

Today it is as necessary as ever to know how to build up a road for those who we call in to take part in the struggle against the system, and thus to go beyond a kind of naive anarchism, sometimes a bit childish, plagued of dogmatism and visceral phraseology.

We have to put the record straight: for anarchist-communists there’s no room in bourgeois elections, because our natural space to build up popular power, to resist and to struggle is somewhere else -in our communities, universities, schools and workplaces.

And what about other elections?

Precisely because of the above mentioned lack of serious reflection about the matters of method and political positions, there’s often a negative attitude from anarchist in regard to “any kind of elections”. As our criticism was one of the very action of voting, independent of the context and content of it! This confuses things up when it comes to the difference between participating in the State and participating in social and popular organisations (trade unions, community organisations, and so on). Anarchist presence in the latter is not only positive, but necessary if we are to guarantee some level of influence in process of social construction for the long term.

Our absence from those spaces, historically, has meant to leave the doors wide open to reformism and all sorts of authoritarians. It is necessary for anarchists to create some real impact in those places where we are. True, our activity cannot be limited to the struggle for representative positions in social organisations, like many other political groupings; our activity, above everything else has to be in the grassroots. But too often we dismiss chances to go for the representative positions because we believe that our very presence in the assembly is enough. We believe that to be our strong point: however, we need that grassroots work to be expressed as well in every single level of the organisations where we are working, and such a thing does not represent at all a departure from our principles as long as we are clear of the following:

That to participate in the electoral struggle for representative positions has to be the expression of a previous work at the grassroots, for real, that gives a ground and legitimacy to our participation. Without this previous work, without starting to build up from below, the dispute over the representative positions constitutes the same top-down logic of other political sectors.

That our participation has not to be, in any case, like any other group; we always have to push forward a project of internal democratization not limited to representation spaces, but also pushed from the grassroots – empowering it with the ultimate say in crucial issues. This means to implement in practice democratic principles like assemblies, accountability, organisational channels from the bottom up, etc…

Never to confuse tactic with strategy: political hegemony in popular, social or mass organisations is not an end on itself. It is only important as long as it helps us push forward real changes well beyond the boundaries of the organisation itself, at the level of the popular actors, threatening the foundations of capitalist society. In brief, we do not care about winning the elections in a trade union for the sake of it, but in what way this helps the accumulation of a revolutionary force. The end goal is not to linger forever in the struggle for reforms, struggle we do not dismiss at all, but we want to make way to the revolutionary changes towards the deliverance of the oppressed and the exploited.

And it is not in any way less important a strict libertarian ethic: we cannot neutralize our own ideas, our own programme. Not because we become representatives of some organisation, we have to silence our ideas. That said, we cannot impose them either. The struggle for our ideas to become hegemonic has to be won at the grassroots, in the assemblies, without abusing our charge as representative.

Those four points, we believe, are of paramount importance to develop a correct line in relation to elections in social organisations. Some years ago, the election of a trade unionist close comrade to a major position in the national confederation of labour (CUT) was an excellent example of how a wonderful opportunity of work in the labour movement was wasted. First, for there was a previous work, no matter how insufficient, with different trade unions and associations which were committed to creating a new type of trade unionism. What we lacked, was a coherent tactic with that force and the candidacy of the comrade, who ended up isolated, could not pose the problem of a new form of trade unionism, and did not contribute, in the end, to the constitution of a current that could gain momentum of the process of accumulation of forces started before hand and which had one of its most interesting moments in the birth of the Multisindical, in mayday 1998.

On the contrary, the current participation of libertarians in the leadership of community and student organisations, is a good example of how the struggle for these spaces, while accompanied by a previous work at the grassroots, by a democratizing project, by a specific programme of demands and struggle, and by an ethic and libertarian style of political work, can only strengthen libertarian influence on the popular quarter and raise the levels of organisation and struggle of the people. And this also helped us to constitute broader networks for the convergence of those who, from the popular struggle, contribute to forging a libertarian project: the existence of FeL (libertarian students’ network) is part of that process.

We cannot assume that struggle in trade unionist and students elections (legitimate spaces, created by the very people on struggle –and sometimes degenerated by bureaucracies- that have nothing to do in nature with the bourgeois class machine of the State) mean inherently, our decline into being “corruptible”. That fear to be “corrupted” by “power” (!) in this case is just not justified, and impossible to happen if we are to stick to the four ideas given before hand. It is only political coherence, a libertarian style of political work and the existence of clear mechanisms of participation that can serve as a guarantee against it. The legacy of the anarcho-syndicalist generation of the ‘50s, that lead to the creation of the CUT, having Ernesto Miranda at the front of this group, is there for everyone to know, as well as the work of the new generation of anarchist communists carried on in the community, students and workers’ organisations.

José Antonio Gutiérrez D.

Written in September 2003, published in Hombre y Sociedad, No. 18-19 Second Term 2004

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By Wayne Price

Central to anarchism is the belief that people can organize themselves to efficiently meet their needs, without top-down hierarchies, coercion, or rewards and punishments. People will make mistakes, because we are imperfect, but we can learn from our mistakes and improve over time. This is the belief in freedom. Anarchism is usually presented as the most extreme form of a belief in freedom. It has often been said that anarchism is a synthesis of classical liberalism—carried to its extreme—and socialism. Another historical name for anarchism (and antistatist Marxism) is “libertarian socialism.”

Yet there is a certain amount of ambiguity among anarchists about freedom. There are topics on which some—many–anarchists reject the pro-freedom, libertarian, position.

For example, concerning freedom of speech. Some anarchists have generalized from our attitude toward fascists (where we attempt to physically drive them off the streets and break up their meetings). These anarchists (and other leftists) have applied this to other groups which are non-fascist–conservatives for example–breaking up their meetings (such as assaulting the platform at Columbia University in New York City of the group which organized “Islamo-fascist Week”). Or anarchists are often against admitting Marxist-Leninists to anarchist gatherings or bookfairs—not only denying them literature tables (which may make sense at an anarchist bookfair) but questioning their right to attend. This is especially true toward the Spartacist League, a Trotskyist group which specializes in “political combat” through being obnoxious, or the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist group which would shoot us if it took power. This denial of free speech has been justified by some with a revival of the 1960s theory of Herbert Marcuse of “repressive tolerance.”

Freedom under capitalism

Capitalist politicians jabber about freedom, liberty, democracy, and more freedom. Revolutionary anarchists point out that freedom under capitalism is limited and hypocritical. Mostly the bourgeois (capitalist) politicians mean the freedom to get rich, including capitalists’ “freedom” not to be bothered by unions or by pesky anti-discrimination laws or environmental regulations. Capitalists want the “liberty” to not promote African-Americans or women at work or to rent out apartments without having to modify them for the physically disabled. This is the “freedom” to oppress others (to deny others their freedom). Needless to say, what I am for is the freedom of the oppressed to be free of their oppression!

Even the most democratic bourgeois state protects the rule of its capitalist minority. This minority gets rich by exploiting the working class majority of the population. The people vote for one or another candidate of the rich to rule over us for 2 or 4 to 8 years. But day-to-day we go to work and take orders from unelected bosses who serve the unelected minority which owns the economy. These capitalists decide (under the pressures of the market) whether employment should go up or down, whether prices should rise or fall, whether or not pollutants should be spewed into the atmosphere, and so on. There is “free speech,” but one side owns the printing presses, the radios, and the television, while dissenting voices can barely be heard over the roar of the mass media. That is why even a capitalist democracy is rightly called a “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”

In its heroic period, the revolutionary bourgeoisie promised all sorts of freedoms: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” or “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” of the U.S. and French revolutions. This meant the end of all pre-capitalist discrimination and oppression based on anything except wealth (ending oppression based on race, skin color, gender, religion, nationality, etc.). Of course, the bourgeoisie has never lived up to its protestations, as we can see by the slave-holders who made the U.S. revolution. They do not live up to it today, in the epoch of semi-monopoly capitalism and imperialist decline.

Every bit of freedom which the people enjoy was won by the struggle and blood of the people, fighting against the feudal lords or against the capitalists themselves. This makes these freedoms precious to us. They are ours. We mean to hold on to them (see my chapter on “Democracy versus the State” in Price [2007]).

Bourgeois democracy has benefits for the rich. It lets them settle differences between competing factions without having to shoot it out. It lets them get rid of a lousy leader (e.g. Bush) without a coup. It lets them pretend to the working people that the people control their government. It lets them coopt talented individuals from the bottom of society into the ruling strata (e.g. Obama).

But bourgeois democracy also has benefits for working people. It is simply easier to live from day to day in a bourgeois democracy than under a one-party police state. Besides that, it is easier for radical minorities (such as anarchists) to organize, to develop our theory, to publish our literature, and to reach out to others, than under a police dictatorship. We can argue that the bourgeois-democratic regime is hypocritical, contradicting the principles it claims to stand on.

Anarchists, socialists, communists, and revolutionaries are a small minority in the U.S. and most industrialized countries. Most working people strongly disagree with us. One of our best defenses is our appeal to traditions of free speech, democracy, and fairness. Anarchists benefit greatly by being able to make this appeal. We would be foolish to give it up.

After World War II, in the anti-Communist McCarthyite Red Scare, the capitalists benefited greatly from the fact that everyone knew that the Communist Party was antidemocratic. Everyone knew that if the Communists ever came to power, they would do as they had done in Eastern Europe and set up a one-party police state. So why defend their free speech? people asked themselves. Similarly, the capitalists have previously attacked the anarchists by portraying us as bomb-throwing terrorists, a danger to everyone, and not deserving of free speech. In our own time we have seen how the fear of terrorism can be used to justify the denial of civil liberties–and that many ordinary people were willing to accept this denial out of fear of being blown up by random bombs. Therefore it is important that we do not make it easy for the state to portray anarchists as terrorists and anti-free speech.

There is a line, based on the theory of “repressive tolerance,” which says that, since the bourgeoisie (also) benefits from free speech and other freedoms, once we radicals take power we will deny free speech, etc. Right now, of course, we are a minority and use free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, etc. But once we take over, this says, we will deny these freedoms to people we disagree with! This is not presented as the control of ACTIONS (such as our stopping counterrevolutionary armies or organized sabotage) but of SPEECH and writing. Its advocates do not apply it just to exceptional circumstances (e.g., if things should develop into a civil war, we would not allow the enemy to make propaganda behind our lines), but even to a peaceful, stable, period, on principle.

As everyone knows, this is the position of the fascists as it is of the Communist Parties. However for anarchists to openly state this program is pretty stupid. By doing so, we would forfeit all the sympathy which others give us on the grounds of our right to free speech. That is aside from the sheer wrongness of these politics.

What about the “rights” of Fascists?

In a number of Western countries, the making of racist, pro-fascist, or Holocaust-denying statements are illegal. Not so in the U.S., with its First Amendment. However, most anarchists do not call on the government to suppress fascists or reactionary statements. We oppose laws limiting fascist speech. In this, we are in full agreement with free-speech civil libertarians (such as the American Civil Liberties Union). Quite simply, we do not trust the government, this bourgeois-patriarchial-racist state. Even if suppressing right wing speech were good, we would expect the state to use any speech-suppression powers to focus on suppressing left-wing speech, that is, ours. And so it has.

Instead, we organize workers, students, African-Americans, and immigrants, to counterdemonstrate at fascist demonstrations, and, where possible, to bust up their forces, driving them out of the neighborhoods. Why?

When people organize a Nazi outfit, they are not organizing the equivalent of a Conservative Discussion Club. They are deliberately choosing to identify with those who broke up unions and left parties, who overthrew bourgeois democracy in favor of bourgeois dictatorship, who exterminated millions of Jews and others, and who waged aggressive wars. Similarly, people who identify with the Ku Klux Klan are choosing to imitate those who covered their faces to gather at night in order to murder African-Americans and their white supporters. By calling themselves Fascists, Nazis, or Klansmen, they are declaring their readiness to engage (in the fairly short-term) in violent, extralegal, ACTIONS against others. It is like forming a chapter of the Mafia. It would be foolish for us to wait until the police catch them doing something illegal. We have every right to protect ourselves, our friends, and our communities from this threat.

In 1930s Germany, the problem with the Nazis was not what they said or wrote. It was that they beat up socialists and communists selling their papers, they attacked union or socialist party meetings, they burned down union halls, and they murdered prominent leftists and even liberals. The police would not arrest them, or if they did, reactionary judges let them off with a slap on the wrist. This, not Free Speech for Fascists, was the issue, and should have been the justification for the left to unite and physically drive the Nazis from the streets (see my chapter on “The Fight Against Nazism in Germany” in Price [2007]).

It is different when dealing with a real Conservative Discussion Club. For us to just call everyone on the right “fascist” and try to break up their meetings is to put ourselves in a false and vulnerable position. The issue is not really “free speech for reactionaries” any more than the right to a fair trial is “civil liberties for criminals.” We want freedom of speech for ourselves, therefore we must defend it for others, even those whom we hate. The same goes for free speech for Communists, Maoists, and orthodox Trotskyists, who would, after all, establish totalitarian states and throw us in jail, if they could. Yet attacks on their free speech, by the government or anyone else, are attacks on the whole left, on everyone. (So we should allow the Spartacists to attend our gatherings.)

The socialist-anarchist revolution must be freely self-organized

The bourgeois-democratic revolution was based on a lie. Although it may have improved life for most people, its real function was to place a minority elite in power, to rule over and plunder the mass of people. This it could not say openly. Therefore the mass struggles which carried it out had to stay within certain limits. But this was acceptable for the capitalist revolution, because its main task is to break down the barriers to the market. Once the capitalist market is freed-up to run more-or-less automatically, then capitalism can take off in its historic role of capital accumulation and industrialization. How democratic or authoritarian the government is, is not the central issue for capitalism.

The revolution of the working class (and its allies among the oppressed) will be qualitatively different. It needs the truth, that all elites must be overturned and the big majority must take power. It needs people to be conscious of what they are doing. It replaces the automatic market with a democratically planned cooperative economy. All this requires awareness, consciousness, and deliberation among the mass of people. This only happens when there is open discussion and democratic decision-making.

Of course, a movement can be built on lies, on obedience to leaders, and on unthinking emotionality. That is how the fascists build their movements, how the Communist Parties build theirs. In reality, it is how liberal and conservative movements are built. They do not need–they cannot tolerate–free speech and democracy within their movements. But we do!

Concerning freedom of speech, “Here is a proposition: There can be no contradiction, no gulf in principle, between what we demand of this existing state, and what we propose for the society we want to replace it, a free society…. What we demand of this state does constitute our real program…. The kind of movement we build now, on a certain basis, will determine our new society, not good intentions…. Our aim by its very nature requires the mobilization of conscious masses. Without such conscious masses, our goal is impossible. Therefore we need the fullest democracy.” (Draper, 1992; pp. 165-166 & 170; Draper, the coiner of the term “socialism-from-below,” was no anarchist, but he was insightful on this topic.)

Freedom for all includes the right of national self-determination

Capitalism cannot fulfill its own bourgeois-democratic program. But the working class can, and can create a society a thousand times more democratic than Jefferson could ever dream of. We revolutionary anarchists must be the champions of every democratic freedom, every struggle against oppression, whatever its immediate relation to the class struggle as such.

This includes the struggle of oppressed nations for self-determination. This is often treated as a special case, but it is not. It is just one of the democratic struggles of masses of people (that is, the workers, peasants, extreme poor, and small shopkeepers) for freedom. Almost all libertarian socialists agree that most of humanity is oppressed by imperialism, but many libertarians do not like the choices which the oppressed peoples would make. At this time in history, oppressed nations are unlikely to chose horizontalized federations of self-managed workplaces and communes. Unfortunately, the Palestinians and Iraqis, say, will (at first) chose national states with capitalist economies. Since this is not what we internationalist anarchists advocate, many anarchists decide that they cannot support the freedom of the Palestinians and Iraqis to make their own choices. These supposed libertarians then refuse to take sides between the imperialist power of the U.S. and the oppressed people of Iraq and Palestine.

People of oppressed nations, like everyone else, learn to want anarchist revolution only by open debate, new experiences, and living the alternatives. They will not learn if anarchists turn our backs on them and their struggles, refuse to engage with them, and refuse to show solidarity with them against their imperialist and colonialist enemies.

What we advocate is no small change in society but a total one, involving a complete transformation of popular consciousness and practice. That is why anarchists are advocates of extreme freedom and radical democracy, of popular participation in every sphere of society and in every way.

References

Draper, Hal (1992). Socialism-From-Below (E. Haberkern, ed.). New Jersey/London: Humanities Press.

Price, Wayne (2007). The Abolition of the State; Anarchist & Marxist Perspectives. Bloomington IN: AuthorHouse.

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Anarchism is the word we use to express our passionate desire for a world on our own terms. Everyone from capitalists to communists uses the word “freedom” as some catch all term that their way of running the world can bring you. When we use it here, we don’t intend to use the same empty rhetoric. Democracy, Justice, Liberty, Freedom, Revolution— they’ve all been co-opted by everything from tyrannical governments to cell phone commercials, almost to the point they don’t mean anything anymore. We mean for a world without rulers, a world without borders, and a world where when freedom is spoken of it’s for all, not just those within a particular nation, class, race, gender, or religion. We want to break down such divisions altogether.

Anarchism describes both the type of society we envision as well as our process for creating it, based on mutual aid, voluntary association, autonomy, and cooperation. We didn’t come up with this word through testing it on focus groups, and it doesn’t concern us whether or not you use it, or any other label, for your own frustration and alienation from the status quo of voting for politicians, or your desires for something different. We don’t want to take power to then impose what we believe would be better rules and more just restrictions. We don’t want to run the world; we want everyone to run their own lives together. Whether as an anarchist, a Democrat or Republican, or anything else, what’s important isn’t what you call yourself, but how you resist oppression and create alternatives.

Direct Action is the term we use for the path out of the world we live in now into the ones we desire. In taking direct action, we bypass the established channels for political expression, and address problems and accomplish goals directly by undertaking them ourselves. For us, it’s not just about disagreeing with the stances of one or all of the candidates we’re offered—it’s about questioning whether any politician can represent us or create a world in which we can live freely. While some might be willing to bite their tongues for a more progressive Democrat or cross their fingers on a third party candidate, many of us have dreams that will never fit into ballot boxes…

Unlike presidential elections and the shelves of chain stores, where your consumer choices are neatly pre-selected and laid out for you by people you’ll never meet, amongst anarchists you’ll actually have to think for yourself. No one will ask you what your stances are on “the issues,” as defined and framed by the politicians and the experts. Instead, we want to know:

What are your desires?

What kind of world do you want to live in?

No one can sell you any fashionably packaged solutions to your alienation from the political system—least of all anarchists! Our goal isn’t to become candidates and convince you to vote for us or our positions— we want everyone to articulate their own visions, and to have the tools and the agency to enact those visions for themselves. We want to completely leave behind the world of partitioned “issues,” the consumerist illusion of choice, and the idea that anyone can represent us. In their place, we’re creating relationships of affinity with those around us who share common interests, similar alienation, and compatible visions of a way to live without ruling or being ruled.

Sure, there are glimpses into other worlds of possibility that inspire us…but ultimately, anyone who lays out a formula for The Revolution with a capital R plays the same game as the politicians who claim to offer us salvation through their expertly designed plans to manage our discontent. Anyway, the point isn’t to have it all figured out; the point is to act. Freedom is not a commodity, it’s a process; we become free by acting freely, and no one can do that for us.

When we step outside of the trap of voting in elections into the vast universe of possibility that exists through direct action, we hold the keys to all of the worlds we’ve only dreamed of, the worlds we never saw in the carefully worded questions of the pollsters or the polished rhetoric of the lesser of two evils. We have worlds to win beyond the electoral system, worlds that are beginning to unfold around you even now. Let’s reclaim our lives from the empty promises of the ballot boxes and start realizing our dreams, right here and right now.

From “False Hopes Versus Real Change”

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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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From Willful Disobedience Vol. 2, No. 12

The social relationships of class and exploitation are not simple. Workerist conceptions, which are based on the idea of an objectively revolutionary class that is defined in terms of its relationship to the means of production, ignore the mass of those world-wide whose lives are stolen from them by the current social order but who can find no place within its productive apparatus. Thus these conceptions end up presenting a narrow and simplistic understanding of exploitation and revolutionary transformation. In order to carry out a revolutionary struggle against exploitation, we need to develop an understanding of class as it actually exists in the world without seeking any guarantees.

At its most basic, class society is one in which there are those who rule and those who are ruled, those who exploit and those who are exploited. Such a social order can only arise when people lose their capacity to determine the conditions of their own existence. Thus, the essential quality shared by the exploited is their dispossession, their loss of the capacity to make and carry out the basic decisions about how they live.
[But what if -I- rule, dude!]

The ruling class is defined in terms of its own project of accumulating power and wealth. While there are certainly significant conflicts within the ruling class in terms of specific interests and real competition for control of resources and territory, this overarching project aimed at the control of social wealth and power, and thus of the lives and relationships of every living being, provides this class with a unified positive project.

The exploited class has no such positive project to define it. Rather it is defined in terms of what is done to it, what is taken away from it. Being uprooted from the ways of life that they had known and created with their peers, the only community that is left to the people who make up this heterogeneous class is that provided by capital and the state, the community of work and commodity exchange decorated with whatever nationalist, religious, ethnic, racial or subcultural ideological constructions through which the ruling order creates identities into which to channel individuality and revolt. The concept of a positive proletarian identity, of a single, unified, positive proletarian project, has no basis in reality since what defines one as proletarian is precisely that her life has been stolen from her, that he has been transformed into a pawn in the projects of the rulers.

The workerist conception of the proletarian project has its origins in the revolutionary theories of Europe and the United States (particularly certain marxist and syndicalist theories). By the late 19th century, both western Europe and the eastern United States were well on their way to being thoroughly industrialized, and the dominant ideology of progress equated technological development with social liberation. This ideology manifested in revolutionary theory as the idea that the industrial working class was objectively revolutionary because it was in the position to take over the means of production developed under capitalism (which, as products of progress, were assumed to be inherently liberating) and turn them to the service of the human community. By ignoring most of the world (along with a significant portion of the exploited in the industrialized areas), revolutionary theorists were thus able to invent a positive project for the proletariat, an objective historical mission. That it was founded on the bourgeois ideology of progress was ignored. In my opinion, the luddites had a much clearer perspective, recognizing that industrialism was another one of the masters’ tools for dispossessing them. With good reason, they attacked the machines of mass production.

The process of dispossession has long since been accomplished in the West (though of course it is a process that is going on at all times even here), but it is in much of the South of the world it is still in its early stages. Since the process started in the West though, there have been some significant changes in the functioning of the productive apparatus. Skilled factory positions have largely disappeared, and what is needed in a worker is flexibility, the capacity to adapt in other words, the capacity to be an interchangeable cog in the machine of capital. In addition, factories tend to require far fewer workers to carry on the productive process, both because of developments in technology and management techniques that have allowed a more decentralized productive process and because increasingly the type of work necessary in factories is largely just monitoring and maintaining machines.

On a practical level this means that we are all, as individuals, expendable to the production process, because we are all replaceable, that lovely capitalist egalitarianism in which we are all equal to zero. In the first world, this has had the effect of pushing increasing numbers of the exploited into increasingly precarious positions: day labor, temporary work, service sector jobs, chronic unemployment, the black market and other forms of illegality, homelessness and prison. The steady job with its guarantee of a somewhat stable life – even if one’s life is not one’s own – is giving way to a lack of guarantees where the illusions provided by a moderately comfortable consumerism can no longer hide that life under capitalism is always lived on the edge of catastrophe.

In the third world, people who have been able to create their own existence, if sometimes a difficult one, are finding their land and their other means for doing so being pulled out from under them as the machines of capital quite literal invade their homes and eat away any possibility to continue living directly off their own activity. Torn from their lives and lands, they are forced to move to the cities where there is little employment for them. Shantytowns develop around the cities, often with populations higher than the city proper. Without any possibility of steady employment, the inhabitants of these shantytowns are compelled to form a black market economy to survive, but this also still serves the interests of capital. Others, in desperation, choose immigration, risking imprisonment in refugee camps and centers for undocumented foreigners in the hope of improving their condition.

So, along with dispossession, precariousness and expendability are increasingly the shared traits of those who make up the exploited class worldwide. If, on the one hand, this means that this commodity civilization is creating in its midst a class of barbarians who truly have nothing to lose in bringing it down (and not in the ways imagined by the old workerist ideologues), on the other hand, these traits do not in themselves provide any basis for a positive project of the transformation of life. The rage provoked by the miserable conditions of life that this society imposes can easily be channeled into projects that serve the ruling order or at least the specific interest of one or another of the rulers. The examples of situations in the past few decades in which the rage of the exploited has been harnessed to fuel nationalist, racialist or religious projects that serve only to reinforce domination are too many to count. The possibility of the end of the current social order is as great as it ever was, but the faith in its inevitability can no longer pretend to have an objective basis.

But in order to truly understand the revolutionary project and begin the project of figuring out how to carry it out (and to developing an analysis of how the ruling class manages to deflect the rage of those it exploits into its own projects), it is necessary to realize that exploitation does not merely occur in terms of the production of wealth, but also in terms of the reproduction of social relationships. Regardless of the position of any particular proletarian in the productive apparatus, it is in the interests of the ruling class that everyone would have a role, a social identity, that serves in the reproduction of social relationships. Race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, subculture – all of these things may, indeed, reflect very real and significant differences, but all are social constructions for channeling these differences into roles useful for the maintenance of the current social order. In the most advanced areas of the current society where the market defines most relationships, identities largely come to be defined in terms of the commodities that symbolize them, and interchangeability becomes the order of the day in social reproduction, just as it is in economic production. And it is precisely because identity is a social construction and increasingly a saleable commodity that it must be dealt with seriously by revolutionaries, analyzed carefully in its complexity with the precise aim of moving beyond these categories to the point that our differences (including those that this society would define in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, etc.) are the reflection of each of us as singular individuals.

Because there is no common positive project to be found in our condition as proletarians – as the exploited and dispossessed – our project must be the struggle to destroy our proletarian condition, to put an end to our dispossession. The essence of what we have lost is not control over the means of production or of material wealth; it is our lives themselves, our capacity to create our existence in terms of our own needs and desires. Thus, our struggle finds its terrain everywhere, at all times. Our aim is to destroy everything that keeps our lives from us: capital, the state, the industrial and post-industrial technological apparatus, work, sacrifice, ideology, every organization that tries to usurp our struggle, in short, all systems of control.

In the very process of carrying out this struggle in the only way that we can carry it out – outside of and against all formality and institutionalization – we begin to develop new ways of relating based on self-organization, a commonality based on the unique differences that define each of us as individuals whose freedom expands with the freedom of the other. It is here in revolt against our proletarian condition that we find that shared positive project that is different for each one of us: the collective struggle for individual realization.

Via AnarchistNews

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By ZIGA VODOVNIK

Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the “American Dream“, that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is just that – a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air Force and served as a bombardier in the “European Theatre“. This proved to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the privileged few.

Although Zinn spent his youthful years helping his parents support the family by working in the shipyards, he started with studies at Columbia University after WWII, where he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in 1958. Later he was appointed as a chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, an all-black women’s college in Atlanta, GA, where he actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement.

From the onset of the Vietnam War he was active within the emerging anti-war movement, and in the following years only stepped up his involvement in movements aspiring towards another, better world. Zinn is the author of more than 20 books, including A People’s History of the United States that is “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories…” (Library Journal)

Zinn’s most recent book is entitled A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and is a fascinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote in the last couple of years. Beloved radical historian is still lecturing across the US and around the world, and is, with active participation and support of various progressive social movements continuing his struggle for free and just society.

Ziga Vodovnik: From the 1980s onwards we are witnessing the process of economic globalization getting stronger day after day. Many on the Left are now caught between a “dilemma” – either to work to reinforce the sovereignty of nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and global capital; or to strive towards a non-national alternative to the present form of globalization and that is equally global. What’s your opinion about this?

Howard Zinn: I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization. In a certain sense the movement towards globalization where capitalists are trying to leap over nation state barriers, creates a kind of opportunity for movement to ignore national barriers, and to bring people together globally, across national lines in opposition to globalization of capital, to create globalization of people, opposed to traditional notion of globalization. In other words to use globalization – it is nothing wrong with idea of globalization – in a way that bypasses national boundaries and of course that there is not involved corporate control of the economic decisions that are made about people all over the world.

ZV: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once wrote that: “Freedom is the mother, not the daughter of order.” Where do you see life after or beyond (nation) states?

HZ: Beyond the nation states? (laughter) I think what lies beyond the nation states is a world without national boundaries, but also with people organized. But not organized as nations, but people organized as groups, as collectives, without national and any kind of boundaries. Without any kind of borders, passports, visas. None of that! Of collectives of different sizes, depending on the function of the collective, having contacts with one another. You cannot have self-sufficient little collectives, because these collectives have different resources available to them. This is something anarchist theory has not worked out and maybe cannot possibly work out in advance, because it would have to work itself out in practice.

ZV: Do you think that a change can be achieved through institutionalized party politics, or only through alternative means – with disobedience, building parallel frameworks, establishing alternative media, etc.

HZ: If you work through the existing structures you are going to be corrupted. By working through political system that poisons the atmosphere, even the progressive organizations, you can see it even now in the US, where people on the “Left” are all caught in the electoral campaign and get into fierce arguments about should we support this third party candidate or that third party candidate. This is a sort of little piece of evidence that suggests that when you get into working through electoral politics you begin to corrupt your ideals. So I think a way to behave is to think not in terms of representative government, not in terms of voting, not in terms of electoral politics, but thinking in terms of organizing social movements, organizing in the work place, organizing in the neighborhood, organizing collectives that can become strong enough to eventually take over – first to become strong enough to resist what has been done to them by authority, and second, later, to become strong enough to actually take over the institutions.

ZV: One personal question. Do you go to the polls? Do you vote?

HZ: I do. Sometimes, not always. It depends. But I believe that it is preferable sometimes to have one candidate rather another candidate, while you understand that that is not the solution. Sometimes the lesser evil is not so lesser, so you want to ignore that, and you either do not vote or vote for third party as a protest against the party system. Sometimes the difference between two candidates is an important one in the immediate sense, and then I believe trying to get somebody into office, who is a little better, who is less dangerous, is understandable. But never forgetting that no matter who gets into office, the crucial question is not who is in office, but what kind of social movement do you have. Because we have seen historically that if you have a powerful social movement, it doesn’t matter who is in office. Whoever is in office, they could be Republican or Democrat, if you have a powerful social movement, the person in office will have to yield, will have to in some ways respect the power of social movements.

We saw this in the 1960s. Richard Nixon was not the lesser evil, he was the greater evil, but in his administration the war was finally brought to an end, because he had to deal with the power of the anti-war movement as well as the power of the Vietnamese movement. I will vote, but always with a caution that voting is not crucial, and organizing is the important thing.

When some people ask me about voting, they would say will you support this candidate or that candidate? I say: ‘I will support this candidate for one minute that I am in the voting booth. At that moment I will support A versus B, but before I am going to the voting booth, and after I leave the voting booth, I am going to concentrate on organizing people and not organizing electoral campaign.’

ZV: Anarchism is in this respect rightly opposing representative democracy since it is still form of tyranny – tyranny of majority. They object to the notion of majority vote, noting that the views of the majority do not always coincide with the morally right one. Thoreau once wrote that we have an obligation to act according to the dictates of our conscience, even if the latter goes against the majority opinion or the laws of the society. Do you agree with this?

HZ: Absolutely. Rousseau once said, if I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority? No, majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things – proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. And also has to take into account that majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. So yes, people have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.

ZV: Where do you see the historical origins of anarchism in the United States?

HZ: One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call themselves anarchists. The word was first used by Proudhon in the middle of the 19th century, but actually there were anarchist ideas that proceeded Proudhon, those in Europe and also in the United States. For instance, there are some ideas of Thomas Paine, who was not an anarchist, who would not call himself an anarchist, but he was suspicious of government. Also Henry David Thoreau. He does not know the word anarchism, and does not use the word anarchism, but Thoreau’s ideas are very close to anarchism. He is very hostile to all forms of government. If we trace origins of anarchism in the United States, then probably Thoreau is the closest you can come to an early American anarchist. You do not really encounter anarchism until after the Civil War, when you have European anarchists, especially German anarchists, coming to the United States. They actually begin to organize. The first time that anarchism has an organized force and becomes publicly known in the United States is in Chicago at the time of Haymarket Affair.

ZV: Where do you see the main inspiration of contemporary anarchism in the United States? What is your opinion about the Transcendentalism – i.e., Henry D. Thoreau, Ralph W. Emerson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller, et al. – as an inspiration in this perspective?

HZ: Well, the Transcendentalism is, we might say, an early form of anarchism. The Transcendentalists also did not call themselves anarchists, but there are anarchist ideas in their thinking and in their literature. In many ways Herman Melville shows some of those anarchist ideas. They were all suspicious of authority. We might say that the Transcendentalism played a role in creating an atmosphere of skepticism towards authority, towards government.
Unfortunately, today there is no real organized anarchist movement in the United States. There are many important groups or collectives that call themselves anarchist, but they are small. I remember that in 1960s there was an anarchist collective here in Boston that consisted of fifteen (sic!) people, but then they split. But in 1960s the idea of anarchism became more important in connection with the movements of 1960s.

ZV: Most of the creative energy for radical politics is nowadays coming from anarchism, but only few of the people involved in the movement actually call themselves “anarchists”. Where do you see the main reason for this? Are activists ashamed to identify themselves with this intellectual tradition, or rather they are true to the commitment that real emancipation needs emancipation from any label?

HZ: The term anarchism has become associated with two phenomena with which real anarchist don’t want to associate themselves with. One is violence, and the other is disorder or chaos. The popular conception of anarchism is on the one hand bomb-throwing and terrorism, and on the other hand no rules, no regulations, no discipline, everybody does what they want, confusion, etc. That is why there is a reluctance to use the term anarchism. But actually the ideas of anarchism are incorporated in the way the movements of the 1960s began to think.

I think that probably the best manifestation of that was in the civil rights movement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – SNCC. SNCC without knowing about anarchism as philosophy embodied the characteristics of anarchism. They were decentralized. Other civil rights organizations, for example Seven Christian Leadership Conference, were centralized organizations with a leader – Martin Luther King. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were based in New York, and also had some kind of centralized organization. SNCC, on the other hand, was totally decentralized. It had what they called field secretaries, who worked in little towns all over the South, with great deal of autonomy. They had an office in Atlanta, Georgia, but the office was not a strong centralized authority. The people who were working out in the field – in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi – they were very much on their own. They were working together with local people, with grassroots people. And so there is no one leader for SNCC, and also great suspicion of government.

They could not depend on government to help them, to support them, even though the government of the time, in the early 1960s, was considered to be progressive, liberal. John F. Kennedy especially. But they looked at John F. Kennedy, they saw how he behaved. John F. Kennedy was not supporting the Southern movement for equal rights for Black people. He was appointing the segregationists judges in the South, he was allowing southern segregationists to do whatever they wanted to do. So SNCC was decentralized, anti-government, without leadership, but they did not have a vision of a future society like the anarchists. They were not thinking long term, they were not asking what kind of society shall we have in the future. They were really concentrated on immediate problem of racial segregation. But their attitude, the way they worked, the way they were organized, was along, you might say, anarchist lines.

ZV: Do you thing that pejorative (mis)usage of the word anarchism is direct consequence of the fact that the ideas that people can be free, was and is very frightening to those in power?

HZ: No doubt! No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them, yes.

ZV: In theoretical political science we can analytically identify two main conceptions of anarchism – a so-called collectivist anarchism limited to Europe, and on another hand individualist anarchism limited to US. Do you agree with this analytical separation?

HZ: To me this is an artificial separation. As so often happens analysts can make things easier for themselves, like to create categories and fit movements into categories, but I don’t think you can do that. Here in the United States, sure there have been people who believed in individualist anarchism, but in the United States have also been organized anarchists of Chicago in 1880s or SNCC. I guess in both instances, in Europe and in the United States, you find both manifestations, except that maybe in Europe the idea of anarcho-syndicalism become stronger in Europe than in the US. While in the US you have the IWW, which is an anarcho-sindicalist organization and certainly not in keeping with individualist anarchism.

ZV: What is your opinion about the “dilemma” of means – revolution versus social and cultural evolution?

HZ: I think here are several different questions. One of them is the issue of violence, and I think here anarchists have disagreed. Here in the US you find a disagreement, and you can find this disagreement within one person. Emma Goldman, you might say she brought anarchism, after she was dead, to the forefront in the US in the 1960s, when she suddenly became an important figure. But Emma Goldman was in favor of the assassination of Henry Clay Frick, but then she decided that this is not the way. Her friend and comrade, Alexander Berkman, he did not give up totally the idea of violence. On the other hand, you have people who were anarchistic in way like Tolstoy and also Gandhi, who believed in nonviolence.

There is one central characteristic of anarchism on the matter of means, and that central principle is a principle of direct action – of not going through the forms that the society offers you, of representative government, of voting, of legislation, but directly taking power. In case of trade unions, in case of anarcho-syndicalism, it means workers going on strike, and not just that, but actually also taking hold of industries in which they work and managing them. What is direct action? In the South when black people were organizing against racial segregation, they did not wait for the government to give them a signal, or to go through the courts, to file lawsuits, wait for Congress to pass the legislation. They took direct action; they went into restaurants, were sitting down there and wouldn’t move. They got on those busses and acted out the situation that they wanted to exist.

Of course, strike is always a form of direct action. With the strike, too, you are not asking government to make things easier for you by passing legislation, you are taking a direct action against the employer. I would say, as far as means go, the idea of direct action against the evil that you want to overcome is a kind of common denominator for anarchist ideas, anarchist movements. I still think one of the most important principles of anarchism is that you cannot separate means and ends. And that is, if your end is egalitarian society you have to use egalitarian means, if your end is non-violent society without war, you cannot use war to achieve your end. I think anarchism requires means and ends to be in line with one another. I think this is in fact one of the distinguishing characteristics of anarchism.

ZV: On one occasion Noam Chomsky has been asked about his specific vision of anarchist society and about his very detailed plan to get there. He answered that “we can not figure out what problems are going to arise unless you experiment with them.” Do you also have a feeling that many left intellectuals are loosing too much energy with their theoretical disputes about the proper means and ends, to even start “experimenting” in practice?

HZ: I think it is worth presenting ideas, like Michael Albert did with Parecon for instance, even though if you maintain flexibility. We cannot create blueprint for future society now, but I think it is good to think about that. I think it is good to have in mind a goal. It is constructive, it is helpful, it is healthy, to think about what future society might be like, because then it guides you somewhat what you are doing today, but only so long as this discussions about future society don’t become obstacles to working towards this future society. Otherwise you can spend discussing this utopian possibility versus that utopian possibility, and in the mean time you are not acting in a way that would bring you closer to that.

ZV: In your A People’s History of the United States you show us that our freedom, rights, environmental standards, etc., have never been given to us from the wealthy and influential few, but have always been fought out by ordinary people – with civil disobedience. What should be in this respect our first steps toward another, better world?

HZ: I think our first step is to organize ourselves and protest against existing order – against war, against economic and sexual exploitation, against racism, etc. But to organize ourselves in such a way that means correspond to the ends, and to organize ourselves in such a way as to create kind of human relationship that should exist in future society. That would mean to organize ourselves without centralize authority, without charismatic leader, in a way that represents in miniature the ideal of the future egalitarian society. So that even if you don’t win some victory tomorrow or next year in the meantime you have created a model. You have acted out how future society should be and you created immediate satisfaction, even if you have not achieved your ultimate goal.

ZV: What is your opinion about different attempts to scientifically prove Bakunin’s ontological assumption that human beings have “instinct for freedom”, not just will but also biological need?

HZ: Actually I believe in this idea, but I think that you cannot have biological evidence for this. You would have to find a gene for freedom? No. I think the other possible way is to go by history of human behavior. History of human behavior shows this desire for freedom, shows that whenever people have been living under tyranny, people would rebel against that.

Ziga Vodovnik is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, where his teaching and research is focused on anarchist theory/praxis and social movements in the Americas. His new book Anarchy of Everyday Life – Notes on anarchism and its Forgotten Confluences will be released in late 2008.

Via Counterpunch

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By Omowale Akintunde, Multicultural Education v. 7 no. 2 (Winter 1999)

Racism is a systemic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every vestige of our reality. For most whites, however, racism is like murder: the concept exists but someone has to commit it in order for it to happen. This limited view of such a multilayered syndrome cultivates the sinister nature of racism and, in fact, perpetuates racist phenomena rather than eradicates them. Further, this view of racism disguises its true essence, thus allowing its tenets to proliferate.

Racism conceived of in this way ignores the societal, systemic, institutional, and political institutions which both overtly and inherently ensure minority subjugation and protect white privilege. When racism is regarded in this way, it also helps white society to erect defense mechanisms to ignore its direct implication and involvement in the maintenance of white racism, white privilege, and the construction of “other.” After all, if racism is conceived of as the conscious employment of certain acts, using certain taboo terms (i.e., nigger, spic) and one does not consciously perform “racist” acts or utter certain taboo terms, then one can reasonably assert that one is not a racist.

This notion suggests that racism is an abstract hypothetical that functions outside of our human and social systems and that without conscious human choice cannot occur. This notion of racism and American society is illustrated in Conceptual Model 1 (see below).

Another view of racism in America, however, is that it is a phenomenon constructed by Americans socially defined as “White,” and that its primary role is to ensure that group’s primacy to the exclusion of all others at whatever cost. This view of racism refutes the notion that racism is an abstract hypothetical that exists outside of the social milieu that requires conscious and deliberate acts to manifest. Further, this view asserts that racism is integrally and inextricably bound to all of our “human” and social processes and that, in fact, American society itself is a function of racism and lies imbedded in racist ideology. This notion of racism and American society is illustrated in a Conceptual Model 2 (see below).

Racism is thus perceived of as abstract hypothetical cause for the emergence of other fallacious syndromes. If racism is perceived as functioning outside of societal processes and as having to be consciously chosen and enacted to become concrete reality then racism in theory can be practiced by anyone. That is, “non-Whites,” too, may engage in practicing racism and thus Whites themselves may be victims of racism.

Such a notion is exactly how racism is mostly perceived in American society, so that the possibility of deconstructing White supremacy, the progenitor and true underlying problem of racism and racist ideology, does not become the focus of racial investigation. That the entire infrastructure of American society is based upon and emanates from the Western canon; that European Americans raped the continent and decimated its indigenous peoples, instituted a system of society- and government-sanctioned chattel slavery for over three centuries; that the present population that is deemed “White” is still benefiting from these systems and institutions; these, it appears, are all points to be ignored.

By ignoring the historical specificity of the construction of race by “Whites,” as a tool to ensure that group’s supremacy and subsequent degradation of “others,” and by promoting the concept of racism as abstract hypothetical, White society not only can ensure that the system of White supremacy remains intact but can, in fact, successfully create smoke screens that actually implicate “others” in the maintenance of such a system.

Via Resist Racism