Simon Springer: Anarchy is Forever

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Simon Springer is a prolific writer on anarchism and geography. The following is an excerpt from his forward to Historical Geographies of Anarchism, ed. F. Ferretti, F. Toro, G. Barrera, and A. Ince, in which he discusses anarchy, “the geometry of life itself,” and anarchism conceived as a political philosophy. Inspiring words in troubled times.

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Anarchy is Forever: The Infinite and Eternal Moment of Struggle

Anarchy is indicative of a world free from servitude and the intrusions of governance, where there are no hierarchical institutions or mechanisms of control. It reveals a world of free association and constant change, a deep interdependence between everything that exists and the perpetual evolution of the unfolding interactions of being. In the midst of this immanence, domination represents a disruption, where in the grand scheme of things it is quickly corrected by the prevailing order of existence.

Anarchy can accordingly be considered at once the infinite and unfathomable vibrations of the universe and the geometry of life itself. It is the energy that flows through our natural world, a beautiful fractal that can never actually be broken, only temporarily interrupted.

Any suggestion that anarchy is chaos consequently signals a profound lack of understanding and serves not as truth, but as the manifestation of an anxiety born from the parochial hubris of the human mind as it attempts to restructure what actually exists in accordance with what it problematically thinks should be. Anarchy is only mayhem through the distorted lens of a fool’s sense of order.

In contrast to anarchy, anarchism is a political philosophy and practice that attempts to correct the strange intermission of the present moment, where the rhythm and flow of symbiosis has been disrupted by extraordinary mass violence. The state, capitalism, religion, sexism, racism, ableism, childism, and speciesism are all representative of the archy, or systems of domination, that form the nebula of this interference, clouding our vision through the myopia of gradation and supremacy.

It is precisely these facets of rule that are the target of anarchists. In attempting to realize the end of such cruelty, anarchists recognize that there is no primacy to the ordering of life, only the harmony of oneness. We are connected to existence as equals, with none taking precedence over another. On a larger temporal timescale it is guaranteed that the system will correct itself, whereby consonance will be restored and all existent chains of command severed.

Greed, extractivism, and the accumulation of capital will push humanity to extinction and the entire order of our planet will reset itself, shattering the false dichotomies and hierarchies that humans have fabricated. Yet for anarchists this is not the desired outcome. The pursuit of anarchism is an attempt to restore balance to the world before our collective demise becomes assured. It is a reaction to the nihilism of avarice, premised on the very radical idea that humans should continue to be woven into the fabric of the great unraveling enigma that is the universe.

Through the institution of the state and the spread of capitalism we have collectively wrestled with the natural world, imposing hierarchies and modes of domination upon the structure of our planetary existence that simply don’t make sense. They are the reflections of human arrogance that have taken us through the looking glass into a dystopian reality of profound malevolence.

We can take some measure of solace in the idea that the state and capital are facile and fugitive attempts at organization that will undoubtedly come undone, but any politics of resignation is fundamentally a practice of necromancy. These are institutions that signify the celebration of our demise and any communion with them is the fulfillment of a death wish. If we do nothing and simply wait for the eternal recurrence to arrive (Nietzsche), our shared misery as we plunge headlong towards oblivion is virtually assured.

Anarchism requires more of us. An anarchist politics insists that apathy give way to empathy. It demands the impossible, summoning us to take action in recreating the world through the realignment of our geographies towards the possibility of a tomorrow that at present cannot be assured.

The primary mode of restitution is prefiguration, a process of living life today, in this very moment, in this exact space, in a way that is befitting of the future we seek to establish. Our future is consequently to be found in the past, in the primordial anarchy that is ancient beyond memory, record, or tradition, and the living anarchism that was documented in historical struggles…

Just as anarchy was the stuff of there and then, anarchism attempts to realize a here and now. Yet this too is indicative of a false separation of space and time, demonstrating the ways that language all too often fails us. There is here, and then is now. Anything else is illusion, veiled in the ignorance of separation. The cosmology of space-time folds into itself, and the eternal now-infinite-here is but a matter of fact, the very basis of existence.

So if anarchy is the filament of our past, then anarchism is the incandescence of our present. Each plays a role in illuminating our future with the passionate radiance of connection. If we are to remain a part of the chronicle of life in its beautiful mercurial narration, we need to let the stories-so-far of anarchism guide us into a future that embraces our past as the space of anarchy.

It is the embrace of this infinite and eternal moment of struggle that sees us emerge from our chrysalis to spread our wings. It gives purpose to the work of transforming the world as we glide along a cyclical line of flight towards the reawakening of harmony. Anarchism is an uroboric geography. It is the realization of the macrocosm in the microcosm, the momentary in the infinite, the universe in a speck of dust.

Through explorations of the past, the musings offered in the pages of this book promote a vision of the horizon, enabling us to realize that anarchist geographies are the fulfillment of a world that we have the active ability to create, an ontology that yearns to be created. They envision an earth beyond militarism, beyond cruelty, beyond violence, and beyond hate, in short, a world that we would actually want to live in. They remind us that while anarchism may be fleeting, anarchy is forever.

Simon Springer

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Published in: on November 26, 2016 at 10:14 am  Comments (2)  
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Gabriel Kuhn: Anarchism Today

Gabriel Kuhn

Gabriel Kuhn

Gabriel Kuhn is the author and editor of numerous works relating to anarchism, rebellion and revolution, including Soccer vs. the State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics, Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy, a collection from Gustav Landauer, Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, Erich Mühsam‘s Liberating Society from the State and Other Writings: A Political Reader, and All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918–1919. He has a blog at PM Press, his main publisher. The following excerpts are from his post, “Revolution Is More Than a Word: 23 Theses on Anarchism.” I thought it was a useful contribution to the current situation facing anarchists, particularly in the U.S. I included some of Gustav Landauer’s writings in Volume One of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. I discuss the origins of the anarchist movement from out of the struggles and debates within the International Workingmen’s Association (the so-called “First International”) in ‘We Do Not Fear Anarchy – We Invoke It’: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement.

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Anarchism: A Political Movement

The origin of anarchism as a self-defined political movement dates back to the social question in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Anarchists were part of the International Workingmen’s Association, better known as the First International, together with the political forces that would later turn into social democrats on the one hand and Leninists on the other. (1) We consider this origin important and see anarchism as part of the left-wing tradition. We are opposed to declaring anarchism a “philosophy”, an “ethic”, a “principle”, or a “way of life” rather than a political movement. An existential attitude is one thing; organizing for political change is another. Without proper organizing, anarchism is easily reduced to a noble idea, reflecting religion or hipsterism more than political ambition. At the same time, anarchism is not just antiauthoritarian class struggle. It is broader and includes activities that range from setting up social centers to deconstructing gender norms to conceiving alternative forms of transportation. Anarchism’s prefigurative dimension has always included questions that didn’t fit narrow definitions of the Left: dietary, sexual, and spiritual concerns as well as matters of personal ethics…

Anarchism’s problems today

The problem of revolution has haunted anarchism since its inception. Other problems have come and gone, depending on historical circumstances and the state of the movement. Here are the main ones we’re able to identify today:

* There is an unfortunate sense of moral superiority, which often overshadows political work. The underlying problem seems to be that two motivations overlap when people become active in anarchist circles: one is that you want to change the world; the other is that you want to be better than the average person. The latter easily leads to self-marginalization since any sense of moral superiority relies on belonging to a selected few rather than the masses. When this becomes dominant, your identity takes precedent over your actions and pointing out the personal shortcomings of others over political change. Ironically, the main targets are often people from within our own ranks rather than the enemy, following the sorry logic of, “If you can’t hit the ones you need to hit, you hit those within arm’s reach.” The combination of judging outsiders while competing with insiders for the moral top-dog position is incompatible with any movement claiming revolutionary integrity.

* The anarchist movement is, by and large, a subculture. Subcultures are great. They provide a home to people (sometimes a life-saving one), they help preserve activist knowledge, they allow for experimentation, and so on. But dissent is not revolution. So if the politics are reduced to the subculture, the revolutionary rhetoric becomes empty and alienating. People hate this and fuck that, but to what end?

* The default mode (mood) of many anarchist circles ranges from grumpy to outright rude. At times, our supposed microcosms of a liberated world are among the most uninviting places imaginable: dark, dirty, and populated by folks who confuse unfriendliness with rebellion. Acting like a jerk does not make you more radical, it just makes you a jerk. Sadly, belligerence also characterizes internal debates. The threads on some anarchist online forums are among the safest means to turn people off anarchism for good. A radical approach to conflict is characterized by openness and self-criticism, not anonymous growling.

* Despite the theoretical embrace of individuality and diversity, many anarchist scenes are incredibly uniform. Any average coffee shop on main street brings together a wider variety of people than most anarchist venues. There are historical reasons for this, but essentially, anarchist culture – the language, the appearance, the social codes – is simply very homogenous. How anarchist are environments in which people feel uncomfortable because of what they wear, eat, or listen to?

* There is a crucial divide in anarchist circles between activists who are opposed to injustice and activists who experience injustice. All activists need to work together to effectively change anything, but the different motivations need to be considered. While people who follow a missionary call tend to be rather ideological, people affected by injustice are often more pragmatic. If such a difference is not recognized, people will drift apart. In the worst case, only the ideologues remain, with abstract debates about personal identity or acceptable language assuming the supposed forefront of radical politics while losing any connection with political work on the ground. Radical politics, then, becomes primarily an intellectual exercise that says next to nothing about the quality of its protagonists as dedicated and reliable comrades.

* The concepts of a free space and a safe space, respectively, are often confounded. Safe spaces, that is, spaces where people can count on finding care and support, are needed in the world we live in. But they are spaces that fulfill a certain purpose. They are not the free spaces we seek to establish, that is, spaces in which people speak their mind, engage in debate, and commonly solve the problems that arise in the process. What makes people safe in the long run is the collective ability to negotiate boundaries. Absolute safety is impossible. Vulnerabilities, misunderstandings, and irritations are part of social life and will not disappear even in the most anarchist of societies.

* The idea that everyone should be allowed to do everything is confused with the idea that everyone is able do everything. The introduction of skills or the passing on of knowledge by experienced activists and organizers is scoffed at. This leads to encountering the same pitfalls and reinventing the wheel over and over again.

* There exists an almost complete lack of vision and strategic orientation in the anarchist movement. In addition, organizational structures are in crisis. Spontaneity, the affinity group model, and a romanticized understanding of multiplicity have become hegemonic. All of these notions are riddled with flaws. The only longterm communities they allow consist of a handful of friends, which is an insufficient basis for the organizing required for broad social change. The main answer to this from within the anarchist movement, namely platformism, underestimates the importance of individual responsibility, which leads to a confusion of formality with efficiency…

Gabriel Kuhn

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Published in: on November 20, 2016 at 10:59 am  Comments (3)  
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IWA-AIT, the CNT and the November Bilbao Conference

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The International Workers Association (IWA-AIT), an association of anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary syndicalist trade unions founded in 1922, was intended to be a successor to the International Workingmen’s Association, which was created in 1864 by European workers, predominantly English and French, to provide for international solidarity between the workers of the world in their struggle against capitalism. The original (or “First”) International split in 1872 between the Marxists, who advocated the creation of “working class” political parties whose purpose was to “conquer political power,” and the anti-authoritarian, federalist and anarchist sections of the International that sought to abolish the state and replace authoritarian organization and capitalism with the free association of free producers. I discuss these developments in “We Do Not Fear Anarchy – We Invoke It”: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement and included many of the most important documents relating to the anarchist wing of the International in Volume One of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. 

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After the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, creating the USSR, the renamed Communist Party sought in 1921 to enlist the world’s revolutionary trade unions in the so-called “Red International.” However, several union organizations of an anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary syndicalist orientation, including the CNT in Spain, were concerned about the nascent Communist dictatorship and disagreed with any attempt to establish state socialism. These groups instead formed the IWA-AIT. The majority of the CNT now wants to “refound” the IWA, for reasons briefly summarized below. However, they are doing so in conflict with the IWA-AIT, which insists in the first statement below that the way to change the IWA-AIT is from within at a proper congress of the IWA-AIT, not by creating a new organization using the same name.

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INTERNATIONAL WORKERS ASSOCIATION IWA-AIT: Misconceptions over Split Conference

lt has come to our attention that various organizations have been invited to a conference ostensibly about “rebuilding the IWA” that is to be held in November in Spain. Due to the fact that this has caused some confusion as to the nature of said conference and to avoid any misunderstandings, we would like to clarify a few matters. —- The Congress of the lnternational Workers’ Association is to be held at the beginning of December in Poland. This Congress and only this Congress is where decisions about the proposals submitted to the Association can be made by the entirety of its member Sections. —- The conference being held in Spain, to which some organizations were invited, is not organized by the IWA, although it claims to be a “conference for the preparation of the IWA refoundation”. This initiative is thus a split where outside organizations are being invited to decide over the future of a federation to which they do not belong. It is held against the statutes, agreements and principles of the very federation it claims to be refounding and its aim is to exclude a dozen other member Sections from the process.

We refer to these facts since it has come to our attention that some comrades around the world may not have been informed to the nature of the conference and believe this is just an international “solidarity” event. However, the invitation sent to these organizations clearly state what the purpose is in the title. Therefore, those who are not members of the IWA Federation must really consider basic principles and ask how it is possible that anybody proposes to cut out the Members and give a voice to non-members.

The reason for holding this parallel conference before the legitimate one is to involve outside organizations in shaping the internal conflict. Instead of coming before the membership. Such a maneouvre is to make it look as if outside organizations are taking sides in an internal conflict and to place them on one side of a split. This is how the attendance of outside organizations will be treated, whether or not that was their intention.

With this clarification, we hope to inform the rank and file members of various organizations, who may not have seen the invitation or be aware of the circumstances. The IWA meets in December and it is at the Congress that the Member Sections must discuss and make decisions about the future of the federation, not any non-statutory meeting to which outside organizations are called to interfere and support the split faction. As stated before, time is needed to work things out in accordance with the procedures of our federation and we would appreciate it if outside organizations refrain from involvement in these matters which concern us directly and need to be resolved by ourselves.

We stress that in no way do we imply that any organizations avoid either the IWA or the split faction in matters such as international solidarity, which must continue even through this difficult time. It is possible that no resolution will be reached right away and that a longer conflict may exist, should the split faction continue to insist on acting in the name of the existing federation. The IWA has tried not to involve other organizations in these internal matters or ask them to take sides in the split. The split faction however has decided to do just that. We ask that people be cautious about such circumstances so that the situation not have new negative repercussions.

IWA Secretariat

http://www.iwa-ait.org/content/misconceptions-over-split-conference

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CNT-ES: Open invitation to the Bilbao International Conference, 26-27 November, 2016 for anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary syndicalist organizations

AIT/IWA Dear comrades: — CNT-E, FAU and USI are sections of the International Workers’ Association (IWA), founded in 1922. — We consider essential and urgent the existence of an active and inclusive anarcho-syndicalist International, which participates in and promotes struggles of workers worldwide and facilitates social improvements for them through this. Unfortunately, we have to admit that despite our best efforts the IWA has deviated from its principles and practices. Instead of concentrating on union activity, it has become bureaucratic, dogmatic and isolationist with regard to the labor movement. Considering this, we need to rebuild our International.

We believe that our International should restrict itself to general principles that express the commonalities that the members sections have, despite their different histories, traditions and social-economic situations. For us these general principles include:

– being an anarcho-syndicalist or revolutionary syndicalist organization as well as a bottom-up organization;

– not receiving economic funding from the state due to being a union or carrying out union activity;

– not supporting as an organization any electoral project, neither of a political party nor of individual candidates.

In addition, we believe that member sections should have at least 100 members nationally. We believe that smaller groups can carry out propaganda activities or local conflicts better and should concentrate on developing at the national level, before taking part in the complex decision-making process of an International. In order to support groups which have less than 100 members we will have the status “Friends”. We wish to help such groups grow and would be pleased to have them take part in our international solidarity campaigns.

At the same time, we do not presume to know or be aware of every other initiative worldwide that might fulfill these requirements. Therefore, we are issuing this open invitation to the International Conference, to be held in Bilbao (Spain) on November 26-27, 2016 during which we will be able to work towards a congress to rebuild an IWA. At the conference you will have a chance to present your organization and its work, get to meet other similar initiatives, assess the benefits of joining us in this endeavor, make contributions and proposals towards the congress agenda and the rebuilding of an IWA, and explore, in any case, the possibility of joint international actions and solidarity.

Even if your organization is not interested in joining this project on a more formal capacity, or ultimately decides not to, we still invite you to contact us to collaborate in international solidarity campaigns.

A proposal for the conference agenda and more practical info will be sent at a later date to those organizations that have expressed an interest in participating in it.

You can contact us on any of the following email addresses to express your interest, confirm your attendance, raise queries or concerns, etc.:

CNT-E, exteriores@cnt.es

FAU, is@fau.org

USI-AIT, info@usi-ait.org

http://cnt.es/en/news/open-invitation-letter-bilbao-international-conference-26-27-november-2016-anarcho-syndicalist-

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Published in: on October 4, 2016 at 9:45 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Some Words of Caution

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As it is becoming more likely that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States, I reproduce some useful words of caution from some Venezuelan anarchists on how to protect yourself from the state police, secret or otherwise. The article is from 2010, so some of the technical information is probably out of date. One thing that should be added is to cover any webcams on your computers, as it is easy to hack into them, turning your laptop or similar device into a virtual eavesdropper. I found this translation on Stuart Christie’s website.

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On infiltration

This article was originally published in El Libertario #58, March-April 2010. Although originally based on the actual experiences of Venezuela’s social struggles, it deals with situations and facts of interest to activists anywhere. Translated by Luis Prat.

For some time now the Venezuelan government has made systematic advances in the reorganization of the national police intelligence system, with the intention of discovering and neutralizing autonomous social movements that appear in the country. The Intelligence and Counterintelligence Law (temporarily suspended) and the new Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN in Spanish) are but two examples of this. In order to promote the necessary knowledge on this issue among activists, we give an informative recap of the different tactics used by the State to break up the antagonistic social fabric and criminalize its followers.

The State’s intelligence tactics

These tricks were developed and/or systematized by the COINTELPRO program of espionage, provocation and information the FBI used to destroy dissident political groups in the United States. They have been used by most of the world’s States and Venezuela is no exception. Here are some examples:

Surveillance:

Intelligence and security organizations use the existing technologies to conduct exhaustive surveillance of activists to prepare the corresponding judicial files. To that end they use the existing surveillance technologies. Photographing, filming, following in vehicles, reading email and correspondence are some of the many tactics used against social militants.

In general, mobiles/cell phones and frequently visited places are infiltrated by the police to eavesdrop in conversations and do what’s called “information sharing” to combine different pieces of information. Let’s not forget that in Venezuela CANTV (State enterprise that monopolizes telephone landlines) and most private communications enterprises lend themselves to such manipulation by the State.

Infiltration:

The State usually places undercover agents in popular demonstrations or inside the assemblies with a dual intent: first, to take note of the persons gathered and the information discussed in the assemblies, second, to promote discord among the attendants in order to trivialize the issues. Not many people go to a gathering without previous interest in the conflict or knowledge of some of the people involved. Since the intelligence services normally use dumb or rookie police for this task, a simple conversation with them usually uncovers who is a plant and who isn’t.

A usual trick is the use of:

Informers

These are people close to the group who, for money, favors or the resolution of judicial problems give information about the group to the intelligence agencies. They are hard to detect and more than once activists have been falsely accused of being informants. This has been used successfully against armed groups particularly in the previous century. Because of this, action groups today tend to be smaller and based on extreme affinity and even family ties.

Another form of infiltration is people who attend a reunion or assembly for the first time and push for extreme or violent acts regardless of the issue being discussed. They stand out because of their subversive rants and their proposals for crazy ideas or plans rarely in tune with reality.

Rumors

The use of informers and infiltrators contributes to the spread of rumors that tend to divide a social front or collective. These baseless rumors seek to discredit the organization and its activists.

False communiqués

Intelligence organizations usually write misleading stuff to create confusion among activists and their kindred organizations. The idea is to find a contradiction within the group that will cause its implosion. For example, in Chile the District Attorney created a group named Frente Anarquista Revolucionario (FAR) [Revolutionary Anarchist Front] that in a provocative fashion claimed responsibility for false actions and stirred polemics with the informal Chilean groups in order to destroy them.

Media disinformation

Certain media work in tight cooperation with intelligence organizations. In general they try to create a preconceived opinion about demonstrators and activists, accusing them of sabotage, of being “enemy agents”, “out of control”, or “maladjusted”. An example is the Venezuelan TV program “La Hojilla” whose anchor –a well known and decorated police informant- plays prosecutor, judge and executioner of dissidents against the current government.

The media also serves to broadcast wrong information about groups and initiatives or to publish manipulated information about some activist, attempting to discredit his/her commitment with whatever causes he or she upholds. For this reason the use of counter information is a fundamental tool. In Venezuela – a country where the majority of the radio-electronic media is in the hands of the current government-the use of blogs, Myspace, Twitter or other communication networks is a necessary tool today and will become even more so in the future.

Harassment

In many countries, intelligence organisms use pressure such as telling the boss an employee is a “radical” or inserting information among his/her acquaintances to make him/her feel uncomfortable or persecuted in their trusted milieu. Accusations such as “homosexual”, “rapist”, “drug addict” are common. Another form of harassment is when the State determines the identity of an activist and decides to arrest or interrogate him/her under any pretext. In many cases the arrest is used to “plant” drugs or other things considered illegal (Molotov cocktails, explosives etc). The goal is to make them quit their activism.

Sabotage

Police organizations (or people connected to them) do sabotage against the meeting places of activists as well as theft of materials. They try to sow fear and discouragement among the sympathizers.

Paramilitary

Intelligence organisms form paramilitary organizations which they equip with weapons and train them to perform the “dirty work” that is not convenient to do under “constitutional legality”. In Venezuela this is formed by the evil “combat corps” or the diverse “popular collectives” that police the poor neighborhoods.

Lethal force

When somebody in a social movement achieves notoriety and other means of control or cooptation by the institutional powers fail, they resort to assassinate the dissident either by thugs (masquerading as common criminals) or in supposed confrontations that are usually uncovered if there is an objective investigation.

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Some measures to avoid infiltration:

  • Turn off your cell phone before a gathering: It has been proven that cell phones can transmit information even when they are off. Put them in a place removed from the discussion area or put them in the refrigerator [TN: better yet, remove the battery]. Black Berrys use GPS (Ground Position System) that gives the exact location where you are. Cell phones are used for data sharing and to establish a dissident’s social network.
  • Before entering the gathering location, try to walk around and reconnoiter the outside area and try to identify suspicious activity that could imply undercover police, usually recognizable by their physique, their way of talking or because they look out of place. Rarely will they look you in the eye and they many times stumble with their explanations.
  • When doing mass email use blind carbon copy (bcc) for the addresses, in case your email falls in the wrong hands you will not expose other people.
  • Send your communications from a cyber café or similar service to prevent the intelligence organizations from obtaining your IP (your computer ID code).
  • Affinity and mutual trust among activists in any campaign are the best antidotes against infiltration and repression. Better a few but secure than many and insecure.
  • Do not contribute to the prevailing disinformation, don’t gossip or circulate ill-intentioned information.
  • Be alert – without becoming paranoid – of infiltrators and provocateurs.
  • If you feel you’re under surveillance let your comrades know about it.
  • Never talk to the police…

How to secure your computer

Today computers are the place where activists keep most of their writings and communiqués. In most raids the first things the security forces confiscate are the computers so we recommend the following:

  • Download and update firewalls such as AVG (www.grisoft.com) or ZoneAlarm (www.zonealarm.com) which are free to download and work with Windows.
  • Install a spyware detector such as Ad-ware in your computer. They can be downloaded free…
  • Deleting documents from your computer doesn’t mean they’re no longer in the hard drive. There is a program called Clean Disk that totally erases them, download it here http://www.clean-disk-security.softonic.com.
  • Encrypt all your sensitive documents…
  • Regularly change your email password, it is recommended to use a 16 digit code containing letters and numbers. A short password is easy to detect. Don’t use birth dates, or the names of family members or pets.
  • There is a free internet provider, Riseup (www.riseup.net) that gives free and secure email addresses to activists.

Avoid paranoia

Some activists become paranoid, which completely immobilizes them, abandoning the struggle and becoming passive members of society. Therefore it is important to think about what was said above so we can act with prior knowledge and diminish risks and weaknesses. We must be conscious of the fact that any struggle for the collective is the potential target of police surveillance and that is part of the social dynamics. The armed organizations of control and repression have been created to counter any type of dissidence therefore by being activists we become their target;however, we have better values than they do: our convictions we uphold for a positive social change. Don’t let fatigue and fear stop you!

http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario-ellibertario@nodo50.org (2010)

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Published in: on September 25, 2016 at 9:26 am  Comments (1)  
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Brian Morris: The Myth of the Liberal State

Brian Morris

Brian Morris

Brian Morris is one of those authors whose writings, regrettably, I was unable to fit into Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. He surely deserved a place in Volume Three, The New Anarchism (1974-2012). He has written too many books to list here, but from an anarchist perspective his most noteworthy include Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom (1993), Ecology and Anarchism (1996), Kropotkin: The Politics of Community (2004), Pioneers of Ecological Humanism (2012), and Anthropology, Ecology, and Anarchism: A Brian Morris Reader (2014). The following is a piece Brian Morris wrote for the English anarchist paper, Freedom, in 1993, in which he handily disposes of the Oxford academic David Miller’s claims that some kind of state is necessary to achieve and maintain economic prosperity, distributive justice and peace.

Morris anthology

A Critique of Liberal Social Theory

David Miller’s useful book on ‘Anarchism’ [1984] was an attempt – so he assured us – to rescue anarchism from the dustbin of history.  He felt anarchism was an important political tradition and had something of value.  It could teach us about the abuses of power, and about the possibilities of free social relationships.  Miller, as a market socialist, advocated three specific values; economic efficiency, distributive justice and the control of “anti-social” behaviour.  In terms of these values, anarchism was declared not to be a viable political option.  He argued that without a market system and the nation state these values were simply not attainable.  Hence Miller’s advocacy of market socialism, otherwise known by its more familiar name of welfare capitalism.

Yet when we look at the real world, beyond the cloisters of Nuffield College, what do we observe?  None of Miller’s esteemed values are anywhere in evidence.

Take economic efficiency.  What do we find?  Poverty, malnutrition and famine throughout much of Africa and Latin America.  There is ecological degradation, increasing desertification, destruction of forests and woodlands, depletion at all levels.  Much of this is due to so-called “development”; to the intensification of agriculture, and to the economic maraudings of multinational capital in search of profits.  Judged in terms of economic efficiency, capitalism – the market economy – is a complete and utter failure, and a serious threat to human survival.

As for “distributive justice”?  What do we find?  Corruption, injustice, and obscene and blatant social inequalities everywhere.  Land holding and the ownership of productive capital, as well as access to the media, are everywhere maldistributed.  Thus, for example, we find in Peru that 10 per cent of the landowners own 93 per cent of the agricultural land.  We find that between 1982 and 1985 the Sudan exported millions of tons of sorghum – in order to feed animals in the richer countries – while at the same time thousands of peasants in southern Sudan were dying of hunger.  People in extreme poverty, without access to land, without any visible means of support and often without even a roof over their head, are to be seen throughout the world living in juxtaposition to extremes of luxury and wealth.  If anything there is, and always has been, an obverse correlation between capitalism and “distributive justice”.  For where commodity production prevails or intrudes, social inequalities invariably increase or are generated.  The green revolution in India has not only been a breeding ground for civil unrest and violence, but, as Vandana Shiva and others have written, has lead to INCREASING social inequalities.

Morris Kropotkin

As for the nation state keeping the peace, or curtailing “anti-social” behaviour, what do we, in reality, find?  Exactly the opposite.  The state is THE source of violent repression, of social and political harassment, and of the curtailment of civil liberties everywhere.  Militarism is rife throughout the world, and the oppression of people by state functionaries, usually on behalf of commercial interests, is the norm.  As Vithal Rajan puts it, in referring to India: if a tiger is poached, the international community is loud in its disapproval: but if the police shoot ten tribal people defending their customary rights to the forest it is frequently not even considered an offence, and is certainly not reported in the international press.

David Miller, like other liberals, has a rather quaint idea that governments are essentially neutral and benign institutions, serving to protect us from “anti-social” people.  The reality is rather different: such institutions are there to support and protect private property and capitalist interests.  This is clearly brought out in David Powell’s recent study of the coal industry in Britain, appropriately entitled “The Power Game”.  The book clearly states which side the state was on in the bitter struggles between labour and capital during the years of industrialism.  At the periphery of the capitalist system, the state is not an institution that protects people; it is one that they need protection from.  The state is organized violence and the reason that power has a capillary effect in modern society – as Foucault argued – is not that there are no centralized institutions but to the fact that the state is now so powerful.  It is infrastructural – penetrating social institutions – as well as overtly coercive and despotic.  The state is incompatible with liberty as is capitalism as an economic system.  Nowadays it is difficult to disentangle the two, and a form of state capitalism prevails.

There is no evidence for the supposed correlation between capitalism and freedom which liberal scholars like Friedman, Hayek, Gray and Fukuyama are so fond of stressing.  John Hall and John Ikenberry in their Open University Book on “The State” (1989) assert that early modern Europe was characterized by an intrinsic link between commerce and liberty (52).  Such a distorted reading of history is only possible if one completely oblates the fact that not only was there little liberty in Europe for working people during this period, but also the “commerce” of which they speak entailed rapacious mercantile trade, genocide and slavery.  Capitalism, as Ngugi Wa Thiongo notes, “came to the world dripping with blood”.  It hardly needs mentioning that some of the most important liberal scholars – like Hume and Locke – were personally implicated in the slave “trade”, worthy though they may have been in other respects.  There has never been a correlation between capitalism and liberty if capitalism is seen for what it is; namely a world system that is intrinsically exploitative of people and of the natural environment.

As a political scientist David Miller has little interest in ecology.  Even people who see themselves as radical ecologists – writers like Arne Naess, Paul Ekins, and Robyn Eckersley – and who are alive to current problems relating to “social justice” and “ecological sustainability”, embrace, when it comes to offering some vision of an alternative future, the kind of welfare capitalism long ago suggested by liberal scholars.  Their vision is no different from that of Miller.  They are thus advocates of the “market” as the best way of allocating resources – and assume that it will simply cease to be exploitative of people and of nature.  The state, they believe, will simply transform itself into a benign institution, one that will provide “macro-controls” on the market – protecting ecosystem integrity, social justice and equality, as well as curtailing excessive concentrations of economic power.  A political vision that is hardly new or radical: it just provides scholarly colleagues with an up-date on liberal theory taking into account the global ecological and economic crisis.  It is an attempt to “green” liberal political theory, just as, at another level, multinational corporations are engaged in greening the retail business.

Brian Morris, Freedom (1993)

Morris pioneers of ecological humanism

Published in: on August 6, 2016 at 9:31 am  Comments (1)  
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Fearless Anarchy

Fireworks of various colors bursting against a black background

Just got my sales statement from AK Press, and see that ‘We Do Not Fear Anarchy – We Invoke It’ – The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement has now sold over 1200 copies! (over 1100 paperbacks and over 100 e-books). Many thanks to AK Press for their excellent marketing and promotion. Here is an excerpt from the conclusion, drawing some lessons for today from out of the debates among the anarchists in the International Workingmen’s Association.

We Do Not Fear the Cover

Anarchism and Social Movements

Today, many anarchists advocate not only working within broader based social movements, but helping to establish popular movements that from their inception adopt decentralized, affinity group based organizational structures that form horizontal networks and popular assemblies where power remains at the base, not in a hierarchical administration, bureaucracy or executive.[i]

But this concept can also be traced back to the International, for it was the federalists, anti-authoritarians and anarchists in the International who insisted that the workers’ own organizations, including the International itself, should be directly democratic, voluntary federations freely federated with one another, for they were to provide the very basis for the future free society. Contemporary anarchists have simply developed more sophisticated ways of implementing these ideas and preventing movements from being co-opted and transformed into top down organizations.

Gone is the “inverted” pyramid of the 19th century anarchists, with smaller scale groups federating into larger and more encompassing federations, ultimately resulting in international federations composed of groups from lower level federations, such as national or regional federations. The problem with these kinds of federations is that the higher level federations can be transformed into governing bodies, particularly in times of crisis, as Marx and Engels attempted to transform the International’s General Council into an executive power after the suppression of the Paris Commune.

Instead of federations organized “from the bottom up,” many contemporary anarchists advocate interlocking horizontal networks like those used in various global movements against neo-liberalism, the “horizontalidad” movement in Argentina and the Occupy movement, networks with no centres, not even administrative or “federalist” ones.[ii] These contemporary movements have been able, at least for a time, to break out of the isolation to which autonomous anarchist communist groups in late 19th century Europe were prone prior to the renewed involvement of many anarchists in the workers’ movement in the mid-1890s, which gave rise to various revolutionary and anarchist syndicalist movements in Europe and the Americas.

What is different about contemporary anarchist approaches to organization is that they bridge the gap between the affinity group, popular assemblies and broader networks of similar organizations and movements in a way that 19th century anarchist communist groups were unable to do, without relying on the more permanent forms and institutions utilized by the anarcho-syndicalists in their federalist organizations. Syndicalist organizations were always in danger of being transformed into top down bureaucratic organizations, as eventually happened with the French CGT during the First World War and even more so after the Russian Revolution, when the CGT came under the control of the Marxists. Under the pressure of the Spanish Civil War, even the anarcho-syndicalist CNT in Spain began turning into a bureaucratic organization.

In many ways, these contemporary forms of anarchist organization mirror the anarchist communist vision of a society in which, in Kropotkin’s words, “ever modified associations… carry in themselves the elements of their durability and constantly assume new forms which answer best to the multiple aspirations of all.”[iii] By making these kinds of organizations, like affinity groups, the basis of their horizontal networks, contemporary anarchists have created non-hierarchical organizations that not just prefigure, but realize in the here and now, the organizational forms consonant with an anarchist communist future, within the context of broader movements for social change.

Robert Graham

[i] Graeber, “The New Anarchists,” in Anarchism Vol. 3, “The New Anarchism,” ed R. Graham, 2012: 1-11.

[ii] Graham, ibid: 572-576.

[iii] Graham, Anarchism Vol. 1, “From Anarchy to Anarchism,” 2005: 142.

anarchist_commmunist_poster_by_redclasspride

Published in: on August 1, 2016 at 11:12 pm  Comments (1)  
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An Anarchist FAQ – 20th Anniversary

anarchist FAQ

Another anniversary worth commemorating – the 20th anniversary of an Anarchist FAQ! If anyone wants to see an exposition of anarchism as a coherent political theory, this is the place to go. Congratulations in particular to Iain McKay for his unstinting work on the FAQ. Here I present an excerpt on the incompatibility of anarchy with hierarchy, which ties in nicely with the Encyclopédie Anarchiste definition of “hierarchy” that I posted previously.

hierarchy

Anarchy v. Hierarchy

If one is an anti-authoritarian, one must oppose all hierarchical institutions, since they embody the principle of authority. For, as Emma Goldman argued, “it is not only government in the sense of the state which is destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole complex authority and institutional domination which strangles life. It is the superstition, myth, pretence, evasions, and subservience which support authority and institutional domination.” [Red Emma Speaks, p. 435] This means that “there is and will always be a need to discover and overcome structures of hierarchy, authority and domination and constraints on freedom: slavery, wage-slavery [i.e. capitalism], racism, sexism, authoritarian schools, etc.” [Noam Chomsky, Language and Politics, p. 364]

Thus the consistent anarchist must oppose hierarchical relationships as well as the state. Whether economic, social or political, to be an anarchist means to oppose hierarchy. The argument for this (if anybody needs one) is as follows:

“All authoritarian institutions are organised as pyramids: the state, the private or public corporation, the army, the police, the church, the university, the hospital: they are all pyramidal structures with a small group of decision-makers at the top and a broad base of people whose decisions are made for them at the bottom. Anarchism does not demand the changing of labels on the layers, it doesn’t want different people on top, it wants us to clamber out from underneath.” [Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action, p. 22]

Hierarchies “share a common feature: they are organised systems of command and obedience” and so anarchists seek “to eliminate hierarchy per se, not simply replace one form of hierarchy with another.” [Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, p. 27] A hierarchy is a pyramidally-structured organisation composed of a series of grades, ranks, or offices of increasing power, prestige, and (usually) remuneration. Scholars who have investigated the hierarchical form have found that the two primary principles it embodies are domination and exploitation. For example, in his classic article “What Do Bosses Do?” (Review of Radical Political Economy, Vol. 6, No. 2), a study of the modern factory, Steven Marglin found that the main function of the corporate hierarchy is not greater productive efficiency (as capitalists claim), but greater control over workers, the purpose of such control being more effective exploitation.

Control in a hierarchy is maintained by coercion, that is, by the threat of negative sanctions of one kind or another: physical, economic, psychological, social, etc. Such control, including the repression of dissent and rebellion, therefore necessitates centralisation: a set of power relations in which the greatest control is exercised by the few at the top (particularly the head of the organisation), while those in the middle ranks have much less control and the many at the bottom have virtually none.

Since domination, coercion, and centralisation are essential features of authoritarianism, and as those features are embodied in hierarchies, all hierarchical institutions are authoritarian. Moreover, for anarchists, any organisation marked by hierarchy, centralism and authoritarianism is state-like, or “statist.” And as anarchists oppose both the state and authoritarian relations, anyone who does not seek to dismantle all forms of hierarchy cannot be called an anarchist. This applies to capitalist firms. As Noam Chomsky points out, the structure of the capitalist firm is extremely hierarchical, indeed fascist, in nature:

“a fascist system. . . [is] absolutist – power goes from top down . . . the ideal state is top down control with the public essentially following orders.

“Let’s take a look at a corporation. . . [I]f you look at what they are, power goes strictly top down, from the board of directors to managers to lower managers to ultimately the people on the shop floor, typing messages, and so on. There’s no flow of power or planning from the bottom up. People can disrupt and make suggestions, but the same is true of a slave society. The structure of power is linear, from the top down.” [Keeping the Rabble in Line, p. 237]

David Deleon indicates these similarities between the company and the state well when he writes:

“Most factories are like military dictatorships. Those at the bottom are privates, the supervisors are sergeants, and on up through the hierarchy. The organisation can dictate everything from our clothing and hair style to how we spend a large portion of our lives, during work. It can compel overtime; it can require us to see a company doctor if we have a medical complaint; it can forbid us free time to engage in political activity; it can suppress freedom of speech, press and assembly — it can use ID cards and armed security police, along with closed-circuit TVs to watch us; it can punish dissenters with ‘disciplinary layoffs’ (as GM calls them), or it can fire us. We are forced, by circumstances, to accept much of this, or join the millions of unemployed. . . In almost every job, we have only the ‘right’ to quit. Major decisions are made at the top and we are expected to obey, whether we work in an ivory tower or a mine shaft.” [“For Democracy Where We Work: A rationale for social self-management”, Reinventing Anarchy, Again, Howard J. Ehrlich (ed.), pp. 193-4]

Thus the consistent anarchist must oppose hierarchy in all its forms, including the capitalist firm. Not to do so is to support archy — which an anarchist, by definition, cannot do. In other words, for anarchists, “[p]romises to obey, contracts of (wage) slavery, agreements requiring the acceptance of a subordinate status, are all illegitimate because they do restrict and restrain individual autonomy.” [Robert Graham, “The Anarchist Contract, Reinventing Anarchy, Again, Howard J. Ehrlich (ed.), p. 77] Hierarchy, therefore, is against the basic principles which drive anarchism. It denies what makes us human and “divest[s] the personality of its most integral traits; it denies the very notion that the individual is competent to deal not only with the management of his or her personal life but with its most important context: the social context.” [Murray Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 202]

An Anarchist FAQ

hierarchy-and-anarchy

Published in: on July 29, 2016 at 9:26 pm  Comments (2)  
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Anarchism: Toward Global Justice

anti-globalization portland

Getting back to the “Anarchist Current,” the Afterword to Volume Three of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, in which I survey the origins, development and evolution of anarchist ideas, in this installment I discuss the relationship between anarchism and contemporary anti-capitalist movements. As the electoral debacles of representative government in capitalist “democracies” continue to unfold, perhaps we will see yet another resurgence in direct action movements against capitalism and domination.

anti-capitalist-protest

Anarchism and Global Justice Movements

David Graeber, among others, has noted that many groups involved in the global justice movement utilize “a rich and growing panoply of organizational instruments—spokescouncils, affinity groups, facilitation tools, break outs, fishbowls, blocking concerns, vibe-watchers and so on—all aimed at creating forms of democratic process that allow initiatives to rise from below and attain maximum effective solidarity; without stifling dissenting voices, creating leadership positions or compelling anyone to do anything which they have not freely agreed to do,” an essentially anarchist approach. Indeed, the “very notion of direct action, with its rejection of a politics which appeals to governments to modify their behaviour, in favour of physical intervention against state power in a form that itself prefigures an alternative—all of this emerges directly from the libertarian tradition” (Volume Three, Selection 1). Similar approaches have been adopted by the Occupy movements that spread across the globe in 2011 (Volume Three, Selection 9).

In light of these developments, some anarchists have begun to articulate a less sectarian and more inclusive conception of anarchism which focuses on process and action, allowing for a diversity of views regarding ultimate ends, recognizing that what anarchists seek is social liberation, not the triumph of an ideology. Anarchists have participated in such international resistance networks as People’s Global Action, which also include many non-anarchists, but which also reject more conventional organizational structures. As the Zapatista inspired Second Declaration of La Realidad put it, such networks have “no central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who resist” (Volume Three, Selections 1 & 58).

This view has been embraced by a variety of anarchist groups. In the 2001 Madrid Declaration of social revolutionary libertarian groups from Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, they argue that anarchists “should currently strive towards encouraging convergence, the interaction of social movements—including the workers’ movement—in a solid social movement antagonistic to capital and its present true face: economic globalization and all other types of domination. This antagonistic social movement does not have, and nor should it have, a single organizational expression. It is pluralistic, based on current reality, coming and acting together in the same territory, recreating a common territorial identity, composed of many identities,” such as “the workers’ movement, the unemployed, the excluded, indigenous movements, discriminated groups, ecologists and feminists, promoting direct action as a way towards social reappropriation of wealth and as a form of propaganda by the deed, as an exercise in direct democracy, participatory and federalist, without delegations or intermediaries, building on a community level in each territory and as an alternative to authoritarian institutions” (Volume Three, Selection 2).

cnt_march

One of the signatories to the Madrid Declaration, the CIPO-RFM or Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca ‘Ricardo Flores Magón’ (‘Ricardo Flores Magón’ Native People’s Council of Oaxaca), is a liberation movement in the Oaxaca region of Mexico that consciously draws on the heritage of Mexican anarchism and indigenous traditions (Volume One, Selection 73; Volume Three, Selection 59). As the Columbian anarchist group, Colectivo Alas de Xue, argues, there exists much common ground between anarchists and many indigenous (or “Indian”) groups in the Americas, such as opposition to the conformity and homogenization imposed by nation states within their own borders, with their centralized power structures, national “culture” and “official” languages, and the separation of peoples by those same borders, dividing families and inhibiting people’s movements (Volume Three, Selection 60). Many anarchists have become involved in groups like “No Borders” and “No One Is Illegal,” which seek, in Harsha Walia’s words, “to attain justice and victories for immigrants and refugees, and to develop the communities’ own capacity to attain dignity for themselves and their families. Real justice will come as immigrants, refugees, and nonstatus people build greater trust in visions of an alternate world, and organize, educate, act, and fight for their own self-determination” (Volume Three, Selection 64).

This quest for self-determination often brings indigenous peoples and immigrants into conflict with national governments, multinational corporations and the paramilitary organizations upon which they sometimes rely, but it is a quest which lies at the heart of anarchism conceived as a movement that seeks to create a world in which people may, in Bakunin’s words, “take into their own hands the direction of their destinies” (Volume One, Selection 24).

From this perspective, there is no necessary conflict between anarchist anti-statism and communal self-determination—rather, they can be seen as parts of the same age old struggle for freedom, often incorporating similar decision making procedures and forms of organization while employing similar tactics, such as direct action. As Uri Gordon argues in the context of the Palestinian struggle for independence, “anarchists may take action in solidarity with Palestinians (as well as Tibetans, West Papuans and Sahrawis for that matter) without reference to the question of statehood. The everyday acts of resistance that anarchists join and defend in Palestine and Israel are immediate steps to help preserve people’s livelihoods and dignity, which are in no way necessarily connected to a statist project” (Volume Three, Selection 21).

latin american anarchism

The Colectivo Alas de Xue notes that many indigenous societies utilize collective forms of decision making similar to the kinds of direct democracy that “libertarians have yearned for down through the centuries” (Volume Three, Selection 60). As David Graeber argues, many indigenous communities developed forms of consensus-based decision making that provide a model consonant with anarchist conceptions of direct democracy precisely because in such societies there is “no way to compel a minority to agree with a majority decision—either because there is no state with a monopoly of coercive force, or because the state has nothing to do with local decision-making” (Volume Three, Selection 6).

This is not to say that libertarian groups drawing on these communal traditions uncritically endorse every aspect of them. Sharif Gemie points out that “many tribal lifestyles are explicitly patriarchal: they refuse women any formal involvement in decision-making. Many tribes also affirm the sanctity of rule by elders, thus rejecting the political potential of younger people” (Volume Three, Selection 50). In Mexico, the CIPO-RFM has consciously striven to deal with these sorts of issues by, for example, actively promoting “a culture of respect for women and for women’s rights, ensuring in practice that within our organization women take up their equal and fair share of positions of representation and responsibility within our ranks” (Volume Three, Selection 59).

In Africa, anarchists have sought to build upon the pre-colonial history of people living without states in egalitarian communities, particularly in light of the disastrous consequences of colonialism and the division of Africa into nation states whose borders were arbitrarily set by the former colonial powers (Volume Three, Selections 51 & 52). Kurdish anarchists have similarly argued that tribal traditions of decentralization and hostility toward the various nation states which have sought to control them predispose the Kurds toward anarchism, leading to the development of a community assembly movement drawing on the ideas of Murray Bookchin (Volume 3, Selection 61). Bas Umali has suggested that Bookchin’s ideas can also be adapted to conditions in the Philippine archipelago, building on traditional community forms such as the “barangay,” a small community of 50 to 100 families (Volume Three, Selection 62).

Whether in Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, or the South Pacific, wherever functioning communities exist, there will also exist social practices and institutions of solidarity and mutual aid. As Elisée Reclus noted long ago, “where anarchist practice really triumphs is in the course of everyday life among common people who would not be able to endure their dreadful struggle for existence if they did not engage in spontaneous mutual aid, putting aside differences and conflicts of interest” (Volume One, Selection 38). Colin Ward therefore argues that “an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism” (1973: 11). From this perspective, anarchism is not “the founding of something new,” but as Gustav Landauer wrote, “the actualization and reconstitution of something that has always been present, which exists alongside the state, albeit buried and laid waste” (Ward, 1973: 11).

Robert Graham

another world is possible

Published in: on July 23, 2016 at 8:14 am  Comments (2)  
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Berned! Sanders Supports Clinton

Now that, predictably, Bernie Sanders has thrown his support behind Hillary Clinton, I thought this video from the Stimulator was particularly appropriate. You have to click on the link immediately below (#BERNEDOUT). WordPress now charges extra to display the video graphic. The image below the link is just that – an image, not the link to the video.

#BERNEDOUT

Berned Out!

Berned Out!

Published in: on July 15, 2016 at 7:00 am  Leave a Comment  
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Neither EU Nor UK

Brexit

The recent “Brexit” vote in Britain brings to mind a few things. First, the counter-revolutionary role of state-controlled referendums (‘referenda’ for the language police), something that Proudhon pointed out in 1851 in General Idea of the Revolution, building on his previous seemingly paradoxical statement that “universal suffrage is counter-revolution” (I included excerpts from General Idea in Volume One of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, and several other of Proudhon’s anarchist writings). Just as universal suffrage is used to legitimate political rule by giving the illusion of popular sovereignty, so do referendums provide an illusion of “direct democracy,” when the ruling classes remain firmly in control (although not always as firmly as they like)

lesser evil

Second, the false dichotomies represented by the choices provided in referendums — in this case the choice between an “independent United Kingdom” and the European Union. Throughout the history of anarchist movements, anarchists have been told they have to choose between one or the other unacceptable alternative, the so-called “lesser evil” (and so we have “derivative anarchist fellow traveller” Noam Chomsky advocating support for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump). Failing to choose is supposed to constitute an abdication of responsibility and to condemn anarchists to powerlessness and irrelevancy. In 1851 in France, the choice was supposed to be between Napoleon III or the Republic; during the Russian Revolution, the choice was supposed to be between the Bolsheviks (Marxist Leninists) or the counter-revolution; during the two World Wars, in Europe the choice was supposed to be between the “Allies” or Germany/the Nazis; during the Spanish Revolution, the choice was supposed to be between Fascism or the Republic, or between military victory or social revolution; during the Cold War, the choice was supposed to be between US or Soviet imperialism, inspiring Marie Louise Berneri to coin the phrase, “Neither East Nor West” (see Volume Two of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas). In response to the Brexit vote, I would like to put forward a variation of that theme: Neither the EU Nor the UK.

Third, if anarchists reject this latest false dilemma, what alternatives can they present? Besides the obvious (possibly long term) ones, like social revolution, an anarchist society without hierarchy and domination, freedom and equality, and so forth? As a contribution to that debate, I present Andrew Flood’s 10 point guide for post Brexit resistance (from the Workers Solidarity Movement website). Andrew has also presented an excellent analysis of the Brexit vote results.

10 point guide for post Brexit resistance as racist right wins EU referendum

  1. The Brexit vote for the UK to leave the European Union demonstrates that even weak parliamentary democracy is incompatible with escalating neoliberal inequality.  In the UK as elsewhere a tiny segment of the population have taken a larger and larger share of total wealth in the last decades.  Particularly under austerity almost everyone else has seen their share of the wealth they produce decline massively.
  2. The Remain campaign was headed up by the political class of the neoliberal establishment and backed by model neo liberal corporations like Ryanair.  But because the anger against rising inequality was successfully diverted through scapegoating already marginalized people, in particular migrants, the Leave campaign was also led by wealthy elitist bigots whose variant of neoliberalism looks to the former colonies and the US rather than Europe.
  3. The markets are now punishing the electorate with capital flight. But the racist colonialist nature of the Leave campaign means that rather than capitalism being blamed migrants will again be scapegoated.  The impact of continued inequality – on white citizen workers – will be blamed on attacks on migrants not being as cruel and ruthless as ‘required’.
  4. The alternative to fight for isn’t yet another referendum but the abolition of a global order built on inequality & market dictatorship.
  5. In the immediate future, the defense of migrants, including those yet to come, is fundamental to opposing the swing to the right post-Brexit.
  6. If the left swings towards a simple economist stance post-Brexit then the racist colonialist nature of that vote will be solidified  We must argue on the more apparently difficult grounds of global class solidarity and not on the treacherous path of the narrow self interest of white citizen workers which can only serve a reactionary English nationalism steeped in racism and colonialism.
  7. The fallout from the Leave vote will not just be limited within the borders of the UK will see a  but huge boost for racist colonialist movements across EU.  The leaders of those movements, like Marine Le Pen have already greeted the Leave vote with joy.
  8. It’s vital to understand this cannot be combatted with liberal platitudes because it is a consequence of the rising inequality economic liberalism has created.  We are facing either a transformation to radical direct democracy that will create economic equality or a turn to the authoritarian politics of control needed to enforce sharp divisions in wealth.
  9. Things look grim but then they were already grim as we face into climate change and automation under capitalism.  The rise of the far right and colonialist racism is not a natural phenomenon but a consequence of a system in a crisis that is a fundamental product of  its own functioning.
  10. We need to take our world back from the patriarchal white supremacist capitalist elite that dominates the planet and dominated both sides of the EU referendum.  The transformation we need if we are not to face escalating poverty, war and climate destruction is a total one that eliminates the state and capitalism to create libertarian communism.

Andrew Flood

brexit voter analysis

Published in: on July 2, 2016 at 9:51 am  Leave a Comment  
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