ANARCHISM - FIVE SHORT ARTICLES
Anarchism
What
Anarchism Is Not:
It
isn’t violence or terrorism. True, many years ago a tiny handful of
anarchists did engage in violence. However, reactionaries, liberals,
populists and socialists have also engaged in violent actions, yet no
one brands their ideologies as terrorist or violent. Many anarchists
are non-violent activists or pacifists.
It
isn’t chaos, hostility to organization or everyone doing what ever
they damn well please. Anarchist organization is not an oxymoron,
anarchists believe very strongly in organization, but the
organizations must be democratic, decentralized and federated, not
hierarchical, top-down and authoritarian.
Anarchism
is not nihilism or amorality. Anarchists have a very strong ethical
basis for their beliefs – the most important of which, that it is
wrong to coerce another person.
Anarchists
do not think society can be changed overnight. Rather they wish
society to move in a
libertarian direction,
rather than an authoritarian one. Nor do anarchists believe in
perfect societies or utopias. They just want life to be better than
it is now.
What
Anarchism Is:
Liberty.
Everyone must be free to live, speak, write, organize as they wish.
Their bodies are their own, they are free to ingest whatever plant or
drug they wish and engage in whatever adult consensual sexual
activity they wish. No one may coerce another.
Self-
management. Most work places are petty tyrannies, everyone ought to
have a say in how things are run.
Mutual
aid. As much as possible services rendered at present by the
government or by corporations ought to be done by democratic,
client-run cooperatives (mutual aid societies)
Decentralization.
What can be done best at the local level ought to be done there.
Centralization leads to corruption and alienation.
Federalism.
Not everything can be done at the micro-level. In some areas scale is
also important. In order to have large organizations, the smaller
groups must federate and in this way maintain their independence yet
have the advantage of a large organization. Control is horizontal –
like a web – rather than vertical as in an authoritarian hierarchy.
Direct
democracy. People make decisions in mass meetings. Recallable
delegates are elected to the higher levels. This way power stays at
the base and the “representatives” aren't a controlling elite.
Types
of Anarchists
Above
were the basic concepts of anarchism. All anarchists believe in and
try to practice these precepts. However, there are a number of
different kinds of anarchists:
Anarcho-syndicalists.
These are anarchists who practice their anarchism in the work place,
attempting to form anarchist trade unions, or influence existing
unions in an anarchist direction. They promote worker
self-management.
Mutualists.
Promote the formation of mutual aid societies and cooperatives and
are sympathetic to individual producers as well as collective ones.
Individualists.
Seek a minimum of organized activity. Prefer individual control of
property, and cooperation at a more limited level than mutualists.
Communitarians
seek to build new communities and/or promote community within
existing populations.
Anarchist
communists. Not to be confused with Marxist Leninist communists who
are statists, anarchist communists prefer community
ownership
and democratic control of the means of production.
Ecological
anarchists. Apply ecological and green principles to anarchism and
society.
Pacifists
and Tolstoyans. Can be any of the above types, but totally reject
any form of violence in the promotion of these goals or in the
future society.
Syntheists
and Platformists. The former seek groups and federations that unite
all
anarchists
whether individualist or communist. The latter, unite anarchist
communists around a program and favor a tighter, disciplined
organization.
These
divisions are not that serious. They are mostly differences in
emphasis and actually help spread anarchist ideas to all corners of
society. 2005
Unite
Around Common Aims
My
view of "anarchist strategy" is not based upon municipal
governments, anarcho-syndicalist unions, nor choosing a model out of
the past. (Athens or the Paris Commune) Rather than attempting to
create something out of our heads, we must look at actual popular
struggle, both past and present. If you examine true mass movements
(those not the creature of some political party) unity is based upon
a
few key issues,
representing the concerns of a great many people. The consensus can
be moderate (end the war), somewhat radical (student power in the
'60's) radical (workers' self-management, Poland 1980) or
revolutionary (abolish the wage system/state, syndicalism in the
1920's) Such positions do not come handed down from some individual,
but are "in the air" at the time.
People
remain united around these key issues as long as the movement is
growing. During decline ideologies come to the forefront and
fragmentation begins - although sectarian groups exist at all
stages. But mass movements always fail and are always recuperated.
The reason for this is that "social revolution" is a
process and not the Apocalypse. Movements are however, successful in
their failure - few of us in the developed world live 5 to a room and
drop dead at 40 like our ancestors of only 100 years ago. This
remarkable change was largely the result of the workers' movement and
not a gift from the bosses. People must see things as process and not
become dependent upon the immediate success of their particular
movement.
What
is "in the air" today? Concern about war, nuclear power,
gentrification of cities, a rejection of work and political parties,
concern with the situation of women and minorities, the environment.
All of these issues really boil down to one central issue - people
do not have control over their lives
- not at work, not at home and not in the community. It seems to me
that the situation exists for a broad libertarian socialist movement
which has decentralist, autonomist and self-managerial aims. Such a
movement could not be created by, nor reduced to, the Green Party,
the libertarian municipalist movement, the IWW or an anarchist
federation, but could encompass all of these.
Our
central problem is not the need to create some magic strategy, but to
get people to see they all have something in common - the implicit
desire to get the State and the corporations off their backs. The
best place to start this process would be to get the various
libertarian/anarchist groups to begin seeing themselves as part of a
movement and stop sniping and bickering. The fact that all agree on
the goals (getting rid of the state and capitalism) and the means to
achieve them (a mass popular movement ) tends to get lost in all the
sectarian hot air. Before we can start thinking of a larger movement,
we must get our own act together, unite around common aims and leave
secondary issues to friendly discussions. 1988
Anarchism
as Common Sense
The
majority of people today wish to preserve the environment.
Environmentalism has become “common sense”, but this was not
the case 50 years ago. At that time, the environment was the concern
of a small minority, ridiculed in the media when mentioned at all.
Gender and racial equality are two more examples of ideas once
considered “fringe” that are now common sense. Go back farther
and the abolition of slavery, child labour and the torture of animals
become examples. Once ideas become widespread among the people and
therefore regarded as common sense, government and business are
forced to adapt to the new reality. In this manner, change occurs
from bottom to top in society. I would like to suggest that our task
as anarchists is to make anarchist
ideas become
regarded as common sense like environmentalism and gender equality
are today.
To
accomplish this task, we don’t need an elite propagandizing a set
of new ideas, but rather a means of bringing out that which already
exists in embryonic or unconscious form. Nor would there be much use
in talking about what happened 100 years ago, 5,000 miles away, or
some during alleged future revolution, but the
ordinary and the here and now.
Environmentalism
and gender equality, once again, are good examples. While not one
person in 10,000 heard of ecology in 1960, no one found pollution or
the sight of clear-cut logging enjoyable. People did not like
environmental destruction, but accepted it as “the inevitable price
of progress.” Most people probably agreed “a woman’s place
was in the home”, but women went to school and many were in the
workplace. There was also the legacy of one hundred years of
struggle for the rights of women which lay beneath the calm,
patriarchal surface. Environmentalists and women’s liberationists
merely brought into conscious awareness what was already there in an
unconscious form. They also made people aware that nothing was
inevitable and that change was possible. Liken this process to
dropping a tiny seed crystal into a supersaturated solution. Do this
and the liquid immediately crystallizes.
What
are some potentially anarchist ideas in a “supersaturated
solution”? Few people any longer longer think more government is
the answer. There is a general dislike of bureaucrats and
politicians. Many people are suspicious of corporations, and anything
else “big”, for that matter. Most workers consider management
over-paid and incompetent. Few people “trust the experts.” In a
more concise and conscious form these feelings and sentiments become:
1. Preference for the voluntary over the forced. 2. Horizontal rather
than vertical relationships or “bottom-up” control rather than
top-down. 3. The small and local preferred to the large and
centralized. 4. Self management and direct democracy.
Millions
of people belong to voluntary associations and cooperatives. Most of
these function well, or at least far better than government or
corporate institutions. We have to ask the question; “If
voluntarism and democratic control work well for the volunteer fire
brigade, the credit union and co-op store, why couldn’t these
methods be extended to the whole society?” 2001
De-Legitimizing
the Dominators
Cannibalism,
head hunting, and human sacrifice were once thought normal. Go back
two hundred years or even less, and you find a general acceptance of
public executions, floggings, torture of animals, beating of children
and wives, humiliation of the handicapped, brutal sexual repression
and “scientific” racism. Any one of these behaviors today would
get you marked as someone with serious mental problems. Take up head
hunting and you end up in an institution for the criminally insane.
Child abuse means a magistrate and mandatory therapy. If behaviors
once deemed acceptable are now seen as unhealthy, surely
authoritarian behavior in general could become so regarded?
As
old Hegel said, people act out of a desire for recognition. One can
acquire this recognition through merit or force. A healthy person
acquires recognition by what she does or how she is as a person, and
has no need to force anyone to agree that she is a valuable human
being. Such a person has developed talents and a personality that
naturally attract others. People with weak, insecure egos need the
bolstering brought by power and authority since they cannot achieve
recognition on their own. Domination allows them to have a sense of
self. One way to power is through politics, and if that avenue is not
open, there is wealth. Money can’t buy you love, but it can sure
as hell buy you power. The “greedy capitalist” is only an
insecure individual seeking power, and thus a sense of self, through
the accumulation of wealth. Is it also not true that almost everyone
in a position of illegitimate authority is a mediocrity and got where
they are through deceit, ruthlessness and skulduggery? Think only of
Tony Blair and George W. Bush.
Bureaucracies
attract unbalanced personalities – yes men, ass kissers, bullies,
and sadists who get their sense of self from tormenting those
underneath them. Authoritarian structures; schools, churches,
corporations, government bureaucracies, police and military, are full
of people who thrive on using their little crumbs of power to the
maximum. Heinrich Himmler is the archetypal “bureaupath.”
Bureaucracies also develop cult-like tendencies forcing otherwise
normal individuals into accepting insane beliefs or immoral
behavior. Only one example of this is “police tribalism”, where
police officers are forced to cover for each other, regardless of the
corrupt or brutal acts that might have committed by members of the
force.
Fanatical,
totalitarian ideologies are a magnet for the unbalanced. Left
sectarian, fascist, extreme nationalist, religious “fundamentalist”
and terrorist groups are full of lunatics who think they have the
right to impose their ideas upon the rest of us, whether we want it
or not. They may well be miserable wretches, but by God they possess
The Truth and long for the day they assuage their insecurity by
becoming commissars or gauleiters.
This
authoritarian madness, whether of political, corporate, bureaucratic
or ideological origin, is very dangerous and may mean the
extinction of the human race. Power-mad crazies killed 170 million
people in the 20th
Century with their wars, man-made famines and extermination camps.
What else might they do? Social evolution has to marginalize this
personality type and the behavior attached to it, in the same way
other harmful behaviors were marginalized in the past. Of course, it
is not just a matter of authoritarian personalities. It goes without
saying, that authoritarian structures must be abolished or replaced
with libertarian forms.
In
order marginalize this illness, every authoritarian law, regulation,
ideology and action must be held up to examination and ridicule,
as the results of insecure, unhealthy individuals forcing their
fantasies upon the rest of us. The ordinary person, already
suspicious of politicians, bureaucrats and corporate CEO’s, must
say when confronted by such people, Only
loonies want power!
2004
French Anarchists in the 1930's
Years
ago, I came across something that Jean Maitron wrote which aroused my
curiosity. Maitron said that France had as many anarchists in the
mid-1930's as the 'classical' period of anarchism. (1890-1910) I
would have loved to research this further and discover what lessons,
if any, our 1930's comrades might have for us, but this entailed
spending a lot of time in Switzerland at the CIRA (International
Center for Anarchist Research) in Lausanne.
Imagine
my surprise and pleasure upon discovering David Berry's ANARCHISM IN
FRANCE 1917-1945. Imagine my displeasure that Greenwood would charge
$75 for it. But I had to have the book and so shelled out. Expensive
but worth it. Berry did all that research, in a most exhausting
manner too, going through hundreds of papers, pamphlets, letters and
so forth. He showed that Maitron was right, anarchism took a
nose-dive in the 20's and revived to pre-war levels or even greater
in the mid-1930's. At this time there were literally 'tens of
thousands' of anarchist activists and supporters. Perhaps as many as
200,000 people in France had some level of sympathy for anarchism.
This non-party, was in fact the third largest 'party' of the Left.
The
largest and most influential organization, the Union
Anarchiste
(UA), formed in 1920, had 3000 members and their paper Le
Libertaire,
had press runs of 20,000, on one occasion 100,000. Nor was anarchism
just Parisian. Even Nice had a UA group of 300 members. It should be
pointed out that most anarchists did not belong to the two main
organizations, the UA and the Federation
Anarchiste Francaise
(FAF) (1) , so their numbers were even greater than formal
memberships would indicate.
Berry
also explores the social make up of the anarchist movement. The
common Marxist put-down has always been that anarchism attracted only
artisans - a 'dying breed' and therefore anarchism was a primitive
form of socialism. What he finds is that most 1930's anarchists were
blue and white collar workers. In fact there was no difference in
social composition between the anarchists and Communist Party (CP)
members.
Anarchists
were active in the strikes of 1936 and CP members were deserting the
party for the UA. Anarchists led the support for the labour movement
in Spain, in one year sending 100 truckloads of supplies to the
CNT-FAI (2) and holding meetings of up to 15,000 people in the red
banlieus
of Paris. According to veteran anarchist Sebastian Faure, there had
never been as many anarchists in France as in 1936-38.
The
UA organized an anti-Stalinist, anti-fascist, Revolutionary Front
composed of left-wing members of the Socialist Party, Trotskyists,
the Socialist Workers and Peasants Party, the Groupe
Revolutionaire,
'moderate' syndicalists of the CGT, revolutionary syndicalists like
Monatte, cooperators, and radical pacifists. Many anarchists, it
turns out, were already active in the CGT, the cooperative movement,
and yes, even the Socialist Party. The anarchist movement had begun
to re-established itself as the
revolutionary movement, just like in the period 1890-1910. The
Stalinists counter-attacked, excluding anarchists from trade union
work, slandering and harassing them wherever possible.
The
momentary success of the CNT-FAI was a real shot in the arm. Spain
provided a living example and the Spanish comrades (esp. Durrutti and
the FAI) exerted strong pressure to overcome sectarian splits within
the anarchist and syndicalist movements and to work towards the
Revolutionary Front. The UA outreach to non-anarchists in its 'common
ground' approach paid off, as Socialists and trade union members
became attracted to anarchism.
However
by 1939, all this positive energy was gone, and so too most of the
organizational efforts. What happened? The defeat of the Spanish
Revolution by Franco and Stalin took a heavy toll on morale.
Sectarian infighting drove away scores of new members. The problem
here was that the FAF considered the UA to be 'revisionist' because
it cooperated with non-anarchists and 'traitors' like the Jouhaux's
'reformist' CGT, as in the Revolutionary Front and Spanish support
work. To add to the misery, Leon Blum's Popular Front government was
defeated and the right-wing Daladier regime installed. The new
government wasted no time attacking the anarchists and persecuting
the Spanish exiles. The 1938 General Strike called by the CGT to
protest Deladier's reactionary policies failed, due in large measure
to the aforementioned demoralization. Overall, the long-term tendency
did not favor libertarianism. Everywhere, centralization, big
government and corporatism were advancing at a gallop. The last
chance to turn this around was 1936.
Berry
concludes that French anarchism attracted people during periods of
'revisionism', that is, when worn-out dogmas were being challenged
and new ideas were coming to the fore. One such period was the late
1890's, when the self-defeating dogmas of 'propaganda of the deed'
and insurrectionism were confronted by the new concept - syndicalism.
The 1930's saw the UA challenge the sectarian isolationism and
hostility to organization that plagued the 1920's movement with a
'common ground' approach. Indeed, the 20's were a sectarian
hell-broth. Anarchists were split into a dozen broad factions; pro
and anti-Bolshevik, a minority (Grave, Pouget) who had supported the
War and the majority who didn't, individualist and non-individualist,
Platformist and antiplatformist, (3) militants and 'moderates' and
two different, and mutually hostile, revolutionary syndicalist
factions. (4) Note that few of these disputes had much to do with the
essential content of anarchism such as anti-authoritarianism,
federalism, and direct action.
One
of the problems never fully resolved (even by the UA) was that most
anarchists were not part of any specific anarchist group and thus
tended to get lost to the movement within the various coops, unions,
women’s, or rationalist groups they belonged to. Many preferred to
join the Socialist Party. This made the anarchist movement seem a lot
weaker than it actually was, and tended to discourage militants from
becoming anarchists. A strong federation would have been a pole of
attraction to many people who joined the Communist or Socialist
parties instead.
The
UA 'common ground' concept had its origins in the pre-war writings
of Sebastien Faure who saw the 'revolutionary forces' consisting of
not just the anarchists but also syndicalists, left-socialists, the
coop movement and the rationalists. In 1917, the anarchist known as
'Mauricius' wrote that anarchists themselves needed to unite around a
few clear principles, "the greatest number of people possible."
That same year the anarcho-syndicalist Raymond Pericat proposed an
international composed of left-socialists, syndicalists and
anarchists.
UA
theory was further advanced in the late 1930's. Up until then,
revolutionary anarchists had a naive view of the revolution; that it
would be quick and total. The events in Spain showed this would not
be the case and that some sort of transition period was required, the
state would have to be dismantled,
rather than abolished in one glorious stroke. The state would have to
be replaced by decentralized federal and direct democratic
structures, a procedure the speed of which would depend upon the
consciousness of the population. Unfortunately the collapse of the
movement and WWII prevented any further development along this line.
And as one might expect, the idea of a transition period was
considered treasonous by the sectarian dreamers.
What
lessons do I draw from the French experience? For one, there is
nothing automatic to history, nor was the decline of our movement a
result of some 'social evolution.' Had the CNT-FAI-POUM alliance in
Spain even partially succeeded, the French movement would have
continued growing and the pressure for anarchist unity and the
Revolutionary Front would have been ever stronger. Stalin knew
exactly what he was doing, he had to destroy the anarchists and their
left-socialist allies (POUM) otherwise these tendencies would
eventually threaten his direction of the Communist Party.
Secondly,
the correctness of the 'broad-church', common ground approach and the
utter futility of sectarianism. The UA, was in certain senses the
spiritual ancestor of today's non-sectarian anarchism. We can see
from their momentary, partial success what we need to do.
Thirdly,
organization. Eventually, and we are certainly not at that point yet,
we will need a federation that great numbers of anarchists and
sympathizers can belong to. This would need to be based upon a few
common principles and not the usual programmatic diarrhea of the
sectarian groups. Something to pull people together, make them
realize they are part of something greater than their own local coop,
union or whatever project they are involved in.
Fourthly,
the international perspective. One group pushing ahead helps all the
rest. If this was true in 1936, imagine now with our airliners and
instant communication. 2004
1.
Not to be confused with the contemporary French Anarchist
Federation. The Second World War broke any organizational continuity.
2.
The CNT was the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist federation, the FAI the
Iberian Anarchist Federation. In 1936 the CNT had 2 million members,
the FAI had 30,000 members.
3.
The Platformists wanted a disciplined organization united around a
program. (the Platform) This was overwhelming rejected by other
anarchists during this period.
4.
The Monatte group which had members in all the trade unions and the
Besnard group formed a small separate union federation (CGT-SR) in
opposition to all the others. The FAF was aligned with the CGT-SR
while the UA worked with the other anarcho-syndicalists.
posted by Larry Gambone at
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