Anarchism,
Or The Revolutionary Movement Of The Twenty-first Century
By David Graeber
and Andrej Grubacic
Znet
08 January, 2004
It
is becoming increasingly clear that the age of revolutions is not over.
It's becoming equally clear that the global revolutionary movement in
the twenty first century, will be one that traces its origins less to
the tradition of Marxism, or even of socialism narrowly defined, but
of anarchism.
Everywhere from
Eastern Europe to Argentina, from Seattle to Bombay, anarchist ideas
and principles are generating new radical dreams and visions. Often
their exponents do not call themselves "anarchists". There
are a host of other names: autonomism, anti-authoritarianism, horizontality,
Zapatismo, direct democracy... Still, everywhere one finds the same
core principles: decentralization, voluntary association, mutual aid,
the network model, and above all, the rejection of any idea that the
end justifies the means, let alone that the business of a revolutionary
is to seize state power and then begin imposing one's vision at the
point of a gun. Above all, anarchism, as an ethics of practice-the idea
of building a new society "within the shell of the old"-has
become the basic inspiration of the "movement of movements"
(of which the authors are a part), which has from the start been less
about seizing state power than about exposing, de-legitimizing and dismantling
mechanisms of rule while winning ever-larger spaces of autonomy and
participatory management within it.
There are some obvious
reasons for the appeal of anarchist ideas at the beginning of the 21st
century: most obviously, the failures and catastrophes resulting from
so many efforts to overcome capitalism by seizing control of the apparatus
of government in the 20th. Increasing numbers of revolutionaries have
begun to recognize that "the revolution" is not going to come
as some great apocalyptic moment, the storming of some global equivalent
of the Winter Palace, but a very long process that has been going on
for most of human history (even if it has like most things come to accelerate
of late) full of strategies of flight and evasion as much as dramatic
confrontations, and which will never-indeed, most anarchists feel, should
never-come to a definitive conclusion.
It's a little disconcerting,
but it offers one enormous consolation: we do not have to wait until
"after the revolution" to begin to get a glimpse of what genuine
freedom might be like. As the Crimethinc Collective, the greatest propagandists
of contemporary American anarchism, put it: "Freedom only exists
in the moment of revolution. And those moments are not as rare as you
think." For an anarchist, in fact, to try to create non-alienated
experiences, true democracy, is an ethical imperative; only by making
one's form of organization in the present at least a rough approximation
of how a free society would actually operate, how everyone, someday,
should be able to live, can one guarantee that we will not cascade back
into disaster. Grim joyless revolutionaries who sacrifice all pleasure
to the cause can only produce grim joyless societies.
These changes have
been difficult to document because so far anarchist ideas have received
almost no attention in the academy. There are still thousands of academic
Marxists, but almost no academic anarchists. This lag is somewhat difficult
to interpret. In part, no doubt, it's because Marxism has always had
a certain affinity with the academy which anarchism obviously lacked:
Marxism was, after all, the only great social movement that was invented
by a Ph.D. Most accounts of the history of anarchism assume it was basically
similar to Marxism: anarchism is presented as the brainchild of certain
19th century thinkers (Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin...) that then went
on to inspire working-class organizations, became enmeshed in political
struggles, divided into sects...
Anarchism, in the
standard accounts, usually comes out as Marxism's poorer cousin, theoretically
a bit flat-footed but making up for brains, perhaps, with passion and
sincerity. Really the analogy is strained. The "founders"
of anarchism did not think of themselves as having invented anything
particularly new. The saw its basic principles-mutual aid, voluntary
association, egalitarian decision-making-as as old as humanity. The
same goes for the rejection of the state and of all forms of structural
violence, inequality, or domination (anarchism literally means "without
rulers")-even the assumption that all these forms are somehow related
and reinforce each other. None of it was seen as some startling new
doctrine, but a longstanding tendency in the history human thought,
and one that cannot be encompassed by any general theory of ideology.
On one level it
is a kind of faith: a belief that most forms of irresponsibility that
seem to make power necessary are in fact the effects of power itself.
In practice though it is a constant questioning, an effort to identify
every compulsory or hierarchical relation in human life, and challenge
them to justify themselves, and if they cannot-which usually turns out
to be the case-an effort to limit their power and thus widen the scope
of human liberty. Just as a Sufi might say that Sufism is the core of
truth behind all religions, an anarchist might argue that anarchism
is the urge for freedom behind all political ideologies.
Schools of Marxism
always have founders. Just as Marxism sprang from the mind of Marx,
so we have Leninists, Maoists,, Althusserians... (Note how the list
starts with heads of state and grades almost seamlessly into French
professors - who, in turn, can spawn their own sects: Lacanians, Foucauldians....)
Schools of anarchism,
in contrast, almost invariably emerge from some kind of organizational
principle or form of practice: Anarcho-Syndicalists and Anarcho-Communists,
Insurrectionists and Platformists, Cooperativists, Councilists, Individualists,
and so on.
Anarchists are distinguished
by what they do, and how they organize themselves to go about doing
it. And indeed this has always been what anarchists have spent most
of their time thinking and arguing about. They have never been much
interested in the kinds of broad strategic or philosophical questions
that preoccupy Marxists such as Are the peasants a potentially revolutionary
class? (anarchists consider this something for peasants to decide) or
what is the nature of the commodity form? Rather, they tend to argue
about what is the truly democratic way to go about a meeting, at what
point organization stops empowering people and starts squelching individual
freedom. Is "leadership" necessarily a bad thing? Or, alternately,
about the ethics of opposing power: What is direct action? Should one
condemn someone who assassinates a head of state? When is it okay to
throw a brick?
Marxism, then, has
tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about revolutionary
strategy. Anarchism has tended to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary
practice. As a result, where Marxism has produced brilliant theories
of praxis, it's mostly been anarchists who have been working on the
praxis itself.
At the moment, there's
something of a rupture between generations of anarchism: between those
whose political formation took place in the 60s and 70s-and who often
still have not shaken the sectarian habits of the last century-or simply
still operate in those terms, and younger activists much more informed,
among other elements, by indigenous, feminist, ecological and cultural-critical
ideas. The former organize mainly through highly visible Anarchist Federations
like the IWA, NEFAC or IWW. The latter work most prominently in the
networks of the global social movement, networks like Peoples Global
Action, which unites anarchist collectives in Europe and elsewhere with
groups ranging from Maori activists in New Zealand, fisherfolk in Indonesia,
or the Canadian postal workers' union (2.). The latter-what might be
loosely referred to as the "small-a anarchists", are by now
by far the majority. But it is sometimes hard to tell, since so many
of them do not trumpet their affinities very loudly. There are many.
in fact, who take anarchist principles of anti-sectarianism and open-endedness
so seriously that they refuse to refer to themselves as 'anarchists'
for that very reason (3.).
But the three essentials
that run throughout all manifestations of anarchist ideology are definitely
there - anti-statism, anti-capitalism and prefigurative politics (i.e.
modes of organization that consciously resemble the world you want to
create. Or, as an anarchist historian of the revolution in Spain has
formulated "an effort to think of not only the ideas but the facts
of the future itself". (4.) This is present in anything from jamming
collectives and on to Indy media, all of which can be called anarchist
in the newer sense.(5.) In some countries, there is only a very limited
degree of confluence between the two coexisting generations, mostly
taking the form of following what each other is doing - but not much
more.
One reason is that
the new generation is much more interested in developing new forms of
practice than arguing about the finer points of ideology. The most dramatic
among these have been the development of new forms of decision-making
process, the beginnings, at least, of an alternate culture of democracy.
The famous North American spokescouncils, where thousands of activists
coordinate large-scale events by consensus, with no formal leadership
structure, are only the most spectacular.
Actually, even calling
these forms "new" is a little bit deceptive. One of the main
inspirations for the new generation of anarchists are the Zapatista
autonomous municipalities of Chiapas, based in Tzeltal or Tojolobal-speaking
communities who have been using consensus process for thousands of years-only
now adopted by revolutionaries to ensure that women and younger people
have an equal voice. In North America, "consensus process"
emerged more than anything else from the feminist movement in the '70s,
as part of a broad backlash against the macho style of leadership typical
of the '60s New Left. The idea of consensus itself was borrowed from
the Quakers, who again, claim to have been inspired by the Six Nations
and other Native American practices.
Consensus is often
misunderstood. One often hears critics claim it would cause stifling
conformity but almost never by anyone who has actually observed consensus
in action, at least, as guided by trained, experienced facilitators
(some recent experiments in Europe, where there is little tradition
of such things, have been somewhat crude). In fact, the operating assumption
is that no one could really convert another completely to their point
of view, or probably should. Instead, the point of consensus process
is to allow a group to decide on a common course of action. Instead
of voting proposals up and down, proposals are worked and reworked,
scotched or reinvented, there is a process of compromise and synthesis,
until one ends up with something everyone can live with. When it comes
to the final stage, actually "finding consensus", there are
two levels of possible objection: one can "stand aside", which
is to say "I don't like this and won't participate but I wouldn't
stop anyone else from doing it", or "block", which has
the effect of a veto. One can only block if one feels a proposal is
in violation of the fundamental principles or reasons for being of a
group. One might say that the function which in the US constitution
is relegated to the courts, of striking down legislative decisions that
violate constitutional principles, is here relegated with anyone with
the courage to actually stand up against the combined will of the group
(though of course there are also ways of challenging unprincipled blocks).
One could go on
at length about the elaborate and surprisingly sophisticated methods
that have been developed to ensure all this works; of forms of modified
consensus required for very large groups; of the way consensus itself
reinforces the principle of decentralization by ensuring one doesn't
really want to bring proposals before very large groups unless one has
to, of means of ensuring gender equity and resolving conflict... The
point is this is a form of direct democracy which is very different
than the kind we usually associate with the term-or, for that matter,
with the kind of majority-vote system usually employed by European or
North American anarchists of earlier generations, or still employed,
say, in middle class urban Argentine asambleas (though not, significantly,
among the more radical piqueteros, the organized unemployed, who tend
to operate by consensus.) With increasing contact between different
movements internationally, the inclusion of indigenous groups and movements
from Africa, Asia, and Oceania with radically different traditions,
we are seeing the beginnings of a new global reconception of what "democracy"
should even mean, one as far as possible from the neoliberal parlaimentarianism
currently promoted by the existing powers of the world.
Again, it is difficult
to follow this new spirit of synthesis by reading most existing anarchist
literature, because those who spend most of their energy on questions
of theory, rather than emerging forms of practice, are the most likely
to maintain the old sectarian dichotomizing logic. Modern anarchism
is imbued with countless contradictions. While small-a anarchists are
slowly incorporating ideas and practices learned from indigenous allies
into their modes of organizing or alternative communities, the main
trace in the written literature has been the emergence of a sect of
Primitivists, a notoriously contentious crew who call for the complete
abolition of industrial civilization, and, in some cases, even agriculture.(6.)
Still, it is only a matter of time before this older, either/or logic
begins to give way to something more resembling the practice of consensus-based
groups.
What would this
new synthesis look like? Some of the outlines can already be discerned
within the movement. It will insist on constantly expanding the focus
of anti-authoritarianism, moving away from class reductionism by trying
to grasp the "totality of domination", that is, to highlight
not only the state but also gender relations, and not only the economy
but also cultural relations and ecology, sexuality, and freedom in every
form it can be sought, and each not only through the sole prism of authority
relations, but also informed by richer and more diverse concepts.
This approach does
not call for an endless expansion of material production, or hold that
technologies are neutral, but it also doesn't decry technology per se.
Instead, it becomes familiar with and employs diverse types of technology
as appropriate. It not only doesn't decry institutions per se, or political
forms per se, it tries to conceive new institutions and new political
forms for activism and for a new society, including new ways of meeting,
new ways of decision making, new ways of coordinating, along the same
lines as it already has with revitalized affinity groups and spokes
structures. And it not only doesn't decry reforms per se, but struggles
to define and win non-reformist reforms, attentive to people's immediate
needs and bettering their lives in the here-and-now at the same time
as moving toward further gains, and eventually, wholesale transformation.(7.)
And of course theory
will have to catch up with practice. To be fully effective, modern anarchism
will have to include at least three levels: activists, people's organizations,
and researchers. The problem at the moment is that anarchist intellectuals
who want to get past old-fashioned, vanguardist habits-the Marxist sectarian
hangover that still haunts so much of the radical intellectual world-are
not quite sure what their role is supposed to be. Anarchism needs to
become reflexive. But how? On one level the answer seems obvious. One
should not lecture, not dictate, not even necessarily think of oneself
as a teacher, but must listen, explore and discover. To tease out and
make explicit the tacit logic already underlying new forms of radical
practice. To put oneself at the service of activists by providing information,
or exposing the interests of the dominant elite carefully hidden behind
supposedly objective, authoritative discourses, rather than trying to
impose a new version of the same thing. But at the same time most recognize
that intellectual struggle needs to reaffirm its place. Many are beginning
to point out that one of the basic weaknesses of the anarchist movement
today is, with respect to the time of, say, Kropotkin or Reclus, or
Herbert Read, exactly the neglecting of the symbolic, the visionary,
and overlooking of the effectiveness of theory. How to move from ethnography
to utopian visions-ideally, as many utopian visions as possible? It
is hardly a coincidence that some of the greatest recruiters for anarchism
in countries like the United States have been feminist science fiction
writers like Starhawk or Ursula K. LeGuin (8.)
One way this is
beginning to happen is as anarchists begin to recuperate the experience
of other social movements with a more developed body of theory, ideas
that come from circles close to, indeed inspired by anarchism. Let's
take for example the idea of participatory economy, which represents
an anarchist economist vision par excellence and which supplements and
rectifies anarchist economic tradition. Parecon theorists argue for
the existence of not just two, but three major classes in advanced capitalism:
not only a proletariat and bourgeoisie but a "coordinator class"
whose role is to manage and control the labor of the working class.
This is the class that includes the management hierarchy and the professional
consultants and advisors central to their system of control - as lawyers,
key engineers and accountants, and so on. They maintain their class
position because of their relative monopolization over knowledge, skills,
and connections. As a result, economists and others working in this
tradition have been trying to create models of an economy which would
systematically eliminate divisions between physical and intellectual
labor. Now that anarchism has so clearly become the center of revolutionary
creativity, proponents of such models have increasingly been, if not
rallying to the flag, exactly, then at least, emphasizing the degree
to which their ideas are compatible with an anarchist vision. (9..)
Similar things are
starting to happen with the development of anarchist political visions.
Now, this is an area where classical anarchism already had a leg up
over classical Marxism, which never developed a theory of political
organization at all. Different schools of anarchism have often advocated
very specific forms of social organization, albeit often markedly at
variance with one another. Still, anarchism as a whole has tended to
advance what liberals like to call 'negative freedoms,' 'freedoms from,'
rather than substantive 'freedoms to.' Often it has celebrated this
very commitment as evidence of anarchism's pluralism, ideological tolerance,
or creativity. But as a result, there has been a reluctance to go beyond
developing small-scale forms of organization, and a faith that larger,
more complicated structures can be improvised later in the same spirit.
There have been
exceptions. Pierre Joseph Proudhon tried to come up with a total vision
of how a libertarian society might operate. (10.) It's generally considered
to have been a failure, but it pointed the way to more developed visions,
such as the North American Social Ecologists's "libertarian municipalism".
There's a lively developing, for instance, on how to balance principles
of worker's control-emphasized by the Parecon folk-and direct democracy,
emphasized by the Social Ecologists.(11..)
Still, there are
a lot of details still to be filled in: what are the anarchist's full
sets of positive institutional alternatives to contemporary legislatures,
courts, police, and diverse executive agencies? How to offer a political
vision that encompasses legislation, implementation, adjudication, and
enforcement and that shows how each would be effectively accomplished
in a non-authoritarian way-not only provide long-term hope, but to inform
immediate responses to today's electoral, law-making, law enforcement,
and court system, and thus, many strategic choices. Obviously there
could never be an anarchist party line on this, the general feeling
among the small-a anarchists at least is that we'll need many concrete
visions. Still, between actual social experiments within expanding self-managing
communities in places like Chiapas and Argentina, and efforts by anarchist
scholar/activists like the newly formed Planetary Alternatives Network
or the Life After Capitalism forums to begin locating and compiling
successful examples of economic and political forms, the work is beginning
(12.). It is clearly a long-term process. But then, the anarchist century
has only just begun.
* David Graeber is an assistant professor at Yale University (USA) and
a political activist. Andrej Grubacic is a historian and social critic
from Yugoslavia. They are involved in Planetary Alternatives Network
(PAN).
1. This doesn't mean anarchists have to be against theory. It might
not need High Theory, in the sense familiar today. Certainly it will
not need one single, Anarchist High Theory. That would be completely
inimical to its spirit. Much better, we think, something more in the
spirit of anarchist decision-making processes: applied to theory, this
would mean accepting the need for a diversity of high theoretical perspectives,
united only by certain shared commitments and understandings. Rather
than based on the need to prove others' fundamental assumptions wrong,
it seeks to find particular projects on which they reinforce each other.
Just because theories are incommensurable in certain respects does not
mean they cannot exist or even reinforce each other, any more than the
fact that individuals have unique and incommensurable views of the world
means they cannot become friends, or lovers, or work on common projects.
Even more than High Theory, what anarchism needs is what might be called
low theory: a way of grappling with those real, immediate questions
that emerge from a transformative project.
2. Fore more information
about the exciting history of Peoples Global Action we suggest the book
We are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-capitalism,
edited by Notes from Nowhere, London: Verso 2003. See also the PGA web
site: www.agp.org
3. Cf. David Graeber, " New Anarchists ", New left Review
13, January - February 2002
4. See Diego Abad
de Santillan, After the Revolution, New York: Greenberg Publishers 1937
5. For more information
on global indymedia project go to : www.indymedia.org
6 Cf. Jason McQuinn, "Why I am not a Primitivist", Anarchy
: a journal of desire armed, printemps/été 2001.Cf. le
site anarchiste www.arnarchymag.org
. Cf. John Zerzan, Future Primitive & Other Essays, Autonomedia,
1994.
7. Cf. Andrej Grubacic, Towards an Another Anarchism, in : Sen, Jai,
Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar and Peter Waterman, The World Social Forum:
Against all Empires, New Delhi: Viveka 2004.
8. Cf. Starhawk, Webs of Power: Notes from Global Uprising, San Francisco
2002. See also : www.starhawk.org
9. Albert, Michael, Participatory Economics, Verso, 2003. See also:
www.parecon.org
10. Avineri, Shlomo.
The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. London: Cambridge University
Press, 1968
11. See The Murray Bookchin Reader, edited by Janet Biehl, London: Cassell
1997. See also the web site of the Institute for Social Ecology :
www.social-ecology.org
12. For more information on Life After Capitalism forums go to :
http://www.zmag.org/lacsite.htm