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On The Appeal of Anarchism, A Response to Don Smith’s
“Are Anarchists in Occupy Aiding Grover Norquist?”

By Dave Fryett

21 September, 2012
Save Our Cola

The short answer, of course, is no. One might think that the title of Smith’s confused article is preposterous enough to render rebuttal unnecessary, but the questions posed are familiar and important ones, and worthy of attention.

A large and ever-growing range of radical political orientation goes by the name of anarchism these days. It will thus be impossible to do justice in one article to each strain, my hope is to capture those elements which are common to all. But what follows is just one anarchist’s view.

Like so many critics of anarchism, Smith doesn’t really know his subject. He says he understands why Occupiers and anarchists reject working through the Democratic Party as it would be difficult to drive out the corporatists. This he regrets as, he insists, progressive Democrats and Occupiers are working for the same things: economic justice, women’s rights, gay rights, environmental stewardship, a strong social safety net, an end to militarism, an end to the police state, and an end to corruption.

At the core of our thought is equality, anarchism is unimaginable without it. And equality not just in one aspect of life but in all. Anarchism is the end of hierarchical authority, the master-servant relationship, the end of the rule of coercive power. Thus our notion of economic justice requires the abolition of capitalism, which is positively medieval in its hierarchy. For us corporatism and capitalism are undifferentiated, and the distinction made between the two in contemporary political parlance utterly specious, a canard. Thus our goals are incompatible with those of the Democrats who want to tame capitalism, not eliminate it.

We do not seek merely the end of the police state, but the end of the state altogether. Another core principle for us is freedom; the ability to act, think, engage, disengage, build, withdraw, plan, organize, exchange, love, and dream freely. The state corrals such liberty, confines it within acceptable parameters. Anarchism does not wish to constrain the ingenuity of everyday people, but to liberate it, give it a free hand. Capitalism has wrought a society remorselessly divided into the few rich and the great many poor. It is the raison d’etre of the state to perpetuate this inequality. The state exists to suppress democracy as the great mass of people would never willingly accept the pitiless economic polarization under which we are compelled to live. In its entirety, the state is the enforcement apparatus of ruling class power. It cannot be reformed, it has to go, as does the power behind it. As John Holloway put it, we want “the end of power-over, and the unleashing of power-to.” Here, too, we stand in opposition to the Democrats.

Moreover, the great majority of anarchists reject political parties. To paraphrase Ngo Van: The so-called workers’ parties are embryonic forms of a new state. Once in power they form the nucleus of a new ruling class and induce nothing more than a new system of exploitation.*

I believe the history of the communist parties of Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam et al. amply demonstrate the veracity of Van’s position.

Later in the article Smith suggests that the state has provided us with many benefits: seat belts…civil rights laws…pollution controls, Medicare, Social Security, laws, constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion and press…public transportation, public schools, disaster relief, medical research…

Firstly, we attained these benefits over the obstreperous and often violent objection of state and capital. It is not as though the they wanted us to have them. They were bestowed upon us under duress. Secondly, these things come to us from government because it has a monopoly on power and thus controls them. We get them with the blessing of the state or we don’t get them at all. We have constitutional rights, but the only real threat to these is the state, the same state which ever so condescendingly grants them to us. We would not need the guarantee if not for the existence of the government as it is the only thing which can (and frequently does) deprive us of these rights.

Transportation, schools and the other services listed above are the result of the labor of countless workers, and it is they and not the state who are responsible for their existence. The state isn’t providing these services, but rather is establishing its hegemony over them. The state rules, workers comply or endure some of the state’s other public services, like police batons, pepper spray, cavity searches, detention, incarceration etc.

Smith, betraying an astonishing ignorance of his topic, contends “Corporations aren’t going away, because it is efficient for people to organize themselves into groups, both economically and politically. Typically, such groups are hierarchical, and members of the group cooperate to reach shared goals. For corporations, of course, the goal is to earn money; employees benefit when their company prospers. “

Here again we see a propensity for circular thought. No Leftists deny the efficiency of group labor, we anarchists insist it be democratic. Under capitalism, one faction privately owns the factory and the other, the workers, hats in hand, beg for the opportunity to sell their labor for a fixed hourly rate. The former sell the product of the workers’ labor for more than it cost to produce. They become rich, while the workers will lead not much more than a subsistence existence and pass their last years in want.

Employees do not benefit when the company prospers, capitalists do. What is good for workers–pay raises, shorter hours or better conditions– is bad for the capitalists as it results in increased costs. This is the class struggle, the irremediable contradiction at the heart of capitalism. It’s a zero-sum game.

Another core principle of anarchism is self-management. What we want is that the means by which society produces those things we need and desire–factories, schools etc.–be publicly owned and run by the workers. And, most importantly, that production be tailored to consumption, and that the profit-motive and all its extractive abuses be brought to an end. It means the end of one person depending upon another for his livelihood.

We anarchists have no objection to economic organization, as Smith put it. As to hierarchy: It should be up to the workers to organize themselves as they see fit. To cede some authority to a party responsible for a particular task should be their prerogative, and is acceptable to most anarchist so long as it is acceptable to those affected, freely given, revocable at any time, and for the benefit of the whole and not the recipient.

Smith: Without government we’d be hunter gatherers.

Government invented agriculture? Actually, it was the other way around–surplus gave rise to the state.

Anarchism, if nothing else, represents a liberation from this type of lunacy. In an anarchist society, there would be no state, no coercive body (nor any incentive) to enfeeble people so thoroughly that they would utter anything as ludicrous as this.

Smith: I don’t believe that a modern society can function without a centralized government.

How would we know as that is all we have ever had? Centralized governments are not inclined to decentralize themselves. Moreover, it is not so much a matter of whether some sort of central institution exists (although some anarchist would disagree), the question is where decision-making power will reside. If the U.S. went anarchist tomorrow, we would still have need of the FAA or something like it.

Here again self-management comes into play. Decision-making should be the collective enterprise of the whole, and not the purview of a class of privileged viziers, even elected ones. To anarchists, the phrase “direct democracy” is redundant. We have a right to govern ourselves. To paraphrase the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front: “It is time to replace government with counter power by the people. This means we want worker/community control of the economy, from below. We want democratic and direct self management of industry by workers in their workplaces; we want self-management of communities by those who live in them. We want to collectively decide how we run our lives.”

Where face-to-face democracy is not tenable, authority can be ceded to an organization such as the FAA. I know I wouldn’t want to fly without them. The point is that whatever organizations exist need to be worker run, and those to whom authority is granted must be controlled from below.

Smith: Give me an example where anarchism, or something based on it, worked in a modern nation.

Give me an example of where it had a chance. We came closest in Spain, where great swaths of that country came under self-rule. But Spanish anarchism was born on a battlefield, and it was crushed with the overt help of the German and Italian fascists, and with the covert assistance of British and American intelligence services. Anarchism is the enemy of wealth and power, anyone who has either has an interest in destroying it. It really never had a chance to flourish. No anarchist community has self destructed. No people have ever abandoned self-rule in favor of a state. In each case these societies were overtaken by force, and from without.

But of greater importance is that whenever there has been a power vacuum people invariably organize themselves democratically, and along anarchist lines. This occurred in Manchuria after WW1, and in many spots around Russia in the years following the October Revolution of 1917. It happened in liberated Greece and Italy after WW2, before the Allies came in and crushed them. And there are many other examples.

The point is not whether there have been any long-lasting anarchist societies, this is just a measure of how successful authoritarian regimes have been in suppressing them. Rather, what is important is the eternal propensity for anarchism which invariably manifests itself whenever people are lucky enough to be set free. People are predisposed to democracy. Anarchism is natural, the state is artificial.

Smith says that the Occupy Movement fell apart due to infighting. While there was no denying that there was a good deal of acrimony within the Left here in Seattle (although not so much within the anarchist faction), it is just absurd to say the movement imploded. It was taken down by the state: police, the FBI, and the DHS, to name a few. It was not we who pepper-sprayed each other. It was not we who broke down each others’ doors and threw in flash-bang grenades. It was not we who kicked people peacefully sleeping in tents. I could go on and on.

So what is anarchism’s appeal? It is the equal distribution of wealth and power. It is the freedom to be self-governing, to have an equal say in the affairs of society, to have control over one’s own life. It is freedom from war, economic exploitation, tyranny. It is the hope of living in a world without racism, sexism, or other forms of sectarianism which divide us into hostile factions. It is the hope of living in a world without borders. It is the desire to live without fear; to live in a world where the other inhabitants of our planet, people who may look or speak or dress differently, are not seen as enemies against whom we must struggle or perish, but are recognized for what they are–our fellow human beings; other branches of the family tree, with whom we can cooperate to our mutual advantage, and from whom we have much to learn.

Anarchism is freedom from this vile, loveless world of capitalism; freedom from a world of the fierce and often lethal competition of free markets. Capitalism does to people what Michael Vick does to dogs. The promise of anarchism is that it removes all that pits one human being against another, subordinates one to another. Anarchism is the end of the world of warring camps, the end of the age of the sword.

Finally, Anarchism is the end of supremacy–all supremacy. It is the beginning of an age in which humanity is exalted. It is a world in which every institution you enter expects and welcomes your participation, encourages your contribution. It is a society which recognizes, as Altiero Spinelli put it, that every human being is an autonomous center of life, a unique form of sentience, and as such all are equal and entitled to equal consideration and respect; a society which recognizes our kinship.

Once the merciless, obscene world of state and capital is vanquished, and society is thus transformed, the Dark Ages will finally come to an end, and the real Enlightenment can begin, an age of peace and plenty. That is anarchism’s appeal.

For those interested in learning more about anarchism, Cindy Milstein’s Anarchism and its Aspirations is a good place to start.

* In the Crossfire, Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary.

Dave is an anarchist in Seattle can be reached through his blog saveourcola.wordpress.com




 

 


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