When?

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"To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so... To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown it all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." [General Idea of the Revolution, p. 294, P-J Proudhon, Pluto Press, London, 1989.]

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Anarchism Today 

 Michael Albert

In lieu of attending the North American Anarchist Conference (NAAC), I was asked: "what do you think of anarchism as an existing and potential ideology and movement?" Well, I think if anarchism were an ecology, it would be a tropical rain forest--broad, wide, and deep, a many faceted organism. A brief reply won't touch most of anarchism's facets, of course, but perhaps I can address a part of the heart of the matter.

Anarchist Focus

To me anarchist practice seeks liberation and decries strategy that reproduces the contours of an oppressive past. It rejects government that subordinates most of society to elites in positions of power. This is Kropotkin, Bakunin, Goldman, and Berkman's very impressive heritage. Their anarchism means eliminating unjust authoritarian hierarchy.

But what about anarchism today? Well, it depends. If "anarchism today" is like anarchism of old and is mainly an anti-authoritarian practice, then I think anarchism today is good for siding with those most oppressed by authoritarianism, just as feminism today is good for siding with those most oppressed by sexism. But if a social activist says their whole mindset stems from anti-sexist concepts, though I would support and welcome their work, I would also feel it was narrow vis-a-vis the entire agenda we face. And likewise, if a social activist says their whole minset stems from anti-authoritarian concepts, though I would support and welcome their work too, I would again feel it was narrow vis-a-vis the entire agenda we face.

I am told, however, that instead of being centrally anti-authoritarian, as in the old days, nowadays being an anarchist implies having a gender, cultural, economic, and a politically-rooted orientation, each aspect on a par with and also informing the rest. This is new in my experience of anarchism, and it is useful to recall that many anarchists as little as a decade back, perhaps even more recently, would have said that anarchism addresses everything, yes, but via an anti-authoritarian focus rather than by elevating other concepts in their own right. They thought, whether implicitly or explicitly, that analysis from an overwhelmingly anti-authoritarian angle could explain the nuclear family better than an analysis based in kinship concepts, and could explain race or religion better than an analysis based in cultural concepts, and could explain production, consumption, and allocation better than an analysis based in economic concepts. They were wrong, and it is good to hear that many modern anarchists know this.

Anarchist Vision?

There is much to celebrate in the breadth and depth of anarchism, of course, but we must also overcome lingering faults, and I think a primary fault to overcome is that anarchism lacks vision.

Anarchists rightly teach that oppression rests not only on forceful defense of advantage from above, but also on convincing citizens below that there is no more liberating social order that they can seek. Elites impose hopelessness on the rest of us, that is, as a damper on our activism and resistance. Why, then, I wonder, have anarchists been largely silent about political vision?

I wouldn't expect anarchism to produce from within a compelling vision of future religion, ethnic identification, or cultural community, or of kinship, sexuality, procreation or socialization, or of production, consumption, or allocation. But regarding attaining, implementing, and protecting against the abuse of shared political agendas, it seems to me that anarchism ought to be where the action is, and, indeed, that it even has a responsibility to be where the action is. Nonetheless, has there been any serious anarchist attempt to explain how what we call legal disputes should be resolved? How legal adjudication should occur? How laws and thus political coordination should be attained? How violations and disruptions should be handled? And for that matter how shared programs should be positively implemented? In other words, what is the anarchist institutional alternative to contemporary legislatures, courts, police, and diverse executive agencies? What institutions do anarchists seek that would advance solidarity, equity, participatory self-management, diversity, and whatever other life-affirming and liberatory values we support, while also accomplishing needed political functions? I wonder why after a century of opposing authoritarian political relations and exploring these matters, anarchism still doesn't clearly, widely, and with vigor offer a broad, overarching political vision? How long until we realize that huge numbers of citizens of developed societies are not going to risk what they have, however little it may be in some cases, to pursue a goal about which they have no clarity? How often do they have to ask us what we are for, before we give them some serious answers? Why hasn't anarchism reached the point where its advocates can say that yes, we oppose the existing state and its authoritarian hierarchies and implications -- and so here are the non-authoritarian political values and institutions we favor instead.

Offering a political vision that encompasses legislation, implementation, adjudication, and enforcement and that shows how each of these functions would be accomplished in a non-authoritarian way promoting values we favor, would not only provide our contemporary activism much-needed long-term values and hope, it would also inform our immediate responses to today's electoral, law-making, law enforcement, and court system, and all our strategic choices. So shouldn' t today's anarchist community be generating such political vision? I think so, and so I keep looking for it, eagerly hoping it will be forthcoming.

Some Questionable Anarchist Practice

Finally, regarding anarchism and movements today, I have another broad range of concerns having to do with personal practice. I worry about certain strange formulations and styles that keep percolating into view among self described anarchists, but that I hope have very little support in the broader anarchist community. I have in mind, for example, views that technology is in itself an enemy of justice and liberty. Or that all institutions by their very nature are infringements on human freedom. Or that relating to existing political or social structures in any sense at all is an automatic sign of hypocrisy or fickle intent. Or that reforms are by their very nature system-supportive and therefore utterly to be avoided, those seeking them to be chastised.

These odd views, which call themselves anarchist but certainly aren't, are not getting to the heart of the matter of contemporary social injustice, as their advocates presumably think, but are instead jumping entirely off the tracks of useful assessment and prescription into self destructiveness and sectarianism. They confuse the social relations of injustice with the physical, chemical, and biological insights that become embodied in instruments that are admittedly often used for bad ends -- or they even confuse it with the very idea of instruments at all. They mistake the necessary fact of humans working together in sustained structures with lasting roles, which is to say in institutions, with the admittedly horrific specific types of institutions that we often find ourselves stuck in today -- corporations, political hierarchies, etc. They mistake trying to self-consciously improve life for people suffering in difficult contexts that impose diverse compromises on our choices, with misunderstanding that the pains people now endure owe themselves to the institutions around us. That is, they confuse reforms with reformism, and confuse being a revolutionary with being someone who a priori rejects winning improvements now, even if the improvements not only contribute to bettering people's lives today, but also to winning further gains in the future.

Likewise, I am concerned about signs I sometimes see of a life-style emphasis that exaggerates the importance and efficacy of personal consumption choices, often seeing one's own consumption preferences (in food, music, entertainment, movies, culture, reading) as superior while harshly disparaging other people's different choices as inferior, all the while oblivious to the fact that different people face different limitations and settings contouring the logic of their options. And I am particularly concerned about behaviors that denigrate the ways various constituencies other than one's own try to find positive engagement and entertainment in life, such as those who are religious or those who play or enjoy sports, or those who watch TV, as if by such pursuits one indicates that one is somehow an unworthy person or otherwise deserves contempt. These kinds of sectarian manifestation of what you would think would be quite rare lifestyle preferences and attitudes matter quite a lot when they become homogenous to movement memberships and thus come to characterize a whole ideology or movement, not least because they affect the quality of our behavior, how we come across to others, what it seems we are in favor of and oppose, and even our capacities for positive empathy and enjoyment.

Thus, finally, to answer the question what do I think of anarchism as an existing and potential ideology of movement, I guess I would say that if anarchism has truly recognized the need for culture-based, economy-based, and gender-based, as well as polity-based concepts and practice, and if anarchism can support vision arising from non-governmental social dimensions while also itself providing serious and compelling political vision, and if the anarchist community can avoid or at least minimize lifestyle sectarianism as well as strange confusions between bad technology and technology per se, authoritarian government and political structures per se, oppressive institutions and institutions per se, and seeking to win reforms versus being reformist - then I think anarchism has a whole lot going for it as a source of movement inspiration and wisdom in the effort to make our world a much better place.

Taken from Znet: www.zmag.org