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ZNet | Vision & Strategy
Power and Revolution:
The Anarchist Century
by Andrej Grubacic
May 11, 2006
{This paper is a revised version of the essay co-writen with
David Graeber: "Anarchism; or, the Revolutionary Movement
for the 21st Century". It is revised and will be revised
further for the presentation for the June 1-7 2006 Z
Sessions on Vision and Strategy, held in Woods Hole,
Massachusetts. }
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 Serbia 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", 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. 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 do***ent 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 "leader****p" 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: I would like to express my
affinity with what might be loosely referred to as the
"small-a anarchists", who 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.
But the three essentials that run throughout all
manifestations of anarchist movement 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".
This is present in anything from jamming collectives and on
to Indy media, all of which can be called anarchist in the
newer sense.)
The new anarchists are 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 leader****p 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 leader****p 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
anarchists in the past. 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" or "revolution" 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 incor****ating 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. 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, ***uality, 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. It rejects
the very opposition between reformism and revolution.
And of course theory will have to catch up with practice.
The problem at the moment is that anarchists who want to get
past old-fa****oned, 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. 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.
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 cl***** 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.
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, I 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.
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, such as the North American
Social Ecologists's "libertarian municipalism". There's a
lively debate 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.
Still, there are a lot of details still to be filled in:
what are the anarchist's full sets of positive institutional
alternatives to contem****ary legislatures, courts, police,
and diverse executive agencies? 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 and many utopian dialogues. Still,
between actual social experiments within expanding
self-managing, ungoverned communities in places like Eastern
Europe or Latin America, and of the efforts of new
anarchists all over the globe, the work is beginning. It is
clearly a long-term process. But then, the anarchist century
has only just begun.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1587154838/ref=nosim/thedanclorenecro
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
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