anarchy n00b

libcom vs. parecon

anarchy n00b — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:50:43 +0000

Fascinating debate between libertarian communists and participatory economics advocates on the libcom.org site. The most significant difference seems to be on the one side (parecon) tying remuneration to effort, and on the other “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” (libcom). Worth reading in its entirety.

Chomsky on anarchism

anarchy n00b — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:21:19 +0000

ZNet has reproduced an article by Chomsky on anarchism. Interesting.

Those pesky protesterrorists

anarchy n00b — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:57:24 +0000

Anti-terrorism laws are again being used to suppress dissent. From a Guardian report on G20 protesters:

Five other activists affiliated to the group Climate Camp said they were stopped and searched under anti-terrorism legislation at a cafe around the corner from the squat.

“A lot of police came in and very forcefully told use they were stopping and searching under the Terrorism Act,” said Bradley Day, 22.

Anarcho-syndicalism

anarchy n00b — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:22:00 +0000

According to Anarchopedia, anarcho-syndicalism is ‘the anarchist wing of the trade union movement’. A explaination of the term from Anarcho-Syndicalism 101:

“Sindicalismo” in Spanish, for example, simply means “Unionism”; the addition of the “Anarco” prefix denotes the libertarian branch of the union movement, or that which aims not only at day-to-day improvements in working conditions under capitalism, but also eventually at a fundamental improvement in the social distribution of decision-making power and access to resources — not simply “bigger cages and longer chains” — through social revolution.

… and a definition of its aims:

The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are workers’ solidarity, direct action and self-management. They are the manifestation in daily life of the application to the workers’ movement of the libertarian principles of anarchism. The anarchist philosophy which inspires these basic principles also defines their purpose; that is, to be a tool of self-emancipation from wage-slavery, and as a means of working towards Libertarian Communism.

The ‘abolition of both the wage system and the state’ are declared its declared aims, according to the 1922 Berlin Congress of the International Workers’ Association (via syndicalist.org). But the everyday problems facing workers are not subordinated to the task of revolution; both short and long term aims are to be striven for:

The twofold task of Revolutionary Syndicalism is to carry on the struggle for economic, social and intellectual improvement in the existing society, and to achieve independent self-managed production and distribution by taking possession of the earth and the means of production. Instead of the State and political parties, the economic organisation of labour. Instead of government over people, the administration of things.

Finally, from Chomsky’s 1971 debate with Foucault, another definition:

A federated, decentralised system of free associations, incorporating economic as well as other social institutions, would be what I refer to as anarcho-syndicalism; and it seems to me that this is the appropriate form of social organisation for an advanced technological society, in which human beings do not have to be forced into the position of tools, of cogs in the machine. There is no longer any social necessity for human beings to be treated as mechanical elements in the productive process; that can be overcome and we must overcome it by a society of freedom and free association, in which the creative urge that I consider intrinsic to human nature, will in fact be able to realise itself in whatever way it will.

Feel free to add links, corrections or comments.

Types of anarchism

anarchy n00b — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:15:42 +0000

Having glanced briefly at Wikipedia’s entry on anarchism, I have attempted to portray some broad-brush-stroke categorisation of anarchist ideologies.

A naÃ¯ve Venn diagram

The areas I am interested in are on the left and centre - anarchism as it relates to socialism and communism, and its mainstream, if there is such a thing. ‘Anarcho’-capitalism is of no interest to me.

I do wonder whether Wikipedia (or its English version, at any rate) has a bias towards highlighting the existence of such ideologies as anarcho-capitalism, given the traditional over-representation of US citizens on the web. It is interesting that Anarchopedia’s entry on anarcho-capitalism quite emphatically denies it a place in anarchist ideology.

I’m also sure I’m over-simplifying. A Venn diagram represents sets in two-dimensional space; ideology is not two-dimensional. I am sure there are also many strands that I’m not yet aware of. I have noticed the term ‘anarcho-syndicalism’ being used. I have no idea where it would fit in with the ideologies. I think some reading is in order.

Bakunin on freedom

anarchy n00b — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:28:48 +0000

Reading some excerpts from Bakunin’s ‘Revolutionary Catechism’ (Dolgoff 1971:76) one in particular stood out:

It is not true that freedom of one man is limited by that of other men. Man is really free to the extent that his freedom, fully acknowledged and mirrored by the free consent of his fellowmen, finds confirmation and expansion in their liberty. Man is truly free only among equally free men; the slavery of even one human being violates humanity and negates the freedom of all.

I have often argued, far less powerfully and concisely than in this passage, that freedom that depends on the coercion of others is not freedom at all. It is this that makes the ‘freedom’ slogan of the US so offensive, when that soi-dissant freedom directly depends on maintainance of a global hegemony and of the repression of people all over the world: economic, politically, militarily. It also casts the neoconservative explanation for the hijack bombings in 2001 - ‘they hate our freedoms’ - a level of truth. If ‘their freedoms’ depend on the negation of others’, then such freedom is indeed detestable. In a global context, the maintainance of wealth by the few at the expense of the many is similar to the freedom enjoyed by the aristocracy in the Middle Ages.

Who would run the NHS?

anarchy n00b — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:44:05 +0000

A little coda to my previous post. A commenter on the article I mentioned linked to an article on libcom.org that analyses the NHS from a libertarian communist perspective. Ultimately, it suggests that NHS should exist ‘as a publicly-owned service, run directly by its workers and patients [...] as part of an entire co-operative libertarian communist society.’ Very interesting and thought-provoking.

Four questions

anarchy n00b — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:24:00 +0000

I read Stephen Moss’s article about the G20 protest last Saturday. It was a diverse crowd, apparently, including the unions, Christian Aid, greens and anarchists. He asked a couple of throwaway questions that, while not particularly penetrating in themselves, did get me thinking about paths to critical inquiry on the subject of anarchism. In particular he asked: ‘I don’t quite see who would run the NHS in [a] government-less world’. It’s a valid question, and I don’t know what the anarchist counter-argument would be, but I think there are several different lines of inquiry that need breaking down.

Is anarchy a good?

By which I mean, in itself. Are its objectives sound and desirable?

Would anarchism work?

Would anarchist means lead to the expected results? I suppose the NHS question, and broader questions of public services and the functioning of society, fall into this category.

How would we get from here to anarchy?

Reform, revolution or other methods? A third-order question, but a significant one, if the first two are answered satisfactorily.

Is it sustainable?

Primarily the question here is, what would prevent new rulers from seizing power? This is similar to the third question.

Of course, each of these questions would need to be considered in the light of varying shades and varieties of anarchism - it is not a monolithic entity. So I do not expect to arrive at a single authoritative answer for each or any of the questions - they are simply there to delineate the terrain of my search.

I don’t want to harp on the Moss article - its main relevance here was that question about the NHS - but one sentence stood out to me as suspect:

“Free Anarchist News â€“ Join the anarchists,” shouts another vendor, apparently unaware of the irony.

Aside from the fact that irony cannot be unintentional (unless you’re from the wrong side of the Atlantic), I smell a logical fallacy. I assume the ‘irony’ is that:

Anarchists love chaos;
Therefore organisation (’join the anarchists’) should be anathema to them.

Do anarchists really love total chaos? Do they despise all kinds of organisation, or is it hierarchy and authority that they stand against? I suspect the ‘irony’ is based on the vulgar definition of anarchy and not the political sense (which I do not yet understand, but I know there is a difference). More significantly, does organisation necessarily include kinds of human interaction (rank, authority) that would be objectionable to anarchists?

The little I know, or think I know, already

anarchy n00b — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:14:58 +0000

I am almost entirely ignorant about anarchism. This post is an attempt to describe that “already” before I start. It’s also possible that everything I think I know is wrong. So, here are the few scraps of information already in my possession:

Anarchy means no rulers.

I am going here from a guess at its etymology: an- meaning without, similar to our English un-, and archy (here I’m guessing from its use in other words like ‘oligarchy’, ‘monarch’) means ruler or authority. I will check this in the dictionary: this is only my ‘folk etymology’. I’m not even sure if it’s Greek or Latin in origin.

There are various branches of anarchism.

My wife is an American, and her father is a Republican. He would definitely be one of the first up against the wall. (I do not advocate violence, but in his case I think I could make an exception.) Yet, he identifies himself as an ‘anarchist’. I suppose the particular brand of American right-wing libertarianism, extreme laissez-faire economics and a mistrust of government, could be called a kind of anarchism. I have no interest in this, as it seems simply an even more brutal and extreme form of capitalism than the neoliberal world order as it stands. So if that’s your interest in anarchism, best to read elsewhere.

I have heard the words ‘anarcho-syndicalism’, ‘anarcho-communism’, ‘libertarian socialism’ and other terms used in conjuction with anarchism. I don’t know what these terms mean, or what their relationship is to each other. What I do know is that anarchism is not monolithic (unsurprisingly) and that it contains many ideological strands.

Bakunin was an important anarchist.

On my bookshelf there is a book of collected essays by Mikhail Bakunin, called On Anarchy. I have not read this book yet, but I will do, and I’m hoping it will provide some background on the tradition.

Something happened in Spain that is important to anarchists.

Now I am starting to feel embarrassed by my ignorance, but the whole point of this blog is to be open about it and then learn, so there it is. I think it might be called the ‘Spanish Civil War’, but I’m not sure. I have absolutely no idea what happened, who was involved, or what we can learn from the events. History according to the British school curriculum includes a lot about mediaeval kings and queens, but next to nothing on recent world history.

Anarchists once killed a US president.

I don’t even know which president, or whether they really were anarchists, or if that was just propaganda. But I remember reading something about it the London Review of Books.

And that’s the sum of what I know about anarchism. Now to learn!

My search

anarchy n00b — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:47:02 +0000

This is intended to be a blog about anarchism, and my attempts to learn about it and to understand it. A bit like Sophie’s World, perhaps, except that I am both narrator and protagonist, and as such, my ignorance is not a literary device â€” it’s genuine ignorance. I know next to nothing about the subject. What little I do know, or think I know, I will sum up in another post. The result of my efforts to learn about anarchism are not a forgone conclusion. I may adopt it in some form, I may reject it in all forms, or I may find that I learn a lot from it and that inflects my way of thinking without feeling I have to identify myself with it. It would be a disingenuous exercise, and prohibitively difficult, to write this in retrospect. I will write as I learn. As such, I am sure there will wrong turns, misinformation, misinterpretation and confusion (which is quite apt in a blog about anarchy). Feel free to correct me, or to suggest other places for me (and anyone who reads this) to learn.

This is not a blog about me. Ideally I would be a generic learner, a ‘clean slate’. But there is no such thing. I think before I begin, I should say a little about my background, at least inasmuch as it gives rise to my motives for wanting to learn about anarchism, and the angle from which I’m approaching the subject. So, forgive me a little autobiography here; feel free to skip it and read other more interesting posts. It acts only as a kind of disclosure of ideological background.

I grew up in Brighton under Thatcher’s government. Like every decent person around me I loathed the Tories. I was a Labour Party member until they threw out Clause 4, at which point I tore up my membership card and watched with gloom as Labour rapidly transmogrified in a manner reminiscent of the closing scene of Animal Farm, where the pigs are indistinguishable from the humans. Meanwhile, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union ushered in a new era of capitalism, Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History, and we had to witness the unedifying spectacle of our Prime Minister lying his way into an unjust and murderous war in the Middle East in tow to a transparently evil US administration. Many on the left became disillusioned with politics, apart from a general sense of resistance and rejection of the neoliberal agenda and the capitalist world-system. This manifested itself mostly, for me and for those around me, in single-issue politics: from the small (Reclaim the Streets) to the big (protests against the Iraq war).

Has the left failed? The tendancy in Europe for social-democratic parties to abandon their principles and conform to the neoliberal agenda, of which New Labour is an example, would suggest that the mainstream European left has lost hope. Certainly the Soviet Union was a travesty, whose leadership created ‘a bureaucratic aristocracy… creating a regime just as oppressive and cruel as that of capitalism’, in the words of Bertrand Russell. Some Marxists would argue that Marxism, in its true form, has never been tried: that the Bolsheviks perverted the revolution and installed a system that was only communist in name. I have some sympathy for this view, but it also seems to me that the prescriptions in the Communist Manifesto have an unintentional tendency to encourage authoritarianism (cf. Monbiot 2004). Volumes could be (and have been) written on this question. Suffice it to say that Marx himself would never have followed another’s ideology as slavishly as his soi-dissant followers; if he had, he would have never written Das Kapital. His greatest legacy to us today is surely his analysis of the capitalist system, including the many concepts (means of production, commodity fetishism) that he put into words, and that left thinkers of all stripes take for granted.

My curiosity was piqued when I learned recently that, even in the First International, there was a split between communists (led by Marx) and the libertarian left (led by Bakunin). The issue of liberty is an urgent one today. Brown continues the Blair-era policies with no sign of a significant shift. Tories, Lib Dems, Labour dissidents and others recently discussed the erosion of civil liberties in the UK at the Convention on Modern Liberty. Liberty, however, means different things to different people. Maximum freedom for capital impinges directly on the liberty, and livelihoods, of people, and of the majority of the world. Nor is liberty the only good. Freedom from coercion is of little value when one is starving.

In my search for an ideology to which I can relate, thereforeâ€”a search in which this investigation of anarchism is the latest stepâ€”my criteria are, broadly: that which benefits the largest number of people, globally, to the greatest possible extent; that which respects the liberty, equality and dignity of all humanity; and that which fosters a sense of solidarity and fellowship among all people.

That’s my starting position. Enough about me: let’s learn about anarchism.