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.