Notes on Anarchism
I am forever saddened by divisions within anarchism. I do not believe that agreement is a prerequisite for respect or friendship. Above all I value kindness and generosity. Having just read Left of the Left, the biography of Sam Dolgoff written by his son, I feel this warm and spirited wobbly and anarchist exemplifies the qualities I admire most in an anarchist. In an important sense they even define anarchism, at least anarchist-humanism: an anarchist-humanist is one who sees injustice and feels revolt in his heart. An anarchist-humanist sees the poor, the hungry, the exploited, and yearns to help.
As an anarchist and a humanist, I feel these instincts deeply. As such,although Dolgoff was a socialist and I am not, although we would have much to disagree about, I feel that he is a comrade; he was one of my people. There are others who I agree with more but who do not feel these instincts, and I feel no kinship to them. But in this humane instinct which I and others like Dolgoff share, we should be united.
Instead, I struggle to bridge gaps in ideology: some people just aren’t interested. And as soon as they find out what beliefs you adhere to, that it clashes with their own beliefs, they become immediately hateful and antagonistic. They lose all interest in the human being who holds these beliefs. They become no more than partisans, and there is nothing in this world so utterly useless as a partisan.
It happens like this: as an individualist, I believe that a market is perfectly acceptable in a free society. By this I mean trade between people who own property or means of production (such as a farmer). Communist anarchists adhere to a theory which says there will be no market, and most of them imagine that when I say ‘market’ I mean pretty much what we have today, massive inequality, gargantuan corporations, and all. They also ‘don’t believe in property’ and hold that the means of production should be owned by the workers, and don’t realize that the possibility exists for more than one type of organization (a factory owned equally by all the people who work in it) which satisfies that condition.
So when I say I believe a market would exist in a free society, they immediately conclude that I am an idiot, an apologist for the mass oppression inherent in State capitalism, that I don’t care about the condition of the worker or the humanization of work life; they conclude that I am a selfish, rich kid who just wants the freedom to fuck people over, and as a necessary inference from this, that I am a profoundly mean-spirited person with an ugly soul. Of course, none of this is even remotely true, and such an extreme reaction and series of assumptions is the result of a fanatical devotion to dogma.
I feel for all the world that I can’t make communist anarchists hear what I’m actually saying. I’ve long since abandoned the idea that they might be persuaded that they're wrong; I hope only to convince them that not everyone they disagree with is literally the spawn of Satan.
Because if they understood, they would realize we should be friends. I may be wrong, but I only advocate what I do because I believe it would lead to a far more even distribution of wealth, because in my ideal society people would be free, and support networks would exist the economic, social, and emotional well-being of the people. Further, I am a devoted humanist, I care deeply about the condition of humanity, and I have only ever wanted to help.
Maybe I’m wrong in my beliefs about political economy, but I’m not the devil. Why, in light of all I’ve just said, do all communist anarchists I speak to viscerally hate me, at best, and occasionally tell me that my back will be against the wall come the revolution at worst? I’m a generally thick-skinned person, but these encounters always leave me feeling upset.
Love is as important as freedom. If what somebody sincerely believes (particularly if they only think it will help people) makes you hate them, then your politics is as toxic as any in existence. It's that kind of fanaticism that makes atrocities possible.
Communists act as vehemently as they do because they believe they are the supreme movement for the liberation of people, the one and only holy dogma. They, like the Soviets, have their program; and all is subordinate to it. And their rejection of thinkers who allow for the possibility of a market is telling: they argue that ‘anarchism’ during the 19th century referred mainly to a particular movement, and that this movement defines anarchism. The word is ancient, and that one group of people derived a set of beliefs from its meaning (basically ‘without rulers’) does not preclude others from doing so. The suggestion is inane: they offered their vision of a free society a century and a half ago, and their descendents now argue that nobody else can present a vision of a free society because they already did.
But concepts evolve, and new ideas about anarchism are a logical progression from the old. With a century intervening, some new ideas will conflict with the old; it is only the dogmatic communists who are foolish enough to say the new ideas are a priori incorrect because they clash with old ideas. So it is that their ideology is relates primarily to the organization of factories: because they have preserved it intact, unchanging, since the early days of the industrial revolution. In seeking friends and allies, I’ll address myself to the 21st century.
I have spent far too much energy in this conflict already, in my short life. If one wishes to be a productive, creative thinker in this field, there comes a time when one realizes communists can’t be reasoned with and stops giving a shit what they think. I don’t insist they stop using the word anarchism; if they would like me to, they can come and make me.
I have a lot of ideas for the future of anarchism. I have projects I want to begin, things I want to write, and proposals for how the anarchist community can reach out. I’m going to use this space to set down my thoughts about the future of anarchism.
Firstly, outreach. Black clad protesters and temperamental youths have done much to damage the name of anarchism, but it's certainly not beyond repair. As I see it, there are a few possible outcomes of anarchist outreach. (1) We can increase the acceptance of particular anarchist ideas, even if the people we convince do not become anarchists. (2) We can show the world a different side of anarchism; the peaceful, the creative, the loving anarchism which concerns itself with the construction of communities and not the destruction of the bourgeois. In doing this, we may find allies, people who we have common ground with and can work together with to achieve our common goals (again, even if they do not become anarchists). And (3) lastly, we can convince others to adopt the anarchist belief system and live an anarchist life. This is the most difficult task, and I suspect it should be taken up only once significant progress has been made on the first two fronts, which will create fertile ground for the recruitment of new anarchists.
Regarding the first outcome, I have lately been pondering the idea of a journal. I want to tap into the pervasive outrage and fear that comes of awful people taking control of powerful governments, for instance Donald Trump being handed enormous executive power by Barack Obama. After such a stark demonstration it is much easier to convince people that the government is far too powerful.
It's easy to tap into that disillusionment when we, as anarchists, are the only ones who can tell them how to take some power back and feel like they can actually do something. Thus, the premise of the journal: what is your goal, and how can it be pursued within civil society. The journal will point out that government is not going to do anything for the people, so if they want something done they’ll just have to do it themselves. It will encourage people to think creatively about how to do it themselves. And it will provide a platform for organizing people with shared goals and creating action committees. Importantly, while this gets people thinking in terms of a free society, one doesn't have to be an anarchist, and hopefully it will attract a diverse group and give them a practical education in what voluntaryism looks like.
The Long Future of Anarchism
A free society will not come into existence over night. The founding of a truly anarchist society would indeed be a revolution, but importantly it would be so in the sense of the industrial revolution or the sexual revolution. It has been debated in the past whether anarchism should be achieved by a violent revolution, but it is a moot question: anarchism can’t be achieved by a violent revolution. Time and time again history has made fools of those who believe their ends can be achieved by fundamentally inconsistent means; those who refuse to accept that the means employed determine the results. The necessary revolution is not nearly so simple as destroying the State. To the contrary, it is the long and loving labour of creating an alternative.
I’m going to dwell on this for a moment. It has been amply demonstrated that violent revolutions almost unexceptionally give rises to totalitarian regimes. The claims of rebel bands to be the sole and true representatives of the people are almost invariably a farce. Look to any revolution you like: Russia, Mexico, Cuba, Algeria, or anywhere else in North Africa for that matter. The exceptions are very few and far between. I have been reading lately about the war for independence in Algeria, and once again I noted with sadness that revolutionaries are always such unethical and inhumane brutes. The cause of this was quite clear in Algeria’s case...
In the beginning, there were many of humane instinct who sought independence, and these formed various organizations and movements of a moderate nature. On the other side, though rarely in favour of independence for the Algerians, there was the occasional figure in French-Algerian politics willing to negotiate in good faith and to work towards equality and a greater standard of living for the native Algerians. A short time into the war, initiated by the extremists on the Algerian side, and spurred on by the retaliations of the extremists on the French side, this middle ground had disappeared, one of the first casualties in the brutal struggle. To read the story, in the fullest possible detail, it becomes clear that a person’s willingness to resort to violence is in inverse proportion to their sense of ethics. Thus, the revolution is always started and controlled by those with no morals and no restraint..
All too often, anarchists and other people of conscience find themselves supporting the revolution as a fallacious extension of another belief: because they oppose colonialism, they must support anti-colonialist rebels, etc. Such was the anarchist Simone de Beauvoir’s facile position on Algeria. She was a most dogmatic supporter of the revolution because, like all anarchists, she hated colonialism. This inspired in her the most profound intellectual dishonesty: every brutality of the French was rightly criticized, but silence reigned when the FNL cut off a civilians cock and stuffed it in his mouth and bombed a dozen others; after all they were doing it for independence. Somehow I expect the thousands of Arabs the FNL slaughtered would have preferred life to independence, much less independence on the FNL’s terms. When they brought the war to France, she praised the discipline imposed by FNL militants, even as they extorted taxes from cafe owners down to manual labourers to fund their war of independence.
Similar attitudes are generally held by communist anarchists, who have an affinity for the romanticized image of the revolutionary. Hence their clashes in the street, their waving of black flags, their imagery of anarchists, bandanas covering their faces, hurling Molotovs at riot police. This may be attractive aesthetically or socially, but it is inane politically and intellectually. These anarchists will continue to show up at various protests for the next century or more, and absolutely nothing positive will have come from it.
We need a serious movement, lifelong commitments, and pragmatic thought to establish a protracted intergenerational revolution. At its core, this revolution will be about building the new society within the shell of the old. Anarchist theory is about an alternative society, a free society which is not built upon force. Anarchist practice, therefore, is not about bomb making or protesting, it is about creating this society.
This is a difficult task, indeed, and in the near future it will require cooperation from the non-anarchist population, as discussed above. Again, they needn’t agree that an ideal society would have no government; they only need to be persuaded that government in its current form is corrupted and ineffective and that it would therefore be easier to pursue their goals in civil society than through government. This is easier than it sounds. If someone is deeply concerned with ensuring the welfare of disadvantaged members of society, it is not hard to convince them to form or join a civil organization which pursues this goal. And so on, for a variety of important goals.
It is beyond the scope of this essay to fully outline the civil institutions which are most important to a free society and what they might look like; but that is the purpose of the proposed journal.
In the long term, there needs to be an intellectual evolution away from the State-centric mindset. Today, people view all the fundamentals of society as the sole responsibility of the government; and conversely, few people feel any responsibility to actively contribute to society. In the move towards a free society, people must eventually come to understand and believe that the stable, caring, and humane society they desire is best achieved by active participation by all members in providing welfare, community organization, etc.
At present, most people upon seeing something which needs to be done petition the government to do it. If the government fails to do it, they protest the government. They see no alternatives. Civil society will not be strong and harmonious until this mindset changes; until people see something which needs doing and do it. We are not absolved of our responsibility by the monoliths which lounge in our capital's. The only way anything has ever been achieved is by the actions of human beings. We are not powerless. We don’t need a party or a government, we need only to believe once again that we are capable of action and we can achieve whatever we desire by cooperation.
… I hope to organize these thoughts better in the near future, and I will be developing the concept of a Journal to discuss civil society and voluntary action. If anybody would be interested in contributing to the development of this idea, or to the journal once it is being assembled (editors, writers, graphic designers, etc.), feel free to email me at kavanagh1@hotmail.com.