Read Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism Online
Authors: Peter Marshall
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Such criticism, which merely asserts that anarchists are ‘immature’ and treats most human beings as naughty children is so obviously vacuous it does not deserve any serious refutation. A more pertinent criticism of anarchism is that it is utopian. From Marx and Engels, who attacked all forms of unscientific socialism as ‘utopian’, onwards, anarchism has been dismissed as chimerical and fanciful — at best a romantic dream, at worst a dangerous fantasy. It is true mat anarchism shares with utopian drought a longing for perfection and holds up the ideal of absolute liberty. There is also a continuous messianic and millenarian strand in the anarchist tradition. Like the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Anabaptists of the Middle Ages, many anarchists have hoped to create heaven on earth in a society of perfect freedom and complete equality. The fight against rulers and the State has often been pitched as a struggle of cosmic proportions between good and evil. During the great social upheavals, some anarchists have tried to realize their ideals with religious fervour, especially in the peasant communities in Spain and Mexico during their revolutions. With Bakunin and his followers, mere also creeps in an apocalyptic vision of revolution in which all is suddenly transformed in an orgy of violent destruction.
The failure of anarchism to establish thus far a free society for any great length of time further supports the Utopian claim. Anarchism undoubtedly presents a non-coercive and decentralist vision of society which is entirely different from existing centralized and hierarchical States. Its ideal of complete freedom has also never been realized and strictly speaking can only be imagined. And despite the many attempts to realize the anarchist ideal,
to put anarchism into practice, notably in the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Revolution, the embryonic experiments were crushed by more powerful forces.
Nevertheless, it says little to dismiss anarchism merely as a historical failure and a Utopian dream. Wary of the Utopian accusation, the towering anarchist thinkers of the nineteenth century, Bakunin and Kropotkin, were keen to stress that their social philosophy was ‘scientific’, in keeping with human psychology and the laws of nature. Despite his dispute with Marx over strategy and the role of the State, Bakunin adopted a tempered version of historical materialism. Kropotkin also constantly emphasized the scientific character of his anarchist beliefs, arguing that the existing tendencies in nature and society supported the anarchist ideal and were moving in its direction. Since Malatesta, who was critical of such a mechanical and determinist approach, anarchists have tended to lay greater stress on the role of human consciousness and volition in social change. Unlike other ‘utopian’ thinkers, they have consistently refused to offer a detailed blueprint of a free society.
At the same time, anarchists do share some positive aspects of the Utopian tradition. The hard-headed ‘realist’ who rejects utopianism is often trying to discredit any alternative to the
status quo
in a most unrealistic way. As Oscar Wilde observed:
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.
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Utopian thought is valuable precisely because it has the imagination to visualize a society which is different from our own. By doing so, it questions the implicit assumptions of existing society and presents alternatives in a concrete way. It offers an ideal to strive for and a goal to approximate constantly. Moreover what was long considered Utopian in the sense of fanciful or impossible has in our century become a reality. To dismiss anarchism as a ‘romantic luxury at best’ or as ‘a cry of pain for the future’ is an expression of prejudice entirely bereft of philosophical rigour.
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While the epithet Utopian need not be an insult or a condemnation, in many ways anarchism is far from Utopian. It offers a clear-sighted critique of existing society and a coherent range of strategies to realize its ideal both in the present and the future. It bases itself on a sound understanding of human potential. It looks to existing libertarian tendencies within society and believes that they can be more fully developed in the future. It draws on the experiences of the past, especially of earlier Stateless societies,
and sees no reason why their best qualities cannot be transformed in a more libertarian direction in the future. It combines age-old patterns of cooperation with a modern concern with individuality. Far from sacrificing generations to some unknown future or individuals to some great cause, it argues that everyday relations can be changed here and now. It offers a platform for social change as well as an ideal of personal liberation and self-determination. For the time being, an anarchist society might seem unlikely, since it still remains a minority interest, but it cannot be said that it is implausible or impossible.
While the authoritarian trend remains dominant in most parts of the world, Colin Ward has correctly observed that ‘an anarchist society, which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow’.
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It can be seen in all groups and associations which are organized like networks rather than pyramids, and which are voluntary, temporary and small. It emerges in groups which are based on affinity between members rather than on the rigours of the rule-book; which are in flux rather than in aspic. It begins to take shape in self-help, mutual aid and direct action organizations, in co-operatives, learning networks, and community action. It emerges spontaneously when people organize themselves outside the State during emergencies, disasters, strikes, and revolutions.
If not accused of being Utopian, anarchism is often dismissed as being a shallow creed without great theoretical substance. It is presented as more of a mood than a doctrine, as a form of therapy rather than a serious social philosophy. This is a view usually levelled by historians rather than philosophers against anarchism. The historian James Joll, for instance, has talked of the ‘somewhat incoherent nature of anarchist philosophy’ and argued that if there is a living anarchist tradition, it should be sought in ‘psychological and temperamental attitudes in society’.
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Again the historian Eric Hobsbawm, who at least recognized the historical importance of anarchism as a social movement, has argued mat ‘with the exception of Kropotkin, it is not easy to think of an anarchist theorist who could be read with real interest by non-anarchists’.
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In his view, there is ‘no real intellectual room for anarchist theory’ and its only useful contribution to socialism has been its critical element. In his study of ‘primitive’ anarchism in Andalucía, Hobsbawm further emphasized its religious dimension and suggested that it was the dying ideology of historically condemned craftsmen and peasants.
Anarchism has certainly attracted a certain type of temperament. Like all extreme ideologies, it has its share of unbalanced individuals who seek a solution to their personal problems in apocalyptic revolution and who revel in illegality and criminality for their own sake. But these are exceptions. The great majority of anarchists are inspired by a vision of universal freedom,
love and peace. For this ideal, they have often been prepared to give up their privileges and comforts, living on the margins of society in a state of permanent protest and open rebellion. They have sometimes gone so far as to cut from the trunk the branch on which they sit.
The anarchist ideal has appealed to a wide variety of people. It has inspired intellectuals who like to take their principles to their logical conclusions and who are prepared to adopt an uncompromising moral stance. The anarchist stress on creativity and spontaneity has attracted many artists among the Post-Impressionists, Dadaists and Surrealists who have called for artistic freedom and tried to create new forms to express their aspirations and feelings. Anarchism appeals to the young in heart who wish to think for themselves and question authority, who wish to throw off the oppressive burden of history and create the world anew.
At the same time, anarchists have certainly not engaged in the tortuous and scholastic debates of many would-be Marxist thinkers. The classic anarchist thinkers, except for Stirner, are notable for the clear and simple exposition of their fundamental principles. Apart from the philosophical anarchists, they have preferred to address the thoughtful worker or peasant rather than the closeted intellectual. But it would be wrong to imply that anarchists are less interested in theory than other socialists or liberals. On the contrary, since there have been relatively few occasions when they have been able to put their principles fully into practice, much of their energy has been devoted to the realm of thought. If some contemporary anarchists are short on theory and long on rhetoric, it is not because of the poverty of anarchist philosophy, but because anarchism attracts a wide range of support outside the world of intellectuals.
Far from being the puerile, naive, Utopian fantasy imagined by superficial observers, anarchist thought, as the present study should hopefully have demonstrated, is profound, complex and subtle. It is more than a doctrine of personal living. It questions and has answers for many of the fundamental concerns of moral and political philosophy. It addresses itself to many of the burning issues of the day. As a result, it remains one of the most important and stimulating intellectual currents in the modern era.
Anarchists are unashamedly optimistic. Many base their optimism on the existence of self-regulation in nature, on the spontaneous harmony of interests in society, and on the potential goodwill of humanity. These beliefs may be under attack in our age of crisis and anxiety but they are still worthy of being taken seriously. They can map our future even if they may never be fully vindicated. Anarchism has been with us as a recognizable philosophy for two and a half millennia; the signs are that it will grow as a social movement and develop even more vigorously as a way of thinking and being in the coining millennium.
Anarchism remains not only an ultimate ideal, but increasingly a practical possibility. If we are to survive nuclear annihilation and ecological disaster, if we can steer between the Scylla of roaring capitalism and the Charybdis of authoritarian socialism, then we may reach the land where a free society of relative abundance exists in harmony with nature, where the claims of the free individual are reconciled with general solidarity. Even if we cannot reach it in our lifetimes, we can at least enjoy the exhilaration of the journey, sailing our ship together towards the beckoning horizon without fettering slaves in the hold or shooting the albatross on the way.
EPILOGUE
You must have chaos within you to give birth to a
dancing star.
F
RIEDRICH
N
IETZSCHE
Demanding the Impossible
was partly inspired by the enthusiasm and experience of the sixties through which I lived. It was a moment when the authoritarian and centralized State was challenged by mass social movements, especially in Europe and North America. It was a time when after the dreary post-war period of reconstruction it seemed that the imagination could at last seize power. In many countries in the West the State was in retreat in face of the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, campaigns for Nuclear Disarmament and the rising feminist and green movements. There were widespread calls for workers’ control, participatory democracy and the decentralization of power. The concepts of hierarchy and authority became central to discussions on the Left. Many alternative communities were set up, based on libertarian principles and promoting justice, creativity and concern for the environment.In the seventies, the Left in Europe and America largely abandoned the hope of revolution. Instead, they attempted the ‘long march of the institutions’, that is, they tried to subvert and reform the State from within. The attempt failed but the eighties and nineties saw the emergence of nonviolent revolutions within the Soviet camp, and the eventual overthrow of Marxism-Leninism as a State ideology. Unfortunately, the newly liberated countries followed the
laissez-faire
model of Western capitalism, often with fewer safeguards for workers and the environment. In the meantime in the West, the organized working-class movement more or less abandoned its militancy. Only a few small groups of Leftists continued to promote class war and violent revolution.With the collapse of authoritarian communism, it became fashionable to talk of the end of history, in the sense that the titanic clash between the two opposing ideologies during the Cold War was over. With the triumph of neo-liberalism, the ruling elites claimed that representative democracy was the only universally applicable and desirable form of government. There was moreover no alternative to market economics. Yet despite the ideology of rolling back the frontiers of the State to ‘free up’ the economy, corporate power and State authority grew stronger and became more entrenched.
The millennium dawned not with a new age of personal and social
transformation but with the West’s military involvement in the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. After 9/11, the fear of terrorism was whipped up and used to expand and strengthen the coercive forces of the State. Hard-won civil rights were gleefully abandoned in the name of homeland security. The Society of the Spectacle was joined by the Surveillance Society: never before in history have the lives of citizens been so intimately surveyed. With the erosion of public welfare and older traditions of civil liberty, the fear of unemployment and poverty has meant that most people live in constant anxiety, exhausted by an endless round of gruelling work with little leisure to alleviate it.Many have adopted a form of voluntary servitude in the hope of survival. Things are in the saddle. There is a collective hallucination that consumer goods will bring fulfilment and happiness. People are alienated from themselves, each other and the natural world. The Megamachine, not the human spirit, has triumphed. We seem to be entering a new Dark Age where global heating threatens, smog hangs over cities obscuring the sun, and the minds of the young are clouded with despair and melancholy. Naked military force and invisible economic power rule over the fate of billions.
The interests of transnational corporations and States have been integrated into an increasingly powerful system. A common culture of hedonism and consumerism, enflamed by the media and advertising in order to maximize profit and power, has spread across the world, from China to the US, from India to South Africa. Fundamentalist Christianity and Islam are the only mass movements making gains.
Yet to a growing number of the earth’s population capitalism and its by-products — imperialism, war, racism, poverty and the destruction of environment — are no longer acceptable. The globalization of corporate power, encouraged and defended by the most developed industrial States, has spawned a dynamic and inventive grassroots movement of opposition and resistance throughout the world. Ever since the ‘Battle of Seattle’ at the World Trade Organization summit in 1999, international gatherings of the most powerful governments and corporations have been made uncomfortable by the anti-globalization movement and their leaders have been reminded of the plight of the poor nations of the world and the wretched of the earth. After the invasion of Iraq, eleven million people around the world protested in demonstrations in February 2003. A strong dissident culture, particularly among the young, has emerged — and much of it is very anarchistic, both in its methods and orientation.
1There are also other important libertarian developments around the world. South America has seen the growth of libertarian Left movements and the alternative ‘solidarity economy’. In Asia grassroots campaigns of
‘people’s power’ have threatened and even toppled dictatorships and the
Sarvodaya
movement in India and Sri Lanka is maintaining its momentum. And in China, a swelling libertarian underground current offers a powerful challenge to the Chinese State.The Phoenix in the desert continues to rise, stretching its wings, multicoloured, far-seeing and wise.