Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (132 page)

In a 1975 postscript to his classic history of
Anarchism
(1962), George Woodcock observed that there had been ‘an autonomous revival of the anarchist idea’ on almost a world-wide scale.
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But in the twenty-first century anarchism is not only an inspiring idea but part of a broader historical movement. The continuing protests against capitalism, globalization and war have reawakened an interest in the subject, partly because anarchists have been deeply involved in the struggles and partly because the movement itself shares the non-hierarchical, decentralized, participatory and co-operative forms of organization associated with anarchism. As a result, at the beginning of the third millennium anarchism is as vibrant and more relevant than ever.

The end of the Spanish Civil War saw the defeat of classical anarchism, but as George Woodcock recognized in the sixties and seventies, a new surge of anarchism took place associated with the New Left, the counterculture, the communes movement, feminism, and the peace and green movements. In the eighties and nineties a ‘second wave’ of anarchism rose up, even more diverse and diffuse than before.

It was responding to the decline of the organized working class in Western countries, to the globalization of capital, to the propaganda of consumption of the mass media, and the stultifying emptiness and alienation of much of the prevailing culture. This recent wave of anarchism is concerned not only with the abolition of Capital and the State but all relations of domination and hierarchy. It wants to diffuse relations of power as much as it can, and if possible, dissolve them entirely. It is fundamentally anti-dogmatic and protean and ready to break with the past. It wishes to create areas of freedom and equality, here and now, not in some mythical future. It does not look to a receding horizon but to the present and the immediate.

Partly inspired by the Situationists, many anarchists today look for the beach below the’ paving stones and call for the imagination, not the proletariat, to seize power. They attack the deathly forces of the Pentagons of the world with poetic terrorism and oppose the cold rationality of the Panopticon of the surveillance society with the magical and the marvellous.
They liven up the bland monochrome of contemporary culture with senseless acts of beauty and joy. They advocate a radical individualism and autonomy without rejecting the ethos of co-operation and communality.

Contemporary anarchists further explore imaginatively the tactics of protest and resistance, issues of identity and sexuality, mental and physical well-being, the degradation of the environment, the effects of technology and the possibility of living in a sustainable world.
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They find the affinity group, based on friendship, mutual aid and respect, a basis for a new commonwealth. They create new forms of self-organization which run parallel to existing ones. They create zones of freedom and joy in the shell of the old society of deference and despair; they confront the forces of the State in mass demonstrations; they defend woodlands and fight new road schemes; they form communes and co-operatives; they reject technology and wish to return to a simpler life close to nature. And as States become more global in reach and corporations more transnational, they celebrate the small, the local, the regional, the wild and the free.

Some iconoclasts of the new wave of anarchy like to claim that classical anarchism is outmoded and the struggles of the past are no longer relevant. Yet a broader sense of history shows that they have not made a completely radical break; they not only reveal an ancient anarchist sensibility but are developing existing currents and eddies in the long and deep flow of the river of anarchy.

Given the fashion for describing what is allegedly new as ‘post’, it is not surprising that recent thinkers have come up with the term ‘post anarchism’. The term embraces the new forms of anarchist thinking and strategy which have emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century. Having an extremely protean and open nature, it rejects the idea that it should form a coherent set of beliefs and actions. There are also lively streams of ‘post-structuralist anarchism’, ‘post-modern anarchism’, and even ‘post-left anarchy’. Social ecology, which forged a creative union between anarchism and ecology, has been joined and enriched by ‘anarcho-primitivism’, ‘green anarchy’ and ‘liberation ecology’. There are thinkers, like Noam Chomsky and Colin Ward, still working creatively in the older tradition of post-war anarchism and offering telling analyses of the present malaise. And anarcha-feminism too is into its second wave and contributing to the boys’ own theory and practice and in many cases showing them the way.

The women’s groups of first-wave feminists aimed at raising awareness of their oppression undoubtedly revealed an unconscious libertarian consciousness, both in their non-hierarchical structure and attempts to reach
consensus among themselves.
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But as L. Susan Brown has pointed out, not all feminists were or are anarchists. For her part, she has developed a form of ‘existential individualism’ which values autonomy of the self, voluntary co-operation and the process of becoming.
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Some activists involve themselves with the working class and unions, while others have been promoting social ecology. Starhawk (Miriam Simos) calls herself a modern witch and anarchist and has reported regularly about the actions of the anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements.

Most contemporary anarcha-feminists follow Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman, who saw no contradiction between the emancipation of the individual and social solidarity. The Anarcha-feminist International, for instance, demands that the ‘traditional patriarchal nuclear family should be replaced by free associations between men and women based on equal right to decide for both parts and with respect for the individual person’s autonomy and integrity’.
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Feminists, no longer content to cook and carry for their radical
compañros
, are very much part of the modern anarchist movement. They have engaged in turbulent demonstrations as well as direct actions. Their
Quiet Rumours
(2003) are becoming much more vocal.
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Like the anarcha-feminists, Noam Chomsky, schooled in classical anarchism, was impressed by the social experiments during the Spanish Civil War. He has been the most influential critic of capitalism in the US from a libertarian point of view. In a long series of books on the media and American foreign policy, he has resoundingly demonstrated how Western elites have supported genocide, wars and repression throughout the world in the name of liberal democracy and Western civilization. He has shown how both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ opinion in the US is committed to a State capitalist ideology which seeks to establish a global system in which US-based corporations can operate freely. The ‘fifth freedom’ of the US constitution, he says, is the freedom to exploit and dominate other peoples.

Chomsky has vividly demonstrated how corporations have joined governments to manipulate the media in order to promote their own interests, thereby perpetuating injustice and inequality and blocking any attempts to create a more direct and participatory democracy. He has repeatedly stressed the double standards of the US government, which rhetorically promotes freedom and democracy abroad yet supports some of the most tyrannical regimes in the world if they further its interests. In
Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance
(2003), he presented a scathing overview of American foreign policy and its imperial ambitions since the Second World War.

Chomsky has never claimed to be an original anarchist thinker, preferring to call himself a ‘derivative fellow traveller’ Even so, he has long aligned himself with the anarchist tradition, and has been particularly influenced by Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rudolf Rocker and Daniel GuéeArin’s anthology of anarchist writings
No Gods, No Masters.
By the age of twelve or thirteen, he admits identifying more fully with the anarchist cause. While he often calls himself a libertarian socialist, he is particularly critical of right-wing libertarians who would inevitably create ‘private tyrannies’ and an all-encompassing form of command economics. Indeed, if the ideals of the US Libertarian Party were realized they would create ‘the worst totalitarian monster that the world has ever seen’.
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Chomsky of course has earned a major reputation for his work in linguistics and for his notion of ‘universal grammar’ innate in human beings. His belief in a human essence places him within the tradition of the Enlightenment. But he does not try to use science to justify his view that ‘normal human emotions are sympathy and solidarity, not just for people but for stranded dolphins’.
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Chomsky still recognizes the reality of a class struggle in existing society, since there is a huge difference between giving orders and taking them. On the other hand, he sees little difference between wage slavery and slavery itself. Like his father, a Jewish émigré from the Ukraine, he has long been a member of the syndicalist Wobblies (IWW) and still stresses the relevance of anarcho-syndicalism and council communism to advanced capitalist societies like the US. He would like to see ‘centralized power eliminated, whether it’s the state or the economy, and have it diffused and ultimately under the direct control of the participants’.
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Political power is always illegitimate and the essence of anarchism is the conviction that ‘the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met’.
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Nevertheless, Chomsky is not an uncompromising anarchist. In his view, a degree of State intervention will be necessary during the transition from capitalist rule to direct democracy. While his long-term goal is to abolish the State, he is prepared to defend and even strengthen elements of existing State authority in order to protect the human rights, welfare, social security and limited democracy that have been won through past popular struggles.

Chomsky is also a pragmatist by refusing to sketch out the nature of a future anarchist society, except to say that by general agreement ‘whatever social structures and arrangements are developed, they ought to maximize the possibilities for people to pursue their own creative potential’.
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He imagines such an anarchist society would be under the direct control of its participants. This would mean workers’ councils in industry, popular
democracy in the communities, and ‘interaction between free associations in larger groups, up to organization of international society’.
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And while general agreement would be preferable, he is willing to countenance a form of democracy based on majority rule as long as any individual through conscious choice is able to refuse to go along with it.

Chomsky has remained a scourge of the media. His analysis of how the mass media are
Manufacturing Consent
(1988) has been followed up by
How it Keeps the Rabble in Line
(1994). He is particularly persuasive in showing how governments and corporations attempt to use the language of the media to distort systematically the fundamental meaning of words and thereby cloud an understanding of social reality. In this way, ‘democracy’ means the rule of an elite rather than the direct participation of the people in running their own affairs; the ‘war on terrorism’ really signifies the use of State violence against dissidents; and the ‘war on drugs’ targets potentially subversive groups and criminalizes certain substances as means of social control. Many people are so brainwashed by State propaganda, the media and public relations that they are not even aware that they are oppressed themselves. They become passive consumers and voluntary slaves. Chomsky often celebrates the value of the consciousness-raising of the women’s movement in making women realize how oppressed they are.

Chomsky opposes censorship and believes in the free exchange of ideas — to the extent that he refuses to take legal action against those who may libel him under the present laws. He still argues that the majority of Western intellectuals — the ‘new mandarins’ – work behind a veneer of objective scholarship for the State and corporate power and interests. Moreover, while he is personally committed to the pursuit of truth and knowledge, he does not believe that it is the special preserve of intellectuals and experts but can be discovered by anyone with an open mind and a degree of common sense. Where many contemporary anarchists adopt a poetic, ranting and declamatory style, Chomsky is remarkable for his careful reasoning, clear analysis, telling evidence and transparent style.

Not all anarchists are happy with Chomsky’s approach. He has been criticized for an overly narrow class analysis and for espousing anarcho-syndicalism. Primitivists are particularly dismissive: the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski had him on his hit-list while the anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan, who was in touch with the bomber, dismisses him as irrelevant because of his emphasis on the workplace. It is clear why Chomsky should not endear himself to them. In his view, ‘technology is a pretty neutral instrument’ and while it can turn factory workers into robots there are ‘virtual communities which are very real’. Indeed, he cannot believe that the anarcho-primitivists who want to abandon cities are serious. Because of
the way urban society is now organized, they are calling for ‘the worst mass genocide in human history’.
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Like his philosophical mentors Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, Chomsky is a child of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and shares its faith in reason, science and technology to improve the human condition. The MIT professor is certainly not green: as a Cartesian rationalist and radical humanist, he lacks an ecological perspective in his writings. Nevertheless, as a persistent and doughty gadfly, he has remained the most influential anarchist critic of American corporations and the US government and their ruthless policy of world domination.