Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (133 page)

In Britain, Colin Ward is another anarchist working in the older tradition. He was part of the movement which developed after the Second World War, contributing to the paper
Freedom
and editing the remarkable journal
Anarchy.
With his background in town planning and architecture, his works primarily explored the relations between people and their built environment, looking at life from an anarchist perspective in fields as diverse as squatting, housing, planning, education, transport and water.
¹⁵

In his widely influential book
Anarchy in Action
(1973), he revealed the influences of Gustav Landauer’s view that the State is a set of relationships, Martin Buber’s distinction between the ‘social principle’ and the ‘political principle’, and Paul Goodman’s belief that a free society is not a new order but an expansion of existing spheres of free action. For Ward, anarchism is a description of human organization which is rooted in the experience of everyday life. In an often-quoted passage, he declared that

Anticipating post-left anarchy, Ward maintained that rather than speculating about the distant future, or waiting for the revolution to occur, anarchist alternatives are already present in the interstices of the existing State. Moreover, it is an everyday choice whether we wish to encourage libertarian or authoritarian tendencies within society and the structures of political power. His do-it-yourself approach is very much in tune with the practical anarchy of ‘second wave’ anarchy. And he ends his lively short introduction to
Anarchism
(2004) with the view that the best
future prospects of anarchism lie with the ecological movement. Indeed, anarchism is the ‘the only political ideology capable of addressing the challenges posed by our new green consciousness to the accepted range of political ideas. Anarchism becomes more and more relevant for the new century.’
¹⁷

A more analytical approach to an anarchist theory of history and of the State has been developed by the British political philosopher Alan Carter. After undertaking a radical critique of
Marx
(1987) which was distinctly libertarian, he explored
The Philosophical Foundations of Property Rights
(1989). In keeping with his non-violent and anarchist sympathies, in
A Radical Green Political Theory
(1999), he elaborated what he called a ‘State-Primacy Theory’ against Marx’s economic one and called for a form of anarcho-communism which would lead to an egalitarian, decentralist and pacifist society. Arguing that there is ‘more mileage’ in anarchist political theory than might be at first assumed, he has from his professorial seat in Glasgow tried to rescue anarchist political thought and the ‘often profound insights it contains from an otherwise premature burial’ by both liberal and Marxist academics.
¹⁸

The term ‘post anarchism’ was first used by intellectuals influenced by the French post-modernist thinkers, especially in their opposition to ‘totalizing systems’ and their analysis of power. They employ the deconstructive techniques of post-structuralism and post-modernism and criticize the legacy of the Enlightenment and its epistemology. The processes of surveillance and control in Western society, for example, are seen as a logical unfolding of the Enlightenment. They also question the universal application of ethical systems, arguing that humans create values and the principles of morality are specific to particular cultures and times. And they challenge the idea of the individual as an essential self and of human nature as innate and universal.

Post-modernist thinkers, however, tend to be libertarians rather than anarchists. Michel Foucault for one maintains that power in the sense of ‘a mode of action upon the action of others’ is everywhere and cannot be escaped, whether in the arena of society or in the realm of knowledge.
¹⁹
While the relations of domination can be changed, the relations of power will always remain. Where anarchists seek to dissolve the structures of power, for Foucault it is senseless to try to create a world outside power: ‘there are no margins for those who break with the system to gambol in’.
²⁰
Indeed, in his view power does not emanate from the State but the State from power: the State is thus a congealed assemblage of power relations.

The American Todd May has tried to elaborate a form of ‘post-
structuralist anarchism’. Unlike a formal or strategic philosophy like Marxism, which locates power emanating from a single place (the economic substructure), May calls anarchism a tactical political philosophy since it avoids an overarching explanation of politics and sees power existing at multiple sites and different levels (such as the State, Church, capitalism and patriarchy). Nevertheless, he misunderstands the richness and diversity of anarchist thought by arguing that classical anarchism relies on ‘naturalism’ and presents the individual as a benign essence oppressed by the State. Anarchists have had very different views of human nature, and not all are essentialist.
²¹
Moreover, Todd goes against the general trend of post-structuralist thought in his ethics as well as anarchism by arguing that binding principles of conduct are ‘universal in scope’. He is even ready to accept for himself ‘the rules of law, the techniques of management, and also the ethics, the ethos, the practice of self, which would allow these games of power to be played with a minimum of domination’.
²²

For his part, the Australian Saul Newman has attempted to make the case for ‘post anarchism’ in his book
From Bakunin to Lacan
(2001). Comparing classical anarchist thought with post-structuralist thought, he finds in them a common thread of anti-authoritarianism. He also acknowledges that the most pressing political problem today is the proliferation and intensification of power and points out the dangers of radical political theories and movements which reaffirm power in their very attempt to overcome it. Taking up Stirner’s idea that the individual has no essence but ‘nothingness’ and Jacques Lacan’s notion of ‘lack’, Newman argues that this ‘empty space’ not only enables the subject to shape his or her own subjectivity but provides a ground for resistance against social power.
²³
By focusing on the isolated individual, however, Newman overlooks the fact that human beings are sets of relations and that society comes before the individual surges up into the world.

Like Nietzsche, Foucault and May, Newman is convinced that one can never be completely free from relations of power: the more one tries to repress power, the more obstinately it rears its head. In his version of ‘post anarchism’, he wishes to affirm power like Nietzsche rather than deny it. He calls for a new ‘heroic’ philosophy which is based on the will to power as long as it is over oneself rather than others. In his view it would lead to a community which sought to overcome itself ‘continually transforming itself and revelling in the knowledge of its power to do so’.
²⁴

The American Lewis Call describes his version as ‘postmodern anarchism’ and draws on post-modernist thinkers as well as cyberpunk science-fiction writers to support his case. He calls them anarchist since their critiques allegedly ‘constitute, in part, a massive theoretical challenge to the very existence of capital and the state’.
²⁵
Following Deleuze, he proposes an
anarchism grounded in desire, desire which he believes is inherently revolutionary. Although he denies free will and intentionality, he says the goal of ‘postmodern anarchism’ is to ‘reprogram and redesign ourselves’ – as if we were computers. This, he tells us, would involve killing ‘our inner fascist’.
²⁶
Call’s most significant contribution however is in his notion of the gift which he takes up from Jean Baudrillard: ‘the symbolic violence of the gift without return is the only violence which has any chance against the omnipresent semiotic codes of political economy’.
²⁷
As a cyberpunk enthusiast, he naturally celebrates the Internet as opening up a space where such non-capitalistic exchanges can take place.

In their analysis of power, these ‘post anarchists’ remain libertarian rather than anarchist. Instead of recognizing that all relationships of power are unacceptable, they distinguish between repressive and productive relationships of power. As Bakunin recognized, it is precisely because human beings can have a deep craving for power that they should not be trusted with it. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It may well be that some residue of power will remain in an anarchist society, but it will be denied rather than affirmed. Power in its political form is inevitably dehumanizing, exploitative and oppressive. Power in the loose sense of the ability to influence others through persuasion would be acceptable, as long as it remains uncoercive, that is, without the use of emotional, mental or physical force. We all have ‘powers’ as capacities and abilities which can be creative and productive but for anarchists asserting power over others against their will is unacceptable. While they have traditionally called for the ‘decentralization of power’, they would also like to see power as a coercive force dissolved completely.

Another refreshing wave of original and imaginative thinking among contemporary anarchists is ‘post-left anarchy’. It distances itself from the traditional Left with its involvement in trade unions and the working-class movement, stress on class struggle and goal of social revolution. It is wary of the traditional militant who knows the text and arguments but silences all questioning or opposition. Post-leftists have been influenced by postmodernist thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, Guattari, Jean-François Lyotard and Judith Butler who are not explicitly anarchist but whose analysis of power is profoundly anti-authoritarian. They share their criticism of the denaturalization of the body and their deconstruction of gender roles and reject the analytical rationality of the Enlightenment, and the binary opposites of Western thought.

A few, following the Italian Alfredo M. Bonanno, author of
Armed Joy
(1977),
advocate insurrection — Bonanno himself ended up in gaol for armed robbery. The vast majority though are interested in creating areas of freedom here and now and encouraging existing libertarian tendencies rather than struggling for some imaginary future. In their view, the satisfaction of desire need not be postponed; joy is available for the taking; the imagination can be immediately powerful. And they are not afraid of celebrating ‘anarchy’ in the popular sense of chaos rather than in the traditional anarchist sense of an ordered society without government. They tend to work within loosely affiliated ‘affinity groups’.

Associated with ‘post-left anarchy’ in the US, where the movement first emerged, are the journals
Crimethinc, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
, and
Green Anarchy.
Bob Black has written a diatribe against Murray Bookchin called
Anarchy after Leftism
(1997). Many primitivists are post-leftists, although one of their most influential thinkers, John Zerzan, likes to call himself ‘anti-Leftist’.

Crimethinc, a loose association of post-leftists in the North America calling themselves an Ex-Workers Collective, takes its name from George Orwell’s concept of ‘Thought Crime’ in his anti-utopian novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Their members are influenced by Situationism, anarcho-punk and green anarchy. Their influential pamphlet
Fighting for Our Lives
not only rails against the State and Capital but calls for a transformation of everyday life which involves a ‘straight edge’ lifestyle, refusal to work and the suppression of gender roles. In the pamphlet
Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs
, the authors describe as dinosaurs capitalism, the State, hierarchy and the ‘countless other guises worn by Authority’. Crimethinc activists reject ideology and adopt the DIY approach of so-called ‘folk’ anarchy. They call for
Days of War, Nights of Love
(2000).

The most delightfully exasperating post-left anarchist is undoubtedly Hakim Bey. ‘Who is Hakim Bey? I love him,’ said Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist who recommended his students in the sixties to drop out and turn on. Hakim Bey (Bey being Turkish for ‘Prince’) is in fact the
nom deplume
of Peter Lamborn Wilson, scholar, historian, poet and visionary. Murray Bookchin considered Bey as one of ‘the most unsavoury examples’ of so-called ‘lifestyle-anarchism’, attacking him for his dangerous Orientalism, extravagant rhetoric and cyber enthusiasm.
²⁸
He could have added his interest in tantra, Hermeticism and paganism. Not surprisingly, for Bey lived for a decade in the East and acknowledges the Ranters, Dadaists and Situationists as influences and has written about Hindu tantrists, heretical Sufis, Muslim pirates, American spiritual anarchists,
French Utopians and Avant Gardeners. Cultivating the ‘art of chaos’, he employs ‘metarational’ thinking in order to transform everyday life and to attain unmediated experiences. A large number of his essays and communiqués, now collected in books, first appeared in the anarcho-punk underground and on-line.