Anarchism

[padraig (u.s.)]

well I certainly wasn't expecting the thread to jump off like this...tho I suppose get a message board full of British people talking about anarchism & it shouldn't be surprising that Thatcher pops up sooner or later...

re: Thatcher

can't speak to her any better than other people here obv.

I will say that the die Reagan kicked the bucket the mood was jubilant - tho Oakland is full of black people & Latins & white lefties, not exactly a Reagan stronghold. Actually as luck would have it I'd set up a benefit show (for prisoner support in Mexico if I remember right - that or the local pirate radio), we were having massive logistical problems & I thought it was going to fall thru when some random dude rushed in off the street yelling "REAGAN'S DEAD, REAGAN'S DEAD". Turned out to be the best show I've ever put on (not saying much, but still), people were in quite a celebratory mood, everyone got quite drunk. Or at least I did.

As Craner might say, it was vile. I guess we forgot about all the wonderful things Reagan did for yuppies & the Contras & how he singledhandedly toppled Communism. him & his hatchetmen, Abrams ("El Mozote is not credible") & Perle & James Baker & all the rest...

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

The idea being to forge a non-Communist alternative to both Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese.

and a fine idea it was.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I'm reading thru the stuff people have posted. thought the anarchism vs. criminal organizations bit was interesting especially. will try to get some replies up if i have time. really busy today unfortunately.

 

[scottdisco]

Terror cells would be the classic example. However, the distinction is a di-polarity not a di-chotomy: terror cells are flatter, but not flat. (Hyper modern groups like AQ are flatter still).

good point.

 

[nomadthethird]

Yeah, and an interesting aside is how the Spanish anarchists were attacked by both sides during the civil war as both the (statist) left and the right view anarchism as a threat, in that its axiomatically opposed to hierarchical structure and control and intended to be genuinely democratic.

I was going to start a thread about this actually... In my eyes, history isn't about the struggle between left vs right, its about elites versus populations - vanguardism in other words - small elites with a handy line in utopian philosophy who decide whats best for everyone else and manipulate or force populations to support, accede or accept their rule. With communism/marxism/maoism (esp. Leninism), the right of the vanguard to rule is built in to revolutionary structures, and force is used to impose that rule. In 'democratic' societies, the vanguard is hidden but implicit, and PR, image manipulation and the manufacture of consent achieves the same aims - that is, the right of elites to ignore or co-opt the wishes of majorities (the bewildered herd) so that they can go about their business - primarily the dissemination of particular economic policies.*

The challenge for anarchism (which of course also has utopian bent) is to create structures and institutions which are capable of fiercely resisting the tendency to slip into hierarchical modes of governance - to prevent vanguardism. The obvious criticism is (of course), that people are selfish and stupid, they don't know whats best for them, they need to be controlled, they want strong leadership etc... all bollocks of course - legions of volunteers around the world participate in all kinds of unpaid work to help others, and people are well capable of making intelligent decisions about their own future when given the opportunity.

I guess the main obstacle to these ideas in the west (other than powerful institutions that would inevitable oppose such a movement) is that the very idea of political participation has been deliberately eroded and society has been atomised to the point where it's almost impossible to conceive of the kind mass democratic participation necessary to bring about significant change.

*Sorry for the blatant obviousness of this.

Very good points, I agree with this all the way...

 

[nomadthethird]

Cheering death makes me uneasy.

Me too. It's not as if I haven't done it myself, but still I can't help but think it reeks of placing undue power-of-influence on an iconographic symbol of something, instead of looking at the circumstances that led to broader ideological trends and saving your anger for constructive pursuits. I'm sure you can do both, but sometimes it seems people would rather just burn effigies than think. That's not a tendency I feel entirely comfortable with.

Sometimes I think the Left (and I'm implicating myself here, too) wastes too much energy on righteous indignation. Too often anger is your badge of honor, it's the "card" you carry to prove you're a leftist.

(That blogger Kvond of Frames/Sing talked about Sloterdijk's take on this a while ago...worth a read...)

That said, Padraig's story about Regan dying is pretty great.

 

[nomadthethird]

In normative terms this is seems to be a matter of personal perspective - tho i guess anarchist groups would tend to define themselves as working in the best interests of the wider masses, while gangs would prolly have much narrower concerns (i.e. self-enrichment).

Criminal organizations are classically very strict in their top-down hierarchical organization, gangs especially. That's the opposite of what anarchists believe in, as Eden and others pointed out.

In the case of the Sicilian/Calabrese mafia(s), for example, the model it ran on was a "family" model. The don or capo-regime is essentially the patriarch of the crime "family", and the don's power is dynastic, gets passed down along blood lines. The glue of the organization is "loyalty", which seemed to work well in the family-centric traditional culture of Southern Italy...but after only a few generations in the U.S., this model fell apart because the "loyalty" was threatened by the new racketeering laws and the lack of cultural emphasis on familial duty and fidelity...

Edit: Also, globalization accelerated and the South Americans and Russians took over crime from for a while...

 

[Mr. Tea]

To luka's post about elites and populations, I would add that the generally high level of material comfort in developed countries also helps reduce the likelihood of mass grassroots-level radical movements, because even people in the most menial jobs, or with no job at all, have somewhere to live and food to eat. Except those at the very bottom, the homeless, who are often too dysfunctional through some combination of drink, drugs and mental illness to be capable of organising anything at all beyond their next Kestrel Super.

Anyway, my main point is this: has anyone ever documented a society that is naturally anarchistic? I'm talking about 'primitive' societies here, I guess, so societies which are organised in that way because that's how they've always been organised, not as the result of a popular reaction against an establishment or power hierarchy. I know zhao's talked about the Dobe at length here, and as interesting as they are they would seem to be a special case, due perhaps to the environmental conditions they live in and their (unique?) use of long-term voluntary abstinence to keep their population stable. But in other parts of the world where very primitive societies still exist, there is nonetheless some kind of power structure present, isn't there? A chief, headman/woman, council of elders, something like that?

To me it seems likely that humans have evolved to live in social groups with some kind of authority invested in one individual or a few individuals. Isn't this the kind of structure seen in the other great apes? So formulating a society that does without any kind of centralised authority at all may be possible - I am nothing if not a critic of the idea that if something is 'natural' then it must be good or right - but it may be very, very difficult. Not least because we live in social units (cities, nation-states) that are many orders of magnitude larger than the extended family groups of tribal societies.

 

[craner]

Reagan had many more hatchetman before getting to Perle and Abrams, who were fairly low rung. But it's always the evil neocons, of course!

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Criminal organizations are classically very strict in their top-down hierarchical organization, gangs especially. That's the opposite of what anarchists believe in, as Eden and others pointed out

I take on board what you're saying, although i am wary of making such broad generalisations on the basis of one historical form of criminal org/gang - i.e. the Italian mafia in this case. It seems very likely that there will be wide variation in the way criminal networks structure themselves internally - relating to socio-cultural and historical dynamics.

Anyhow with regards to anarchists i'm not so much interested in what they profess to believe in the abstract, and more in the institutional operations of "anarchist groups". Simply stating an aversion to hierarchy and unequal power structures is not equivalent to realising an alternative in practice. Both theoretically and from my own experiences, i'd say that its always going to be incredibly difficult - if at all possible - to operate social organisations along principles of no hierarchy and consensus decision-making. Prolly easier the less people involved but the group i was involved with for a while were pretty small and still had significant problems (as i described in an earlier post).

Padraig -- how does the Zapatista system work? Can you shed any light on what worked well and what didn't?

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Mr Tea OTM!

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Reagan had many more hatchetman before getting to Perle and Abrams, who were fairly low rung. But it's always the evil neocons, of course!

this is true. didn't mean to make it sound like I was just focusing in the neocons, Abrams & Perle were just the first two to come to mind. tho, if I'm not mistaken James Baker is the antithesis of a neocon. Ed Meese deserves a mention too, of course.

I'm equal opportunity when it comes to the loathing of Reagan's hatchetmen.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

...but still I can't help but think it reeks of placing undue power-of-influence on an iconographic symbol of something, instead of looking at the circumstances that led to broader ideological trends and saving your anger for constructive pursuits. I'm sure you can do both, but sometimes it seems people would rather just burn effigies than think. That's not a tendency I feel entirely comfortable with.

Sometimes I think the Left (and I'm implicating myself here, too) wastes too much energy on righteous indignation. Too often anger is your badge of honor, it's the "card" you carry to prove you're a leftist.

all true. I expect a large degree of this comes from a feeling of futility, people venting their frustrations on a figurehead. it's not the worst thing in the world tho as long as you don't trick yourself thinking that venting your feelings on a figurehead can replace constructive action.

 

[vimothy]

Reagan and Thatcher have both acquired almost mythical status... uncritically loved and loathed in equal measure. It's mostly about personal political positioning.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Anyway, my main point is this: has anyone ever documented a society that is naturally anarchistic? I'm talking about 'primitive' societies here, I guess, so societies which are organised in that way because that's how they've always been organised....But in other parts of the world where very primitive societies still exist, there is nonetheless some kind of power structure present, isn't there? A chief, headman/woman, council of elders, something like that?

there's a lot of debate over this. you hear it cited a lot by some people - especially primitivists & anti-civ types - tho personally I haven't read enough to make any claims (nor I suspect that neither have some of the people who do make such claims - tho not all, there are some people who really know their stuff). I seem to recall that the Kung (aka Bushmen) are cited pretty often. and I think that even if you have done the reading there are disagreements on interpretations of the research among the anthropologists and other scholars who aren't largely motivated by ideological agendas.

(also tbf I think people use this a lot more make the claim that hunter-gatherer societies were, contrary to what one might think, "affluent" - that they spend relatively little time, esp. compared to modern society, working but nonetheless maintain a relatively high standard of living. I think there's more evidence for & validity to this claim (esp. as regards the idea that technology tends to increase rather than decrease the amount of time we spend working) but again I haven't read enough.)

To me it seems likely that humans have evolved to live in social groups with some kind of authority invested in one individual or a few individuals.

even still there are different kinds of authority - moral authority, for example. leading by example vs. leading by dictation, essentially.

a lot of these concepts - self-suffiency, consensus, the attempt to organize power bottom up rather than top down, abolition of division of labor - are in my mind more like suggestions than hard & fast rules anyway.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Anyhow with regards to anarchists i'm not so much interested in what they profess to believe in the abstract, and more in the institutional operations of "anarchist groups".

with you there 100%! tho I think it's impossible to describe how "anarchist groups" as a single category operate, given that it will vary from group to group depending on a wide number of circumstances. this is partly why I think people tend to talk in broad terms & of principles - there is no Party line to point to. hope that's not a cop-out.

I will speak to my own experience. as I've said, simplest is best. if you have too many people for everything to be face-to-face (rarely a problem) then rotating members to some kind of larger assembly who may discuss freely but are only empowered to vote according to the consensus of the smaller group - this admittedly means making decisions can take a very long time. speaking of which, consensus will not always work - sometimes you'll have to resort to majority rule, it's a case by case thing & every attempt should be made to avoid it but if you do have to resort to majority don't feel like you've violated your principles or whatever.

attempt to split up labor equally so that one or two people gets left doing all the dirty work, which unfortunately happens quite a lot - tho people embrace that role too & that should also be avoided.

when I volunteered at an anarchist bookstore we had one paid staff member who worked there full time & did all the accounting & bookkeeping. but all the other responsibilities were split up & we still met twice a month & made consensus decisions, or majority rule when necessary.

power problems are always going to arise - rather than just giving up when they do try to 1) nip them in the bud & 2) deal w/them as best you can. try to be as open as possible about everything.

Both theoretically and from my own experiences, i'd say that its always going to be incredibly difficult - if at all possible - to operate social organisations along principles of no hierarchy and consensus decision-making. Prolly easier the less people involved but the group i was involved with for a while were pretty small and still had significant problems (as i described in an earlier post).

difficulty, yes. again, should not in my view be, at least necessarily, a deterrent. and the fewer people the better is true - it really varies by situation - what are you trying to accomplish? also, knowing the people you're working with - having connections beyond supposedly shared ideals - is always infintely better.

answer to the Zapatista question in a minute.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

how does the Zapatista system work? Can you shed any light on what worked well and what didn't?

first - I don't fully understand it, as obv outsiders are not exactly to privy to the full Zapatista inner workings. *EDIT* not to make it sound like a cabal - I mean everyone I met was polite & friendly but there was very much a sense of not really communicating (partially just massive cultural differences - but they're also just generally wary of outsiders, w/good reason I might add). also by "inner workings" i mean more like Vimothy was saying - how things actually work. plus also, being at a kind of ungainly mix of civil movement & insurgency I don't really have any idea how things work between the civilian/military leaders & to what extent they're the same thing *CLOSE EDIT*

but generally it's similar to the CNT structure I described. villages have councils of some kind, then district/regional/etc. councils to a higher & higher level (also I'm not sure "council" is the right word - confederation, maybe).. eventually culminating in a kind of supreme council. I'm not sure whether they operate on a consensus basis or not - I think to a degree. an example of this in action would be the San Andres accords where as I recall the EZLN negotiators had to take any govt proposals back the councils so that everyone could debate them before agreeing to anything. they also have councils to address specific issues - education, law, etc.

obviously things are different w/the military. I'm not sure but I think it's fairly conventional. one interesting point about the army is that women can join & become officers & that they're treated at least nominally equally - certainly women in the army are in a much better position than Maya women generally. at least as AFAIK.

they're really big on autonomy & self-management (autogestión”. they're also quite clear that they're not trying to secede from Mexico, I think I've mentioned they have a kind of "we are true Mexican patriots line". so they want essentially a kind of semi-autonomy where they control local matters as I described above but also I guess vote in state & federal elections, have their economy integrated at some degree with that of Mexico, etc. I am very unclear on exactly how this would work out. I've also heard people talk about Zapatismo as a concept or philosophy but it seems rather vague & I've no idea what it is specifically if anything, tho this could just be a failing in on my part.

as to what worked/didn't, um...well they've managed to pretty effectively rule themselves for the last 15 yrs. AFAIK it's more like a return to tradition - like they were already pretty good at looking after themselves & view the govt as something of an occupying force (which it was/is, in effect - run by mestizos & ladinos - not to get into specifics but Chiapas even up to '94 has a brutal history). I have no idea how this works on a basic level - I imagine it varies village to village - depending also on things like affluence (there is disparity definitely), how Zapatista that village is, etc etc.

 

[baboon2004]

Is that it? That's what Thatcher is reduced to? Pinochet?

For FUCK'S sake. Is this somehow excusable?

 

[vimothy]

The most fundamental unit of human organisation, the family, is inherently hierarchical.

I don't think actual collective action is possible on anything other than a very small scale without some kind of hierarchy. A totally flat structure implies incredibly complex linkages between nodes -- functional organisational telepathy, basically. Failing that, orders emerge.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

The most fundamental unit of human organisation, the family, is inherently hierarchical.

if you're referencing the nuclear family or even the extended family I would challenge that that is the most fundamental unit of human organization & argue that it's only becoming the prevailing viewpoint rather recently.

either way radicals of all stripes have at least been aware of this for a while. there have been numerous efforts, successful to varying degrees, to raise children at least communally in part. for example, on the kibbutzim. or, for a society that was "always that way" I know examples exist - tho I cannot name any off the top of my head - of "primitive" peoples who raise children largely communally, where "mother" & "father" are not viewed exlusive as the biological parents of a child.

see also: the awesome Rudimentary Peni song "Love Is Not" (link to lyrics - couldn't find audio or video). just another reason Rudi P is well underrated - while everyone else was harping on about the Falklands they were busy attacking the "myth" of parental love & savaging marriage. (Crass also did up marriage & kind-of parents ("Mother Earth" tho I've never been sure exactly what the hell that's about) but I dunno if even at their agitprop best they can match the sheer acid bile that Nic Blinko spits out)

I don't think actual collective action is possible on anything other than a very small scale without some kind of hierarchy. A totally flat structure implies incredibly complex linkages between nodes -- functional organisational telepathy, basically. Failing that, orders emerge.

but, I mean "actual" collection action w/absolutely no hierarchy, not even an informal, unspoken, perhaps even subconscious one. come on, nothing ever obtains it's absolute ideal. so in that sense, no, there is no "actual" collective action.

it's about the purity of your beliefs really. I mean I for one am not say "oh shit, the two of us are forming a hiearchy by making this decision. I guess we should just sit here not making any decisions so as not to create a hierarchy." of course that's nonsense.

the point is, as w/anything, trying to release your ideal to the best of your ability. of course you're going to have to compromise sometimes. it's how/when/why you compromise.