#uri gordon

[sammeldeineknochen]

Der Preis der Freiheit wird immer ewige Wachsamkeit heißen.

 Uri Gordon: “Düstere Neugkeiten? Anarchistische Politik in Zeiten des Zusammenbruchs” in: Ilija Trojanow (Hrsg.): “Anarchistische Welten”, S.

[sharpened--edges]

[T]he state’s utterly disproportionate military might, and powers of surveillance and social control, mean that it simply cannot be defeated in outright battle. Anarchists will probably never get their hands on what it takes to fight against tanks, mines, aeroplanes, and so on.  This means that, under any foreseeable circumstances, a precondition for any revolutionary social transformation is that most members of the police and army forces desert or defect. This, further, would seem to only be plausible in the context of an already existing popular mobilisation that is very broad-based and very militant, and which is capable of winning over even serving members of the state’s armed wing.… On these considerations, armed struggle seems to be for now a self-defeating prospect. However, what anarchists may consider in this speculative context is the possibility of creating the appropriate conditions for its success.… The strategic outlook already prevalent among anarchists is that the road to revolution involves the proliferation of urban and rural projects of sustainable living, community-building and the development of skills and infrastructures. But while this is usually couched in terms of ‘hollowing out’ capitalism, it can also be considered as the creation of a sustainable social base for more militant activity, up to (possibly) insurrection. In such a situation, armed struggle would be undertaken, not by isolated groups of desperadoes, but by communities which have already carved out a significant space of autonomy within hierarchical society. This could happen either in defence from a final, violent attempt of the state to recuperate those liberated spaces, or as part of a large-scale scenario of social collapse created by peak oil and climate change. So while armed struggle may not be an option in present times, it may well be profoundly entangled with the most non-violent and ‘constructive’ anarchist exploits.

Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto, 2008), pp. 107–8.

[sharpened--edges]

[T]he mistake that most clouds our thinking over [anarchist] process [is] the continued couching of the debate in the language of democracy. It is true that there are major parallels between some of the values animating activists’ collective process practices and those which feature in the more radical end of democratic theory – especially concepts of participation, deliberation and inclusion … However, there is still a fundamental difference between the coordinates of the debate. Democratic discourse assumes without exception that the political process results, at some point, in collectively binding decisions. That these decisions can be the result of free and open debate by all those affected does not change the fact that the outcome is seen to have a mandatory nature. Saying that something is collectively binding makes no sense if each person is to make up their own mind over whether they are bound by it. Binding means enforceable, and enforceability is a background assumption of democracy. But the outcomes of anarchist process are inherently impossible to enforce. That is why the process is not ‘democratic’ at all, since in democracy the point of equal participation in determining decisions is that this is what legitimates these decisions’ subsequent enforcement – or simply sweetens the pill. Anarchism, then, represents not the most radical form of democracy, but an altogether different paradigm of collective action.

Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto, 2008), pp. 69–70.

[sharpened--edges]

[A]ny anarchist theory which looks forward to the absence of law and authority, unfettered diversity and maximum autonomy (literally ‘self-legislation’) must also respond to the possibility that patterns of domination may re-emerge within and/or among them. Thus ‘the price of eternal liberty is eternal vigilance’, and anarchist utopianism cannot be equated with chiliasm and closure. If one insists on the potential need for anarchist agency under any conditions, then the notion of a closure of the revolutionary project loses its meaning.… At most, then, an ‘anarchist society’ would be one in which everyone is an anarchist, that is, a society in which every person wields agency against rule and domination. To be sure, the frequency of the need to do so may hopefully diminish to a great extent, in comparison to what an anarchist approach would deem necessary in present societies. However, one has no reason to think that it can ever be permanently removed. In sum, the inherently diverse and voluntary nature of the anarchist project leaves it necessarily open to change and challenge from within.

Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto, 2008), pp. 45–6.

[rawxlib]

The choice is indeed one between decentralisation and large-scale industrial modernity — and anarchists are going to have to finally bite the bullet and admit that they would go for the former. Indeed decentralisation cannot sustain modern industrial society as we know it. As a result, anarchists must admit that their political agendas imply a retro-fitting process of decentralisation that carries with it quite a significant roll-back into low-tech living.

Uri Gordon, Anarchism and Political Theory: Contemporary Problems

[anarchism21-blog]

Definition of anarchy

As with any other concept in human thought, the definition of "anarchy" is historical and social. This means that the meaning and understanding of concepts depend on its historical and social context, and this happens because thoughts and ideas are not independent of concrete human experience. Historical and social events inform the way humans interpret the world, and ideas themselves inform the way humans interact with the world. This could be called a dialectical relationship between idealism and materialism.

Even though etymologically "anarchy" is related to the ancient Greek "anarchos", meaning "without rulers" or "without political sovereignity", in the mainstream media and electoral political discourse, "anarchy" is often used as a synonym for "chaos" and "disorder". There are three things that can be said about this:

The term could have gained this pejorative dimension due to the "propaganda of the deed" in which anarchist individuals and collectives cause physical damage to individuals or property in order to spread anarchist ideals. Propaganda of the deed had its historical prime time at the turn of the 19th century, with the assassination of influential statesmen and with the bombing of government buildings and bourgois  but it is still found widespread in contemporary tactics such as the Black Bloc.

One could argue that the media and the rulling class spread this negative understanding of anarchy in order to mistify and badmouth social anarchist and worker movements by giving them a bad popular reputation.

As Uri Gordon posits, this negative understanding of the term could date back to its Greek origins. Gordon found out through researching Ancient Greek texts that the term was already used as a synonym for "disorder" and "chaos" by thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle. In other words, the view of "anarchy" as a negative ideal is deeply rooted in Western thought. This is why in an article in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Andrew Belsey writes that there is a dogma in political philosophy in which a social organization without the State will necessarily result in "chaos", and that this dogma is only denied by anarchists and classical marxists. It is true that both anarchists and classical marxists are anti-dogmatic in respect to the causation chain of statelessness = chaos, but they deal with this question in such a different and radical way that it has caused a major historical split in the global socialist movement.

Even though it has been adopted by many thinkers who put it forward neutrally – as the term that stands for "a state of social organization without political sovereignity" –, the term remains heavily connected to chaos and social disorder. While some people who identify themselves with anarchist principles choose to stick with the term in order to identify themselves with the rich historical political tradition of anarchism, many others renounce it in order to evade repetitive clarifications or theoretical ostracization, choosing alternative terms such as "libertarian socialism" or no labels at all.

[therorlord]

In case someone hasn't noticed, anarchism is alive and kicking. The past decade or so has seen the full revival of a global anarchist movement on a scale and on levels of unity and diversity unseen since the 1930s. From anti-capitalist social centres and eco-feminist farms to community organizing, blockades of international summits, daily direct actions and a mass of publications and websites – anarchy lives at the heart of the global movement that declares: ‘another world is possible’. Far from the end of history predicted in 1989, the circulation and spread of anarchist struggles and politics – largely in advanced capitalist countries – has been a vital force behind resistance to neo-liberalism and the Permanent War. The a-word itself can be a source of pride, an unnecessary liability or an insignificant accessory. Its euphemisms are legion: anti-authoritarian, autonomous, horizontalist … but you know it when you see it, and anarchy is everywhere.

- Anarchy Alive - Uri Gordon

[disquietingtruths]

Anarchism: the A word

‘Mindless, violent thugs, hell-bent on sowing chaos.’ That’s the kind of press anarchists often get. Uri Gordon provides a more sympathetic take on a growing yet still little understood political movement.

I must have been eight or nine years old when I first heard the a-word. I don’t remember the context, but I do remember asking my mother what ‘anarchists’ were. She said: anarchists are people who want to destroy everything, and rebuild it all from scratch.

To her credit, my mother’s answer was quite generous: at least it included the part about rebuilding...

It did get me thinking that anarchists had good intentions, that they wanted to ‘destroy everything’ not just for the hell of it, but because they thought ‘everything’ was unjust and dysfunctional. Her definition was neither accurate nor very nuanced, but there was a grain of truth to her association of anarchism with the notion that society needed to be changed at a very fundamental level, and that such change couldn’t happen through piecemeal reform but instead required a thorough transformation from the ground up.

I think I was lucky; imagine what most kids hear in response to the same question.

In 1910 American activist Emma Goldman wrote: ‘Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals.’

A full century after Goldman penned her inspiring words, there remains the same need to dispel misconceptions about anarchism, bred of the unholy matrimony between plain ignorance and vile slander. Chaos, suffering, destruction, tumult, strife – these are things that anarchists have never called for. Yet most people imagine anarchists as people who do actively desire such things, people who must be either evil or insane.

But actually there is nothing very surprising here. As Goldman noted in the same essay: ‘In its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruellest means to stay the advent of the New… Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims to reconstruct.’

Ben Rubin, Emma Goldman/Celebrate People's History, 2002, courtesy of Justseeds.org

This has led many who endorse anarchist values to shun the label itself. Some activists will call themselves ‘libertarian socialist’, ‘anti-authoritarian’, ‘autonomous’, or nothing at all, just to avoid the a-word and its bad PR. But there are also those of us who carry the label with pride, and tirelessly repeat what it really stands for.

Direct action – a core principle

What, then, do anarchists want? The answer is simple. Anarchists want a social order without rulers or hierarchy. Anarchists want freedom and equality for all. We want a world with no borders and no social classes, no gods and no masters, where power is as decentralized as possible and every individual and community can determine their own destiny. We believe in independent thought, international solidarity, voluntary association and mutual aid. This is why we seek the abolition of capitalism and the state, which place economic and political power in the hands of a tiny minority. It is why we resist patriarchy, white supremacy, compulsory heterosexuality and all other systems of domination and discrimination. And it is, I suspect, why so many teachers, corporate journalists, clergy, business people and police work so hard at hiding our values from the general public.

What also distinguishes anarchists is a strong commitment to being the change we want to see in the world. This approach, sometimes called ‘prefigurative politics’, is evident in decentralized organization, decision-making by consensus, respect for differing opinions and an overall emphasis on the process as well as the outcomes of activism. It is also the motivation for our constant effort to deprogramme ourselves and overcome behaviours and prejudices that are sexist, racist, homophobic, consumerist and conformist. As anarchists we explicitly try to be and live what we want, not just as end goals, but as guides to political action and everyday life.

This relates to the core of practical anarchist politics – the principle of direct action. Anarchists understand direct action as a matter of taking social change into one’s own hands, by intervening directly in a situation rather than appealing to an external agent (typically the government) for its rectification. It is a ‘Do It Yourself’ approach to politics based on people-power, mirrored by a total lack of interest in operating through established political channels.

Most commonly, direct action is viewed under its preventative or destructive guise. If, for instance, anarchists object to the clear-cutting of a forest, then taking direct action means that rather than petitioning the loggers or engaging in a legal process, they would intervene literally to prevent the clear-cutting – by chaining themselves to the trees, or lying in front of the bulldozers, or pouring sugar into their gas-tanks – all acts which can directly hinder or halt the project.

But direct action can also be understood in a constructive way. Anarchists who propose non-hierarchical social relations, or an ecologically responsible economy, undertake to construct and live such realities by themselves. Building alternatives from below, anarchists are involved in many projects, collectives and networks which are intended to be the groundwork for a new society within the shell of the old. Leading by example, anarchists seek to demonstrate in the most practical terms that ‘another world is possible’.

A movement reborn

The anarchist idea is as ancient as the institutions it resists; the notion that people can live together without a class of rulers or concentrations of wealth inspired the earliest slave rebellions as well as religious heretics throughout the ages – including the early Christians. Modern anarchism, for its part, emerged with the workers’ movement of the 19th century, and at least in southern Europe, was the political orientation of its overwhelming majority. The first writer to call himself an anarchist was the French social theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who also declared that ‘property is theft’. Anarchism became clearly defined as an independent movement with the 1872 split in the First International between the workers’ representatives who followed Karl Marx, and those who followed Proudhon and the Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin. Unlike the Marxists, who expected to overwhelm capitalism through parliamentary elections (or, later on, by seizing state power), anarchists called for abolishing the state and capitalism simultaneously. Whether they were peasants staging an uprising or militant unionists building up to a general strike, anarchists consistently steered a revolutionary course towards stateless socialism by stateless means.

It is only in the recent decade or so that anarchism has experienced a full-blown revival on a global scale

Anarchism had its ‘golden age’ during the early decades of the 20th century. These saw massive peasant and industrial union activity in almost every country of Europe and the Americas, as well as the liberation of much of the Ukraine during the Russian civil war of 1919-21, and much of Catalonia during the Spanish civil war of 1936-39. But the physical elimination of most of the European anarchist movement by the Bolshevik and Fascist dictatorships, as well as the American ‘Red Scare’, effectively wiped anarchism off the map.

It is only in the recent decade or so that anarchism has experienced a full-blown revival on a global scale. This was largely the result of the rediscovery – since the late 1960s – of anarchist values and tactics by numerous social movements which did not use the label. Activists also progressively came to see the interdependence of their agendas, manifest in ecological critiques of capitalism, feminist anti-militarism, and the interrelation of racial and economic segregation. Contemporary anarchism is rooted in the convergence of the radical ends of feminist, ecological, anti-capitalist, anti-racist and queer liberation struggles and agendas, which finally fused in the late 1990s through the global wave of protest against the policies and institutions of neoliberal globalization.

Maturity and playfulness

Today the anarchist movement is a mature global network of activist collectives, involved in any number of struggles and constructive projects – from resistance to mining in Indonesia and anti-nuclear action in Germany, through solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank and communal farming in France, and on to climate campaigning in Britain and labour struggles in South Africa. Anarchists also participate in, and are often the main organizers of, projects and campaigns which have a much broader appeal – research groups who monitor the corporate world or international institutions, local economic initiatives, women’s health collectives, non-profit bicycle workshops, public art projects… The number of anarchist publications, bookfairs and websites is rising every year, as is the geographical, cultural and age diversity among anarchists themselves.

Another feature of anarchist action is its creativity and playfulness. Inspired throughout its history by avant-garde movements from the surrealists to the Situationists, and more recently by a diversity of global cultures and subcultures, anarchism today displays more humour and fun than perhaps any political movement in history. Activists will often stage street theatre displays, art exhibitions and elaborate hoaxes; they might come to a demonstration dressed up as turtles, pink fairies or business people; and they will certainly pay attention to the beauty as well as the productivity of their eco-farms and community gardens.

Yes despite all these features, most of the public is only exposed to anarchism when some of its exponents employ confrontational tactics in mass protests – smashing the windows of banks and corporate outlets, blockading political and economic summits and, in some countries, fighting police and/or neo-Nazis in the streets. Whether these tactics are still effective or have turned into theatrical rituals is debatable. I, for one, believe that the occasional public display of organized rage and well-targeted disruption contributes to the vigour and dynamism of the ongoing social struggle. Also debatable is whether this gives anarchists a positive or a negative reputation. Here, it is worth noting that many people who complain about confrontational action in their own countries are quite supportive of similar or even more militant tactics when they occur in Libya, Bolivia or Iran. Are they merely not-in-my-back-yard pacifists? Or do they believe that their right occasionally to elect a capitalist politician gives their governments more legitimacy than a dictatorship should enjoy? Anarchists certainly do not.

In a future plagued by energy scarcity, climate instability and financial meltdown, anarchist values and forms of organization will become increasingly important. The 21st century may well see the collapse of global capitalism under the weight of its own excesses – but there is no guarantee that what we get instead will be any more humane or equal. The challenge anarchists and their allies face today is to disseminate their skills and ideas, creating a better chance that the move through industrial collapse will lead to a truly liberated world.