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If there weren't anarchists the state would have to invent them

dh | 01.08.2002 23:04

Point me to some Anarchist FAQ somebody

Anarchism And Other Impediments To Anarchy

Bob Black

There is no need at present to produce new definitions of anarchism - it would be hard to improve on those long since devised by various eminent dead foreigners. Nor need we linger over the familiar hyphenated anarchisms, communist- and individualist- and so forth; the textbooks cover all that. More to the point is why we are no closer to anarchy today than were Godwin and Proudhon and Kropotkin and Goldman in their times. There are lots of reasons, but the ones that most need to be thought about are the ones that the anarchists engender themselves, since it is these obstacles - if any - it should be possible to remove. Possible, but not probable.

My considered judgment, after years of scrutiny of, and sometimes harrowing activity in the anarchist milieu, is that anarchists are a main reason - I suspect, a sufficient reason - why anarchy remains an epithet without a prayer of a chance to be realized. Most anarchists are, frankly, incapable of living in an autonomous cooperative manner. A lot of them aren't very bright. They tend to peruse their own classics and insider literature to the exclusion of broader knowledge of the world we live in. Essentially timid, they associate with others like themselves with the tacit understanding that nobody will measure anybody else's opinions and actions against any standard of practical critical intelligence; that no one by his or her individual achievements will rise too far above the prevalent level; and, above all, that nobody challenges the shibboleths of anarchist ideology.

Anarchism as a milieu is not so much a challenge to the existing order as it is one highly specialized form of accommodation to it. It is a way of life, or an adjunct of one, with its own particular mix of rewards and sacrifices. Poverty is obligatory, but for that very reason forecloses the question whether this or that anarchist could have been anything but a failure regardless of ideology. The history of anarchism is a history of unparalleled defeat and martyrdom, yet anarchists venerate their victimized forebears with a morbid devotion which occasions suspicion that the anarchists, like everybody else, think that the only good anarchist is a dead one. Revolution--defeated revolution--is glorious, but it belongs in books and pamphlets. In this century--Spain in 1936 and France in 1968 are especially clear cases--the revolutionary upsurge caught the official, organized anarchists flat-footed and initially non-supportive or worse. The reason is not far to seek. It's not that all these ideologues were hypocrites (some were). Rather, they had worked out a daily routine of anarchist militancy, one they unconsciously counted on to endure indefinitely since revolution isn't really imaginable in the here-and-now, and they reacted with fear and defensiveness when events outdistanced their rhetoric.

In other words, given a choice between anarchism and anarchy, most anarchists would go for the anarchism ideology and subculture rather than take a dangerous leap into the unknown, into a world of stateless liberty. But since anarchists are almost the only avowed critics of the state as such, these freedom-fearing folk would inevitably assume prominent or at least publicized places in any insurgency which was genuinely anti-statist. Themselves follower-types, they would find themselves the leaders of a revolution which threatened their settled status no less than that of the politicians and proprietors. The anarchists would sabotage the revolution, consciously or otherwise, which without them might have dispensed with the state without even pausing to replay the ancient Marx/Bakunin tussle.

In truth the anarchists who assume the name have done nothing to challenge the state, not with windy unread jargon-filled writings, but with the contagious example of another way to relate to other people. Anarchists as they conduct the anarchism business are the best refutation of anarchist pretensions. True, in North America at least the top-heavy "federations" of workerist organizers have collapsed in ennui and acrimony, and a good thing too, but the informal social structure of anarchism is still hierachic through and through. The anarchists placidly submit to what Bakunin called an "invisible government" which in their case consists of the editors (in fact if not in name) of a handful of the larger and longer-lasting anarchist publications.

These publications, despite seemingly profound ideological differences, have similar "father-knows-best" stances vis-a-vis their readers as well as a gentlemen's agreement not to permit attacks upon each other which would expose inconsistencies and otherwise undermine their common class interest in hegemony over the anarchist rank-and-file. Oddly enough, you can more readily criticize the Fifth Estate or Kick It Over in their own pages than you can there criticize, say, Processed World. Every organization has more in common with every other organization than it does with any of the unorganized. The anarchist critique of the state, if only the anarchists understood it, is but a special case of the critique of organization. And, at some level, even anarchist organizations sense this.

Anti-anarchists may well conclude that if there is to be hierachy and coercion, let it be out in the open, clearly labeled as such. Unlike these pundits (the right-wing "libertarians", the minarchists, for instance) I stubbornly persist in my opposition to the state. But not because, as anarchists so often thoughtlessly declaim, the state is not "necessary". Ordinary people dismiss this anarchist assertion as ludicrous, and so they should. Obviously, in an industrialized class society like ours, the state is necessary. The point is that the state has created the conditions in which it is indeed necessary, by stripping individuals and face-to-face voluntary associations of their powers. More fundamentally, the state's underpinnings (work, moralism, industrial technology, hierarchic organizations) are not necessary but rather antithetical to the satisfactions of real needs and desires. Unfortunately, most brands of anarchism endorse all these premises yet balk at their logical conclusion: the state.

If there were no anarchists, the state would have had to invent them. We know that on several occasions it has done just that. We need anarchists unencumbered by anarchism. Then, and only then, we can begin to get serious about fomenting anarchy

dh

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

Fuck Bob Black

02.08.2002 00:51

Bob black is an insane moron. Nobody except the equally insane ,so called, primitivists takes him seriously.And nobody SHOULD ever take this guy serious.He dont know what he is saying.

www.anarchismfaq.org

 http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/liberty.html

anarcho-syndicalist


Genoa can't be ignored

02.08.2002 08:53

Ask yourself this;
In Genoa were the Anarchists a benefit or a liability? Did they allow the cops to join the demo in disguise, attack people and property and then withdraw to allow those in uniform an excuse to kill. Ask yourself. And if Genoa does not lead you to question these counter-productive tactics of the anarchists that have lead SO MANY TIMES IN ITALY AND ELSEWHERE to defeat then you will never learn. Genoa was the ultimate confirmation that Anarchism is a real weakness of the anti-capitalist movement.

Socialist
mail e-mail: douglas111@hotmail.com


Bob Black

02.08.2002 08:58

Some of Bob's stuffs off the wall but the stuff he's written about abolishing work is good - you should read it. F*** work!

RichardG


bundle!

02.08.2002 09:44

Wahey, we haven't had a proper "you're crap" "no you're crap" "you're both crap and so is everyone else" ding-dong for ages! I was starting to think folk were getting too distracted by trivial diversions like strikes + demos. Good to see IMC get back on to the serious issues; exposing each other as state-funded sell-out traitors.

We must sweep ourselves out with an iron broom! Purge purge and purge again! Listening is bourgeois!

a nonny mouse


To Socialist

02.08.2002 10:07

Socialist, I know that the corporate media and lefty publications were awash with claims of cops infiltrating the Black Bloc, but it's bollocks. There were a few of them, but it made no difference whatsoever to anything on the day. The fact is, there are angry working class people who want to physically confront the State, outside the framework of any Party or trade union. This scares the authoritarian left because they must maintain the illusion that no revolutionary activity can take place outside the Party. You have abviously bought this.

And blaming working class people for State repression shows that you know *nothing* about the nature of the State. Or the political situation in Italy.

The police do not need "an excuse" to attack people - they can do whatever they want and get away with it. Organised fascism in the Italian police force (the Carabinieri in particular) is a horrible reality, and blaming the anarchists who bravely fought them (alongside many other workers) for the suppression of the anti-G8 is ridiculous.

Oh, and Bob Black is a complete wacko - he's one of those anti-language, anti-music, anti-numbers types [seriously!].

rednblack
- Homepage: http://www.anarchistyouth.net


Little known fact....

02.08.2002 10:37

...the Black Block is not just anarchists. You have all sorts of people there. It is a fucking tactic that anyone can be involved in (yes it is true: socalists, greens, trade unionists and anarchists are known to be involved). That's its strength and weakness. You can potentially get a lot of people to do the tactic, but it is subject to infiltration and misuse - something that happened in Genoa, in Gothenburg, in Brussels, in Barcelona etc. But this does not say that the Black Block tacitc is a bad tactic. First of all, people that critisice the tactic should try to understand what it is and why people adhere to the Black Block tactic. Then it is allright to slag off or criticise, whatever. But come on, the old fucking argument that the police inflitrated it so we can't have it thing is too old. The police sure as hell infiltrated every fucking bloc in Genoa.

Chrome


Bob Black is a police grass

02.08.2002 18:33

Black Bob grassed up Jim Hogshire for drugs and got him raided by the police.

A lot of his writing is just plain anti anarchist.

Lawnmower Man


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