On the Popularity of Anarchism
By Adrian Bleifuss Prados • Oct 30th, 2007 • Category: CultureThis past weekend, I attended an anti-war rally organized by a peace coalition in Chicago. Although several thousand demonstrators showed up, I still felt that at this stage in the war there should have been many thousands more. As usual, the media hardly covered the event.
There was an especially strong presence of sectarian groups, each with its own pamphlet station, including some Trotskyist organizations I had never heard of before. (Trot-watching is like bird-watching, there are common Spartacists and ISOers and then there are rarer species.) News and Letters and Solidarity both deserve props for being the only two non-authoritarian groups to table. * Peering down the row of literature tables of wanna-be Bolshevik parties, a News and Letters member sighed, “these groups…they never grow and they never die.”
As I watched a ferocious argument between Spartacists and members of the Socialist Equality Party over the “class nature” of the Chinese Communist Party, I realized why the socialist tradition is so unappealing to so many young people: It’s because socialists are nuts. And, when they’re not crazy, they’re boring and pedantic.
Enter anarchism, or as some anarchists prefer, “anarchy.” Where the stale rhetoric of the Marxist left turns off young troublemakers hungry for an emancipatory politics, anarchism extends its welcoming hand and offers its own critique of capitalism.
Whenever I’m in a left-wing bookstore I make a bee-line for the anarchist magazines. Sure, anarchists have no workable plan for universal health care or for addressing the sub-prime mortgage crisis … and their principles effectively prohibit them from meaningfully supporting progressive legislation or reforms. But Goddammit, anarchists are also the only radicals who are producing consistently humorous and emotionally stirring literature. Some of the more politically problematic “post-left” anarchist outfits also put out the best material. The prolific pamphleteers at CrimethInc, for example, make the best political graphic art around. Their absurd 2006 May Day poster captures the spirit of that radical worker’s holiday perfectly and their various writings on 9/11 and terrorism offer some important insights.
In a way, anarchism is a living fossil of the optimistic, free-wheeling 19th century left. For the most part, anarchists never invested themselves in authoritarian projects (on the contrary, the Red Army mowed down a good many anarchists). This means that the anarchist idea is largely unburdened by the moral horrors of the last 100 years. I think Emma Goldman was briefly hoodwinked by the Bolshies, but Kropotkin’s verdict on the Lenin & Co. needs not one word of revision. This is in stark contrast to the parties and personalities of the Second International, which were (at least for a short while) almost universally enthusiastic about Lenin’s coup…even our dear Gene Debs declared, “From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, I am a Bolshevik.”
Democratic socialists, i.e. those democratic socialists that dream of something beyond the welfare-state, can learn from the current popularity of anarchism. We need to get over hang-ups of 1917 and reclaim the spirit of revolt. Explaining to Americans that we are reasonable, pragmatic socialists and that the socialist idea is perfectly respectable in Europe is not working. Moreover it’s dishonest, the social democratic parties of Europe have largely abandoned socialism and I, for one, am not flying my red flag for Gordon Brown or Gerhard Schroeder.
_____
* DSA had a contingent and a very snazzy orange banner.
PS:
Let’s also remember that anarchists are our historical cousins, the distinction between anarchists and socialists is a relatively late development and, for the most part, left anarchists have advocated some kind of stateless, socialist economic arrangement. Kropotkin would have happily called himself a “communist.”
Print This Post
Adrian Bleifuss Prados is
Email this author | All posts by Adrian Bleifuss Prados
This is a really good essay. I too feel that the exciting *organizing* ideas, or at least “public” expressions of those ideas, and theorizations of transformations in modes of control and production, have come from anarchist and autonomist-marxism schools of thought. I still think that YDS *should* have a monopoly on thinking politically about organizing. I think this means much more than electoral strategies. I tried to articulate a similar idea in my post on mass convergences on this blog here…which, btw, the red special also contributed to. That essay is here:
http://theactivist.org/blog/?p=56
The other essay I wanted to direct people to is a “coming to terms” of democratic socialism and anarchism–written by former organizer Daraka Larimore-Hall–ironically, written at least in part to help settle differences that the Phoenix, AZ chapter (my chapter) was having with an anarchist coalition. That essay is here:
http://www.ainfos.ca/02/oct/ainfos00190.html
I agree that anarchism is has an admirable liveliness to it these days, worth learning from. And there’s no need to be reflexively sectarian about anarchists. At the same time, I’m not too impressed at their being “unburdened by the moral horrors of the last 100 years”. It’s easy to have clean hands when you’ve never won any significant political victories.
And it’s a true, but truly weird, paradox that “the more politically problematic ‘post-left’ anarchist outfits also put out the best material”, if by “best” we mean “nourishing to the soul” rather than “tells us how to proceed with the struggle.” I really agree with that–Bob Black, for example, is a guilty pleasure of mine, though politically ass-backwards in any number of ways. It’s probably worth thinking a bit more about why this is. I sometimes suspect it’s because the anarchists who are the best at imagining a different world are the most clueless about how to achieve one.
Peter’s posts pretty much covers how I feel about anarchism and anarchists. So what I’ll add is I really did enjoy Adrian’s post and agree with much of it. However, I don’t think DSA/YDS’s relations with European social democratic parties is what is holding us back in America. Most Americans have no idea what is going on in Europe or the problems of European socialism/social democracy (and don’t care either). The real problem, as you stated, is a lack of imagination. When I first took on the YDS organizer job a Chilean told me “you have to make socialism seem new, like Bachelet did.” Ignoring that later part, he had a point. We have to offer a better world concretely and simply: not just say things will be better. Being firm, sincere, and honest about your beliefs/goals wins you more points here than looking to Europe or talking esoteric bable.
I also couldn’t disagre more with the statement that YDS should have a monopoly on political thinking about organizing. We are part of a broad movement. If I wanted to be part of a vangaurd that had a monopoly on political thought, I wouldn’t have joined a democratic socialist orgnaization.
I think Matt, Peter and David’s comments make important points/correctives to my posts.
Everyone should read Matt’s RNC convention piece. I took his suggestion that YDS “monopolize” political thinking about organizing to be a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that democratic socialists should more aggressively assert their ideas which are, after all, better than those of the Northeast Anarchist Network, ANSWER, the Green Party, etc.
I agree with Peter that anarchists can become “beautiful soul” leftists who keep their hands clean and ideals pure but don’t do much much. I think Bob Black is a funny example of how an outspoken critic of the sectarian left can become involved in endless sectarian battles.
David is right that association with social democratic parties is not really a liability, I just think its not as much of a selling point as it would’ve been 30 or even 15 years ago.
Anarchists may not have changed the world in the last couple of hundred years but neither have I. If you read any of CRIMETHINC books your mind can’t help but get caught up in the dreams of your boots on a cities pavement holding the flag of affirmative action. They have learned to have a romantic and passionate appeal that should be inspiring to all of us. Their writings pull people in. The one thing you should take from your cousin is this writing style. If other groups were able to use this same appeal, but on a much larger scale, then maybe instead of lighting insignificant matches we will have the power to ignite the world. I’d like to leave you guys a little inspiration to get you out of the day to day monotony…
We fell in love in the wreckage,
Shouted songs in the uproar,
Danced joyfully in
The heaviest shackles they
Could forge; we smuggled our
Stories through the gauntlets
Of silence, starvation, and
subjugation, to bring them
back to life again and again as
bombs and beating hearts; we
built castles in the sky from
the ruins of hell on earth.
Largely agreed, but what about Anarcho-Socialist experiments during the Spanish Civil War, or even the Paris Commune.
Anarchism/Marxism/Democratic Socialism has a huge overlap. Rosa Luxemburg wrote about the dictatorship of the proletariat not meaning the end of Democracy, and Engles described the representative bodies of the Paris Commune in 1871 as a good example of the Dictorship of the Proletariat.
There is a lot of room for more united front within the Left, there should be communication and work together towards common goals, while still maintaining a diversity of opinon and an internal critique
Adrien interprets my sense of the political correctly. I still have an old bumper sticker from when I joined YDS that said: Democratic Socialists Think Really Different. Well, if we don’t think really different than why should anyone join YDS? After all we are not and have rarely been able to out-organize anyone. So are we simply “good coalition partners” or the “red stripe in the rainbow”? That can’t just be it. We *must* be able to have a political analysis of organizing. This was the sense in which I meant that we *should* have a monopoly on thinking politically about organizing–However, David is right in the sense that I tend to overstate the case…I would qualify that now by saying “a leading role in thinking politically about youth anti-capitalist organizing among the sane left.”
About imagination, I have another post here that folks might be interested in:
http://democraticgunslinger.blogspot.com/2005/04/imagine-theres-no-imagination-ydsers.html
I agree with you, there needs to be a greater union of anti-capitalist elements and there needs to be a march towards common goals.
We need actual an actual new minimum program, to accomplish attainable goals, while still maintaining a maximum program of a society governed by socialism.
Once minimum goals are attained, new minimum goals can be set, membership and profile will grow.
Ideas should be fresh and adapted to the 21st century. They should focus on our end goals, the elimination of poverty, health-care for all, respect for human life and liberty and not on simply dogma.
But quite simply I agree with your logic that movement would be served well if the YDS and the DSA took a leading role, since our methods are responsible and our vision is revolutionary.
Harrington’s model of visionary gradualism, but with a sense of urgency, and more direct action.
Acting like a marginal interest group within the Democratic party shouldn’t be our primary mode of policy change, though support for Progressives is something that we shouldnt shun away from. The Christain-Right and their alliance with the Republicans can serve as an example here
Matt: Thanks for clearing up your thoughts. YDS’s political thinking makes it unique, and being a YDS activists makes you a stronger activist,thinker, and progressive.
I’d just like to pitch the working draft of DSA’s Economic Justice Agenda: http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/Toward%20an%20Economic%20Justice%20Agenda.pdf
It discusses a minimal program that socialists can push progressives to get around. It offers our unique social democratic analysis, which sets the ground work for a democratic socialist future.
Dear Comrade Duhalde,
It’s a “minimum” program, not a “minimal” program. A “minimal” program would have, like, nothing in it!
And what exactly is our “unique social democratic analysis”? I know lots of people in DSA/YDS like to talk about “our analysis,” but in all honesty I don’t think our analysis is so unique. It’s our _political approach_ which differs from both liberals and the purist radical left — or at least is supposed to differ from them.
Comrade Schulman,
One point for you.
I disagree with you on the grounds that our approach and analysis are unique in the US of A. That discussion merits more room than the blog grants.
See you in Atlanta.