Archive for August, 2011

A New Essay by Darian Worden.

Dual Paths: Tensions, Complimentary Concepts, and Finding an Orientation Toward Liberty.

There are many ideas to navigate on the course to liberty. Examining the relations between several sets of seemingly unrelated or contradictory concepts can provide a clearer picture of the way forward to a libertarian society. The following ten explorations are both philosophical and action-oriented. They will hopefully help establish a stronger foundation to the pursuit of liberty.

Individual and community.

Sometimes the essential conflict of social philosophy is framed as that of individualism versus collectivism, or egoism versus community. Those who speak of reconciling the two can be regarded with suspicion as seeking to subsume one under the other. But there is no reason this has to be so.

Assuming that the individual and the community are involved in a conflict that is irreconcilable, or at best able to be only somewhat mitigated, neglects the idea that the best community is that which is best for individual flourishing, and the most flourishing individual exists in the most functional community. So liberty is both about individuals and about the communities where free individuals interact for mutual benefit.

 Individual Empowerment and the Dispersal of Power.

Different uses of the word “power” can lead to confusion. On the one hand, we have “liberty versus power,” government serving “the powerful,” the evils of the pursuit of power, and calls to “abolish power.” On the other hand, when people are “powerless,” that generally doesn’t mean that they are living in equal freedom, but that they are helpless, without autonomy, entirely at the mercy of others.

Liberty is harmed by power relations where people with vastly unequal amounts of power rule over others. However, anarchy does not necessitate a “power vacuum,” but the dispersal of power as widely and equally as possible. Doing so is both a project of widespread individual empowerment – helping individuals gain decision-making power over their own lives – as well as the breakup of authoritarian power centers.

Evolutionary and Revolutionary Political Change.

The evolutionary approach and the revolutionary approach to changing the political and social situation are sometimes contrasted and framed as irreconcilable. Such a framing is detrimental. On the one hand, focusing exclusively on The Revolution as a massive overturning of power sets up an all-or-nothing pursuit of a millenarian cataclysmic event. And if the revolution doesn’t come or doesn’t turn out right, then disillusionment or defense of the status quo sets in. Similarly, if The Revolution is something that happens every day, then revolution loses its meaning as it is difficult for people to live in constant upheaval.

On the other hand, revolutions happen. A movement needs to prepare for them to be relevant enough to influence the course of the revolution. An exclusively evolutionary approach can be easily confused as accommodating the status quo, or as a non-threatening nuisance to the authorities.

A better approach would be the dual path – an evolutionary approach of building libertarian alternatives that also have revolutionary capability. Pushing people into revolution is vanguardist and unlikely to be effective, but informing popular dissent, demonstrating libertarian alternatives, and being ready to provide guidance to popular insurrections is valuable. In this way, revolution is viewed more as an event that is sometimes necessary in the evolution toward greater liberty.

Rejection and Direction.

Sometimes it is best to try to steer something in a libertarian direction, and sometimes it is best to reject it altogether. For example, consider a local neighborhood association. It might be valuable for the libertarian to get involved in the organization and make it a vehicle for local autonomy that respects individual liberty. But the association might be so full of authoritarian values that it would be better to reject it altogether and focus on building other networks and organizations.

The decision to reject or direct depends on the situation. Dogmatic rejectionism leads to irrelevance or living as a hermit, but over-direction leads to tyranny or being viewed as a busybody.

Exploring rejection and direction reveals another tension: subversion versus co-option. One can subvert the intentions of authority by moving an institution in a libertarian direction. But by participating in that institution there is a risk of being co-opted into merely perpetuating its current function. This is a tension to be mindful of.

Inroads and Outreach.

It is necessary to make inroads into communities and networks. Interpersonal relations are essential to living, and of course you are going to bring your values and skills to any social situation. But are you going to relentlessly agitate or argue the finer points of theory to friends? Only when the occasion calls for it.

However, outward agitation and disseminating libertarian views are important. This is the function of impersonal outreach, where one seeks to reach as many people as possible with a message, and generalizations are used to do so.

Outreach without inroads has less grounding in lived reality and shows less demonstrable value to people for whom the ideas are only abstractions that nobody they know lives by. But inroads without outreach means less differentiation, fewer people getting the message, and possibly to the communities where you’ve made inroads being co-opted by more dominant ideologies.

Publicity and Anonymity.

When engaging in outreach, it is sometimes best to put a public face behind what you are doing, and sometimes best to sit back and let information be digested without the distractions of personality or a broader ideology.

It is also essential to consider publicity versus anonymity in the context of personal security. It is often assumed that one will be safer in anonymity, and many times this is the case. If the authorities don’t know who you are they can’t get you, and even when anonymity isn’t perfect one can at least present oneself as a smaller fish, not worth the resources to catch. However, publicity can be protective. It might be more difficult to quietly disappear or assassinate someone if they are a well-known figure with respect and roots in a community. The public will only believe that so many “accidents” are possible. Similarly, if a person known to a large, active social network is arrested, they can expect support in the form of calls to jail, resources for defense, and public scrutiny directed at the behavior of the authorities.

Local and Global.

Libertarians should think and act globally and locally (though obviously individual action will emphasize different activities depending on specialties).

Acting locally enables the face-to-face interaction that can create true, experienced alternatives to authoritarianism. But without a global perspective, the local community can become insular, isolated, and more easily defeated. Worse, when there are no other options available for libertarian community, then the single option is more likely to stagnate and devolve into a fight over unifying dogma.

A global approach releases the pressures that are built up in the course of the necessary local approach. Also, organizing on a broader geographic basis can help the message spread to more areas, defying authority globally and inspiring new action locally. Examples of global networks valuable to liberty are WikiLeaks and Anonymous. Examples of organizations that inspire local action are the Industrial Workers of the World, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, and Students for a Stateless Society.

 Participation versus Specialization, Letting People Alone to Their Interests.

It’s generally good for decision-making to be participatory – everyone involved gets a say, and everyone involved has an actual stake in how things operate. However, not everyone is going to be interested in getting involved in every decision to be made, and it’s unlikely that any person has the time to get involved in all the meetings and events that would be necessary to make everything run. This would of course be mitigated by many necessities being satisfied by smaller worker cooperatives whose meetings would only involve a few people. However, for things like road repair, garbage cleanup, and park maintenance, not everyone is going to be that interested. Certainly, freeloading behavior can be discouraged by mechanisms of reciprocity – someone who doesn’t help much doesn’t get much help. But people will have a range of interests, and not all disinterest is detrimental.

Indeed, most people seem tonot care about politics so long as they have sufficient autonomy to do what they are actually interested in. This principle could stand to be examined more by myself and others. If it holds true, then action should take it into account. For example, if anarchy caused savings in living costs that brought significant improvements in living quality for significantly less work hours, and much more control of things you are interested in, is that worth the tradeoff for several hours a year attending meetings, pruning plants, or fixing potholes?

Encouraging an attitude of participation and problem-solving can be helpful, but it can only go so far, and it should only be pushed so far.

Common Defense and Professional Defense.

It seems unlikely that anarchist society would emerge simultaneously in all regions of the world. Therefore the anarchist society would need to deter, or defend itself against, a variety of imperial ambitions. At one level we have the common defense – the armed individual, the neighborhood watch, the militia. At another level we have professional defense – the aircraft operators, the special operations forces. The specifics of how they would operate would of course need to be worked out. But they would be unlikely to make war on and conquer each other because 1) to get to an anarchist society would require sufficient libertarian sentiment to make the re-establishment of authority prohibitive, and 2) not many people want their neighborhood to be a warzone or to see their families’ livelihoods burning. The relation between a hard defense of weaponry and armed maneuvers, and a soft defense of solidarity actions and subversion, shed light on how to best increase the potential costs for governments to intervene against an anarchist society.

Network and Confederation.

Social networks and the confederation are two precedents for (not necessarily examples of) anarchist organization.

The network can be formal or informal, and operates on some combination of trust, affinity, and purpose. It can be geographically concentrated or dispersed. A network can be hierarchical, but in the case of the anarchist network it should be as egalitarian as practical.

The confederation is a way for different actors to identify with a common set of allegiances – a certain political cohesion, a certain set of rules. If sets of rules are established on a voluntary and participatory basis with the goal of mutual benefit and individual empowerment, then it is possible that anarchist societies might look something like a series of confederations. The libertarian confederations would be expected to take a peacemaking approach to relating with each other and in resolving disputes among members, including the process of secession.

The network and confederation model is a mix of description and prediction, but is not meant to be a prescription that must be adhered to. We will understand the organization of a free society better as we refine our theory with practice.

Conclusion.

Achieving the right balance among different approaches to pursuing liberty is not an all-or-nothing affair, but acting with a greater degree of accuracy will be helpful. Sometimes, things that at first seem contradictory are instead complimentary, and even the tensions between opposites can be useful in creating a viable path. Pursuing liberty is a process that requires many different approaches and talents. Liberty is where numerous personalities and tendencies interact to create a society of individual empowerment and social reciprocity. 

— This essay is based on a session I led at the 2011 Alternatives Expo, part of the Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, NH.
By Darian Worden

Darian Worden is a graduate student of history, a news analyst at Center for a Stateless Society, and a host of the internet radio show Thinking Liberty. His essays and other works can be viewed at DarianWorden.com.

A New Essay by Anna O. Morgenstern

Paths to Liberation, or What if they built a factory and no one came?

"They can't stop us."

A lot of people in the broader anarchist movement seem to focus more on goals or endpoints, and ignore or underemphasize the means to achieving them. This is understandable, in that statists are constantly challenging us to identify what a stateless society will be like. (Statists are generally concerned much more with outcomes than the means to get to them, or most of them would be horribly shamed by the programs they advocate.) This creates a great deal of internecine squabbles that I think are unnecessary. Existentially, intentions are much less important in determining someone’s character than actions. Now there are many, many varieties of anarchist individuals and organizations with their own characteristics and philosophy, but I think, in terms of their program to achieve anarchism, we can divide them into 5 basic groups. I will attempt to explore these groups and their means, and see what their impact would be.

First off are the insurrectionary anarchists. Though they come in different flavors, most of them would consider themselves revolutionary anti-capitalists. Though dormant for a long time, the insurrectionary mode of anarchism was one of the oldest varieties, right alongside anarcho-syndicalism as anarchism became defined as a unique offshoot of the labor movement. The insurrectionary anarchists often get a lot of criticism from the rest of the “left” at large, criticism that I believe is un-deserved. This criticism, I believe, points to how much most people have been tamed by the powers that be, which have absorbed and co-opted their ostensible “opposition”. While I have a different “most preferred” strategy, they are certainly useful allies. When I saw the pictures from Greece, of the crowds *successfully* attacking riot police, my heart swelled.

Basically the insurrectionary anarchists follow a program of confronting capitalism when and where it exposes its major coordinating events, and of finding techniques to reclaim the abandoned or easily re-expropriated parts of the system for the use of the people. It is largely not a “productive” strategy, but rather a negative force, attacking state-capitalism while providing nothing for the capitalists to consume. In the beginning, food, shelter and clothing for the IAs comes from refuse or unused property, though ideally, as the revolution advances, they will be in position to make bold strikes into re-expropriation of actual exchange value. Now, this will be considered “stealing” by vulgar libertarians. But the IAs argument goes that the capitalists already stole their capacity to produce these goods from us. It would be no different than robbing the vaults where the IRS keeps their ill-gotten tax gains.

In terms of dialectical materialism, the IA movement could be seen as the revolution of the sub-proletariat, taking place in the midst of the incomplete revolution of the proletariat. For this reason, many statist Marxists see IAs as a counter revolutionary force… in a sense they are considered “too radical for the times”. As far as I can tell though, the IA movement, to the extent that it succeeds, provides quite a few boons to the working class.

First off, it reduces the “reserve army of the unemployed”, placing upward pressure on wage rates, by giving the workers a viable alternative to submission. Secondly, it removes goods from availability, increasing effective demand, which, while inflationary, also adds upward pressure on wage rates from the bottom up. Plus it gives psychological relief to the bottom, marginal strata of the working class by giving them a concrete viable alternative to their situation which is not submissive but defiant and proud, not alienated but passionate.

In theory this combined pressure on the capitalists should yield shocks and amplify the basic contradictions in the system… in some areas capitalism will collapse or be forced to withdraw. In these spaces the IAs will build a new way of life (somehow), rinse, repeat.

So far the most successful IA movement in recent times has been the EZLN, the Zapatistas of Chiapas. In many areas of Oaxaca there have been large pockets of success, but a lot of backlash as well.

Then there are the Philosophical anarchists. They come in both anarcho-capitalist and anarcho-socialist varieties. Their essential idea is to eschew political activism largely, but to make attempts to convince people far and wide of the essential rightness of their position. In theory, this will undermine the power and prestige of the state at all levels of society. Fewer and fewer individuals will actively take part in the various workings of the state, until one day the last bureaucrat turns the lights out in the last office. Though they tend not to openly advocate the other paths, their methodology requires people to pursue them, lest this method take 100s of years. They tend to be the most pessimistic about the short term prospects for anarchism. Many anarchists will combine philosophical outreach with other strategies, though the IAs often seem to be a bit less sanguine about this, seeing it as a diversionary waste of time.

There are the “Parliamentary” anarchists. These types also come in both anarcho-capitalist and anarcho-socialist varieties. They want to “work from the inside” to undermine the state through direct engagement with its machinery. They will field candidates, vote, agitate for specific laws, etc. In theory, by pressuring the state they will force it to act against the ruling classes’ wishes, weakening them step by step until the state itself is easily abolished altogether.

Anarcho-capitalists who follow this path are often indistinguishable from minarchist “libertarians” except in their idea of the endgame, and possible radicalism of their proposals. Anarcho-socialists who follow this path are often indistinguishable from Fabian social-democrats except in their idea of the endgame, and possible radicalism of their proposals.

The weakness of this position is that it tends to yield a very stable state. As the radical left and right parliamentarians collide, the economic positions will stabilize around a sort of mixed economy capitalism, while civil liberties will be high and militarism low. Very much like Western Europe actually. This sort of state will eventually collapse under its own economic contradictions but if both parties are dedicated to advancing their positions it could take a very long time.

Then there are the anarcho-syndicalists, or labor-anarchists, and the agorists. Despite evolving from very different positions, these two strategies have the most in common with each other, and are capable of co-existing with insurrectionary anarchism, at least in theory. They are not political revolutionary strategies, but economic revolutionary strategies, that employ force primary as a last ditch self-defense tactic.

Anarcho-syndicalism is one of the oldest varieties of anarchism, basically evolving out of the labor movement of the 19^th century. They seek to find ways to use direct action in the workplace to disrupt the employing class, while also developing alternative forms of production (often called syndicates, thus the name) that are worker-owned and often not tied into a profit motive. (Since the laborers would be receiving the full product of their labor, there would be no profit per-se, no excess revenue going to a third party.) Anarcho-syndicalism is not confrontational with “capitalism” as a unified force, but confronts the capitalists inside the workplace. The IWW, while not officially “anarchist” in name, is basically a model of how this sort of method works. They did not seek to engage the state directly, but to pressure the state to concede to their demands as workers.

In theory the employers will be pushed back and gradually replaced, until independent workers collectives will control the means of production and the state will cease to have any meaning or power.

Kevin Carson’s “Labor Struggle: A Free Market Model” has a lot of historical and speculative ideas about this path in detail.

The major advantage of this strategy is that it is productive and immediate. Using the techniques of direct action gets immediate, tangible results for the working class, which empowers them to engage in further action. The major disadvantage is that it tends to draw the fire of the state, literally and figuratively. As the conditions of production are moving away from large-scale material outlays, this methodology is becoming more and more practical again. At the same time, it is becoming more and more similar to agorism.

Agorism is the idea of counter-economic production with a philosophical underpinning of anarchism. Counter-economic production is production that exists outside of the purview or approval of the state. The black and grey markets, so called. In a sense, agorism could be seen as freelance anarcho-syndicalism. One difference is that agorism is something that can be practiced by individuals, small business owners and workers alike. The basic idea is to operate outside the eye, and thus control, of the state. Stealth, exile and cunning, as James Joyce put it, are required. This strategy is also productive and immediate, it is also direct action, only outside an official workplace.

The website agorism.info has a great deal of information about agorism and its possibilities as a revolutionary economic anarchist strategy.

As each of these paths advance, we can expect that there will be an overlap between an-syn and agorism. Unofficial unions, syndicates and labor associations will form their own production firms not dependent on a capitalist owner and in ways unauthorized by any state, thus being equivalent to agorist firms. Profit taking agorist firms and syndicates will trade with each other for parts and material and services. Both agorism and anarcho-syndicalism remove laborers and a marginal number of unemployed from the market for state-capitalist labor, thus providing upward pressure on wage rates. They are both deflationary forces, by adding goods and services to the market at lower prices than a statist firm which must absorb the costs of the state’s taxes and regulation. This puts state-capitalist firms in a vice. The state will have to expend more and more resources to fight these unauthorized mills of production, while at the same time dealing with a larger and larger insurrectionary movement. It is quite reasonable to expect that at least some anarcho-syndicates and agorist firms will donate materials and services to the insurrectionary anarchist movement, perhaps in exchange for labor or crafts, as each of these movements grow. The insurrectionary movement will develop, perhaps, into the “sword” of the anarchist movement while agorism and anarcho-syndicalism will serve as the “plowshare”.

Each of these movements can co-exist and synergize each others activities if they can get over their philosophical differences at least for strategic purposes. That may seem like a big “if” right now, but as the state in its desperation grows more authoritarian, exposing the iron fist from below the velvet glove, the pragmatic benefits may bring all of these “direct action” movements together, at least at the margins.

ALLiance Contributing Writer Anna O. Morgenstern has been an anarchist of one stripe or another for almost 30 years. Her intellectual interests include economic history, social psychology and voluntary organization theory. She likes piña coladas, but not getting caught in the rain.