Sort of political Monday
I had thought to write something about the various Occupy protests but I see that others have already hammered down the salient points. Except the media, that is, who seem to be entranced by what are really pretty small protests. The only thing I'd add is that these things are yet another failure for social media.
The only important thing about the Occupy movement that hasn't had much said about it is that it has a lot in common with anarchism. Some of us were talking about that on the weekend and it soon became obvious to me that most educated people have no idea what anarchists believe in. So here is a primer.
Now, to do a good primer, I have to present anarchists in the best possible light, so no take downs today. This is a short presentation of the thinking behind anarchism.
Anarchists, like all sorts of post-Hegelian political movements, believe that society in it's current form carries deep faults that will eventually lead to its failure and that when it fails, something better and more natural will grow up in its place. That's where they differ from you or me. Most of us worry that widespread social failure will lead to a dark age of violence, poverty and meaninglessness. Anarchists believe we already live in a dark age sustained by an unjust social order and that collapse will free us.
Anarchism is a sort of bipolar belief in that there are times when anarchists can convince themselves that they see the signs of the coming collapse and believe all they have to do is to call attention to this so everyone else will join into push the idol over. And that, of course, is what the Occupy protests have been all about. They see the current economic difficulties as an opportunity to promote unrest. What the protestors are hoping is millions of others sitting at home following this on Facebook or on television will see what is happening and decide they can all rebel or, at the very least, that the tension against the fault lines will be ratcheted up just a notch more.
There are other times when anarchists think that they need to seed the storm. This is when they resort to violence but they don't believe they can overthrow society by violence. To the contrary, anarchists believe that any successful rebel group that did overthrow society would inevitably become a new tyranny. Anarchists believe that the only overthrow that will yield a better world is one that spreads widely (and wildly) throughout society and thus the point of the violence is always to inspire others to rise up against society.
Anarchists also believe that one of the ways that society demonstrates its illegitimacy is by overreacting to anarchist violence. As a consequence, some anarchist violence is intended to be sacrificial. One of the recurring strategies is to frame every successful action police and governments take against anarchists as brutal repression of human rights and freedoms and anarchists have gotten to be very good at playing the media to help them do this.
You can always find some anarchists on both sides of this peaceful-means versus use-of-violence divide and you find other anarchists who swing back and forth.
The really important thing to grasp about anarchists is that they aren't all that interested in destroying society themselves. As crazy as this may seem, anarchists believe that most people are seething with anger and discontent. They think the only reason we don't all riot all the time is an illusion of order and authority. The things they do are always intended to form cracks in what they see as just an illusion. They think that the rest of us are in a state of tension such that we are ready to let go much the same way that a storm cloud can be primed to let go earlier, or as an avalanche can be triggered or a tinderbox set aflame.
Why do they think this would be a good thing? Well, think of what happens when systems fail. A few years ago we had giant ice storm up here that closed roads, shut power off (sometimes for days) and generally brought everything to a stop. In the aftermath, many people helped one another. They shared food and comfort, they formed little groups to help dig out the little old ladies, they made sure that anyone who needed to get to the hospital did. Anarchists imagine that widespread social collapse will produce the same sort of cooperation on a much larger scale. And you can see that they really do believe this in the way that their movement tends to always coalesce around things like tent cities. (From the very beginning anarchism has tended to be an urban phenomenon and that shouldn't surprise us. For similar reasons, anarchism is always and everywhere opposed to individualism.)
It is in their belief that something like what happened here after the ice storm will happen on a grand scale after social collapse that anarchists differ most profoundly from Communists. Anarchists do not believe that any sort of special worker class or any revolutionary elite is necessary to build a new society after the old one has collapsed. They believe, and yes they are incredibly naive to believe this but they do, that a better, more peaceful society will naturally spring up based on "real" needs.
The flip side of this is that they believe that the current unjust society is being sustained by a relatively small subset of people who do well out of the system as it currently exists. And it is one of the inherent weaknesses of anarchism that they tend to demonize these people and can convince themselves that appalling acts of violence against them are justifiable. Anarchists are also prone to antisemitism and the anarchist movements seem to inevitably traffic in some of the ugliest anti-Jewish stereotypes (this has not been much reported, but ugly demonizing of Jews has been a small but significant part of the Occupy protests).
The other really crazy thing that pretty much inevitably happens with anarchism is that some small group or lone actor will convince themselves that some act of really brutal violence against an authority figure or iconic public monument will trigger a revolution. They can even imagine that they themselves will be killed in the process but that their death will trigger change. So they sit alone in their parent's basement, or out in the garage or maybe in some small apartment somewhere building a bomb or planning an assassination. Most of these plans never get carried out, and the majority of the small number that are attempted fail but every once in a while, one of them will succeed. My suspicion is that however miserable a failure the Occupy protests are, the risk of some nasty act of violence in the aftermath is very significant.
I had thought to write something about the various Occupy protests but I see that others have already hammered down the salient points. Except the media, that is, who seem to be entranced by what are really pretty small protests. The only thing I'd add is that these things are yet another failure for social media.
The only important thing about the Occupy movement that hasn't had much said about it is that it has a lot in common with anarchism. Some of us were talking about that on the weekend and it soon became obvious to me that most educated people have no idea what anarchists believe in. So here is a primer.
Now, to do a good primer, I have to present anarchists in the best possible light, so no take downs today. This is a short presentation of the thinking behind anarchism.
Anarchists, like all sorts of post-Hegelian political movements, believe that society in it's current form carries deep faults that will eventually lead to its failure and that when it fails, something better and more natural will grow up in its place. That's where they differ from you or me. Most of us worry that widespread social failure will lead to a dark age of violence, poverty and meaninglessness. Anarchists believe we already live in a dark age sustained by an unjust social order and that collapse will free us.
Anarchism is a sort of bipolar belief in that there are times when anarchists can convince themselves that they see the signs of the coming collapse and believe all they have to do is to call attention to this so everyone else will join into push the idol over. And that, of course, is what the Occupy protests have been all about. They see the current economic difficulties as an opportunity to promote unrest. What the protestors are hoping is millions of others sitting at home following this on Facebook or on television will see what is happening and decide they can all rebel or, at the very least, that the tension against the fault lines will be ratcheted up just a notch more.
There are other times when anarchists think that they need to seed the storm. This is when they resort to violence but they don't believe they can overthrow society by violence. To the contrary, anarchists believe that any successful rebel group that did overthrow society would inevitably become a new tyranny. Anarchists believe that the only overthrow that will yield a better world is one that spreads widely (and wildly) throughout society and thus the point of the violence is always to inspire others to rise up against society.
Anarchists also believe that one of the ways that society demonstrates its illegitimacy is by overreacting to anarchist violence. As a consequence, some anarchist violence is intended to be sacrificial. One of the recurring strategies is to frame every successful action police and governments take against anarchists as brutal repression of human rights and freedoms and anarchists have gotten to be very good at playing the media to help them do this.
You can always find some anarchists on both sides of this peaceful-means versus use-of-violence divide and you find other anarchists who swing back and forth.
The really important thing to grasp about anarchists is that they aren't all that interested in destroying society themselves. As crazy as this may seem, anarchists believe that most people are seething with anger and discontent. They think the only reason we don't all riot all the time is an illusion of order and authority. The things they do are always intended to form cracks in what they see as just an illusion. They think that the rest of us are in a state of tension such that we are ready to let go much the same way that a storm cloud can be primed to let go earlier, or as an avalanche can be triggered or a tinderbox set aflame.
Why do they think this would be a good thing? Well, think of what happens when systems fail. A few years ago we had giant ice storm up here that closed roads, shut power off (sometimes for days) and generally brought everything to a stop. In the aftermath, many people helped one another. They shared food and comfort, they formed little groups to help dig out the little old ladies, they made sure that anyone who needed to get to the hospital did. Anarchists imagine that widespread social collapse will produce the same sort of cooperation on a much larger scale. And you can see that they really do believe this in the way that their movement tends to always coalesce around things like tent cities. (From the very beginning anarchism has tended to be an urban phenomenon and that shouldn't surprise us. For similar reasons, anarchism is always and everywhere opposed to individualism.)
It is in their belief that something like what happened here after the ice storm will happen on a grand scale after social collapse that anarchists differ most profoundly from Communists. Anarchists do not believe that any sort of special worker class or any revolutionary elite is necessary to build a new society after the old one has collapsed. They believe, and yes they are incredibly naive to believe this but they do, that a better, more peaceful society will naturally spring up based on "real" needs.
The flip side of this is that they believe that the current unjust society is being sustained by a relatively small subset of people who do well out of the system as it currently exists. And it is one of the inherent weaknesses of anarchism that they tend to demonize these people and can convince themselves that appalling acts of violence against them are justifiable. Anarchists are also prone to antisemitism and the anarchist movements seem to inevitably traffic in some of the ugliest anti-Jewish stereotypes (this has not been much reported, but ugly demonizing of Jews has been a small but significant part of the Occupy protests).
The other really crazy thing that pretty much inevitably happens with anarchism is that some small group or lone actor will convince themselves that some act of really brutal violence against an authority figure or iconic public monument will trigger a revolution. They can even imagine that they themselves will be killed in the process but that their death will trigger change. So they sit alone in their parent's basement, or out in the garage or maybe in some small apartment somewhere building a bomb or planning an assassination. Most of these plans never get carried out, and the majority of the small number that are attempted fail but every once in a while, one of them will succeed. My suspicion is that however miserable a failure the Occupy protests are, the risk of some nasty act of violence in the aftermath is very significant.
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