Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (137 page)

These forms of protest and resistance not only challenge the authority of the State and the power of transnational corporations but reveal the empty charade of consumer society. By their very nature, they show a different way of doing things which is decentralized, democratic, egalitarian and fun. They are intended to demonstrate that the more you consume and gawp, the less you live, while the more you act and create, the more fulfilled and alive you become.

My own view is that any means employed inevitably influence the ends; indeed, means are ends-in-the-making. You cannot use violence against individuals as the principal means to bring about a peaceful society. You cannot use a secret elite to overthrow an elite without the danger of creating another one. You cannot use coercion to bring about a free society. You cannot force others to be free. Non-violent resistance, civil disobedience and direct action may be necessary sometimes against an oppressive tyranny, but the best way to bring about change is to persuade people openly of the benefits of a decentralized society without government through creative thought, imagination, action and example. When there are enough people who want to be free, then we shall have a free society. To try and impose by force an anarchist solution on society is against the whole tenor of anarchism, which seeks to end coercion and expand freedom. And confronted with the mad rationality of the Panopticon and Pentagon society, love is truly subversive.

Just as the notion of ‘self-organization’, partly inspired by new cybernetics, became popular in the seventies, so the more organic image of the ‘rhizome’, used by the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, has caught on to delineate anarchist organization. In typically convoluted prose, they describe the concept as containing the principles of connection, heterogeneity and multiplicity: ‘an acentred, non-hierarchical, non-signifying system without a General and without an organizing memory or central automation, defined solely by a circulation of states’.
⁶⁵
In botany, the rhizome is a thick, horizontal underground stem of plants, the
buds of which develop like irises or mint into new plants. The metaphor is particularly appropriate to describe the kind of libertarian grassroots, non-hierarchical, leaderless networks of groups and movements which have emerged in the international campaigns against globalization, capitalism and war. They are like nature’s web itself, interconnected, diverse and fecund.

By working within the mainstream society, it is also possible to create a ‘transfer culture’, gradually building libertarian relationships of trust, support and co-operation in ever-widening and overlapping circles.
⁶⁶
These networks are often made up of ‘affinity groups’, convivial gatherings of like-minded individuals, which are autonomous, fluid, flexible and responsive. They come and go according to need and desire. They can form loose clusters and confederations, and where necessary send delegates or ‘spokes’ to larger assemblies or ‘spoke councils’ to co-ordinate their thinking and action through a process of consensus decision-making. To facilitate this, highly effective procedures have been developed to accommodate minority views and to resolve conflicts of opinion.

No longer ready to work or wait for a post-revolutionary Utopia in an imaginary future, many contemporary anarchists have taken up the anarcho-syndicalist idea of creating ‘the new world in the shell of the old’ by adopting a DIY approach. Better to do it yourself, they say, than be told what to do or do nothing. Such practical anarchy ranges from experiments in communal living, alternative economic systems and the development of libertarian institutions. These vary from LETS (Local Exchange and Trade Systems), co-ops, community centres to temporary autonomous zones and liminal spaces of transformation and passage. Groups like Critical Mass (originating in California) and Reclaim the Streets (first appearing in London) further try to reinhabit the over-regulated and constantly surveyed public spaces across Europe, Australasia and the Americas.

Anarchism has emerged as one of the most influential and dynamic currents in the anti-globalization movement, not so much as capital-’A’ anarchist groups as a network of small-’a’ anarchist activists. Indeed, in many ways the soul of the movement is anarchist.
⁶⁷
The term ‘anti-globalization’ describes a variety of groups which are all united in opposing the political and economic power of the multinational corporations and the free-trade agreements brokered by the leading industrial States which undermine local democracy, worsen labour conditions and harm the environment. Some however prefer to give it the more positive definition of Global
Justice Movement; others call it a movement of movements. Whatever the name, those involved wish to expose the mechanisms and machinations of corporate and State power and expand autonomous spaces within and outside their reaches.

The activists are anti-capital, anti-neoliberalism and anti-war; they are for human rights, biological and cultural diversity and the free movement of ideas and peoples across borders. They have no parties, no leaders and no centralized bureaucracy. Using the latest information technology, they organize and co-ordinate campaigns of direct action and civil disobedience across the globe. There can be no doubt that as a decentralized, leaderless network of self-organizing and autonomous groups, the international Global Justice Movement is very anarchistic. As Naomi Klein has observed, there is a general consensus that ‘building community-based decision-making power — whether through unions, neighbourhoods, farms, villages, anarchist collectives or aboriginal self-government — is essential to countering the might of the multinational corporations’.
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Anarchists have been involved in the World Social Forums, first held in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 2001, with the slogan ‘Another World is Possible’, and in the first European Social Forum in Florence in 2002, which defined itself as ‘Against the War, Against Racism, Against Neo-liberalism’. They have been active in the international People’s Global Action, founded in Geneva in 1998, which is an instrument for co-ordination, based on the principles of autonomy and decentralization, for those struggling against economic liberalization and corporate rule. A Direct Action Network of anarchist and anti-authoritarian affinity groups, autonomous and regional, was also set up to co-ordinate actions.

Not only does the organization of the Global Justice Movement reflect anarchist principles but anarchists have been prominently involved in a series of demonstrations at international summits of the most powerful and wealthy States and corporations. These have taken place in Seattle in 1999 (which shut down the meeting of the World Trade Organization), the IMF summit in Prague in 2000, the Genoa meeting of the G8 in 2001 (which led to the death of the Genoese anarchist Carlo Giuliani), the World Trade Forum in New York in 2002, the Anti-War demonstration in Washington DC in 2003, and the G8 summit in Rostock and Heiligendamm in 2007. The movement is generally committed to non-violent civil disobedience and direct action and attempts a carnivalesque disruption of order at the international gatherings.

Active in the movement is the organization Food not Bombs, started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the eighties and now with some 200 chapters all over the world. They are against war and poverty and for immigration and self-managing communities. The Love and Rage Anarchist Federation
in North America firmly adopted in the nineties a ‘Platformist’ approach, inspired by the Russian Dielo Truda’s
Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)
(1917), which emphasized the need for anarchists to organize themselves and adopt a common approach. They also took up the tactic of forming ‘Black Blocs’ at demonstrations which were first seen in the protests against the Gulf War in 1991.

Since Seattle, the Black Blocs have been joined by other anarchists, autonomists and anti-capitalist groups who are prepared to engage in vandalism and property destruction without wishing to harm human beings. The Black Bloc tactic developed out of the Autonomism movement in Germany, Holland, Italy and France in the eighties (influenced by the thinkers Antonio Negri and Cornelius Castoriadis), whose members wore black clothes and urged the working class to force changes outside the trade unions and the State. Despite their commitment to liberty and equality, their confrontational tactics have attracted media interest,
agents provocateurs
and police repression as well as resurrecting the popular but mistaken image of anarchism as violent and dangerous.

Other anarchists adopt a more playful form of cultural subversion. Ya Basta! (Enough Already) groups in the US and the Wombles (White Overalls Movement Building Libertarian Effective Struggles) in Britain have dressed up in white overalls for symbolic actions, taking their cue from the Tute Blanche (White Overalls) group in Italy and the Provos in Holland. Reclaim the Streets groups, which first appeared in Britain, arrange direct actions from mass cycling to street parties in order to re-inhabit public spaces. Acts of senseless beauty and absurd theatre, pink fairies and Michelin men have delighted and subverted the media and helped to raise awareness about the plight of those who most suffer from the effects of globalization, Capital and the State.

Given the confines of space, this brief survey of recent developments in anarchism is somewhat Atlantic-centric, but it should not be forgotten that anarchism is a vibrant, world-wide movement. In Russia, a hard-hitting anarchist punk rock scene emerged in the eighties and nineties, more concerned with personal rebelliousness than class struggle. The New Revolutionary Alternative appeared however in 1991, carrying out a number of direct actions in protest against the Second Chechen War, attacking government buildings and military and police centres. The increasingly authoritarian government in Russia gives little room for opposition but anarchist-inspired groups include Autonomous Action, New Light and the Siberian Confederation of Labour. In the old Soviet Union, there is also a
lively anarchist scene, more engaged in cultural subversion than class struggle, especially in the Czech Republic and Hungary.

On the eastern fringe of Europe, in Greece, there has been a strong interest in social ecology. A new wave of young anarchists emerged in the nineties, especially among school and university students, whose actions culminated in the violent police invasion of the Polytechnic of Athens in 1995. They were involved again in clashes with police in 2007 while protesting against government plans to privatize higher education. Some insurrectionists, known as ‘Thieves in Black’, have engaged in bank robberies, while in 2006 a group called ‘Anti-Justice’ let off a few symbolic bombs. In neighbouring Turkey, anarchists have published the magazine
Ates Hirsizi
, and offered a federal solution for Kurdistan. A translation of
Demanding the Impossible
has also appeared.

Travelling further east, the
Sarvodaya
movement, inspired by Gandhi, who called for an ‘enlightened anarchy’, is still active. In India, where it is often translated as ‘Welfare for All’, it has been working for the voluntary donation and redistribution of land and the development of a decentralized, self-managing society. In Sri Lanka, the Buddhist-inspired movement is known as ‘Awakening for All’ and has been involved in grassroots development and peace projects.

On the other hand, many countries in Asia have had severe restrictions on free speech and assembly although their authoritarian governments and dictatorships allow multinational corporations a free hand. Having experienced decades of brutal communist dictatorships and Marxist propaganda, the rallying cry of class war does not go down very well. Nevertheless, anarchist groups are active in Cambodia, the Philippines and in Indonesia (where the Jarkata Anarchist Resistance operates and where
Demanding the Impossible
is being translated).

Anarchism has played a very significant part in Korean history, a tradition kept alive today by the Korean Anarchist Network in the South. The week-long uprising in the South Korean town of Kwangju in 1980, during which neighbourhood assemblies were established, inspired other revolts against dictatorships in East Asia. Libertarian ‘people-power revolutions’ have helped overthrow dictatorships in the Philippines and in Indonesia. Despite the highly conformist and hierarchical structure of Japanese society, groups like Anarchy in Nippon are challenging the
status quo.
There is also a lively and creative anarchist movement in Australia, and to a lesser extent in New Zealand.

Libertarian impulses in China were given temporary and joyous expression in Tiananmen Square in 1989, especially by the Autonomous Beijing Group. After the tanks rolled in, the implacable censorship and brutal repression of the Chinese Communist Party have prevented an anarchist
movement from surfacing, although a strong anarchist current is flowing in the underground labour and anti-dictatorship movements. The Falun Gong movement, based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, also offers a powerful challenge to the Chinese Communist State.

In Africa, most people have managed their lives communally outside or despite their corrupt and dictatorial governments. Indeed, many aspects of the traditional village are quite anarchistic, especially the reliance on consensus decision-making. The decentralized and participatory democracy of many ethnic groups — so-called tribes without rulers — are moreover an inspiration to the wider movement. At the same time, a self-conscious anarchist movement has developed in South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho, where the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation is active. Uganda has anarchist voices. Nigeria, the largest African nation, has a dynamic anarchist movement called the ‘Awareness League’. Two of its members, Sam Mbah and I. E. Igariwey, have produced the first history of
African Anarchism
(1997). Even Nobel-prize winning writer Wole Soyinka has been linked to the cause.