We
have been studying political philosophies that support or advance
toward bottom-up democracy through top-down structures of authority.
Anarchism also aims at bottom-up democracy, but more radically does not
propose any top-down authority for support. Just as Thoreau wrote in
Civil Disobedience, “That government is best which governs the least”,
Anarchists believe in getting rid of government as much as possible.
This may or may not leave room for a diminished government that leans
towards capitalism or socialism, but it is at odds with communism
imposing a dictatorship even though it also ultimately aims at direct
governance by the people. Hard capitalism could be similar if not
identical to anarchism (remember that communists consider capitalism to
be anarchism already but anarchism for the wealthy rather than for the
common people), however capitalism traditionally relies on the state for
money and military support. Socialism is not compatible with complete
anarchism because it presupposes a state structure, but a more
libertarian socialism would aim at anarchism as much as it is possible
and feasible, just like communism.
How
feasible is anarchy? Some say it is impossible. Others say it is
entirely possible and we can figure it out and live it now. Others say
we cannot figure it out, but we should dream the impossible and strive
to achieve what may only be a dream for now. To many anarchism is no
different than Hobbes’ state of nature: nasty, brutish and short-lived.
Without government, the police and military for example, how would the
powerless and marginalized be defended from the powerful and dominant?
Anarchists would side with Saint-Simon, the socialist, and argue that
technology and culture have advanced to a point where power can be held
by the people without the necessary abuses of the state. Government and
structures of power, they would argue, are already inherently abusive,
and anarchism would be less abusive than the current structures of
power. For instance, while the powerful could still hire private armies
to do what they want without fear of the state police, international
wars would become virtually impossible.
One
can find the idea that power is inherently abusive in ancient Chinese
and Greek thought (Daoism and Stoicism specifically), in the thought of
Rousseau and Thoreau, as well as libertarianism of 1800s France and
America today. The term ‘anarchism’ was used as a negative term by the
Royalists against the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War
(involving Hobbes and Locke). During the French Revolution,
progressives who began opposing the dictatorship of Robespierre began
using the term in a positive way. This prefigured the split between
communists and anarchists. The question is, is centralized authority
more or less abusive than decentralized authority? All the political
philosophies theoretically aim at decentralized authority, but none
trusts decentralized authority like anarchism. One could equally say
that none trusts dictatorship like communism that we have studied so
far, but fascism (which we study next week) believes in dictatorship
like communism but does not believe in evolving toward direct democracy.
Proudhon
The
first to call himself an anarchist by name was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(1809 – 1865). He is best known for the quote, “Property is theft”,
from his work, “What is Property?”. He is also quoted famously for
saying, “Anarchy is order”, the possible origin of the A surrounded by
an O which is the symbol of anarchism. Marx and Proudhon were friends
for awhile in Paris before splitting over differences. Proudhon argued
for a collectivism of co-ops and communes without the need for a
centralized state. Unlike Marx and communism, Proudhon did not believe
in the nationalization of property under state ownership. Through free
association, individuals labor in collectives and reap the fruit of
their efforts without individual or collective ownership of the kind
Locke felt the state must protect. Rather than property, Proudhon
argued for possession through mutual and voluntary use.
While
communists such as Marx argued that dictatorship was necessary to
transform society, Proudhon and his followers recalled the French
Revolution and argued that this would be a step backwards that would
take power from the people rather than giving power to the people.
Proudhon repeatedly spoke of “the people”, and regarded all government
as tyranny. This goes beyond Rousseau, who believes in central
government that has the support of the general will. Proudhon argued
that property was the cause of all wars, including religious wars and
the French Revolution, and so if possession through use made property
rights unnecessary war would become a thing of the past. Towards the
end of his life, Proudhon began to compromise with the idea of a balance
of central authority as a socialist, but retained his belief that
mutualism was superior and more trustworthy than authority.
Bakunin
Socialists
in Europe became polarized at this time between the communists who
followed Marx and the Anarchists who followed Proudhon and the Russian
Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876). A Hegelian like Marx, Bakunin had met
both Marx and Proudhon in Paris and translated Hegel and the Communist
Manifesto of Marx and Engels into Russian. Like Lenin and Trotsky,
Bakunin was exiled from Russia for his criticism of the tyrannical power
of the Tsar. Unlike Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky however, Bakunin
had come to distrust authority even under the guise of socialism and
communism. At meetings of the First International socialist congress,
Marx argued that they should participate in European national elections
while Bakunin argued that they should abstain from voting and complying
with state held power. Bakunin argued for rising up against the state
in acts of open rebellion, what he called “the propaganda of the deed”
(actions speak louder than words). Later anarchists would use this
phrase to describe bombings and assassinations against those they
believe oppress the common people. The Marxists, who dominated the
congress, expelled Bakunin and his followers. Bakunin continued to
argue that no one should be given political power, not even the workers,
as this power would come to exploit the workers themselves. All
dictatorship is self-perpetuating, and a communist dictatorship would
merely claim to be the voice of the people. Marcuse and Chomsky have
both been influenced by Bakunin in their criticism of communist
dictatorship.
The Spanish Civil War
During
the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939), the fascist general Francisco
Franco fought for control of a divided Spain with the support of the
fascist governments of Italy and Germany and American corporations such
as General Motors, Ford and Texaco. Those on the left, the communists,
socialists and anarchists, saw the war as a struggle for freedom, while
those on the right saw the war as a struggle for Christian civilization.
On the left were peasants, workers and intellectuals. On the right
were the clergy, the military, land owners and business interests.
Anarchism had gained more influence in Spain than elsewhere in Europe,
and for a brief time, especially in Andalusia and Catalonia, land and
industries were collectivized and run as mutualist co-ops.
Unfortunately, this success frightened the communists as well as the
fascists, and infighting between communists and anarchists weakened the
left side of the war. With the victory of Franco in 1939, these
communities were crushed and thousands of anarchists and communists
shot. I personally saw walls in Barcelona that were riddled with
pockmarks from this period. This is known as a brief period where
anarchism did flourish and work as a political form, but because it was
so brief and crushed by fascism its feasibility remains controversial.
Would it have survived and flourished had Franco and the powers that
backed him not been victorious, or would it have been swallowed up by
communism or another form of power?
Squatter’s Rights
One
concept of anarchism that still has a following today is squatter’s
rights. Do the poor have the right to seize unused property such as
houses and factories and use them as they see fit, gaining possession of
these lands and facilities through use? Capitalism and communism would
say no, because property is the right of the individual or the state,
not to be seized voluntarily. Anarchists argue that people should take
possession of buildings that are not used and put them to good use for
the good of any who wish to contribute to the effort. There are
countless squatter’s communities around the world, especially in
impoverished areas (consider homeless camps visible underneath freeway
overpasses here in the East Bay). In Detroit there have been activists
for decades who help poor families break into unused homes and repair
them so that they can be used, resulting in continuous struggles with
local police. Some of these activists even call the police and let them
know what homes they are “liberating” to wear down police already busy
with other matters.
Free Love & Women’s Rights
Anarchism
is often in solidarity with free love and women’s rights movements.
Just as anarchism wants an end to the domination of the wealthy over
the poor, it also seeks an end to other forms of oppression such as the
tyranny of the male over the female. Anarchists often are champions of
free love, the voluntary sexual association of individuals rather than
the prescribed and state sanctified sexual union of marriage, as well as
women’s rights such as equal treatment, suffrage, contraception, and
abortion. While this is much more accepted today under state systems,
sexual relations outside of marriage were considered criminal in the
past and remain so in many places today. Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) was
a feminist and anarchist who argued the real anarchist and social
revolution should be concerned with ridding society of gender
inequality. Critical of both American capitalism and Soviet communism,
she is considered one of the first revolutionary feminists who hoped
that one day women would be recognized as full individuals who are able
to get married or not and have children or not without the coercion of
the state or culture.
Now
we consider two thinkers who are not only affiliated with anarchism but
increasingly important today: Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. Both
criticize the way power and information are held in society and the
oppressive nature of human institutions. However, Chomsky is very much a
positivist who believes that there are true human rights and objective
facts while Foucault is very much an existentialist and Nietzschean who
believes that any conception of true rights or objectivity is itself
oppressive in the same way as all human institutions. Both agree that
power as it is practiced today marginalizes the truth, perspective and
reality of the oppressed, but they disagree over whether this is
monstrous or all too human. This is an important debate within not only
anarchism but many other schools of thought. Are human beings always
dominating and marginalizing, or are there just forms of social life
that liberate us from domination? Are there true human rights, or are
human rights another form, perhaps more evolved, of political domination
and control? On the one hand, with positivism, we can agree that there
are human rights and social forms we believe in and push for, but on
the other, with skepticism, we know that America, Britain and the Soviet
Union have paid great lip service to human rights while ignoring and
marginalizing brutality and domination at home and abroad. Either way,
we should push for the good while maintaining skepticism.
Noam Chomsky (1928 – present)
Chomsky,
who has openly declared himself an anarchist, is one of the foremost
critics of American empire and colonialism as was the late Howard Zinn.
He first became famous and secured tenure at MIT in the 50s as a
linguist and philosopher of language with his theory of universal
grammar, also called x-bar y-bar theory (essentially, that there are
basic structures of grammar inherent to all human language such that
ancient Chinese has nouns and verbs just like modern English). In the
late 60s, he gained far more fame across many academic disciplines and
the reading public as a critic of the Vietnam war and American empire.
One of his most famous books is Manufacturing Consent (1988) that he
co-wrote with Edward Herman, which argues that the American mass media
maintains silence about the brutality of our military, corporations and
allies while repeatedly putting the brutality of our enemies and
opponents on display. For example, TV news programs and newspapers
devoted many minutes of airtime and inches of print discussing
suppression of dissent in communist countries while maintaining media
silence about the same forms of suppression here at home and in Central
and South America.
Chomsky
states that all forms of authority and domination should be challenged
and if the forms are unjustifiable they should be dismantled. Chomsky
clearly has the political, economic, and military domination of America
over much of the rest of the world in mind. Because power is by nature
domineering and potentially abusive, the burden of proof should be on
the authority itself to justify its own existence and importance.
Chomsky is consistently critical of academic journals maintaining
silence as he is of the mass media, arguing that even left-wing
academics are either brainwashed into believing that the West and
America stand for freedom and democracy in the face of the evidence he
collects or know what not to say and practice self censorship to
maintain and advance their careers. Chomsky criticizes forms of
democracy and libertarianism as practiced in America and Britain that
give property rights overriding support (like Locke) while maintaining
silence about poverty and the gap between the rich and the poor, as well
as Soviet communism for being an enemy of true socialism. Chomsky
argues, unlike Foucault, that there is a true human nature and that
unjust institutions contradict and violate this nature, however he does
also say that we do not know enough about human nature to know whether
it is basically anarchistic and libertarian or oppressive and
domineering. In other words, he hopes that Mencius is right but we do
not know enough to rule Xun Zi out.
Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984)
Foucault
is now a very celebrated and well studied thinker not only in
philosophy but also in history, sociology and political science. He
also taught briefly at Berkeley. His books are critical historical
studies of social institutions and practices such as prisons,
psychiatric hospitals, science and sexuality. Foucault called himself a
Nietzschean (a follower of Nietzsche, who we will study next class
along with how some Nazis misused his philosophy) and his critical
philosophy centers on the idea of the human tendency to privilege what
is labeled as good while marginalizing and dominating what is labeled as
evil. The famous story is that Foucault went on vacation to the
Riviera and brought Nietzsche, who he had not yet read, with him, and
then stayed in his hotel room the entire time reading Nietzsche.
As
a Nietzschean, Foucault is deeply critical of any claim to absolute or
objective knowledge, distrusts binary dichotomies such as good/bad,
true/false, opinion/knowledge or sane/insane, and understands truth as a
struggle between competing forces, institutions and interpretations.
Institutions must support binary divisions to maintain power and
pronounce themselves objective holders of genuine knowledge and truth.
This bends our view of reality such that the dominant system (religion,
science, politics, etc) is simply identified with truth and the messy
historical process and evolution of systems of thought is obscured.
For
Foucault knowledge is always involved with serving power, just as for
Nietzsche truth is always involved with desire. We have all heard
‘Knowledge is Power!’ as a good thing, but for Foucault knowledge is not
only power, it is domination. He states that truth is not outside
power, but is a thing of this world. Foucault studies the complicated
historical situations when one form of power, knowledge and dominance
shifts to become another form as circumstances change. A dominant theme
of his work is that with industrialization people have to learn to
police and dominate themselves and the authorities have to convince them
that it is their own idea and independence. Marcuse describes
something similar in One-Dimensional Man.
Thus,
science such as psychiatry serves powerful interests while baptizing
itself as disinterested objective truth, and the average person believes
that they are smart and free for believing what they are told in a
magazine rather than understanding the complicated and brutal process of
various forms of truth that compete with each other. However, Foucault
believes that we should push for what we want and strive for greater
understanding while knowing that we are naturally greedy, abusive,
marginalizing, and ignorant.
Power
is not just a negative thing, but everything, so the form of the bad is
the form of the good. Thus, communists who declare themselves to be
liberators are also oppressors, and people who feel oppressed by society
are also helping to oppress themselves through fear and desire. Human
nature is neither good nor evil, but the two together. While not openly
calling himself an anarchist, Foucault distrusted all forms of
authority and became disenchanted with communism and other forms of left
wing thought. His conception of power is very similar if not identical
to anarchist criticisms of society.
