In Defence Of Misrepresnted Minorities

[Warbler]

It's become apparent to me over the last few weeks, that there has been an attempt to demonise one of the oldest standing socio/ political philosophies of history?

In no small part this has been down to the clarion callers of David Cameron (Daily Mail and Express et al) though somewhat ironically they invoke Johnny Rotten (ney Lydon) though in fairness, I wouldn't blame them. But since 'call me Dave' has suddenly become a 'Pistols' scholar, perhaps he ought to dwell on a later follow up single 'Pretty Vacant'.

I'm seriously tempted to ask how many people who've set out to demonise anarchists, have actually read any of it's theory?

William Godwin?
Mikhael Bakunin?
John Ruskin?
Leo Tolstoy?
Peter Kropotkin?
Gandhi?
John Woodcock?

If you have; you'll realise it's far from the popular misconception that the right wing politically correct press are pedalling. In many respects it's a description of a Utopian society based on mutual respect and collective assistance?

Unfortunately, human beings don't always organise along such lines. Those of you familiar with Lenin's works will realise the problems he had in this respect "The State and Revolution" - circa August 1917. Emancipation of the masses into a theoretcial nirvana presents problems? Outside powers and interests attack it, because it's a threat to their hegenomy. To defend these gains, you have to militarise a state? A classic dialectic?

But don't let us confuse anarchy, with the excesses of capitalist polarisation please. All I do is appeal to those of you with more critical faculties to read, and work it out shrug::

 

[tetley]

[/QUOTE]
But don't let us confuse anarchy, with the excesses of capitalist polarisation please. [/QUOTE]


It's easy to see why people do, anarchy is almost always portayed as such by the media.

 

[Warbler]

Originally posted by tetley@Aug 28 2007, 04:46 AM

But don't let us confuse anarchy, with the excesses of capitalist polarisation please. [/QUOTE]


It's easy to see why people do, anarchy is almost always portayed as such by the media. [/quote]
Indeed it is, and it puzzles me

An environmental protester is always described as an "anarchist", a football fan behaving badly, a "hooligan"?

Yet another (of many) examples of right wing political correctness that the press barons have been pedalling for centuries. Anarchist theory is based very much on peace, mutual support, and the destruction of autocracy. It's just about the most liberating of all philosophies and can trace it's lineage back centuries.

It annoys me that the lazy and academically ignorant media people bracket those individuals who've come to epitomise what David (hug a hoodie) Cameron calls "Anarchy in the UK" as such. In truth the behaviour of such feral packs of people bears no resemblence what so ever to anarchy, which although it has it's schisms, is essentially an idealistic philosophy based on very liberated people acting collectively for the greater good without the need to resort to autocratic enforcement through the collective consciousness of what's right and wrong.

I think for those of you with an architectural background, you can probably add Frank Lloyd-Wright to the list too. Certainly his conceptual proposal for 'Broadacre Town' (or something like that - circa 1958) drew heavily on Kropotkin. By then he'd given up designing buildings and had branched out into wider idealistic ambitions. Today, aspects of it look positively visionary, but it too will be buried in an obscure part of history for fear that it might be embraced.

 

[tetley]

Originally posted by Warbler@Aug 28 2007, 11:52 AM
Anarchist theory is based very much on peace, mutual support, and the destruction of autocracy. It's just about the most liberating of all philosophies and can trace it's lineage back centuries.

You have anarchy pitched right, but I would like to know in which industrial nation it has worked.

 

[Sara]

Very few Anarchist groups have even attempted to cohere and to put their philosophy into practice... Those which have done so, have almost without exception used violence, albeit at a low level, to further their cause. Viz: Spain, during the Civil War, Paris in the late C19th, Russia in the pre- and early Revolutionary period etc etc

There can be no such thing as a non-violent revolutionary movement; it's an oxymoron unfortunately

I'm speaking as an Anarchist, by inclination and conviction, and so far as possible, by my way of life [sadly, almost IMpossible]

<< To live Outside the Law, you must be honest >> Bob Dylan, cc 1964


PS Interesting you cite architecture: Le Corbusier was even earlier than Frank Lloyd Wright in designing the classless "Machine For Living" of which the surviving example, his huge stand-alone block of flats "L'Unite d'Habitation" near Marseilles intended as a vertical village for the workers [of all classes] has of course become a haven of middle-class and moneyed types who wish to inhabit an icon of Modernism.... The problem with all Utopian schemes is that they appeal only and finally to an Elite

Btw, Frank Lloyd Wright was so elitist as to be almost Fascist and he certainly spawned a Fascist-inspired coterie - cf the novels of Ayn Rand, whose hero/es was/were based n FLW, an autocrat of the worst sort for all his extraordinarily wonderful buildings. These were of course built not for ordinary people but for the mega-rich - as was all great English or rather British domestic architecture

 

[mark]

Oh, I most strongly recommend Anarchy, be your own copper, Judge and Jury, and most excitingly your own excecutioner. Grrrrrrrrrrrr :rant: :nuts: :angy:

 

[Warbler]

To a large extend alot of the above goes to the heart of the very connundrum. The vested capitalist interests of a ruling class elite have every incentive to ensure that emancipating philosophies aren't allowed to take root, and they (often with the assistance of foreign powers) will seek to attack and destroy them. Radical alternatives therefore need to be capable of defending themselves and this throws up something of a contradiction as it almost by definition propogates a strong command and control structure. It was a problem Lenin was never able to fully reconcile. No sooner had Bolshevism freed the sacrifical masses through Brest Litovsk, then 'White Russians' supported in no small part by other European powers had plunged them into a civil war.

Organisation and collective discipline thus becomes paramount and this largely militates against anarchist philosophy, where very often decisions are taken on a much more autonomous and devolved structure. I can't remember which General/ commentator about Republican Spain made the point that you can't prosecute a war by "taking a vote to decide whether to fight or not every morning" in respect to the Aragon front. It's probably for this reason that most anarchist utopias have existed at local level, and to some extent this is it's inevitable graduation. It's therefore difficult to ask the question in which industrialised country the philosophy has worked. Essentially the philosophy doesn't really recognise the concept of the nation state and actually moves towards advocating its slow disintegration as it becomes obsolete along with artifically concevied national borders through a series of localised initiatives rendering it redundant and ultimately removing one of the biggest reasons that people (through the concept of nationhood) go to war. If pushed, I suppose India would be the nearest that comes to mind. There have been examples of peaceful revolutions, 'bloodless coups' etc but they are far and few, and in truth don't normally work, as they require the acquiessence of the ruling regime to comply. Most of the associated violence is normally prosecuted from this group, and although an anarcho syndlicist trade union such as the CNT, the FAI or even the POUM were able to take local power in parts of Spain on a popular mandate, it was Nationalist elements that started (later augmented of course by Communist groups in a perverse way) the atacks against them..

This leads to another problem of course to do with idealism, unfortunately not everyone is disposed to such views so a level of consciouness is another pre-requisite, and this can only really be achieved in local areas I'd have thought.

If I were to crystal ball gaze, it might even be that the philosophy could come to bear yet if we are facing environmental meltdown which ultimately leads to restrictions on our ability to travel, and the development of autonomous collective local responses as the centralising nation loses its legitimacy? My own best guess however, is that the forces of capitalism will ensure a series of prolonged 'environmental wars' fought over the control of natural resources will occur first.

I mean we might even see a day where a rabid capitalist consuming country invades and occupies another for instance to secure their oil reserves?

 

[tetley]

Originally posted by Warbler@Aug 29 2007, 07:21 AM
This leads to another problem of course to do with idealism, unfortunately not everyone is disposed to such views so a level of consciouness is another pre-requisite,

And there is your connundrum.

 

[Tout Seul]

In my first stab at determining my political identity I decided I was a Bakuninite wirh reservations mainly because I couldn't find anyone else with similar ideas except sometimes my favourite uncle who was a closet Marxist and that didn't bode too well. At the time I had a long term vision of the future not unlike that of HG Wells in that there would be a minority elite controlling power(fuel), food production, and technology in a world where there was no or very limited need for workers. Those not in the elite lived a subsistence life.

Unfortunately nowadays that vision has returned smashing down the dreams a young father had for his descendants. I missed the revolution bus.

 

[Warbler]

Originally posted by Tout Seul@Aug 29 2007, 11:24 PM
In my first stab at determining my political identity I decided I was a Bakuninite wirh reservations mainly because I couldn't find anyone else with similar ideas

:laughing:

I know I shouldn't laugh, but the concept of abandoned anarchists half amuses me. Fear not TS, the revolutionary freedom bus is merely parked in a lay by having its wheels changed (again) last time I knew there was no shortage of spare seats left so I'm sure you can hop on should it ever splutter back into life.

Perhaps returning a little bit to the issues though, I think one of the fundamental principals of anarchism is that it doesn't involve violent over throw through conflict, which is very much the way the media is painting it. Quite the opposite in fact. It's more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The over throw is much more organic in nature therefore. Essentially, it involves a series of local responses and the creation of a series mutual self help socities/ systems, which ultimately gnaws away at the soverignity of the nation state and its centralised command and control structure by eroding its legitimacy. This in theory at least, eventually renders it obsolete as people consciously choose to disregard it rather than destroy it.

I guess to some extent it goes back to some very simple questions, with very complicated answers.

What is a nation state?
How do they come about?
Who decides on where they are drawn up?
Why do people accept them?

Ultimately I think it's kind of tribal and based on a loose bonding of similar characteristics. In some cases though they are geographically defined, or imposed by the outside will of others. I think the more you interrogate these questions however, the more complicated the issues become. Either way it's difficult to escape from the idea that a lot of these borders and boundaries are artifically created and then imposed by the interests of a ruling elite.

It's difficult to know what direction things are moving in. Historically England at a series of medieval fiefdoms, with a land owning class holding local power whilst backed up by a private army to defend these interests. Over time these got eroded to the point where the concept of nationhood assumed primacy and was able to extent its legislature and revenue raising powers outwards thus absorbing these local power bases. Countries like Germany and Italy used to be composed of a series of duchey's, Saxony, Brandenburg, Bavaria - Umbria, Lazio, Tuscany etc and were eventually united in the 1870's {1871?}

But if the shift is towards centralisation, then it's most definately not been the experience of recent Eastern European history, where artifically conceived conglomorate states have been falling like nine pins in recent years in the name of independence, and the redefining of ever more local affiliations.

Is it possible that in time we might revert to some kind of loose federation of soverign regions? within an over arching European structure? In truth I've got no idea, but would expect wholesale environmental meltdown to be the catalyst provided it was on a scale that fundamentally affected our ability to travel and therefore govern with any sense of enforcable authority over longer distances

 

[clivex]

and to put their philosophy into practice... Those which have done so, have almost without exception used violence

Just as with all the failed political systems. communism, facism, theological states...

It is perhaps extraordinary how emphatically these systems have failed. Absolute waste of time to give them even a moments consideration> time to move on

The arguments are pointless. Capitalism allied to liberal democracy has trumped all other "systems" decisively

No one had to build a war or ban travel to keep liberal democrats at home

and no one is emigrating to Cuba or Zimbabwe