The core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be legitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that some authoritarian hierarchic relation is legitimate. If they can't prove it, then it should be dismantled.
- Noam Chomsky
I wanted to say something brief about anarchism since I added the Traditions portion of the sidebar. First, I really recommend the interview with Chomsky hyperlinked there. It's one of the most accessible summaries of anarchism as a tradition, particularly within the US, that I have been able to find.
Secondly, it is an established intellectual tradition--not the amorphous blob of lawlessness and chaos that typically comes to mind. There are about a million synonymous terms for it--syndicalism, libertarianism, libertarian-socialism, democratic socialism, anarcho-communism, etc.--each with their own history and meaning, but only worth knowing if you're really interested. The elementary idea is that people should have meaningful control over their lives, and that means democratic control of both political and economic institutions.
As Americans, we already understand the political side of this. Representative democracies operate on the idea that people control their government democratically. They are designed to facilitate control of the political process through elected representation and by personal protections such as civil rights. This is a central component of a libertarian, or anarchist, outlook.
The second component, however, is economic. Democratic control of one's workplace, for instance, is barely acknowledged, even on a theoretical level, within the United States. Corporations are authoritarian in structure, not democratic. The only democratic control people have over private institutions comes either from the political process in the form of government regulation, or from work agreements achieved through employee organizing (trade unions). Anyone interested in increasing popular control over production and resources will quickly find themselves at odds with the "right" to private ownership of these things on which all of us rely for survival.
6 comments:
A nice summary of anarchism if there ever was one. I appreciate your astute, humorous, serious, and gentle commentary on everything from lapdancing to ladies to ideology. Keep it coming. Viva! -Katie
That was indeed a very thought provoking article with some very different definitions of anarchy and libertarianism from what I am used to.
It actually parallels some things I have been thinking about lately. The thought that came to mind when I was reading the interview is the role that TIME plays in power, because power in many ways is about access to resources. I don't think you can honestly discuss power without talking about access to resources.
But people come into and out of existence at different points in the game. A person who has been here for 60 years has more potential for accumulating resources than a new born babe. So
Since there is only one planet, you can't create without some degree of destruction. It seems like it's inevitable that it will lead to questions of entitlement.
We just had a discussion meeting here on that topic. Everyone seemed keen on equality until you pressed them on their competitive advantages. And then they were not remotely interested in dismantling the power relationships.
I didn't really understand what Chomsky meant when he says an anti-state form of socialism, unless he just means direct democracy as opposed to a representative democracy. In a democracy isn't the state just the representatives of the democracy along with the bureacracies they create to actualize their goals?
Anyway, very stimulating stuff. :)
The terminology gets a little ridiculous to me sometimes; it's one of several things that I think needs go, frankly. If you want to talk history, particularly intellectual traditions, then you can get into all the terminology. There's a lot of interesting things to learn from them. In our everyday life, however, the guiding principle is extremely simple: power is illegitimate without proof of legitimacy, and the burden of proof is on those who hold power. To paraphrase what I think is also attributable to Chomsky, anarchism is not so much an ideology as it is a tendency in human behavior to seek out forms of coercion and control and challenge them when they aren't justified.
Anyway, your question about anti-state socialism. This is synonymous with "libertarian-socialism," libertarian of course meaning liberty; in the European tradition this typically meant liberty from government, which during the enlightenment period would have been one of the primary centers of power and authority, along with the Church. Naturally, people were very eager to challenge this authority; as Americans, our country was founded on precisely these sorts of ideas, that "government that governs best, governs least," etc. So that's a very libertarian, or anti-state, sentiment beginning with the enlightenment and continuing through American intellectual culture to this day.
Socialism was another product of the enlightenment; Chomsky has described it broadly as classical liberalism adapted to the modern era, meaning the industrial era, which created a new form of concentrated power and authority in the form of private ownership over public resources. I believe mainstream socialism presumed a challenge to traditional centers of power, namely church and state, and then extended them to this new one. So, to my mind, "anti-state socialism" is redundant, at least within the tradition of enlightenment thinking. (Even Karl Marx conceived communism as a "stateless" society, and as such was in keeping with the mainstream socialist thinking at the time.)
The term is very relevant, however, in light of 20th century history, where the socialist tradition was realized in two very different ways. One was in the manner in which you would expect, namely, democratic control of political and economic institutions, decentralized authority; i.e., meaningful popular control of one's life. The other was highly-centralized government control of everything, allegedly for the common good. This is what we call "state socialism," although there's nothing really socialist about it. Nevertheless, the term has gained wide currency with the confusion that has come from state regimes calling themselves socialist and Western democracies returning the favor--each for their own purposes. In America, socialism, particularly communism, has become synonymous with this variety of government totalitarianism. It's worth noting that the concepts have not become synonymous with the worker movements that actually were socialist in form, like the movements during the Spanish Civil War--which incidentally were attacked and ultimately destroyed by the Communists (USSR), Fascists, and the liberal democracies (US/UK) alike. These workers movements are now generally identified as anarchist, libertarian-socialist, and all the colorful terms, to avoid confusion.
OK, so the basic idea is that centralized power sucks and decentralized power is infinitely better. I agree with that. :) People are certainly more free when the power is decentralized.
I'm not sure I agree that means you are eliminating power from the equation, but it certainly waters down any one person's monopoly over it.
Even self autonomy is a form of a power. Creation is power. Art is power. Letters to the editor is power too. Throwing these ideas around in your blog might even be power if someone listens and takes what is written seriously. I mean what is power, but influence over what happens in our world.
The essay reminded me of that quote by A.J. Liebling: "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." And that's sort of what is going on here in your blog. :) Some micro-power to compensate for the mainstream media's macro-powe. :))) Personally, I think it's great.
I guess I just think there is such a thing as having too little power. When I have less control over my life, I start to crave control more. You look at someone like Adolf Hitler. Would he have craved power so much if he had not felt power deprived to start with? Which sort of gets you into power in the sense of the ego. Has Chomsky written anything about Freud's interpretations of power?
In terms of justifying power, I was just thinking the other day how much our culture spends rationalizing power. Chomsky mentioned Ayn Rand. One of my ex boyfriends asked me to read Atlas Shrugged once. I admit I didn't get through it, but it occurred to me by page 120 that it must take 1000+ pages to turn black into white, which follows what you were saying about games with language.
Anyway, this is extremely interesting, but my brother\ just invited me to Austin to visit, so I'd better get in gear. Have a wonderdul weekend. I love your blog. This is great fun to have this sort of discussion!!!! :) Thanks!
Sheryl, I appreciate your comments. I think you hit the nail on the head when wrote about having influence over what happens in our world. I think we should have more of it.
Thanks again for opening up the comments options. You really have a knack for finding interesting articles. It's fun to be able to comment on them. :)
Post a Comment