A “New” Anarchism? – On Bifurcation and Transformation of Contemporary Anarchist Thought and...

DOI 10.1515/wpsr-2012-0003 World Political Science Review 2012; 8(1): 48–69

Žiga Vodovnik*A “New” Anarchism? – On Bifurcation and Transformation of Contemporary Anarchist Thought and Praxis**Abstract: The article reflects main discrepancies between basic coordinates of classic anarchist thought and coordinates of contemporary anarchism, as it developed within the “post-Seattle” alter-globalization movement. The article ascertains that the anarchist renaissance within the alter-globalization movement is not fostered only by classical anarchism, but also by ideational currents that in the past had represented its main counterpoint. The question that the author addresses is therefore: Is it possible to talk about a “new” anarchism? Following a thorough examination of the alter-globalization movement, its genealogy and the main ideational currents within the movement, the author concludes, that a “new” or “post-ideological” anarchism does not offer important innovations only on the level of political praxis, but also on the level of theoretical paradigms. In the last part of the article, the author affirms these findings with an outline of redefinition of violence, political power, nation state and democracy within (contemporary) anarchism.

Keywords: alter-globalization movement; anarchism; political theory; social movements

*Corresponding author: Assist. Prof. Žiga Vodovnik, PhD, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Phone: +386 15805207, e-mail: [email protected]

1 IntroductionEvery single attempt to review the history of anarchist thought is to embark on a “risky” journey since, according to Irwing L. Horowitz (2005: xi), anarchism is not a completed ideology but rather a sentiment. Andrej Grubačić (2004: 35) also established that anarchism should only be understood as a tendency in

** Originally published as Vodovnik, Žiga. 2011. “Novi anarhizem? – o bifurkaciji in transfor-maciji sodobne anarhistične misli in prakse”, Teorija in praksa, vol. 48, no. 1, (jan.–feb. 2011), pp. 87–107.

Authenticated | [email protected] author's copyDownload Date | 2/18/14 7:29 PM

Transformation of Contemporary Anarchist Thought 49

the history of human thought and practice, a tendency which cannot be encom-passed by a general theory of ideology, because its contents as well as manifesta-tions in political activity change with time.

Even though anarchism is amorphous, paradox-ridden and full of contradic-tions, we can still try to mark off this complex theory and practice with a loose working definition which understands anarchism as a political theory and prac-tice aimed at (according to Proudhon) achieving anarchy – a society without a ruler.¹ It is geared towards a society founded on justice, equality and brother-hood, while abolishing all means of the civil and social constraint. As such, it opposes all types of hierarchy, exploitation and authority along with their main two manifestations – the state and capitalism. At this point, the much broader definition by John Clark (1978: 13) is worth noting as it defines anarchism concurrently as:1. a view of an ideal, non-coercive, non-authoritarian society;2. a criticism of existing society and its institutions, based on this anti-

authoritarian ideal;3. a view of human nature that justifies the hope for significant progress

toward the ideal;4. a strategy for change, involving institutions of non-coercive, non-

authoritarian, and decentralist alternatives.

From Clark’s definition it follows, that anarchism should not be understood solely as a political ideology, but simultaneously as a political philosophy (ad 1), political theory (ad 2), ontological position (ad 3), and specific political practice (ad 4), whose value is in its multidimensionality. Murray Bookchin (1996: 29) also sees the value of anarchism in the fact that it has addressed “ecological, feminist, and community issues, the problems of self-empowerment, the avail-able concepts of self-administration, namely the themes that are now at the fore-ground of a famous ‘social issue’. And it has raised these issues from within its very substance as a theory and practice directed against hierarchy and domina-tion.” Since anarchism has operated with the concept of hierarchy and domina-tion, which consequently detected and included exploitation that may not even have an economic meaning at all, anarchism raises a much broader and more

1 Anarchists advocate that anarchism should be discussed as a theory and not an ideology. Anarchism is a set of ideas which is flexible and open to modifications in the light of new find-ings, whereas ideology is a closed set of ideas which, instead of offering a clear insight into the social and political reality, veil this reality or only offer a distorted picture where camera obscura additionally strengthens and justifies this ideology.


50 Žiga Vodovnik

important question – not only the question of class antagonism, but rather of hierarchy and domination as such.

Rudi Rizman (1986) ascertains that, to some extent, anarchist ideas have succeeded in “infiltrating” into progressive social thought or establishing them-selves within it, particularly within the social sciences, even if the latter rarely refer to anarchism and more often than not conceal it. But even today the bearers of social power are reluctant to give anarchism any credit, or even continue to unduly incorporate its contributions in their own milieu of (post)Marxism, (neo)liberalism and all other “-isms”. Therefore, one cannot but agree with the view that anarchism is one of the most, if not the most, plundered political philosophies.

It is ironic that – also in the academic sphere – this has been more or less intentionally forgotten and that anarchism is still depicted as a “poor cousin” of Marxism which is “theoretically a bit flat-footed but making up for brains, perhaps, with passion and sincerity” (Graeber and Grubačić 2004). The “classics” of anarchism are often portrayed as agitators, pamphletists and moralists and not as relevant theoreticians and philosophers, whereas the most famous representa-tives of modern anarchism are not regarded as authors of sophisticated theoreti-cal analyses but more as sources of witty slogans, politically charged poetry and readable science-fiction novels (cf. Graeber 2009: 211).

The main aim of the following article is not an uncritical and naïve list of cases proving that anarchism is possible and needed. Our purpose is therefore more challenging as our aspiration is to enrich social scientific and humanistic thought with the contributions of contemporary anarchism that we can find also within the post-Seattle alter-globalization movement (AGM). After the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle in the late fall of 1999, mainstream media tried to dismiss the protesters and their demands with distorted reports that depicted them as “global village idiots” (The Wall Street Journal), “a guerrilla army of anti-trade activists” (The Washington Post), or even as “a Noah’s ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions, and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix” (The New York Times).²

According to Giorel Curran (2006: 2), today within the AGM “post-ideological anarchism” adopts ideas and principles from the heritage of classical anarchism very flexibly and non-doctrinally, and simultaneously rejects its traditional forms to construct genuinely new autonomous politics through eclectic col-lection and merging. The anarchist renaissance within the movement of move-ments is not only inspired by anarchism but is also dynamized by currents of

2 For more about the media representation of the AGM, see McNally (2006).



ideas which in the past were its counterpoise. The question that we will address throughout the text is: Is it possible to talk about a new anarchism?

Despite the vast amounts of media coverage and books and articles on the AGM, especially on its practice and organizational structure, the movement’s political aspirations and ideational inspirations have still not been prop-erly addressed. Also in this respect, a theoretical reflection on contemporary anarchism as a new post-ideology of the AGM is not only beneficial, but also a necessary task. But answering the above question is not our only goal, because we will, inter alia, try to contribute to a better understanding of this intellectual tradition. Namely, a great problem related to understanding and therefore writing about anarchism has been observed in environments where the history of anar-chism has been distorted or completely overlooked. Even though one can find some valuable attempts to delve into the history of anarchism in the Balkans (Kristan 1927; Kesić 1976; Fischer 1979, 1986; Rozman 1979; Maserati 1982; Indjić (n.d.); Grubačić 2010), the general perception of anarchism and its history is still completely distorted.³

At the outset, some epistemological and methodological instructions are worth noting. According to Arjun Appadurai (2004: 273), research in the era of globalization is a peculiar optical challenge. If we take our task of writing a new reflection on contemporary anarchism seriously, we soon realize that nowadays many concepts and categories of the AGM are too elusive for traditional disci-plines, classical theories and Western epistemologies, therefore our analysis must be founded on a new, more flexible epistemology. Also, conceptual clarity and theoretical thoroughness are also insufficient because this task demands a wider cognitive transformation which Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2004) per-ceives as a prerequisite for any social justice. However, we are witnessing episte-mological ignorance and the suppression of knowledge, a form of epistemicide, that strengthens the status quo and at the same time dismisses, discredits and trivializes arguments and solutions not in line with the hegemonic epistemologi-cal position – a hegemonic notion of truth, objectivity and rationality (Santos 2004, 2007, 2008).

For Santos (2004), the solution is “the sociology of absences” which trans-forms impossible into possible, absent into present, or irrelevant into relevant.

3 According to Zadnikar (2004: 209), “when the political theory and practice of anarchism thrived in the youth subcultures of the West and filled up the new-left or Bolshevik void, the ‘punks’ in Slovenia understood anarchism at the level of bourgeois semantics: as chaos. The Dead Kennedys did not touch them so they eventually stuck to one of the post-images and a bottle of cheap booze.”


52 Žiga Vodovnik

If the production of the non-existence, ergo the hegemonic conception of social sciences, is founded on:

– a monoculture of science that turns modern science and high culture into the sole criteria of truth and aesthetic quality, respectively;

– a monoculture of linear time that dismisses as “backward” whatever is asymmetrical and contrary to whatever is declared “forward”;

– a monoculture of classification that attempts to naturalize social differences and hierarchies;

– a monoculture of the universal and the global that trivializes all particular and local practices and ideas, and renders them incapable of being credible alternatives to what exists globally and universally; and

– a monoculture of capitalist production and efficiency that privileges growth through market forces and dismisses other systems of production as non-productive;

then “the sociology of absences” should be founded on the following: – an ecology of knowledges that recognizes other knowledge and criteria of rigor; – an ecology of temporalities that understands linear time as only one of many

conceptions of time: the rejection of linear time places other and different political and social practices on the same level as political and social prac-tices of the West since now they become another form of contemporaneity;

– an ecology of recognition that tries to articulate a new nexus between the principles of equality and of difference, thus allowing for the possibility of equal differences: the differences remaining after the elimination of hierar-chy would thus become an important criticism of the differences requested and needed by hierarchy so as to subsist;

– an ecology of trans-scale that rejects the logic of the global scale and recu-perates particular and local practices and ideas as relevant alternatives;

– an ecology of productiveness that refutes the hegemonic paradigm of devel-opment and infinite economic growth: it recuperates and validates alterna-tive systems of production, popular economic organizations, cooperatives and enterprises, which have been trivialized by the hegemonic orthodoxy of productivity.⁴

4 For more about the “sociology of absence” and the “sociology of potentiality”, see Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “The World Social Forum: Toward a Counter-Hegemonic Globali-sation (Part I)” in World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, eds. Jai Sen and Peter Water-man (New Delhi: The Viveka Foundation, 2004). Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond (London: Zed Books, 2006); Boaventura de Sousa Santos (ed.), Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life



Such transformation thus reveals social and political solutions, initiatives and concepts which were suppressed, coopted or trivialized by the dominant political and/or epistemological position, because according to Santos (2004: 238) “what does not exist is, in fact, actively produced as non-existent, that is, as a non-credible alternative to what exists”.

To completely understand anarchism, a relevant example of the epistemo-logical transformation can also be found within anthropology. With their con-ceptualization of “other anthropologies/anthropology otherwise”, Eduardo Restrepo and Arturo Escobar (2005) call for a critical awareness of both the larger epistemic and political field in which disciplines emerged and continue to function, and of the micro-practices and relations of power within and across different locations and traditions of individual disciplines.

Following Restrepo and Escobar, we would consequently have to analyze subaltern forms of knowledge, modalities of writing, political and intellectual practices etc. The solution is once again an epistemological and methodological transformation that will overcome the “asymmetrical ignorance” and “parochial mentality” that still characterizes the disciplines of social sciences and humani-ties. Such epistemological and methodological transformation would result in new styles of thinking and new forms of knowledge organization. It can also be added that the result would be an assumption of political practices and ideas which in the past were too often marginalized and trivialized, and would at the same time represent the first step to pluralization and decentralization of social sciences. Even more, it would also be the first step to cognitive justice which is, as mentioned earlier, a prerequisite for social justice.

2 A Short History of the “Movement of Movements”

Gustavo Esteva (Kingsnorth 2004: 44) described the AGM as “one no and many yeses” because many different collectives and movements, in many different places, are united in their critique of neoliberal globalization, whereas their aspirations, goals and visions are diverse. Most studies conclude that the AGM was born amid the tear gas and rain that accompanied the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, but its broader understanding – as the umbrella term under which

(Lanham, MD: Lexington Book, 2007); Boaventura de Sousa Santos (ed.), Another Knowledge Is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies (New York, NY: Verso, 2008).


54 Žiga Vodovnik

we can place many different political inspirations and aspirations – opens a new dilemma of where to start with its genealogy?

Zahara Heckscher (2002), for instance, traces antecedents of the AGM already back to the late 18th century, more precisely, in the Tupac Amaru II uprising of 1780–1781. Heckscher believes the uprising represents “a bridge between local anti-colonial rebellion and transnational social movements against exploitive eco-nomic integration” (ibid., 86–87). On the other hand, Benedict Anderson (2007) concludes that the global anarchist movement at the end of the 19th century is not only the main ideological inspiration of the AGM, but also its very beginning.

If, however, we focus solely on the second half of the “short 20th century”, then we can conclude the AGM came to world attention on the day of “the end of history”, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force. On that morning, the indigenous people of Chiapas, Mexico, chose to start war against oblivion, as the NAFTA – it enabled buying communal land and on the other hand banned subsidies to indigenous farm cooperatives – would bring the “summary execution” of all indigenous people in Mexico. Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Ch’ol, Zoque, and Mam Indians disrupted the festive mood with a dec-laration of war against neoliberal globalization. The Zapatista uprising and the later encuentro against neoliberalism and for humanity (Encuentro Intercontinen-tal por la Humanidad y contra el Neoliberalismo) mark the birth of the “movement of movements”. The encuentro, organized in the Lacandon jungle in 1996 by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejercito Zapatista Liberation National, EZLN), resulted in an appeal for:

an intercontinental network of resistance, recognizing differences and acknowledging similarities, [that] will strive to find itself in other resistances around the world. This inter-continental network of resistance will be the medium in which distant resistances may support one another. This intercontinental network if resistance is not on organizing struc-ture; it has no central head or decision maker; it has no central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who resist.

(Marcos in de León, 2001: 125)

An important outcome of the Zapatista encuentro, one still often overlooked, was the global network the People’s Global Action (PGA), which “unites anarchist collectives in Europe and elsewhere with groups ranging from Maori activists in New Zealand, fisherfolk in Indonesia, or the Canadian postal workers’ union” (Graeber and Grubačić 2004), and that would become one of the main organ-izers of the counter-summits from Seattle and Prague, to Quebec and Genoa. The network includes many movements and collectives that cannot be reduced to a single ideological platform but, as can be seen from its Hallmarks, the organiza-tional principles of the PGA evoke the main anarchist ideas:



1. A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism; all trade agree-ments, institutions and governments that promote destructive globalization.

2. We reject all forms and systems of domination and discrimination includ-ing, but not limited to, patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism of all creeds. We embrace the full dignity of all human beings.

3. A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organizations, in which transnational capital is the only real policy-maker;

4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements’ struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights, as well as the construction of local alterna-tives to global capitalism.

5. An organizational philosophy based on decentralization and autonomy (PGA 2001).

While we can clearly not define the AGM as an anarchist movement only, since the AGM constitutes a broad coalition of environmentalists, farmers, feminists, trade unionists, indigenous activists, non-governmental organizations and initia-tives, but also anarchists, we can without any hesitation add that the majority of its creative energy is nowadays coming exactly from anarchist groups. However, anarchist principles are so widespread throughout the AGM that we could mark it as anarchist in places where it is without this identity.

3 The AGM and Anarchism as a MethodologyAccording to Giorel Curran (2006: 2), today we can speak about “post-ideologi-cal anarchism” which is the only correct and the best response to the reconfig-ured political, economic and social landscape that, in a certain sense, renders traditional currents of anarchism obsolete. “Post-ideological anarchism” adopts ideas and principles from the heritage of classical anarchism very flexibly and non-doctrinally, and simultaneously rejects its traditional forms to construct genuinely new autonomous politics through eclectic collection and merging. The anarchist renaissance within the movement of movements is not only inspired by anarchism but is also dynamized by currents of ideas which in the past were its counterpoise. So is it possible to talk about a new anarchism?

This position was approached for the first time and in an extreme way by Dave Neal in his essay Anarchism: Ideology or Methodology? where we find two basic perceptions and conceptions of anarchism: capital-A and small-a


56 Žiga Vodovnik

anarchism. If the former, according to Neal (1997), can be equated with ideologi-cally pure positions within the traditional schools of anarchism and thus equates anarchism with an ideology or “a set of rules and conventions to which you must abide”, the latter is characterized by non-dogmatism, eclecticism and fluidity and is understood as a methodology or “a way of acting, or a historical tendency against illegitimate authority”.

A very detailed analysis of the duality of anarchism can be found in Nikolai Jeffs’ conceptualization of latent and manifest anarchism. Manifest anarchism represents for Jeffs (1998) “a deliberate take over of ideology and practices, and with this self-identification of the subject as an anarchist”, whereas latent anar-chism assumes all characteristics of Neal’s conceptualization of anarchism as a methodology. Latent anarchism thus “represents various practices that have been throughout history conceived past relations of power and submission. For these, neither interpellation nor the constitution of an individual into a subject of some self-reflected anarchism is crucial” (ibid., 23).

If in an essay written before the new movement of movements had reached full stride, Neal estimated that “within the anarchist movement we can still find a plethora of Anarchists – ideologues – who focus endlessly on their dogma instead of organizing solidarity among workers”, a decade later, David Graeber (2004) contemplates that it is small-a anarchism that represents the real locus of the most creative and most lucid radical turmoil. In his reflection on new anar-chism, Graeber stresses that it still has an ideology but for the first time it is an entirely new one, i.e., a post-ideology:

A constant complaint about the globalization movement in the progressive press is that, while tactically brilliant, it lacks any central theme or coherent ideology… Yet this is a move-ment about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization. It is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties or corporations; networks based on principles of decentral-ized, non-hierarchical consensus democracy. Ultimately, it aspires to be much more than that, because ultimately it aspires to reinvent daily life as whole.

(ibid., 2004: 212)

Barbara Epstein (2001) also ascertains that, within the movement of movements, anarchism represents the main inspiration and aspiration. The new generation of activists in their understanding of anarchism surpasses its narrow and dog-matic interpretation that reduces it to a set of prefabricated solutions or even to an eternal truth that can only be interpreted, commented upon, or confirmed anew with new data and evidence. We could state that the opening of political space has led to a final acceptance of the upgraded version of Marx’s 11th thesis



on Feuerbach which, according to Maurice Brinton (in Goodway, 2004: 3), states that revolutionaries have only interpreted Marx and Bakunin, in various ways; the point, however, is to change them.

Epstein argues that we can distinguish anarchism per se, thus capital-A anarchism or anarchism as an ideological tradition, and anarchist sensibilities that overlap with Curran’s conceptualization of “post-ideological” anarchism, or Neal’s conceptualization of “small-a” anarchism. With this reinterpretation of anarchism the new movements again warn that anarchist thought cannot be reduced to one single dimension as, despite the unshakeable basic premises, it is also full of internal contradictions, own criticism and, consequently, redefined positions. They point out that anarchism is not a coherent and completed system but a set of ideas which addresses important questions but leaves many of them unanswered; it is only a set of inquiries and researches without final results. According to Epstein for contemporary young activists anarchism does not repre-sent some abstract radical theory but instead means:

a decentralized organizational structure, based on affinity groups that work together on an ad hoc basis, and decision-making by consensus. It also means egalitarianism; opposition to all hierarchies; suspicion of authority, especially that of the state; and commitment to living according to one’s values… Many envision a stateless society based on small, egalitar-ian communities. For some, however, the society of the future remains an open question. For them, anarchism is important mainly as an organizational structure and as a commit-ment to egalitarianism.

(Epstein, 2001: 1)

“Small-a” anarchism, which is much more open to modifications as it freely disposes with ideas and practices and randomly assumes, revises and dismisses them so as to achieve the set goals, can thus be regarded as a reconfigured anarchism of “Type 3”. According to Hakim Bey, the radically non-ideological position of “Type-3” anarchism is a detour from social anar-chism (“Type 1”) and also from individualist anarchism (“Type 2”) precisely because of its eclectic inclusion of useful conceptions of all ideological orien-tations (Bey 2003: 62).

Perhaps it would be reasonable to reiterate here that the abovementioned bifurcation of anarchism into “new” and “old” is merely an analytical tool serving to explain or mark the innovations and (dis)continuities within the anar-chist current. It does not attempt to conceal important links between the old and new manifestations as practically all subsequent bifurcations of anarchism have largely built on the epistemological and theoretical conceptions of classical anar-chism. The use of these adjectives is primarily descriptive and not normative or evaluative.


58 Žiga Vodovnik

4 The New Coordinates of Anarchist Thought and Praxis

The previous section soon reveals that contemporary anarchism draws strength from the same sources that deprived it of this strength in the industrial era: in the post-modern period the rejection of a uniform solid organization transmutes into a plurality of organizational forms of rebellion, the rejection of the authoritative levers transmutes into a prefiguration of parallel living and community spaces, the failure to focus on strategic goals transmutes into a diffuse counter-power; and, finally, the theoretical inconsistence develops into heterogeneous experien-tial learning of direct action (Zadnikar 1998: 5).

In the next section, I will show that within contemporary anarchism we can find a myriad of important breakthroughs not only on the level of political prac-tice, but also on the level of theoretical paradigm. For this purpose we will offer a closer examination of a (re)definition of violence, political power, the state and democracy within a “new” anarchism.

4.1 Scholium I: Anarchism – violence

Torn between the word and nitroglycerin within anarchism is not a historical constant but more of an exception and a characteristic of the anarchist move-ment at the end of the 19th century when a thin current was formed, focusing on so-called “propaganda by the deed” and therefore also on violence. However, it is incomprehensible that even today the centers of authority and power associate with violence every attempt to spread independence and freedom. Anarchism is thus reduced to chaos, violence and disorder even if, by definition, it only opposes hierarchy and domination, not order, rules and an organized social system. Anar-chism should therefore stand for terrorism, nihilism and the abandonment of all moral values. Anarchists are therefore equated with terrorists, vandals, brutes, madmen, murderers, extremists etc.

Using the example of the North American anarchist movement, Graeber (2004: 207) assesses that today’s anarchist movement is dangerous and sub-versive for those who rule precisely because of its absence of violence not its presence because “governments simply do not know how to deal with an overtly revolutionary movement that refuses to fall into familiar patterns of armed resist-ance”. The anarchist movement has already outclassed the futile discussions on the right and the appropriate method of political struggle. Since Seattle in 1999, there has been a consensus within the movement that the best answer to the



question of the means of political struggle is a “diversity of tactics” following the anarchist principles of direct action and prefigurative politics.

We will not get caught up in the senseless yet relatively frequent discussions on the question of the destruction of private property which in fact – as the “black bloc” collective of ACME rightfully replied in its communiqué written after the Seattle protests – is not a question of violence but undoubtedly a good starting point for a proper discussion on the violence of private property:

We contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property – especially corporate private property – is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it… When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights. At the same time, we exorcise that set of violent and destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost everything around us. By “destroying” private property, we convert its limited exchange value into an expanded use value. A storefront window becomes a vent to let some fresh air into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet (at least until the police decide to tear-gas a nearby road blockade). A newspaper box becomes a tool for creating such vents or a small blockade for the reclamation of public space or an object to improve one’s vantage point by standing on it. A dumpster becomes an obstruction to a phalanx of rioting cops and a source of heat and light. A building facade becomes a message board to record brainstorm ideas for a better world. After N30 [protests], many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way again… Broken windows can be boarded up and eventu-ally replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come.

(ACME, 1999)

Considering that one of the key features of anarchism is the persistent linking of the means of political struggle with the objectives of this struggle – “the means are the goals in the making” – it is no surprise that the theory and practice of prefigurative politics developed exactly in the anarchist milieu. Prefiguration is an attempt to realize a theoretical finding that the methods of political organiza-tion and action should themselves be used to create the future already in the present or at least to some extent foresee the social changes we are striving for. As explained by Tim Jordan (2002: 73), prefigurative politics means acting in a manner as we would want it to be in the future or acting in a manner as if the world in which we aspire to live has already materialized. It is a brief attempt to delegitimize the existing system and to build up its alternative from the bottom up.

4.2 Scholium II: Anarchism – political power

Throughout history, anarchism as a practice-based theory was able to detect many more problems and offer many more solutions than other intellectual traditions,


60 Žiga Vodovnik

but its persistent following of the prefigurative logics within political practice led to unwarranted reduction in its theoretical approach to specific concepts. This primarily applies to concepts and categories rejected by anarchism as anomalies of the past and requiring no detailed theoretical reflection as they have no place in the anarchist project of horizontal organization and consensus decision-making. In the past, this collection often included the concept of political power which, in recent years, has been discussed in all its complexity and all its manifestations, primarily by merging classical anarchism with poststructuralism.

Anarchism has never been defined by a short-sighted criticism of power as it has been capable – in contrast to “diamat” Marxism – of identifying and address-ing domination as a conception of power which must and can be eliminated. Todd May (2007: 20–21) ascertains the demands for the immediate abolition of all monopolies of power have occasionally given rise to theoretical purism which has frustrated any kind of profound discussion and reflection of political power functioning as a pledge of political struggle and the reality of every anarchist political community of the future. According to May (1994), in the past anarchism often assumed a deterministic and reductionist perception of power which, as a rule, was located only within the state, but nowadays it is capable – by hybrid-izing and incorporating poststructuralism – of detecting also microtechnologies of power not only inside but also and mostly beyond the state. May acknowledges that anarchism must continue to broaden the scope of its criticism beyond the state and capitalism, and consequently also the place of political contestation, while finally also addressing the question of revolutionary power:

While [anarchists] have two-part distinction: power (bad) vs nature (good), I have a four-part one: power as creative/power as repressive and good/bad. I do not take creative power as necessarily good, nor repressive power as necessarily bad. It all depends on what is being created or repressed.

(May in Curran, 2006: 36)

An interesting breakdown of political power within anarchist political theory was proposed also by Uri Godon who referred to the “anarcho-pagan” activist Starhawk and her innovative typology of power.⁵ Gordon (2008: 48) distinguishes between the following:1. power-to: the basic sense of power as the capacity to affect reality;2. power-over: power-to wielded as domination in hierarchical and coercive

settings; and

5 See Starhawk (1987).



3. power-with: power-to wielded as non-coercive influence and initiative among people who view themselves as equals.

Such a categorization usefully upgrades John Holloway’s binary conception of power to good and bad power or power-to and power-over, as it is completely clear that there are cases when our power-to realizes itself but not through power-over (Hol-loway 2002). Moreover, Gordon claims that power-over must not be reduced solely to force or coercion because in modern societies power-over increasingly frequently realizes itself through the manipulation and power of social roles and/or authority.

In his ethnography of the North American anarchist movement, Graeber (2009) accepts the above tripartite scheme of power by detecting and unveiling the seemingly hidden aspects of the issue of power within egalitarian collectives and exposing the problem of the uneven distribution of power-to and lack of transparency in the implementation of power-with within collectives.⁶ The issue of power not only concerns power-over, as was the case with classical anarchism which for several decades has constantly fetishized it, but primarily concerns other manifestations of power. After all, power-over is not static and does not exist in vacuo but always results from a dynamic redistribution of power-to and consequently also power-with. Power-over can only be limited through a redistri-bution of power-to and this, of course, shifts the focus of struggle and criticism from institutions and politics beyond movements to the movements themselves and their internal asymmetry of political resources.

Hence the perennial question arises about the (in)adequacy of decision-making and communication structures within egalitarian collectives which can reinforce the abovementioned inequalities and, by rejecting formal solutions and delegating responsibility, lead to informal hierarchies and the “tyranny of structurelessness” (Freeman).⁷ But this is already a different topic, for entirely different study.

4.3 Scholium III: Anarchism – the State

Since much has been written on anarchism and the state, this section will be rather short. Anarchism perceives the state as a conservative force which author-izes, regulates and organizes the denial and restriction of progress (including the expansion of freedom) or uses progress to its own benefit and the benefit

6 For more, see Graeber (2009: 239–85).7 For more about the “tyranny of structurelessness”, see Freeman (1970).


62 Žiga Vodovnik

of the privileged class; yet it does not encourage it. The state is therefore per-ceived as an anomaly, which is corroborated by Harold Barclay in his work People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy, where he sheds some light on a plethora of anthropological studies suggesting that anarchies are not only utopian wishes but a necessity and even a rule in human history:

Anarchy is by no means unusual; it is a perfectly common form of polity or political organi-zation. Not only is it common, but it is probably the oldest type of polity and one which has characterized most of human history.

(Barclay, 1996: 12)

May (1994) found that, in the past, the narrow understanding of power as repressive and never productive was often the only seamy side of the anarchist political philosophy. This simplified discussion does not necessarily concern its perception only but also its localization, as many currents of anarchism equated power – that is, power-over – solely with the state. Anarchism does not distin-guish itself from other revolutionary currents only for its criticism of the state since its epistemological position and the resulting criticism are much broader in scope. The state and capitalism are perhaps the most eye-striking sources of domination but are far from being the only ones. This is particularly true for the postmodern globalized world where, for some time, nation-states have been losing their political independence and economic sovereignty. Especially nowadays, when within the top 100 economies we find more multinational cor-porations than national economies, the nation-state ceases be the main or the sole target of anarchist critiques.

Within contemporary anarchism the loudest opponent of negative fetishiza-tion of the state – namely, conditioning of the anarchist struggle on demands for all or nothing, where one should “fast” completely until the “main course” – is Noam Chomsky. Chomsky (in Pateman 2005) advocates an ostensibly paradoxical stance that today, because of the discrepancy between the goals and visions of anar-chism, the protection or even consolidation of the state is the first step to its aboli-tion. Namely, this preserves the public space where people can participate, organize themselves and influence public politicians, even if in limited ways and within a limited scope. Nevertheless, he remains loyal to the anarchist belief that the state is an illegitimate institution but surpasses his “philosophical radicalism” with a con-clusion that without any opposition to the neoliberal agenda the state could become even more illegitimate, violent and unfair. Pursuing ideals such as freedom and equality is precisely the reason today’s anarchism should defend the state against the attacks of multinational corporations that are eager to ruin the democratic and social institutions of the state, regardless of the limits of their influence.



Similar simplifications and distortions are likewise observed in the case of the (mis)understanding of anarchist conceptions of authority. It should be emphasized that anarchism does not oppose authority per se, that is technical competence and expert knowledge, but only the unjustified, imposed authority or so-called authoritarianism. Authority must be non-compulsory, functionally specific and must be underpinned by competence and approval.

Chomsky (ibid., 178) claims that the structures of authority, hierarchy and domination should be searched for, identified and then challenged in all aspects of life. If it is impossible to find an excuse for them, these structures are illegiti-mate and should therefore be abolished to broaden the extent of man’s freedom. This also includes political power, property and management in the sense of the relationship between men and women, parents and children, our control over the destiny of future generations and many more. Of course, to such scrutiny Chomsky submits all institutions which at first glance appear neutral and inde-pendent, along with institutions which were perhaps useful and purposeful in the past. Also those types of authority and oppression must be addressed and disclosed in exactly the same way, which are remnants of the period in which their existence was justified for ensuring security, survival or economic devel-opment, whereas today they contribute to – instead of reduce – material and cultural impoverishment.

4.4 Scholium IV: Anarchism – Democracy

We can agree with a thesis that two main discourses can be found in contempo-rary discussions on democracy: the first understands democracy as a word whose roots lie in Ancient Greece and whose etymological origin poses new dilem-mas; while the second examines democracy as an egalitarian decision-making procedure and everyday practice which in antiquity were gradually labeled “democratic” (Graeber 2007: 340). It comes as no surprise therefore, the theo-retical “radicalism”, which renounces the simplified treatment of democracy as an invention, and which instead of a legal dimension, analyzes the genealogical dimension or the roots respectfully (lat. Radix) of democratic praxis. The results of this dualism are “diachronous” discussions on democracy and, finally, a series of debates on the level of democracy of institutions and institutes which by their very essence counterpoise democratic practices. These and similar misconcep-tions also gave rise to a hegemonic notion of democracy which only recuperated the word while rejecting its contents.

The fact that, despite the rise and reinforcement of (participative) democracy over the past few years, we perceive the crisis of the existing economic project


64 Žiga Vodovnik

and etatism also as the crisis of democracy only confirms further myopia of our (mis)conception of the essence of democracy, which is why we are still search-ing for it in places where the possibility of actually finding it is the smallest. As Graeber (ibid., 366) would add, another result of these mistakes are modern liberal democracies that feature nothing similar to the Athenian agora but offer a number of parallels with the Roman circus. Here architecture was surely not the only thing he had in mind.

Within anarchism, democracy is interpreted as a praxis – as a free and creative activity in everyday life – and not as a prefabricated institutional design. It is not equated with a particular constitutional system only, nor with a particular constellation of centers of power within a society, but it instead understood in Westian terms – as a verb, and never as a noun (West 2005: 68). Anarchism stresses that democracy is not a matter of a specific type of produc-tion or consumption but first and foremost a matter of freedom. If “majoritarian democracy” advocates the sovereignty of people, then participative democracy advocates the sovereignty of an individual; it is therefore understandable that anarchism rejects the form of representative democracy as well as the concep-tion of nation as an entity separate from the individuals composing it. Within anarchism, democracy is conceived in such a radical way that many authors suggest this is more a sui generis type of aristocracy. According to Woodcock (2003: 31), anarchism is a “universalized and purified aristocracy. If anar-chism called for the freedom of noble men, anarchism has always declared the nobility of free men”.

If within representative democracy the main manifestation or proof of the level of democracy is (passive) voting or a choice between the offered options, then within anarchism “democracy on steroids” means the active (co)creation of these options where every form of majority voting is out of the question as the only genuinely democratic procedure is consensus decision-making. There is probably no need to list the many episodes in modern history warning about the fatal consequences of leveling democracy to the concept of representative democ-racy with majority decision-making where “democracy” resulted in the undemo-cratic or anti-democratic treatment of minorities. Hence, majority voting is not only an inherently oppressive anomaly resulting in a tyranny of the majority, but (paradoxically) also an extremely disuniting and at the same time homogenizing institute leading to unstable and one-dimensional societies.

Graeber (2007: 342) is thus convinced that representative democracy in all of its derivations is a big rarity in the history of political communities as it is based on two preconditions which hardly ever coincide:1. belief that people should have an equal say in the decision-making;2. a coercive apparatus capable of enforcing those decisions.



Graeber is not surprised that there have only been a few periods in human history when both preconditions coincided since in egalitarian communities such systems of restraint were perceived as unnecessary and irrational anomalies, whereas in those entities with established mechanisms of control and coercion the political elites and the rulers had no idea and desire to follow and realize the popular will.

5 ConclusionsThrough theoretical purism, stubborn adherence to principles and the absolute rejection of compromises and reformism, anarchism has preserved its ontological radicalism but, along the way, it has definitely lost its value and topicality since “anachronistic” anarchism is torn “between tragic Past and impossible Future, and it seems to lack a Present” (Bey 2003: 60).

In this regard, anarchism must first overcome the negative “fetishization” of the state because today’s struggle for a better world not only involves anti-statism but should be much more encompassing. The most telling comparison is the fight against the mythological many-headed monster Hydra where the state represents only one of the threats which have to be “severed” while others remain to be fought, e.g., capitalism, racism, sexism, militarism, homophobia and national-ism, to mention just the most obvious ones. Likewise, anarchism must change its perception of the state. It has to understand it as a “a social relationship; a certain way of people relating to one another” (Landauer) and address it as soon as possible instead of rejecting it for the sake of theoretical purity or an ontologi-cal high-principled attitude.

Gustav Landauer contended that the state was not something that could be destroyed by a one-off revolution, which is why a free society cannot be achieved by simply replacing the old regulation with a new one; this can only be accom-plished by broadening the spheres of freedom to the extent that they eventually triumph in all social life:

A table can be overturned and a window can be smashed. However, those who believe that the state is also a thing or a fetish that can be overturned or smashed are sophists and believers in the Word. The state is a social relationship; a certain way of people relating to one another. It can be destroyed by creating new social relationships, i.e. by people relating to one another differently. … We, who have imprisoned ourselves in the absolute state, must realize the truth: we are the state! And we will be the state as long as we are nothing differ-ent; as long as we have not yet created the institutions necessary for a true community and a true society of human beings.

(Landauer, 2010: 249)


66 Žiga Vodovnik

The solution therefore lies in the prefigurative adventure into new political prac-tices and structures which, already here and now, are drawing the contours of the world we are striving to achieve some day. In her reflection on new anarchism, Cindy Milstein (2010: 122) establishes that it is high time for anarchism to “move from protest to politics, from shutting down streets to opening up public space, from demanding scraps from those few in power to holding power firmly in all our hands”. Such a position already evokes Bey’s conception of the spontane-ous and subversive tactics of creating Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) which “liberate a part (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolve themselves to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush them” (Bey 2003: 99).

In his excellent reading of Bey, Nikolai Jeffs (1997: 368–369) emphasizes that “subversion must be deterritorialized, decentralized and delinealized in all polit-ical, economic, social, libidinal and, last but not least, narrative levels, and that small and nomadic types of resistance must be launched also because there is no place in the world that would not be territorialized by a national state … [TAZ] is invisible to the state and sufficiently flexible to disappear the very moment it is identified, defined, fixed”. This kind of emancipation does not have to postpone its mission until the fulfillment of the necessary condition – the maturity of objec-tive historic circumstances, or the formation of some coherent subject or class – since it builds on the supposition that every individual is capable of co-creating the world with their, even if very small, gestures. Consequently, every individual can change this world and create it anew (Jeffs 1998: 22–23).

Although anarchism has never been characterized by the narrow economic reductionism, which would result in the fetishization of economic exploitation and class antagonism, a new anarchism is putting additional emphasis on the concept of hierarchy and domination which consequently detects exploitation that may not even have an economic meaning at all. In Bookchinite terms, a new anarchism raises a much broader and more important question – not only the question of class antagonism, but of hierarchy and domination as such. Hence, anarchists do not perceive revolutionary change as something that concerns an alternation in hegemonic economic and political arrangements only, but see revolutionary change as something that changes and/or transcends the ways we live, work, make love, collaborate et cetera. Only by exceeding the rigid pursuing of a certain doctrine, can anarchism remain one of the most important and most topical intellectual currents of the modern world on one hand, and the starting point for achieving social changes on the other.



ReferencesACME Collective (1999) N30 Black Bloc Communique. Available at: http://theanarchistlibrary.

org/n30-black-bloc-communiqué (accessed May 5, 2012).Anderson, Benedict (2007) Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination.

New York, NY: Verso.Appadurai, Arjun (2004) “Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination.” In: (Joan

Vincent, ed.) The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and a Critique. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 271–284.

Barclay, Harold (1996) People without Government, an Anthropology of Anarchy. London: Kahn & Averill.

Bey, Hakim (2003) T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.

Bookchin, Murray (1996) “Anarchism, Past and Present.” In: (Howard J. Ehrlich, ed.) Reinventing Anarchy, Again. Oakland, CA: AK Press, pp. 19–30.

Clark, John (1978) “What is Anarchism?” In: (Roland J. Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds.) Anarchism: Nomos XIX. New York, NY: New York University Press, pp. 3–28.

Curran, Giorel (2006) 21st Century Dissent: Anarchism, Anti-Globalization and Environ-mentalism. New York, NY: Palgrave.

de León, Juana Ponce (ed.) (2001) Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marcos. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.

Epstein, Barbara (2001) “Anarchism and the Anti-Globalisation Movement,” Monthly Review, 53(4):1–14.

Fischer, Jasna (1979) “Radikalizacija delavskega gibanja v Sloveniji v osemdesetih letih 19. stoletja,” Časopis za kritiko znanosti, domišljijo in novo antropologijo, VII(35–36):7–21.

Fischer, Jasna (1986) “Johann Most in njegov vpliv na razvoj delavskega gibanja v Sloveniji.” In: (Johann Most, ed.) Anarhizem in komunizem – Kapital in delo. Ljubljana: Knjižnica revolucionarne teorije, pp. 8–18.

Freeman, Jo (1970) The Tyranny of Structurelessness. Available at: http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm (accessed May 5, 2012).

Goodway, David (ed.) (2004) For Worker’s Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton. Oakland, CA: AK Press.

Gordon, Uri (2008) Anarchy Alive!: Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory. London: Pluto Press.

Graeber, David (2004) “The New Anarchists.” In: (Tom Mertes, ed.) A Movement of Movements, Is Another World Really Possible? New York, NY: Verso, pp. 202–218.

Graeber, David (2007) Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire. Oakland, CA: AK Press.

Graeber, David (2009) Direct Action: An Ethnography. Oakland, CA: AK Press.Graeber, David and Andrej Grubačić (2004) Anarchism, or the Revolutionary Movement

of the Twenty-first Century. Available at: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/9258 (accessed May 5, 2012).

Grubačić, Andrej (2004) “Towards Another Anarchism.” In: (Jai Sen and Peter Waterman, eds.) World Social Forum: Challenging Empires. New Delhi: The Viveka Foundation, pp. 35–43.


68 Žiga Vodovnik

Grubačić, Andrej (2010) Don’t Mourn, Balkanize!: Essays After Yugoslavia. Oakland, CA: AK Press.

Heckscher, Zahara (2002) “Long before Seattle: Historical Resistance to Economic Globalization.” In: (Robin Broad, ed.) Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy. Manham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, pp. 86–91.

Holloway, John (2002) Change the World without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today. London: Pluto Press.

Horowitz, Irving L. (ed.) (2005) The Anarchists. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction Publishers.

Indjić, Trivo (n.d.) Razvoj anarhističkih ideja na tlu jugoslovenskih zemalja. Available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/239867/Kratka-istorija-anarhistikih-ideja-na-tlu-jugoslovenskih-zemalja (accessed May 5, 2012).

Jeffs, Nikolai (1997) “Intelektualci, novi razredi, anarhizmi”. In: (Noam Chomsky, ed.) Somrak demokracije. Ljubljana: Studia humanitatis, pp. 351–376.

Jeffs, Nikolai (1998) “All you need is love (nasilje, emancipacija, pa tudi nekaj uvodnih besed…),” Časopis za kritiko znanosti, domišljijo in novo antropologijo, XXVI(188):9–42.

Jordan, Tim (2002) Activism! Direct Action, Hacktivism and the Future of Society. London: Reaktion Books.

Kesić, Stojan (1976) Odnosi između radničkih pokreta u jugoslovenskim zemljama do 1914. godine. Beograd: Narodna knjiga – Institut za savremenu istoriju.

Kingsnorth, Paul (2004) One No, Many Yeses. London: Free Press.Kristan, Anton (1927) O delavskem in socialističnem gibanju na Slovenskem do ustanovitve

jugoslovanske socijalno-demokratične stranke (1848–1896). Ljubljana: Zadružna založba.Landauer, Gustav (2010) Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader. Oakland, CA: PM

Press.Maserati, Ennio (1982) “Attività anarchica in Dalmazia nel primo Novecento,” Rivista

Trimestrale di Studi Storici, 18(1):108–121.May, Todd (1994) The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism. University Park, PA:

The Pennsylvania State University Press.May, Todd (2007) “Jacques Rancière and the Ethics of Equality,” SubStance, 36(2):20–36.McNally, David (2006) Another World is Possible: Globalization & Anti-Capitalism. Winnipeg:

Arbeiter Ring Publishing.Milstein, Cindy (2010) Anarchism and Its Asprations. Oakland, CA: AK Press.Neal, Dave (1997) Anarchism: Ideology or Methodology? Available at: http://www.infoshop.org/

library/Dave_Neal:Anarchism:_ideology_or_methodology (accessed May 5, 2012).Pateman, Barry (ed.) (2005) Chomsky on Anarchism. Oakland, CA: AK Press.People’s Global Action (PGA) (2001) Hallmarks. Available at: http://www.nadir.org/nadir/

initiativ/agp/en/ (accessed May 5, 2012).Restrepo, Eduardo and Arturo Escobar (2005) “Other Anthropologies and Anthropology

Otherwise: Steps to a World Anthropologies Framework,” Critique of Anthropology, 25(2):99–129.

Rizman, Rudi (1986) “Oris razvoja anarhistične družbene misli.” In: (Rudi Rizman, ed.) Antologija anarhizma. Ljubljana: Knjižnica revolucionarne teorije, pp. xxi–lxxiv.

Rozman, Franc (1979) Socialistično delavsko gibanje na slovenskem Štajerskem. Ljubljana: Založba Borec.



Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2004) “The World Social Forum: Toward a Counter-Hegemonic Globalisation (Part I).” In: (Jai Sen et al., eds.) World Social Forum: Challenging Empires. New Delhi: The Viveka Foundation, pp. 235–245.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2006) The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond. London: Zed Books.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (ed.) (2007) Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (ed.) (2008) Another Knowledge is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies. New York, NY: Verso.

Starhawk (1987) Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

West, Cornel (2005) Democracy Matters. New York, NY: Penguin Books.Woodcock, George (2003) Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements.

Peterborough: Broadview Press.Zadnikar, Darij (1998) “Le vkup, le vkup, uboga gmajna!” Časopis za kritiko znanosti, domišljijo

in novo antropologijo, XXVI(188):5–6.Zadnikar, Darij (2004) “Kronika radostnega uporništva.” In: (John Holloway, ed.) Spreminjamo

svet brez boja za oblast: pomen revolucije danes. Ljubljana: Študentska založba, pp. 201–225.


A “New” Anarchism? – On Bifurcation and Transformation of Contemporary Anarchist Thought and...

Documents

Transcript of A “New” Anarchism? – On Bifurcation and Transformation of Contemporary Anarchist Thought and...