An unusual agreement
In the last hundred years, there is no idea that has been criticized, slandered and falsified more and more in unison than anarchism.
It sounds incredible, but anarchism as a political position and theoretical foundation and consideration of the problems of the modern world was equally passionately and unanimously attacked by fascists and communists, liberals and conservatives, nationalists and globalists... Such an unexpected agreement suggests the question - why? And how did a consensus come about among such different and conflicting ideas? What is the historical background of that story? And, finally, what did the anarchists do to piss everyone off?
For sure, each of you has at least once experienced that a teacher at school, a boss at work or a parent at home (such statements, of course, always come from - authority) threaten him loudly - I will not allow anarchy. Modern language, in all its manifestations, has brought a strong, incredibly intense pejorization of the term anarchy and all its derivatives. As well as impossible coins created to defame and shoot political opponents. Thus, in the XNUMXs, Broz disempowered the modern, reformist and European Serbian leadership (Nikezić, Latinka Perović) by labeling them anarcholiberals. Of course, the meaning or rational basis was not important. It was important - quick discrediting, and anarchism could always serve well for these purposes. Even before that, on the occasion of Đilas, this term, as heavy as a death sentence, was activated on several occasions.
The communist paradox
When looking at the fundamental principles of the ideology of communism and anarchism, a rational person would have to see huge similarities, strategic overlaps, a trace of a similar context in which they were born, close theoretical positions, and yet, despite that, sometimes in some historical episodes it is seen that communists dealt with the anarchists much more thoroughly than with the fascists. After all, perhaps that is precisely why - since anarchism (or post-anarchism) as an alternative did not exist, and could not exist after so much negative labeling in communism - in all countries, from Vladivostok to Tirana, communism in its twilight phase made the transition towards - nationalism and national-fascism.
XIX century, birthplace of ideologies
The beginnings of the story of anarchism go back to the middle of the XNUMXth century, which, since it is the epoch that constitutes the other significant ideologies of our time, could be called the great birthplace of ideologies.
Four key names are associated with the early phase of anarchism: the French Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), the German Max Stirner (1806-1856), and two Russians, who, admittedly, spent most of their lives in Europe, mostly in Switzerland. - Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) and Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921). To understand their position and influence, it is important to know that Switzerland was one of the most intellectually dynamic centers of Europe at that time. Namely, many Slavic emigrants and political workers found refuge in the land of watches and cheeses, so that ideas from Switzerland spread back and forth not only in Russia, but also in the Slavic South, but also in Poland, the Czech Republic and other parts of the Slavic world within Austria-Hungary. .
The term itself was coined by Proudhon. It is from two Greek words an i arks created a name that will prove not only theoretically successful but will become part of almost all languages.
In everyday use, even educated people will translate this term as "powerlessness", although it would be more precise - "without power". Someone will say - what's the difference? In almost all languages, the term "statelessness" implies a state of chaos. That expression was born out of the need to describe situations of social disintegration, and in its subsequent use for a political thought, it is extremely inadequate. The anarchist ideal, "an-archia", implies a society without government as the basis of harmony and social harmony, and not quite the opposite state, which, whether we like it or not, the term "governmentlessness" implies. The term "statelessness" contains regret for the government (which, as this term implies, brings order and order), while in the precise translation of "an-archia" as "without government" there is no nostalgia for the government and its mechanisms.
So, in short, "an-archia" as imagined by Proudhon is not any powerlessness, disintegration and chaos, but a state of authentic social peace and order that is created by amputating the manipulative and alienating mechanisms on which, from the first Mesopotamian cities to the present day, every government rests .
The shores of Utopia
Anarchism is, without a doubt, an idea that "genre-wise" unequivocally belongs to the utopian zone. But what political idea isn't that? Didn't Wilde elegantly note - that a geographical map on which the land of Utopia is not drawn does not deserve to exist. At the core of every political idea is some kind of utopia, which is already so implicit in most other ideological projects that it is not even problematized. As a premise that is not questioned, and therefore its utopian essence fades, disappears, it is relegated to the background through the play of mental powers and language. Even nationalism as an ideology rests on the utopia of an idyllic family, a community in which everyone is fulfilled and reaches their authenticity by the very act of belonging to the community. Of course, that utopia never and nowhere, however much the media image may create such an illusion, does not actually exist. Fortunately, we add, because imagine the endless banality of societies in which there is no incident of otherness, and where everyone is in his place already by the act of birth (which is not even the merit of the one who was born). Such a utopia is nothing less than the utopia of freedom, which, in addition, is incomparably nobler and more inspiring, which means that it opens the way for reaching authenticity, since freedom is not something you automatically take on (like a surname, for example), but the most personal path, choice and chosen, always.
And communism is equally a utopia. In the closest neighborhood of an anarchist utopia. Well, nevertheless, communism, with a deft quip about socialism as the first stage and way station on the way to the communist Paradise, overcame, actually postponed the inexorable logical conflict of its position. This was possible due to the existence of the communist empire - the first country of socialism, later dozens of other countries on all continents, including China. Actually, no country ever stood behind anarchism, although Catalonia, during almost three years between 1936 and 1939, was an anarchist country, albeit in a cruel war with domestic fascists who were generously supported by the then serious military powers, Germany and Italy. The type of reality, the real historical experience, therefore, strongly influenced the awareness of these ideologies and their possibilities.
Defensive time
During Kropotkin's lifetime, anarchism as a world story will experience its first major ebb and flow. There are several reasons for this. With the exception of Kropotkin himself (the controversial and isolated Most, then Malatesta and Gustav Landauer were not that format), it happened that the "lions" Proudhon and Bakunin disappeared from the anarchist scene, and were excluded from the International, and in a fierce quarrel with other "players" from the left of the political spectrum - social democrats and communists - anarchists were pushed to the margins. There was another, not insignificant, reason for that. Namely, the time of attrition and defensiveness was followed by a kind of decadence of anarchism. When we say that, we first of all mean the radical "romanticization" and reduction of anarchism to an ideological basis for rebellious individuals who opted for assassinations, bombings and the like. Such a strategy distanced anarchism from broad support - and relegated to the background the educational dimension, which all creators of anarchism insisted on. The media (and then mainly in the service of power, real political and economic power) used this situation to demonize anarchism (although, judging by Bakunin's compliment to Proudhon - "he admired Satan", probably the "Pope from Lugano" would not have experienced that as something negative).
Again, the militant anarchists found support in some of the views of Bakunin himself, who wrote, regarding Proudhon and the early utopians: "The great mistake of most of those noble champions of equality, justice and freedom was that they imagined that they were fighting, i.e. interest of the bourgeois class, can prove something with intellectual and moral arguments."
From a certain resignation that this attitude of Bakunin cannot hide, it is understandable that many young anarchists immediately went to inquire how they are made - infernal machines. Or Most's books on dynamite and its use were accepted.
During that time, Marxists tried their best to support an extremely negative image of anarchists in the public eye.
Anarchism is more and more directly associated with violence in the public eye. The wave starts in France, where between 1892 and 1894 a whole series of murders, assassinations, robberies took place. The actors of these events claim that their goal is "weakening bourgeois justice, and the bourgeoisie, which persecuted the anarchists."
Those are the years that will be remembered for Ravashol's bombs, so when Ravashol was killed, similar revenge actions by Veylan followed, and when he was also killed, Emil Henri started a new revenge... All this significantly reduced the real influence of anarchism on at the very end of the century in which anarchism was born.
Anarchism in art
This period of attrition and stagnation in the development of anarchist ideas will show something else: the inspiration and breadth of the possible influence of some of the fundamental anarchist insights and principles.
We can follow the path of possible influences in the artistic events of the time. In the constitution of Dadaism, it is impossible not to recognize some anarchist and anarchoid impulses. A comparative analysis that would accompany the relationship between Dada - Anarchism, and against it Surrealism - Communism, would certainly provide interesting and meaningful analogies and insights.
Feminism
One of the directions in which the fruitful influence of anarchism as a general theory of liberation will act will be the creation and early development of feminism.
"True emancipation does not begin with winning the right to vote, nor in the courtroom. Emancipation begins in the female soul. History teaches us that every oppressed class has achieved true liberation from its masters only through its own efforts. It is necessary for a woman to learn this lesson, for her to understand that her freedom will reach the limits of her ability to realize her freedom. That is why it is much more important for a woman to start with her inner renewal, to free herself from the restraints of prejudices, traditions and customs", she wrote in 1910 (The tragedy of female emancipation) Emma Goldman, one of the several most important figures of the anarchist movement at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. Her ideas were strongly received by young and educated American and European women, and almost all of her followers became important figures in the women's emancipation movement.
"Could anything be more shocking than the idea that an adult, healthy woman, full of life and passion, must renounce the demands of her nature, must suppress her most intense desires, question her health and break her spirit, must darken her vision, and to refrain from the depth and magnitude of sexual experience until some "good" man comes along to take her as his wife. That's exactly what marriage is," she says in the text "Love and Marriage" (1910).
The fact that modern feminism was born under the auspices of anarchism, and that almost all the founders of feminism were originally anarchists, on the one hand confirms the emancipatory potential of anarchist thinking, while on the other hand it explains why feminism grew into one of the most challenging and intellectually dynamic movements during the XNUMXth century. system.
Pacifism
Another direction of important influence was - pacifism, and all possible forms of antimilitarism. Despite the inconvenient reputation created by people like Ravašol and Čolgoš, and not only them, anarchism has been consistently pacifist since its beginnings, radically against all possible forms of violence. Anarchists, namely, insist that every war is the most hideous manipulation, in which manipulated people die for the interests of exploiters and ruling elites. Anarchism, on that trail, was the first to unmask the so-called Great ideas, which by their own power of irrational motivation most directly created suffering and death. The nation, the church, the state are nothing but another of the modes in which the ruling class recruits people through such abstractions who, thinking that they are working for some nebulous "big ideas", are actually working to achieve the goals of their exploiters and their economic and political interests. The anarchists, led by Kropotkin in Declaration of war (1916) explained that people are drawn into the imperial phantasms of their own exploiters.
Anarchist pacifism is only a consequent appreciation of the fundamental principles of anarchism. All the founders of anarchism insisted on a clear anti-military commitment. Anarchism most comprehensively and most destructively unmasks the nature of all violence, since violence always functions as an attack on freedom itself, and is therefore the only natural position for anarchism - at the radically pacifist pole.
After the Second
World War II World War almost destroyed anarchism in the world. The reality of the war reduced the scope of trade unions, and the bitter defeat in Spain demotivated numerous activists and leftists around the world, or pushed them into the hands of the communists. The anarchists themselves, wherever they happened to be, and mostly they were emigrants from totalitarian countries like Russia, Spain and Italy, naturally, took a decisive stand on the anti-fascist side. As a consequence, many of them joined local resistance movements or guerrilla groups fighting in occupied areas of Europe. However, the end of the war will remind us of some of the most important reasons that made this movement strong and influential in many parts of the world. At the same time, the new civilization that emerged from the ruins of the great war will present to anarchism, along with the old ones, many different, completely new challenges.
Anarchism, after being on the defensive after the Second World War, will again appear powerfully on the big public stage only with the Uprising of 1968, but also with the emergence of the new left, pacifism, feminism, the ecological movement, the whole complex and exciting left panopticon that will mark the entry into the postmodern era, which is largely inspired by anarchist heritage. (It would be interesting to make a deeper analysis of relations and analogies in the triangle anarchism - structuralism - postmodernism, with the interesting situation that the best "anarchist" texts of our time are no longer written by anarchist activists, but by theorists and writers like Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard...)
But what caused the defensive after the Second World War? Three things can be seen as important causes.
First - the defeat in Spain undoubtedly had the effect of partially dissolving the movement.
Second - the international position of the Soviet Union in the decades after the Second World War, since the "first country of communism" imposed itself as a key partner to numerous liberation movements in the world. Nevertheless, despite this, anarchist ideas would often be "smuggled" into such and such movements, especially in Latin America, but also in Greece during the struggle against the dictatorship. However, in all these movements, Soviet advisors and secret services constantly carried out "de-anarchization", as they once did in Ukraine or Catalonia. Free-thinking intellectuals, radical critics, by nature close to such movements, were removed or even liquidated as soon as the Soviet influence became significant.
Third - the Cold War division of the world significantly reduced the active space for "apolitical" (or anti-political) concepts such as anarchism.
The genie is out of the bottle
And what, in turn, influenced the offensive from the sixties?
Perhaps anarchism, as a radical theory of freedom, was the only remaining possible answer to the cynicism of self-conscious capitalism - which abolished a good part of those "visible", clearly discernible reasons for rebellion, thus pacifying the revolutionary social energy. It was a passage through the postmodern gate of (self)deception, and the creation of "ideal subjects" by the media.
Also, anarchism gave a powerful stamp to pop culture, which brought it from factories and intellectual circles to the big media scene. In short - that's how the genie was let out of the bottle. There was no return.
Recent times have brought another and interesting analogy. Whoever deals with this, will notice that anarchist sites on the Internet are not only extremely numerous, but also brilliantly created... Since anarchism itself, from its beginnings, opposes the organizational and social concept of hierarchy, the concept of the network, I guess there was nothing more natural than that the anarchists the Network, They experience the Internet as "their" medium.
And, finally, the most important thing - no matter how active the strategies of self-deception are, the injustice in the world is no less - and that is always the reason for looking for real, non-corrupt, effective alternatives. And if you think so, sooner or later you have to come across - anarchism.
Again, there are authors who believe that today's popularity is actually a disservice to anarchism. It is stated that the displacement of anarchism from the edge, from the margin would in some way be a trap by the consumerist hysteroid contemporary society. But is it really so?
True social criticism, uncorrupted and pure, is possible only from such positions. Everything else is playing in the same circle, legitimizing and reproducing the dullness of a system that is beginning to suffocate in its own self-infatuation.
If you are not ready to enter that cynical quicksand of contemporary, high-minded liberal capitalism, you must find active modes of dissent, and the anarchist story, in this sense, offers very inspiring possibilities.
Finally, and fortunately - the eros of rebellion will never lose its seductiveness.
(2006)
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