Anarchism vs. Anarchy

 

 

This is a follow-up blog to my last blog on Bret Weinstein and the anarchistic nihilism of the violence and looting in his home city of Portland, Oregon.  I want to elaborate more on the distinctions between anarchistic nihilism and political and philosophical anarchism, or, in other words, the crucial difference between anarchism and anarchy.  Not that I’m particularly sympathetic to either political or philosophical anarchism.  As socialist Hal Draper has pointed out, under anarchism it would be like the Wild West, for there would be no intervening body such as a state to protect the weak and defenseless from the bullying strong.  For to have such would be to restrain the “freedom” of the bully!  Also, I read an account of how anarchism would supposedly work in practice, through a series of interlocking autonomous local communes—where the communes themselves, and their mechanisms of cooperation among themselves would clearly resemble—state mechanisms!  Thus, to me, the state is a tautology:  it exists out of necessity, it has needed functions to fulfill, it is there because needed regulation and management, even repression of evil and malevolence, are called for under human social arrangements; even purely local ones, as there simply is no automatic “invisible hand” to spontaneously regulate, neither in the market, nor in other vital social functions.  When both Marx and Bakunin wrote, in the 19^th Century, one calling for the gradual “withering away of the state,” i.e., gradual anarchism, while the latter wished to abolish the state immediately, the modern welfare state was not only not in existence, it was even unheard of.  It didn’t come about until the 1890s, after the deaths of both Marx and Bakunin, and near the death of Engels (who died in 1895).  In the 1890s, that wily conservative Otto von Bismarck, as leader of a united Germany, passed the Anti-Socialist Laws, which forbade the German Social-Democratic Party from propagandizing the socialist cause, while, simultaneously, providing for workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance—thus appeasing the working class.  Prior to that, the state was neoliberal, if not openly repressive, and carried out no welfare measures.  So, it was thus impossible for either a Marx or a Bakunin, or their followers, to envision a different kind of state, and the states when then existed were hostile not only to the working class, but to ordinary citizens as a whole; and viewed its function as a state in purely negative terms—to restrain in the name of “freedom,” and to control from the top-down.

 

As a socialist I engaged in an anarchist-socialist dialogue through two book reviews for the hard-copy socialist journal New Politics of two books from anarchist publisher AK Press:  the first, from 2010, of Noam Chomsky’s Chomsky on Anarchism, Chomsky, Anarchism, and Socialism - New Politics, the second from 2013, of the anthology The Accumulation of Freedom,  Anarchist Economics and the Socialist-Anarchist Dialogue - New Politics.  The Chomsky review is especially relevant here, for Chomsky, a self-professed anarchist, is often derided by other anarchists as a “reformist.”  For example, while he believes, rightly, that all authority should be questioned, interrogated, he concludes that not all authority is bad; indeed, some is necessary and beneficial.  Similarly, Chomsky holds that a major problem besetting the Third World is too little government, state power and intervention—that too much authority and power there is in private hands, is controlled by neoliberalism in the service of neoliberal capitalist interests against the needs and wishes of the people.  On these, we socialists and political and philosophical anarchists can agree.

What we can’t agree on is the nihilism engendered by anarchist acting out; it’s descent into mere anarchy, not political anarchism in any meaningful or constructive sense.  While I can certainly positively hold with anarchists on the need for individual autonomy, even against the “popular masses,” and the generally beneficial achievement of such anarchism in the arts, where the freewheeling artist creates compelling freewheeling art, beyond that, as a socialist, there’s little in anarchism I can accept; and when it comes to anarchy, there’s nothing I can accept.  As a prime example of both, consider the Sex Pistols’ song, “Anarchy in the U.K.”  I certainly can embrace the opening words of brazen statement in the song, “I am the anti-Christ/I am an anarchist,” but cannot accept, embrace, the later statement in the song, “I want to destroy.”  For the act of revolution, of successful social transformation, is constructive more than it is destructive.  As an example, when we destroy the rotting, decrepit shed on the weed-strewn lawn, we must also construct not only a new edifice on the property, but also cleanse it of its weed-infested, unsightly nature, or else our work will become as naught.  Social change that lasts is constructive, not merely destructive of the old order; and, as Bret Weinstein pointed out, the destruction in rampant anarchy presently going on in Portland, Oregon, is not revolution of a positive sense, but negative, nihilistic anarchy which is only destructive, and alienating of the very people we need to reach.