negations

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article by Andy Price reviews my Being a Bookchinite
as well as Bookchin’s posthumous, Social Ecology and Communalism. It appeared in
the most recent issue of Anarchist Studies (Spring-Summer 2008). I post it here
with permission and intend to reply in the next week or so.]

- - -

Bookchin’s Social Ecology and Communalism (2007), a posthumous collection of four essays, culminates in the last theoretical piece he was to write, wherein he concludes that, ‘its often refreshing aphorisms and insights notwithstanding’, anarchism ‘is simply not a social theory’ (p.90, emphasis added). As forthright as ever, one can almost feel the hackles rising at Bookchin’s final proclamation. However, it would be all too easy here to make the same mistakes that much of the reaction to Bookchin in the 1990s made, and to read his ultimate break with anarchism as further evidence of, variously: Bookchin’s nefarious desire to be leader of the green-anarcho left; his desire to extinguish any other political creed but his own; or his fundamental personal failings that render his liberatory project dogmatic and irrelevant.

In truth, however, this caricature of Bookchin is unfair, and Bookchin’s rejection of anarchism more properly reflects the two driving forces of his half-century of radical thought: the commitment to the social expression of humanity’s creative potentiality; and the commitment to the continuing dialectical development of radical oppositional thought in light of the continuing development of capitalism. In Social Ecology and Communalism–thanks in no small measure to the excellent selection and ordering by Eirik Eiglad, who collates and introduces the collection–these two driving forces are traceable throughout and find their synthesis in the political project Bookchin outlines in his final theoretical outing.

In the opening essay, ‘What is Social Ecology?’ first published in 1993, we find a clear enunciation of Bookchin’s view of nature, both human and nonhuman, from which emerges his formulation of humanity’s creative potential. ‘[T]he natural world and the social’, Bookchin writes, ‘are interlinked by evolution into one nature that consists of two differentiations: first, or biotic nature, and second or social nature’ (p.29). What links these two natures is that they both ’share an evolutionary potential for greater subjectivity and flexibility’ (p.29).

That is to say that humanity is both the expression of, and is endowed with, a creative, evolutionary potentiality for increased subjectivity, flexibility, and ultimately, self-consciousness. These evolutionary materials not only rendered humanity the most self-conscious element in nature in the present but also provide it with the creative potentiality to achieve a rational ecological society in the future. Needless to say, this creative potentiality has been arrested by the destructiveness that has thus far characterised human society and its relationship with the natural world. It is to the creation of social forms that both express this creative potentiality and ameliorate the destructive that Bookchin sets his political programme.

In the two essays that follow–’Radical Politics in an Era of Advanced Capitalism’ (1989), and ‘Social Ecology in a Period of Reaction’ (1996)–we can trace Bookchin’s commitment to the dialectical development of oppositional thought in light of the ever-shifting terrain of capitalism. Here, he describes the changing nature of capitalism post-1945 (p.56; p.69). During the 1950s and 1960s, capitalism began to mutate an economic system into a social system, bringing new challenges to the Left. It is from within these changes that Bookchin’s critique of the stasis of Marxism would emerge.

By the 1990s, however, the rules of engagement had changed again: capitalism was no longer solely a set of social relations but had transformed into the ‘end of history’ itself, had become enshrined as the ultimate version of human nature, a nature predicated on its ethos ‘to compete, win, and grow’ (p.73). In the light of such a shift, ideas and movements that opposed capitalism had also been deeply affected, and must therefore be subject to a constant ‘uncompromising critique’ (p.75). This uncompromising critique of the movements to which he belonged, so characteristic of Bookchin’s career, was based on this clear understanding of the extent of the changing nature of capitalism and the changes this necessitated in anti-capitalism.

Which bring us to the fourth essay, ‘The Communalist Project’ (2002), Bookchin’s final outlining of his political project. Here, the two driving motors of his work in fact become one, intertwined whole: the project to build a society that is the expression of the creative potentiality of humanity must be drawn in light of the ultimate shift in capitalism and the crisis it fosters–i.e., the threat of ecological collapse. This response, in light of the fact that capitalist crisis is now generalised (p.84)–i.e., it is not solely an economic crisis, does not solely affect one particular class–must be predicated on a direct empowerment of the citizen through the community. It is in this sense that Bookchin argues that, ‘Above all, Communalism is engaged with the problem of power’ (p.109). This engagement with power is in fact twofold. First, the empowerment of the citizen and the community would require the creation of a decentralised ‘ensemble of institutions designed to deal with the problems of consociational life in an orderly and hopefully fair manner’ (p.95). This process would not only require substantial organisation but also leadership. For Bookchin, ‘leadership always exists … [and] … a serious libertarian approach to leadership would indeed acknowledge the reality and crucial importance of leaders’ (p.111, emphasis in original), to both challenge the abusive power of present leaders and to engender the material and institutional changes necessary for the move toward communalism.

Second, in order to engender this new social reality, the members of a community would need to be materially and politically empowered, today. Therefore, Bookchin argues that ‘adherents of Communalism mobilize themselves to electorally engage in a potentially important centre of power–the municipal council–and try to compel it to create legislatively potent neighbourhood assemblies’ (p.109, emphasis added). This would constitute the ‘minimum programme’ of communalism that would aim, in the here and now, ‘to satisfy the most elemental needs of the masses, to improve their access to the resources that make daily life tolerable’ (p.114). In light of the extent of the spread of the ethos of capitalism, now enshrined as human nature itself (and to the extent that it permits no other conception of human nature) this tentative, material and political empowerment is indispensable to opening up even the idea of radical change.

These initial steps, then, are not the start of a process through which a communalist society can be legislated into existence for Bookchin, but rather the process through which the ‘maximum program’ is hopefully brought into view: they are the first tentative steps to establish ‘new rules of engagement between the people and capital’, as revolutionaries–anarchist or otherwise–start to envision and create ‘lasting organizations and institutions that can play a socially transformative role in the real world’ (p.115).

In Social Ecology and Communalism, then, we get a glimpse, uncluttered of the polemics of the 1990s, of the explicitly social nature of the whole Bookchin programme: philosophically, in his commitment to the social expression of humanity’s creative evolutionary potential; and politically in his commitment to confronting the realities of the power required to start this process, today. This social focus and the commitment to the dialectical development of radical thought are the fundamentals of Bookchin’s revolutionary programme, and it is from these fundamentals (rather than dubious motivations or personal failings) that stem his critiques of the less-socially focused aspects of anarchism. Anyone with any lingering doubts about Bookchin’s motivations should read this concise yet comprehensive collection.

Unfortunately, the second piece under review here, Chuck Morse’s essay, ‘Being a Bookchinite’, almost completely neglects these fundamentals. In doing so, it follows the same patterns of much of the critiques of Bookchin of the 1990s: it offers an analysis of Bookchin and his work without paying sufficient attention to his theoretical and practical programme. Instead, Morse relies on the insinuation of personal failings and insidious motives in Bookchin that render his revolutionary project a failure (p.3). Based on the three years he spent studying and working in close association with Bookchin (1989-92)–which began after he ’self-consciously apprenticed’ himself to Bookchin and became ‘one of his core disciples’ (p.5)–Morse offers to ‘illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of his [Bookchin’s] particular approach to revolutionary organising’ (p.6).

He begins by outlining ‘three of the cardinal tenets of membership of Bookchin’s core circle’ (p.10). These were: an emphasis on education, as a result of which, Morse tells us, he received an unparalleled education under Bookchin (p.10, fn.13); the unique framing of politics as a moral activity, which ‘fostered an unusually strong commitment to honesty, accountability, and the principled discussion of ideas’ (p.12); and a commitment to a ‘boldness’ of political engagement, fostering the notion of a small group of people being able to change the world if willing to take risks (p.14). For Morse, however, these cardinal tenets also presented ’significant problems’ (p.18).

In terms of the emphasis on education, Morse argues that the centrality of Bookchin as the educator, and the principle focus on his thought, ‘tended to close us off from insights that other traditions and thinkers had to offer’ (p.18). His followers believed that Bookchin had found the principles of social development that could replace capitalism and avert ecological disaster, and therefore ‘Bookchin’s ideas played a quasi-religious role for us and he became something of a prophet’ (p.18). From this, since they believed that ‘Bookchin advanced the truth, other theorists advanced deceptions by default’ (p.18, emphasis in original). Moreover, Bookchin ‘often dissuaded us from exploring other writers who–he seemed to fear–might threaten his hold on us’ (p.19).

However, this claim of educational ‘closure’ around Bookchin jars with Morse’s own description of the extent and scope of that education. Only a few pages earlier, Morse describes how there were regular lectures from Bookchin on his own work but how it was also possible to ‘participate in weekly study groups on Hegel, Marx, the French Revolution, cities, and other weighty topics and theorists’ (pp.11-12). Indeed, ‘there were so many study groups, of such high quality, that people used to say that we had started an underground university’ (p.12). Many of these groups were student led, but Bookchin had encouraged them directly: he counselled his students ‘not only to explore key revolutionary thinkers and events, but also to acquaint ourselves with major moments in the Western tradition’, in order to ‘assimilate the best aspects of this legacy into our movement’ (pp.10-11). Moreover, he tells us that ‘the extraordinary breadth of historical and theoretical references in his [Bookchin’s] work seemed to show this was possible’, and proved to Morse that ‘no idea was too abstract or event too remote to be incorporated into our transformative project’ (p.11).

Quite how a thinker who encouraged such an education could then close his students off from other insights is left unclear. One can only assume here that Morse took his self-appointed role as a Bookchin ‘disciple’ all too literally, and that this ‘closing-off ‘ was a self-imposed one. The fact that Bookchin dissuaded his students from other writers or schools of thought does not automatically translate as an attempt to maintain a hold over his students. Rather, it represents the messy business of a democratic politics, and the freedom of opinion therein.

Later, Morse himself openly concedes there is no evidence for this kind of intellectual domineering in Bookchin, but does so only to launch an even more problematic criticism: ‘Although I never saw Bookchin demand obsequiousness’, Morse states, ‘he encouraged it indirectly’, as ‘he constantly spoke of his ill-health and implied that his death was imminent’ (p.21). For Morse, Bookchin’s discussions of his own mortality are all the more problematic as Bookchin did this ‘when I first met him in 1989, almost two decades before his actual death’ (p.21). The insinuation here of some kind of mortal deception by Bookchin is compounded by Morse when he tells us, rather unscientifically, that ‘he has heard accounts of similar behaviour twenty years before that’, and that this created a ‘tragic aura’ around Bookchin that fostered a feeling in those around him ‘that we should treasure every moment with him’ (p.21).

In terms of what an essay on the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchin’s revolutionary project should contain, we surely know that it should not be this kind of personal recollection and gossipy insinuation. Moreover, and although it is regrettable that one has to enter into this personal discussion, it should be noted in the name of fairness that Bookchin turned 70 in the period that Morse knew him (in 1991) and was in ill-health: he was three years away from his first heart attack and was increasingly crippled by osteoarthritis. Is it so surprising that a man of 70 would talk of his declining health, and even his death? And why should this present a problem? Again, this tells us less about Bookchin and his programme and more about Morse: to be lulled into obsequiousness by a septuagenarian discussing his health and death speaks more of weaknesses of the listener than those of the speaker.

Next, Morse argues that the second cardinal tenet, Bookchin’s framing of politics as a moral activity, led to ‘an obsession with defending his views against threats’ (a causal link he does not explain) which led to Bookchin’s ‘endless stream of polemics’ (again, unexplained) (p.21; p.22). This ‘tendency for defensiveness’ also manifested itself in Bookchin constantly ‘inventing new names for his views’–his move from social ecology to radical social ecology, anarchism to social anarchism, and libertarian municipalism to communalism (p.22). That Bookchin changed the names of different aspects of his thought, that he was a strident polemicist is clear; that these things stem from defensiveness is not. As noted already in this review, this more accurately reflects the commitment to the dialectical development of radical thought throughout Bookchin’s career. However, Morse does not see the dialectic in Bookchin, and views Bookchin’s ultimate rejection of anarchism and his move toward communalism as ‘bitter, doctrinal carping’ (p.24).

For Morse, instead of ‘carping’, what Bookchin should have actually been doing was enjoying the ‘triumphant moment’ that the re-emergence of anarchism within the anti-capitalist movement represented, ‘given that he had done more than any other thinker to redeem the anarchist vision in the second half of the twentieth century’ (pp.23-4). It does not occur to Morse to ask: why would Bookchin forego such a triumphant moment? Why would he forego the enjoyment of seeing his work justified, of sitting back and resting on his laurels? Why not take the path of least resistance in what was clearly the autumn of his life? Again, the answers to these questions are to be found in Bookchin’s work itself, and not in the caricature that Morse falls back onto here.

Finally, the third cardinal tenet–Bookchin’s commitment to the notion ‘that a small group of people can change the world’–led for Morse to Bookchin’s ‘disregard of the material conditions of social change’ (p.18). Despite the fact that Bookchin’s commitment to the creation of an educated intelligentsia to lead social change stems from a detailed regard for the extent to which present material conditions preclude social change (as discussed above), Morse uses this claim to launch his most specious accusation yet: that Bookchin’s dismissal of the material conditions for revolutionary change was most strikingly represented by his ’silence on white supremacy and racism, which he never addressed in all but the most cursory fashion’ (p.24).

Further, Morse then goes on to tell us that he remembers ‘marvelling at how strange it was that Bookchin had settled in Vermont, the whitest state in America’ and how the organisations he built ‘were always overwhelmingly white’ (p.24). Here, the same pattern that Morse uses in his earlier insinuation repeats itself, as he tells us that ‘though I never personally witnessed what I recognised as an obvious act of prejudice, it was clear to me that Bookchin lived in a bubble’ (p.24)–i.e., just as in the case of Bookchin’s demanding of obsequiousness, prejudice is insinuated by noting its very absence.

In terms of the claim that Bookchin was ’silent’ on race, then the whole of Bookchin’s writings on hierarchy and domination set themselves to a critique of these concepts in their entirety, including the hierarchy and domination that exists between ethnic groups. To argue for the dissolution of hierarchy as such in society is to argue for the end of white supremacy. It is ridiculous to suggest that Bookchin was silent on this issue. The instances where Bookchin discusses these hierarchies specifically are there in his work, and too numerous to list here, but we should remind ourselves in passing of his vociferous (and voluminous) late-1980s writings against those in the ecology movement who argued that population growth was the cause of the ecological crisis, writings which endlessly pointed out the implicit racism of such a position. This is to leave aside Bookchin’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

In terms of the criticism of Bookchin’s residency in Vermont, then, to attempt to draw any conclusions from the question of where a person in their fifties (as Bookchin was when he moved to Vermont, gradually, throughout 1970s)–who had lived in the US Northeast his entire life, who had a network of friends, family, political and work commitments in the region–’chose’ to live shows a complete disregard for the material conditions of social reality, not just social change; but again, on Morse’s part, not Bookchin’s. Moreover, it also overlooks one of the key political motivations for moving to Vermont in the first place: the New England town meeting tradition, which Bookchin would consistently write of (see Bookchin 1995, for example), and to which he hoped he could tap into in the construction of his new politics.

Again here, and as with the rest of Morse’s essay, an explanation of the problems he raises can be found in Bookchin’s work, in an examination of his theoretical foundations and their conclusions for radical action: there is a coherence of thought and practice in Bookchin, wherein his political programme, whether one agrees with him or not, is based upon his principles. It is here where we can, and should, put Bookchin to the test, through a detailed examination of these principles and the practice they necessitate. Unfortunately, Morse does not offer this here but rather falls back into the patterns of caricature that surrounded Bookchin in the 1990s.

The author would like to thank Janet Biehl for providing additional information.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bookchin, M (1995), From Urbanisation to Cities: Toward a New Politics of Citizenship, 2nd edn., New York and London, Cassell.

ANDY PRICE
Department of Politics & Philosophy Manchester Metropolitan University

Social Ecology and Communalism
Murray Bookchin
AK Press, Edinburgh 2007
ISBN: 978-1904869499, 118 pages

Being a Bookchinite
Chuck Morse
Chuck Morse, New York 2007
27pp. (Also due to appear in the Spring 2008 issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory.)

Located in East Harlem, Art for Change (AfC) encourages the advancement of progressive social change by using art as a catalyst for individual and collective reflection and action.

Art for Change will be presenting Hacia Afuera, the first public art festival in East Harlem-El Barrio to be held in the spring of 2008 and is inviting artists to take part in it with performance, music, site specific installations and interactive media pieces.

East Harlem-El Barrio is a neighborhood with a long history of art, from theater to murals, to performance. In recent years, gentrification has become a reality for many of its residents and thus Hacia Afuera is to be used as a vehicle to reclaim the space especially those that are public.

Works must fit in the political and social context of the neighborhood and must be made of sustainable materials (found, grass, rescued wood) when possible. We are looking for pieces that are highly imaginative but not necessarily complicated in its assembling or in the number of external support that is needed (electricity, extravagant permits, etc).

Budget for the Festival is limited but we will provide materials like basic tools, nails, screws, paint, fabric, soil.

Proposals must be one page in length and should include set-up detail and the ideal location where the piece will be situated. The exact demarcation of where the Festival will take place is still to be decided, but gardens, streets, sidewalks, parks and private walls are possible.

Proposal should also include:

Artistâ s Full Name + Alias (Collectives, teams and community groups are welcome!)
Artistâ s Bio + Statement
Letter of Interest
Dimensions of Piece
Two â Five samples (on DVD, CD)
If performance, indicate duration and number of participants
Time Needed for Set-up
Time Needed for Breakdown
Materials Needed (indicate which you are able to supply)
** Sample documents will not be returned

We are expecting at least 500 visitors throughout the two weekends of the festival. This is a great opportunity to work with existing environments in transforming spaces along with passers-by, residents and visitors.

Please send your application ASAP.
Art for Change/Hacia Afuera
1699 Lexington Ave.
Basement North
New York, NY 10029
Or to info@artforchange.org with â Public Art Proposalâ in the subject line.

I thought that the following new book looked interesting, particularly given the ongoing debates about the relationship of anarchism to the Enlightenment and the possibility of a postmodern anarchism.

(The book is stupidly expensive and hard to find in any library, although I purchased the author’s dissertation for $34 online. I believe that it is identical to what Peter Lang published).

Illegitimate children of the Enlightenment: anarchists and the French Revolution, 1880-1914

The early years of Third French Republic (1880-1914) saw multiple political factions vying for the legacy of the French Revolution. This book examines one of those factions, the anarchist movement, and the role played by the French Revolution in its political thought and action. The French Revolution became a vital, if not well recognized, tool of the anarchist movement to popularize and legitimize its revolutionary activity while engaged in a struggle with other political forces of the Republic to claim ownership over the Revolutionary heritage. The anarchists of the Third Republic wrote histories of the Revolution that reflected their own political orientation. They asserted themselves as part of the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment, which they believed had helped spark the Revolution. The anarchists appropriated the music and popular culture of the French Revolution in their own propaganda. Moreover, they orchestrated revolutionary action and political theatre on the day most associated with the Revolution, July 14. In the Revolution, the anarchists saw glimmers of hope, precursors to their own movement, as well as an effective means to present their message to a wider audience as they also offered models for others to imitate.

The Author: C. Alexander McKinley received his Ph.D. in comparative history from Brandeis University in 2006. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Geography at St. Ambrose University. McKinley has written on French history as well as on the history of radical movements in Europe.

The first issue of Resistance Studies has just been made available online. You can find it in PDF format here and read a press release about the project here.

The following is a summary of its content (provided by the publishers):

The article by Karl Palmås discusses the possible rupture in the strategies of activist groups, where the abstract mechanism of the motor is replaced by another abstract mechanism - the computer model. Palmås draws from contemporary debates in philosophy and sociology, as well as from recent societal and economical developments. In his case study of the Adbusters movement, he notices a shift in how the practice of resistance is modelled. Instead of “jamming” or “blocking” capitalism, Adbusters have turned to a computer-like model where capitalism is “hacked” or “re-written” just like software. This, in turn, leads to a new agenda for resistance, an agenda which works by making new arrangements instead of blocking the old ones. Palmås’ text introduces an interesting perspective on resistance and social change, which instructs us to look at the abstract mechanisms and models, both in order to understand resistance as such, but also to understand power.

Tim Gough’s “Resistance: Under what Grace” is another theoretical article on how to understand the concept of resistance. He invokes the paradoxical nature of resistance, and its relationship towards the existing prevailing order. When an order is opposed and changed, and resistance triumphs, it immediately turns into a new order, which in turn may be resisted. Since this paradoxical logic is always at work, we must displace the question of a beginning and an end in terms of our common-sense understanding of the concept of time.

Instead of separating resistance and order, Gough suggests an “awareness which in the context this cunning and simultaneity becomes the act of a being which, in its difference, makes that difference an issue for it; this folded characteristic being the very possibility of resistance”.

Jeffrey Shantz too challenges the grand theories of revolution, and instead discusses how anarchist futures are made right now. He draws his examples from the “anarchist transfer culture”, which is attempting at building sustainable communities within the context of the old society. Instead of purely speculative social analysis, the desirable society must be made, and the only way of doing that is to learn the practices. The capitalist relations between consumers and producers, for example, can be overturned, at least on a small scale, by developing gift-economies. We have seen this trend on a large scale in computer software and copyleft media. However, this model is also applicable in building alternative forms of welfare based on mutual aid and autonomous networks, which could endure the trends of the market or the budget of the State. The concept of resistance, then, turns into something readily available in everyday life, not merely reacting against obvious structures of power, but primarily with a potential positive task of building new arrangements. This is why, Shantz argues, the anarchist futures need to be understood in a present tense, since they are already in the making right now.

Patit Paban Mishra rounds up this issue with the historical case of the Orissa tribals in India, which resisted the 1874 revenue settlement imposed by the colonial rule. The settlement led to poverty and misery or the tribal society. However, in heterogeneous constellations the struggle continued up until 1946, displaying the ever-changing dynamic of oppression and resistance.

For more information, visit this link.

I apologize to regular Negations readers for the lack of new posts recently. I certainly haven’t lost interest in this blog or run out of ideas, but I have been very busy with other things. I have been working hard on my entries for The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest and also doing research for potential, future publications (for instance, I just read Fernando Lopez and Veronica Diz’s Resistencia Liberteria; Warren Belasco’s Appetite for Change: How the Counter-Culture Challenged the Food Industry; and David Graeber’s Fragments of An Anarchist Anthropology).

I have also been pondering the implications of a new opportunity that just opened up for me: AK Press, the venerable anarchist publishing and distribution house in Oakland, California, recently decided to pay me to do freelance acquisitions for them. Specifically, I will search out writers with promising projects and help them prepare a book proposal for AK, who will remunerate me with a small sum every time that they agree to publish a work that has passed through my hands.

This is very exciting to me. I spent a lot of time cultivating authors during my years with the Institute for Anarchist Studies and The New Formulation (among other projects) and it is something that I genuinely enjoy doing. I love helping a writer clarify his or her ideas, develop his or her voice, and ultimately make a contribution to the anarchist vision. Doing this has always been deeply satisfying for me.

I am also eager to work closely with AK, a project that I hold in the highest regard. I first got to know AK people in the early 1990s through the anarchist scene, our links deepened as the Institute for Anarchist Studies gathered momentum in the latter part of that decade, and our bonds grew stronger still after they asked me to translate Abel Paz’s Durruti in the Spanish Revolution. I have found AK collective members to be among the most committed, friendly, hard-working, patient, disciplined, and fun militants around. And there is no doubt that their efforts have had an extremely positive impact on the American anarchist movement and the left generally: the excellent books that they publish, and the vast amounts of radical literature that they distribute, has raised the level of discussion about the anarchist alternative immeasurably. I, for one, am deeply grateful for all the contributions that they have made.

At present, I am familiarizing myself with AK’s operations and more immediate publishing goals. This month I will participate in a conference call with Zach, Lorna, and Charles, AK’s publishing team, who will fill me in on key details. The four of us also hope to have a short retreat this March, immediately after the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, during which I will learn even more. I hope to be more or less up to speed by April.

Nonetheless, I don’t believe that it’s too early to put out my first call for manuscripts: please contact me if you have a book that you are working on (or considering working on) that you think might be a good fit for the AK catalog! I would be happy to discuss this with you and hopefully help guide you through the process of submitting a proposal.

Two historians remember and analyze Resistencia Libertaria, an anarchist group active in the 1970s whose members were largely
“disappeared” by the state. Looking at its organizational methods and differences with other groups, they provide
insight into this generally unknown period of activism in Argentina.

By Laura Vales

Translated to English by Chuck Morse

From Página/12 (November 26, 2007)

Resistencia Libertaria was an anarchist group active in the 1970s. It dedicated itself to community and labor organizing and also had a military wing with which it carried out actions designed to finance the organization. Structured as a cadre group, it grew to between one hundred and 130 members, most of whom would be “disappeared” during the dictatorship. Its history is now coming to light thanks to Fernando López Trujillo and Verónica Diz, authors of a new book about this practically unknown topic. López Trujillo, a historian, was a member of Resistencia Libertaria and, in 1997, a co-founder of the Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierda Center for the Documentation and Investigation of Left Culture). Diz is a journalist and history professor. She belongs to the generation that became politicized in the 1990s and her work has focused feminism and anarchism.

---

- Why is so little known about this period of anarchist activity?

Fernando Lopez and Veronica Diz, authors of Resistencia Libertaria

Fernando López Trujillo: - One of the reasons is how it ended: the organization was destroyed and the survivors left the country. Terror is also an issue, given that about 80 percent of the group were incarcerated in the state’s clandestine detention centers.

- Where did Resistencia Libertaria come from?

- Many new anarchist groups appeared between 1971 and 1973, products of the turbulence of the era.

- You point out in your book that the new militants did not have strong links with the pre-existing anarchist organizations.

- They didn’t have contact with the old mainstays of the movement. There were three or four centers, which still exist today, representing what remained of movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The new formations were born outside of them and, in general, didn’t have a good relationship with them.

- Why?

- Above all, because most of the old groups survived on the basis of not engaging social life and saw the newcomers as a threat.

Verónica Diz:- There’s a split that repeats itself historically: the view of anarchism as an activist, social tradition, that’s engaged and works with others, versus the “I’m not getting mixed up with anybody” stance, which always ends up hurling accusations at the other side.

- Such as?

Continue Reading »

One could be excused for thinking that Latin American revolutionaries were all authoritarians in the 1960s and 1970s. Leading figures like Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Savlador Allende were deeply committed to a state-centered, top down approach to social change and groups like Uruguay’s Tupamaros or Brazil’s MR-8, which might have seemed more libertarian, were devoted Marxist-Leninists. It would appear that anarchists had no presence during the period.

The truth is that they were quite active and made important contributions to the battles being waged against the military dictatorships in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. While their efforts are largely not reflected in the historical record, this omission says more about biases among historians, and the fear of disclosure that many survivors have inherited from the era, than anarchists’ real significance to the march of events during those terrifying decades.

This is why the recent publication of Verónica Diz and Fernando López Trujillo’s Resistencia Libertaria is such a good thing. Their (Spanish-language) book is the first comprehensive study of Resistencia Libertaria (RL) in any language and will hopefully help bring anarchists into the picture. RL was a clandestine Argentine anarchist organization founded shortly before the Argentine military seized power in 1976. It was active in the student, labor, and neighborhood movements of the time and also had a military wing with which it defended and financed its activities. The group had between 100 and 130 members at its peak as well as a much larger circle of supporters. The state crushed the organization in 1978 and 80 percent of its militants suffered the dictatorship’s concentration camps and torture chambers.

López and Diz qualify their work as a “first approximation” of RL’s history. Their book covers the origins of the group, some of its activities prior to the dictatorship, and the generalized crisis that erupted after the 1976 military coup. It also has five appendices which contain relevant historical documents as well as related articles.

The authors: Fernando López, a historian, is one of the few surviving RL members and author of Vidas en rojo y negro: Una historia del anarquismo en la década infame (Letra Libre, 2005). Verónica Diz is a journalist and professor of history whose work has focused on the relationship between anarchism and feminism.

English readers interested in learning more about Resistencia Libertaria should check out an interview that I conducted with López in 2002: “Resistencia Libertaria: Anarchist Opposition to the Last Argentine Dictatorship.” Spanish readers might wish to download the prologue and first chapter of López and Diz’s book from the publisher’s website. Those interested in contemporary Argentine anarchism may be interested in López’s “Some Notes on the Argentine Anarchist Movement in the Emergency“; for the movement’s early years, see the growing archive of Latin American anarchist material on this site.

Below is a short video documenting the creation of a mural in honor of disappeared members of Resistencia Libertaria. The mural was a project of Argentina’s Organización Socialista Libertaria and the muralists were known as the “Unidad Muralista Hermanos Tello,” a name evoking the memory of the three Tello brothers, who were leading members of RL and are all disappeared.

An exciting, new project recently came to my attention: The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 1500 - Present. Edited by Immanuel Ness, this eight-volume, 5,000-page, peer-reviewed work will be published by Blackwell next year and is sure to become the definitive reference work for students of social radicalism.

The publication will be unique not only because of its length but also because of its extensive coverage of the global anarchist movement: it is scheduled to contain a total of 200,000 words (i.e., hundreds and hundreds of pages!) on the topic. It will include entries on the movement in specific countries, biographies of individual anarchists, discussions of key events and themes in the movement’s history, as well as explorations of various tendencies, tactics, institutions, and organizations. Jesse Cohn, author of Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation, is the Associate Editor in charge of anarchist content.

Encyclopedia editors are still looking for writers to pen entries on many of the anarchist-related topics that they intend to treat in the book. I recently agreed to write entries on anarchism in Argentina, Mexico, and Puerto Rico (respectively), but many topics remain unassigned. Below is a list of unclaimed entries as of December 18, 2007. Please contact Jesse Cohn if you are interested in taking on one of them. Continue Reading »

It can be hard for someone interested in anarchist theory to find a good forum for their writing these days. Anarchist publications are often very anti-intellectual and theoretical publications tend to be highly anti-anarchist. Sometimes it seems like there is no middle ground.

I haven’t figured out how to resolve this problem, but I was encouraged by two journals that I read about recently. They are:

The Journal for the Study of Radicalism

The Journal for the Study of Radicalism engages in serious, scholarly exploration of the forms, representations, meanings, and historical influences of radical social movements. With sensitivity and openness to historical and cultural contexts of the term, we loosely define “radical,” as distinguished from “reformers,” to mean groups who seek revolutionary alternatives to hegemonic social and political institutions, and who use violent or non-violent means to resist authority and to bring about change. The journal is eclectic, without dogma or strict political agenda, and ranges broadly across social and political groups worldwide, whether typically defined as “left” or “right.” We expect contributors to come from a wide range of fields and disciplines, including ethnography, sociology, political science, literature, history, philosophy, critical media studies, literary studies, religious studies, psychology, women’s studies, and critical race studies. We especially welcome articles that reconceptualize definitions and theories of radicalism, feature underrepresented radical groups, and introduce new topics and methods of study.

Future issues will include themes like the re-conceptualization of “left” and “right,” radical groups typically ignored in academic scholarship, such as deep ecologists, primitivists, and anarchists, the role of science and technology in radical visions, transnational and regional understandings of radicalism, and the relationships of radical movements to land and environment.

City: Analysis of Urban trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action

City is a journal of provocative, cutting-edge and committed insights into, analysis of, and commentary on the contemporary urban world. We record and analyse cities and their futures, and urbanization from multiple perspectives including: the information and digital revolutions, war and imperialism, neoliberalism and gentrification, environment and sustainability, resistance and social movements, regeneration, resurgence and revanchism, race, class and gender, multi-culturalism and post-colonialism. City combines an analysis of trends, culture, policy and action, and features both historical and theoretical work alongside detailed case studies, policy commentary and open debate.

Besides regular papers and special features, City sections include: ‘Alternatives’ showcasing radical, ‘Grassroots’ approaches; ‘Voices’ featuring literary and ethnographic interpretations; ‘Forum’ presenting commentary on contemporary policy; ‘Prospects and Retrospects’ as well as reviews and Debates.

City is multi-, trans-disciplinary and holistic, drawing on work from academics in geography, the social sciences, political economy, philosophy, cultural studies, and the humanities, as well as from policy makers, the multitude of actors–including practitioners, activists, organizers, writers, artists, ecologists, planners, and architects–who play key roles in sustaining and constructing cities and urban futures.

Among the approximately two dozen individuals involved in the magazine, I note that Paul Chatterton is a “Senior Deputy Editor” and in charge of the “Alternatives” section. He does valuable work on contemporary, direct action movements and is rumored to be seeking anarchist contributors to the publication. I also see that Manuel Castells is an Associate Editor.

In the mid-1960s, a loose band of artists, hippies, and anarchists burst onto the political stage in the Netherlands. Known as the Provos (as in to provoke), they led a mini-rebellion against the established order that rattled elites and left behind an inspired legacy of anti-authoritarian activism.

Richard Kempton documents this legacy in his recently released, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt, the first book-length history of the group in English. He traces the emergence, highpoints, and decline of the Provos, in addition to providing tangential but interesting appendices on topics such as the relationship between the Provos and the Situationists, the history of anarchism in Amsterdam, and others. He does a good job at placing the group in the context of the radical currents from which it emerged and at relating the Provos’ trajectory to some of the political peculiarities of the Netherlands. While a deeper examination of the group’s ideas and internal organization would have enriched the book, I found it to be thoughtful, informative, and fun to read. (For a quick introduction to the Provos, you may wish to check out this article as well as this one.)

Kempton illustrates the Provos’ extraordinary ability to expose the contradictions of the liberal democratic society in which they lived while making authorities look absurd in the process. Of their many feats that he records, their “White Bicycle Plan” is surely the most famous. It began as a response to the traffic jams and air pollution plaguing Amsterdam: instead of passively accepting the automobile’s toxic domination of urban life, the Provos pressed the municipal government to give out vast numbers of unlockable, white bikes throughout the city. These cycles–easily identifiable due to their color–would be available to any passerby who felt like riding one. He or she could take it to his or her destination but, once there, would be obliged to leave it for other citizens. This ingenious plan was clearly a sensible, low-cost, and environmentally friendly way to meet at least some of Amsterdam’s transportation needs.

The Provos distributed fifty bikes at their own expense to jump start the program but immediately ran into problems with the police, who objected to their attempt to socialize the means of transportation. In fact, the cops impounded the bikes furnished by the Provos on the pretext that doling out unlocked bicycles “encouraged theft.” In other words, they took bicycles to prevent them from being taken!

The Provos were naturally delighted to find the police offering Amsterdamers such a concrete lesson in the bankruptcy of the criminal justice system: thanks to their unintentional complicity in the Provos’ scheme, the city became a classroom in which attentive residents could learn a lesson normally buried in obscure anarchist pamphlets and disquisitions: the cops’ primary objective is not to serve the people but rather to protect the status quo, no matter how noxious and irrational it might be.

The “White Bicycle Plan” was one among multiple Provo “plans,” all designed to push people toward cooperative, ecological solutions while undermining the legitimacy of the established order. They outlined many of these in a brochure entitled What the Provos Want , which they released in 1966, shortly before successfully competing for a seat on Amsterdam’s City Council (”Vote Provo for a Laugh!” was one of their campaign slogans). Kempton summarizes key points:

• The White Bicycle Plan: In an effort to address traffic congestion in the center of the city, white bicycles would become the common property of all the people of Amsterdam. Automobiles would be excluded from the center of the city.

• The White Chimney Plan: A mandate that chimneys have special built-in incinerators to combat air pollution; with fines for infractions.

• The White Chicken Plan: Amsterdam’s police force should be recast as unarmed friendly social workers with candy and band-aids in their pockets.

• The White Dwelling Plan: In an effort to ease the city’s housing shortage the city government would publish a weekly list of empty buildings so people without homes could squat them.

• The White Wives Plan: Developed by Irene Donner-Van der Wetering, this plan called for sex education for young people. Among other things it mandated information on contraception, medical clinics for young girls, and teaching family planning.

• The White Schools Plan: Students would have a say in expanding opportunities for democratically organized study and discussion.

• The White City Plan: Amsterdam would become the first urban area committed to implementing Constant Nieuwenhuis’s New Babylon.(1)

After reading these “plans,” I found myself surprised to realize that today, approximately forty years later, many of their demands (”plans”) have become non-controversial elements of mainstream social policy. For example, numerous cities have experimented with free bicycle programs (such as Portland, Madison, and Barcelona), and bike paths and restrictions on vehicular traffic are common in American cities. Likewise, controls on air pollution are pervasive; young people often receive some degree of sex education; and students frequently play a role in setting academic policy at the college and sometimes high school level. Obviously, aspects of their program remain unrealized–I know of no city that publishes lists of squatable buildings, for instance–but, nonetheless, much of the Provo platform has lost its controversial, provocative quality.

This raises a difficult question about the meaning of the Provos’ legacy. What if the Provos (and corresponding groups like the Yippies in the United States) ultimately need to be understood less as anarchist instigators than as the avant-garde of a more lenient, culturally flexible, and ecologically friendly capitalism? While it’s true that they set stodgy authorities into a frenzy four decades ago, it may be that those authorities were simply anachronistic obstacles and that the Provos actually helped modernize capitalism by undermining their legitimacy.

Issues such as these are beyond the scope of Kempton’s book and, for that matter, most works on the history of anarchism. However, I believe that they are worth pursuing and I hope that the publication of this long overdue book on the Provos indicates that a more serious, complicated engagement with our past is on the horizon.

1. Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007), 81.