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1 Strategy For Building Anarchist Revolution |
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by Minnesota Anarchists
Email: mnanarchists (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!) |
15 Oct 2002
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1 Strategy for building @ revolution |
Strategy for Achieving Anarchist Revolution
By Torrance Hodgson.
You can't blow up a social relationship. The total collapse of this society would provide no guarantee about what replaced it. Unless a majority of people had the ideas and organization sufficient enough for the creation of an alternative society we would see the old world reassert itself because it is what people would be used to, what they believed in, what existed unchallenged in their own personalities.
- from You Can't Blow up a Social Relationship
The anarchist revolution will primarily be a revolution of the mind. It is not government and capitalism that are the fundamental causes for the current system. Remove authority and the people will find new leaders. Destroy capitalism and the people will resurrect private property. Instead, the current system is a product of the common ideas and beliefs of the vast majority of the people today. It is the current popular consciousness that not only allows the current system to prevail but indeed is the source for its existence. Any successful revolution must be aimed at changing that popular consciousness.
Anarchy is essentially the negation of authority. This is represented in anarchists' stance against the state and capitalism, both of which are inherently authoritarian. To change the popular consciousness to one that is anarchistic in its tendencies, anarchists must show that authority is both illegitimate and unnecessary. Illegitimacy is a theoretical concept and is destined to remain in the realms of theory. Anarchists have argued convincingly elsewhere that authority, in general, is indeed illegitimate. But this alone is not enough. People are willing to partake in illegitimate systems, no matter how detrimental that system is, when they see no other viable alternative. Anarchists must show that authority is also unnecessary and that other libertarian forms of organisation are in fact viable. The only convincing argument for this is practical examples. To this end anarchists need to begin to create the framework for libertarian societies within the current system.
To build an anarchist society alongside the current order of things parallels anarcho-syndicalism in some respects. However, it is a more holistic approach in that it is not only focused on the economic sphere, but the other two primary spheres of human life: the personal and political. This offers anarchists a wonderful opportunity to show that anarchist organisation is possible and also better than the current system. But there are numerous other advantages, not least gaining knowledge about methods of organisation that are largely unknown even to many anarchists today. More importantly, perhaps, such a strategy allows mass organisation amongst anarchists united not by ideological uniformity but by methodological compatibility. This point is critical as many from even platformist traditions admit that the idea of working together united by a single ideology is not ideal but they compromise thinking that it is the only way they can organise on a large scale. Working together united by methodologies that are compatible with each other lets ideas to continue to grow and change whilst still allowing us to form a mass movement.
Most anarchists would agree that the community would likely be the building block for almost any form of anarchist society. This would probably be the best place to start: the creation of explicitly anarchist intentional communities. This in itself would offer unique and invaluable experience and knowledge that could be shared amongst other such communities and the anarchist movement as a whole. This proliferation of knowledge would generate a huge increase in anarchist understanding in areas where we really don't have much understanding such as the ideal community size if there even is one. These communities should aim for economic independence to some limited degree in an effort to begin to withdraw support from the capitalist system. Also, by their very nature, these communities will begin to develop a political independence of a sort, however, it is important that these communities remain explicitly anarchist as there is always the risk that they could be co-opted.
The creation of these communities is the starting point but very quickly these communities will need to grow. As well as forming communities, networks between communities must begin to be formed on larger and larger scales to begin to realise greater and greater levels of independence in both the political and economic spheres. Such networking will be a steep learning curve for many anarchists and will offer perhaps even greater knowledge into anarchist organisation than that offered by community organisation. For example, one such lesson would be concerning the nature of networking: formal or informal networks? The decentralised structure of such a set-up allows for a large amount of fluidity in forms of organisation and this will allow many different types of organisation to be easily tested and experimented with.
Eventually, it is likely that we would see clusters of networked communities forming on a global scale and beginning to become both politically and economically independent from the system from which they have grown under all the while maintaining strong integration with the people of that system in an effort to continue transforming that social consciousness. This integration with the people is essential for the continued existence of such communities as sympathetic masses make state repression less likely. The integration is also necessary to remain effective at being a revolutionary tool. Ultimately, it would be hoped that the anarchist society could break free and disband of the society from which it grew. Obviously, there will be struggle along the way with the powers that be and such obstacles will have to be dealt with in creative ways because facing the state head on with violence would be futile.
The creation of an anarchist society or at least the beginnings of one offers numerous immediate advantages that are extremely beneficial to the movement. The communities could act as places for anarchists to congregate and this is especially important so long as we remain situated so sparsely over the globe. All too many anarchists lose motivation when they are unable to find support or like-minded thinkers - intentional anarchist communities would act as home bases and would provide that needed support to keep anarchists in the movement and not let them fizzle out. In keeping with the idea of integrating with surrounding communities and people, these anarchist communities could act as excellent forums for community organisation - in a way they would act as the ideal affinity group. They could provide free food to the starving, or shelter to the homeless. They could provide an area to have concerts or other forms of entertainment all the while spreading our message. Basically, the communities could act as anarchist hubs for organisation.
The anarchist revolution will only come with a dramatic change in the popular consciousness. A critical aspect of aiding that change is in showing that anarchist forms of organisation are possible and the most effective way at doing that is creating the framework for an anarchist society now - the basis of which would be the anarchist community. Such a strategy is holistic in that it focuses on change in all three main spheres of life - personal, political and economic. With strong integration with surrounding areas and by acting as anarchist hubs for organisation, these communities could drastically aid in creating a mass movement united on methodological compatibility. When mass is achieved the system can be totally swept aside revealing the anarchist society already in full operation. |
