Anarchism reloaded

Abstract

The contemporary re-emergence of anarchism on a global scale deserves serious attention from students of ideology. As the defining orientation of prominent activist networks, anarchism today is the principal point of reference for radical social change movements in the North, and represents a mature and complex genre of political expression. This article offers a synchronic and diachronic analysis of contemporary anarchist ideology, based on participant research on large-scale ideological expression in anarchist movement networks. I identify and discuss three major conceptual clusters which mark contemporary anarchism's stable ideological core: (a) the construction of the concept of ‘domination’ and the active opposition to all its forms and systems, (b) the ethos of direct action as a primary mode of political engagement, both destructive and constructive, and (c) the open-ended, experimental approach to revolutionary visions and strategies, which endorses epistemological pluralism and is strongly grounded in present tense action. From a diachronic point of view, it is argued that these three elements are the product of network- and ideological convergence among ecological, feminist, anti-war and anti-neoliberal movements, associated with the multi-issue politics of alternative globalization and local grassroots politics. The re-emergence of anarchism thus highlights the continuity between movement networks, political culture and ideological articulation, and draws attention to important processes in the life-cycles of ideological formations.

Notes

 1. Data retrieved through search form on http://erds.dol-esa.gov/query/getOrgQry.do

 2. M. Diani, ‘The Concept of Social Movement’, Sociological Review,40 (1), 1992, p. 13.

 3. The metaphor is borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of knowledge. cf. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 7–13.

 4. Cf. P. Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the surplus of meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976).

 5. Peoples' Global Action Network, Hallmarks. Internet: http://www.nadir.org/nadir/ initiativ/agp/free/pga/hallm.htm

 6. This phrase was first coined by the Situationists—a radical group of artists and writers that came to prominence during the May 1968 student uprisings in France—and used as a title for one the key works it generated: R. Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life (London: Rebel Press, 2001).

 7. Cf. B. Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); P.H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought (London: Routledge, 2000).

 8. Cf. E.A. Armstrong, Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950–1994 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); F. Martel, The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France since 1968 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).

 9. Cf. B. Shepard and R. Hayduk (Eds), From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization (London: Verso, 2002).

10. F. Perlman, ‘The reproduction of everyday life’ (Detroit: Black and Red, 1969). Internet: http://www.spunk.org/library/ writers/perlman/sp001702/repro.html

11. The concept of a family resemblance is drawn from L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), §§65–67.

12. Black Laundry (2001) ‘Nails and feathers’ http://www.blacklaundry.org/pdfs/Wigstock_sept01.pdf

13. The terms ‘patriarchy’ and ‘white supremacy’ are preferred here to ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’, because the reference is to structural patterns in social relations rather than to individual persons' attitudes of prejudice and bigotry.

14. B. Black, ‘The sphinctre of anarchism’, in Beneath the Underground (Portland, OR: Feral House, 1994), p. 33.

15. B. Tokar, ‘The enemy of nature’ (review), Tikkun,18 (1).

16. J. Carter and D. Morland, ‘Anti-Capitalism: Are we all anarchists now?’, in Carter and Morland (Eds), Anti-capitalist Britain (Gretton: New Clarion Press, 2004), p. 79.

17. S. Buechler, Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 207.

18. M. Bookchin (1980) ‘Anarchism past and present’, Comment,1 (6).

19. Cf. Midnight Notes, Strange Victories: The Anti-nuclear movement in the US and Europe (London: Elephant Editions, 1985); and I. Welsh, ‘Anti-nuclear movements: failed projects or heralds of a direct action milieu?’ Working Paper Series11 (Cardiff University: School of Social Sciences, 2001).

20. B. Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Non-violent direct action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 95–96.

21. Cf. D. Wall, Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement (London: Routledge, 1999); B. Seel, M. Patterson and B. Doherty, Direct Action in British Environmentalism (London: Routledge, 2000).

22. E.g. D. and G. Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism—The Left Wing Alternative (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2001).

23. CrimethInc collective, ‘Alive in the land of the dead’. Internet: http://www.crimethinc.com/library/english/alive.html

24. R. Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (New York: Secker and Warburg, 1938). Internet: http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/rocker/sp001495/rocker_as1.html

25. S. Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan: Antiauthoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001), p. 158.

26. D. Kellner, Introduction to A. Feenberg and J. Freedman, When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001), p. xviii.

27. For further reading and online resources see http://www.postanarchism.org/

28. T. May, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1994).

29. C. Ward, Anarchy in Action (London: Freedom Press, 1973).

30. U. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (London: Gollancz, 2002), p. 316.

31. R. Williams ‘Utopia and science fiction’, Science Fiction Studies,5 (3), 1978; Internet: http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/ backissues/16/williams16art.htm

32. P.M., bolo'bolo (New York: Autonomedia, 1985), pp. 68–70.

33. P.M., bolo' bolo (New York: Autonomedia, 1985), pp. 68–70, pp. 77–78.

34. W. Phillips ‘Speech in Boston, Massachusetts, January 28’; in Speeches Before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (Boston, R. F. Wallcut, 1852), p. 13.

35. Hakim Bey ‘The Willimantic/Rensselaer Questions’, in Mike Gunderloy and Michael Ziesing, Anarchy and the End of History (San Francisco, CA: Factsheet Five Books, 1991), pp. 87–92.