For anarchists who do know something about anthropology, the arguments are all too familiar. A typical exchange goes something like this:
Skeptic: Well, I might take this whole anarchism idea more seriously if you could give me some reason to think it would work. Can you name me a single viable example of a society which has existed without a government?
Anarchist: Sure. There have been thousands. I could name a dozen just off the top of my head: the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi, the Vezo… All without violence or hierarchy.
Skeptic: But those are all a bunch of primitives! I‟m talking about anarchism in a modern, technological society.
Anarchist: Okay, then. There have been all sorts of successful experiments: experiments with worker's self-management, like Mondragon; economic projects based on the idea of the gift economy, like Linux; all sorts of political organizations based on consensus and direct democracy…
Skeptic: Sure, sure, but these are small, isolated examples. I'm talking about whole societies.
Anarchist: Well, it's not like people haven't tried. Look at the Paris Commune, the free states in Ukraine and Shimin, the 1936 revolution in Spain…
Skeptic: Yeah, and look what happened to those guys! They all got killed!
The dice are loaded. You can't win. Because when the skeptic says “society,” what he really means is “state,” even “nation-state.” Since no one is going to produce an example of an anarchist state — that would be a contradiction in terms — what we're really being asked for is an example of a modern nation-state with the government somehow plucked away: a situation in which the government of Canada, to take a random example, has been overthrown, or for some reason abolished itself, and no new one has taken its place but instead all former Canadian citizens begin to organize themselves into libertarian collectives. Obviously this would never be allowed to happen. In the past, whenever it even looked like it might — here, the Paris commune and Spanish civil war are excellent examples — the politicians running pretty much every state in the vicinity have been willing to put their differences on hold until those trying to bring such a situation about had been rounded up and shot.
There is a way out, which is to accept that anarchist forms of organization would not look anything like a state. That they would involve an endless variety of communities, associations, networks, projects, on every conceivable scale, overlapping and intersecting in any way we could imagine, and possibly many that we can't. Some would be quite local, others global. Perhaps all they would have in common is that none would involve anyone showing up with weapons and telling everyone else to shut up and do what they were told. And that, since anarchists are not actually trying to seize power within any national territory, the process of one system replacing the other will not take the form of some sudden revolutionary cataclysm—the storming of a Bastille, the seizing of a Winter Palace — but will necessarily be gradual, the creation of alternative forms of organization on a world scale, new forms of communication, new, less alienated ways of organizing life, which will, eventually, make currently existing forms of power seem stupid and beside the point. That in turn would mean that there are endless examples of viable anarchism: pretty much any form of organization would count as one, so long as it was not imposed by some higher authority, from a klezmer band to the international postal service.
– Excerpt from David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Mass amnesia makes Americans forget the story behind May Day
By Rudolph J. Vecoli for The Barre Montpelier Times Argus
April 26, 2007
May Day: The holiday of the workers. In days gone by, when men, women and children often worked 10 or more hours a day, seven days a week, May Day was an assertion on the part of wage-slaves that they were sovereign human beings with control over their own lives and destinies. They celebrated the day with marches of tens and hundreds of thousands throughout the world.
May Day was an expression of the international solidarity of the working class. "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," was not just a slogan. It was a battle cry in the war between classes. Their marches and rallies, with fiery speeches, impassioned poetry and stirring anthems, gave them a sense of their collective strength. It was an act of defiance of the combined forces of employers and public authorities. Often their gatherings were brutally attacked by police or thugs with clubs and guns.
Many of us have grandparents or great-grandparents who participated in these observances. Few of us acknowledge or are even aware of this inspiring part of our family histories. We Americans suffer from mass amnesia of the remarkable and some times glorious history of workers' struggles for liberty of expression and social justice. Who now remembers May Day?
Although not often taught in American history classes, May Day originated in the United States during the campaign for an eight-hour day. The Knights of Labor, the nascent American Federation of Labor and various anarchist groups designated May 1, 1886, for nationwide demonstrations for the eight-hour goal. An incident which occurred several days later in Chicago made this the beginning of a global workers' movement. Following a clash between strikers and police in which several workers were killed, a protest meeting was held in Haymarket Square.
When police attacked the gathering, a bomb was thrown, killing several officers. In the trial of anarchists (who were not accused of the bombing, but for advocating violence) which followed, eight were found guilty and four subsequently executed. These "Haymarket martyrs" quickly became revered heroes of labor movements throughout the world.
With this tragic episode in the class war in mind, the International Socialist Congress meeting in Paris in 1889 designated May 1, 1890, as an eight-hour holiday to be observed by workers in all countries. An increasingly conservative Samuel Gompers and AF of L had by the mid-1890s distanced themselves from May Day and embraced the legally sanctioned Labor Day, which was observed the first Monday in September. Coming from radical backgrounds, Finns, Slavs, East European Jews, Italians and other immigrants found their cherished May Day opposed not only by capitalists but often by American workers as well. Despite being denounced as "foreign born reds," they kept the torch of May Day idealism burning for another generation.
The response of the "bosses," political and economic, was twofold: to allay the anger of the workers, measures were taken to ameliorate the worst abuses of the capitalist system; while extreme repression was used to silence the most vocal and active labor advocates. The case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchist immigrants, electrocuted on Aug. 23, 1927, following a blatantly biased trial, is the most heinous example of the latter.
However, the ideal of May Day had already been shattered by the collision of international solidarity of the "proletariat" with the fervid nationalism resulting from World War I. Patriotism trumped class consciousness, and millions of workers killed each other in the name of the fatherland. Meanwhile, the Bolshevik Revolution which appeared to fulfill the vision of a collective republic turned out to be a Trojan horse in the socialist camp. The Leninist-Stalinist regime proved to be a ruthless dictatorship presiding over state capitalism. Among the earliest and most passionate opponents of Communist Russia were socialists and anarchists whose comrades were being liquidated by the Bolsheviks.
The aspiration for the unity of workers was shattered by these developments.
In the United States, the Great Depression of the 1930s did not usher in communism but the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which saved capitalism and laid the basis for a welfare state.
May Day was hijacked by the Soviet Union with its displays of military prowess in Red Square. The association of May Day with Soviet Communism has given it a bad name to this day.
In this age of globalization, when workers are pitted against each other, across oceans and continents, we have returned to conditions of pitiless exploitation of human beings. If greed ever was constrained by patriotism, it certainly is not today. The quest for profits knows no inhibitions by national ideologies or loyalties. Yes, we are involved in a class war, a war of oil companies, the military-industrial complex, the corrupted political institutions, against the workers and consumers.
We, the American working people, remain beguiled by symbols, the flag, the Fourth of July, the Thanksgiving turkey. It is time to revisit May Day in the spirit in which it was conceived over a hundred years ago. Only an international labor movement can hope to match the prowess of the amoral trans-national capitalist system. Freeing ourselves from the sordid history which stained the banner of May Day, we need to raise a cleansed, purified standard on which is emblazoned once again: "Workers of the World Unite!"
Rudolph J. Vecoli is professor emeritus of history and former director of the Immigration History Research Center University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He lives in St. Paul, Minn.
April 26, 2007
May Day: The holiday of the workers. In days gone by, when men, women and children often worked 10 or more hours a day, seven days a week, May Day was an assertion on the part of wage-slaves that they were sovereign human beings with control over their own lives and destinies. They celebrated the day with marches of tens and hundreds of thousands throughout the world.
May Day was an expression of the international solidarity of the working class. "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," was not just a slogan. It was a battle cry in the war between classes. Their marches and rallies, with fiery speeches, impassioned poetry and stirring anthems, gave them a sense of their collective strength. It was an act of defiance of the combined forces of employers and public authorities. Often their gatherings were brutally attacked by police or thugs with clubs and guns.
Many of us have grandparents or great-grandparents who participated in these observances. Few of us acknowledge or are even aware of this inspiring part of our family histories. We Americans suffer from mass amnesia of the remarkable and some times glorious history of workers' struggles for liberty of expression and social justice. Who now remembers May Day?
Although not often taught in American history classes, May Day originated in the United States during the campaign for an eight-hour day. The Knights of Labor, the nascent American Federation of Labor and various anarchist groups designated May 1, 1886, for nationwide demonstrations for the eight-hour goal. An incident which occurred several days later in Chicago made this the beginning of a global workers' movement. Following a clash between strikers and police in which several workers were killed, a protest meeting was held in Haymarket Square.
When police attacked the gathering, a bomb was thrown, killing several officers. In the trial of anarchists (who were not accused of the bombing, but for advocating violence) which followed, eight were found guilty and four subsequently executed. These "Haymarket martyrs" quickly became revered heroes of labor movements throughout the world.
With this tragic episode in the class war in mind, the International Socialist Congress meeting in Paris in 1889 designated May 1, 1890, as an eight-hour holiday to be observed by workers in all countries. An increasingly conservative Samuel Gompers and AF of L had by the mid-1890s distanced themselves from May Day and embraced the legally sanctioned Labor Day, which was observed the first Monday in September. Coming from radical backgrounds, Finns, Slavs, East European Jews, Italians and other immigrants found their cherished May Day opposed not only by capitalists but often by American workers as well. Despite being denounced as "foreign born reds," they kept the torch of May Day idealism burning for another generation.
The response of the "bosses," political and economic, was twofold: to allay the anger of the workers, measures were taken to ameliorate the worst abuses of the capitalist system; while extreme repression was used to silence the most vocal and active labor advocates. The case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchist immigrants, electrocuted on Aug. 23, 1927, following a blatantly biased trial, is the most heinous example of the latter.
However, the ideal of May Day had already been shattered by the collision of international solidarity of the "proletariat" with the fervid nationalism resulting from World War I. Patriotism trumped class consciousness, and millions of workers killed each other in the name of the fatherland. Meanwhile, the Bolshevik Revolution which appeared to fulfill the vision of a collective republic turned out to be a Trojan horse in the socialist camp. The Leninist-Stalinist regime proved to be a ruthless dictatorship presiding over state capitalism. Among the earliest and most passionate opponents of Communist Russia were socialists and anarchists whose comrades were being liquidated by the Bolsheviks.
The aspiration for the unity of workers was shattered by these developments.
In the United States, the Great Depression of the 1930s did not usher in communism but the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which saved capitalism and laid the basis for a welfare state.
May Day was hijacked by the Soviet Union with its displays of military prowess in Red Square. The association of May Day with Soviet Communism has given it a bad name to this day.
In this age of globalization, when workers are pitted against each other, across oceans and continents, we have returned to conditions of pitiless exploitation of human beings. If greed ever was constrained by patriotism, it certainly is not today. The quest for profits knows no inhibitions by national ideologies or loyalties. Yes, we are involved in a class war, a war of oil companies, the military-industrial complex, the corrupted political institutions, against the workers and consumers.
We, the American working people, remain beguiled by symbols, the flag, the Fourth of July, the Thanksgiving turkey. It is time to revisit May Day in the spirit in which it was conceived over a hundred years ago. Only an international labor movement can hope to match the prowess of the amoral trans-national capitalist system. Freeing ourselves from the sordid history which stained the banner of May Day, we need to raise a cleansed, purified standard on which is emblazoned once again: "Workers of the World Unite!"
Rudolph J. Vecoli is professor emeritus of history and former director of the Immigration History Research Center University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He lives in St. Paul, Minn.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
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