Building Working-Class Defense Organizations: An Interview with the Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee

By First of May Anarchist Alliance

The General Defense Committee of the Industrial Workers World (IWW) has become an important pole of struggle for pro-working-class revolutionaries in the Twin Cities. While active on a number of different fronts it is the participation of the General Defense Committee (GDC) in the year-long struggle against police killings and brutality in the Twin Cities that has largely led to the significant growth of the organization. The GDC has grown to approximately 90 dues-paying members in Minnesota, and has several active working-groups. In the wake of Trump's election victory, Wobblies (1) and others across the country have begun establishing their own GDC locals - strongly influenced by the Twin Cities' model.

First of May Anarchist Alliance spoke to Erik D. secretary of the Twin Cities GDC Local 14 about the history and work of the General Defense Committee there. Erik is a father, husband, education worker, and wobbly who's also been involved in the youth-focused intergenerational group, the Junior Wobblies.

This interview originally appeared on First of May Anarchist Alliance's website .

Fellow Worker Erik, can you tell us about the origins and history of the General Defense Committee, its relationship to the IWW, and how the militants who founded the current Local conceived of it?

As I understand it, the General Defense Committee (GDC) was first founded by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1917, in response to the repression of wobblies and anti-WWI draft protests. I haven't learned enough about the historic GDC to really speak much about it. I joined the IWW in 2006, and we didn't formally charter the current local as a GDC until 2011. In 2011, the committee was 13 wobblies. But we had actually started organizing ourselves prior to 2011, calling ourselves the Local Defense Committee.

Are there historical or modern examples or inspirations that influence the way GDC sees itself, its activity and organization?

One of the things I've appreciated about the Twin Cities GDC is the very practical intention to learn, with a specific focus on learning in order to act. From the very beginning we engaged in mutual education. Since one of our early orientations was to anti-fascist and anti-racist work, we did a fair bit of reading on the topic of fascism and anti-fascism (Sunday mornings with coffee).

I mention this period of mutual education because we have a lot of inspirations, but none of them have been role models, per se. We have looked to previous movements largely in order to inform our own work and to learn from our elders and the experience of previous generations, but not as Role Models To Be Emulated. That's been important.

With that caveat, we have a lot of inspiration. I get new inspiration every time I read a book, it seems. Some of the inspiration is local: here, I'd specifically highlight Anti-Racist Action and Teamsters Local 544. Anti-Racist Action (ARA) came out of a Minneapolis-based group of anti-racist skinheads who decided they needed to find a way to kick racist skins and organized fascists out of the Twin Cities. Teamsters Local 544 was the local that organized the 1934 strike that made Minneapolis a union town, innovated new forms of the picket (specifically, the 'flying picket'), and engaged for a short time in open physical confrontation on the streets.

Beyond the Twin Cities, I think our members have a lot of very different inspirations. One of mine has always been John Brown, but I grew up partly in Kansas. I guess the Black Panther Party would be the most common source of inspiration among early members; our advocacy of Community Self Defense certainly owes a lot to the Panthers, including their Survival Programs. The most recent addition to my 'Hall of Inspiration' is Rudy Shields, whom I learned about from Akinyele Omowale Umoja's We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.

One of the first projects of the Twin Cities GDC was organizing a "Picket Training", which seems like a kind of simple project, but you all attached some importance to it. How come?

I think the history of the Picket Training is actually the beginning of the history of the local GDC, so forgive me for a longer answer. The IWW was always heavily involved in local May Day events, naturally. In both 2007 and 2008 we had dispiriting and potentially dangerous experiences in marches that were organized by other groups. These happened when we were 'out-marshaled' and 'peace-policed.' Folks might remember the 2006 "Day Without An Immigrant." In 2007 immigrant protection and rights continued to be major issues, and the march was partly centered around pro-immigrant demands.

So it was worrying when wobblies who had been active in local anti-fascist actions saw someone they thought they knew from a fascist rally elsewhere in the state videotaping the crowd (we were never able to confirm the identity because of what happened next). Fascists videotaping an immigrants rights march is extremely concerning; they were likely videotaping either to research immigrants rights' groups (including antifa groups), or to identify potentially undocumented people.

A few wobblies went to talk to the videotaper and get in the way of the camera. Shouting commenced, and the self-appointed organizers of the march successfully pushed the wobblies back into the crowd, allowing the videotaping to continue.

The May Day parade the next year found wobblies promoting militant chants shut down by the same sort of marshals.

At roughly the same time, the local IWW was doing a lot of organizing. While some of us had prior experience in organizing pickets and direct actions, the Starbucks Workers campaign, the Jimmy John's campaign, the Sisters Camelot Canvas Union, and the Chicago-Lake Liquors campaigns all provided early experience and training in planning and executing pickets and direct actions, in a context where we were already committed to IWW ideas and practices. Some of these were particularly challenging, such as doing intelligence and the occasional flying picket of scab canvassers in the Sisters Camelot campaign. Since they never stayed put, it felt like a throwback to the 1934 strikes and the flying pickets. It was cold both Winters.

There was one particular occasion at the University of Minnesota AFSCME strike in 2007 where the IWW promoted, and executed, a hard picket line in the early morning hours at a delivery dock. This was going extremely well until a UMN delivery truck driver rammed the picket line. I was in the wrong place at the moment, and ended up on his hood. I found out later I'd crushed three neck vertebrae; it took two surgeries and a lot of physical therapy to get past it. It also gave me a serious motivation for doing pickets and direct actions better. Just a week after a truck hit me, a delivery truck hit another picketer at an IWW picket of D'Amico's restaurant, thankfully without serious consequences.

Finally, 2008 was the end of an intense two-year process organized at disrupting the Republican National Convention. Most of us already had a critique of 'summit hopping' styles of disruption, few of which have been effective since before the FTAA in Miami 2003. But a number of wobblies were serious and on occasion influential participants in (at least the early period of) the two years of planning that ended up calling itself the "Welcoming Committee." The Welcoming Committee meetings (which were held in the same community space as the early IWW at the time, the Jack Pine Community Center) hammered out some early agreements and principles, including, along with other interested groups, the well-known Saint Paul Principles. This process also gave local wobblies experience in critically thinking through on-the-street tactics and what it would take to actually win goals and actions on those streets, whether in labor pickets or direct actions(2).

All these motivations and experiences were in the forefront of our minds when we thought up the picket training. We knew we had to get better at this, and though we all had some experience, that's not the same thing as having teachable knowledge. So we researched, wrote, debated, and practiced. We adopted a principle of teaching the tactics quickly rather than perfecting the training first, and encouraged people to think about themselves as the next trainers. In order to keep track of our curriculum and to make it portable, we created a trainer's manual, a trainee manual, and a setup manual, which we update frequently.

We offer the trainings to non-wobblies, and while we avoid being an on-call security group, we are trusted locally as providing quality security and planning successful actions. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and on-the-streets protest since Ferguson, I think the GDC has earned a bit of respect from other local organizations as a result.

Anti-fascism seems to have been a key concern for the Twin Cities GDC from the start. Can you explain a bit about why this was the case and how the GDC intended to "do" anti-fascism a bit differently than other antifa groups?

Partly that was organic, because of the people involved. One of our members was a member of the Baldies, and later Anti-Racist Action, and brought a lot of experience on that front to the table(3) .Others also had anti-fascist experience. Given that density of experience and expertise, it was fairly natural that we were interested in anti-fascism from the beginning.

Our first major action was the disruption of a David Irving event (4). Like most of his events in recent years, promotion and entrance to these is secretive and even paranoid. We created fake identities and profiles, acquired tickets and location information, and mobilized over 80 locals who hated the idea of fascists meeting in our city. This put our early group's planning abilities to the test, since the meeting was on an upper floor of a downtown hotel with a front desk by which everyone would have to walk.

As we went along, and based in part on discussions and debates both internal to the GDC and to the local IWW, we formulated a clearer understanding of the relationship we think should exist between anti-fascist work (I think these days, I'd say "Community Self Defense," which would include antifa work) and unionism(5).

Part of the clearer rationale was to establish faith and credit with groups that may have bad impressions of unions, or prioritize other forms of work, and to bring a more diverse group of fellow workers into the IWW. Another part was the understanding that if the IWW ever gets close to its goal of genuinely challenging the foundations of capitalism, we will have to have a group and an orientation capable of defending the union and its workers. We didn't feel that we should wait until the attack came to organize to fight it.

I think the most significant difference of our anti-fascism from other anti-fascist groups is our relatively public, or mass, orientation. Many anti-fascist groups operate largely as affinity groups, stressing secrecy and small numbers, for good reasons. But the types of pressure we can place on the fascists with these sorts of organizations is limited, and the risks to members enormous. Our anti-fascism has taken a mass orientation: we aim for the largest, most public, and most militant forms of engagement possible, consistently pushing for more radical analysis and actions. While some groups consider mass organizations fundamentally reactive and apolitical, the GDC has made its own anti-capitalist and revolutionary politics clear, in order to avoid being captured by liberals.

It seems apparent that the GDC really "took off" during the recent upsurge against police killings in the Twin Cities (Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Phil Quinn, Michael Kirvelay & others) - could you say a little bit about why this was the case, how the GDC oriented itself and what allowed it to be a place for militants to come and to grow?

Right. The GDC began to grow very rapidly with the engagement at the Fourth Precinct. I want to talk for a minute about the types of engagement that we practiced there, but first I would like to point out the time difference: we'd been meeting irregularly since 2009, were chartered in 2011, and began to 'take off' in 2015. We didn't develop in a rush, despite our feeling of urgency. In retrospect, we should have done more, earlier, and more seriously. You can only prepare to be ready for crisis and then wait to respond in an organized fashion. By the time the police murdered Jamar Clark, after Ferguson and other places had already seen massive protests, we were ready to respond in public, I think.

About two months previously, we'd tested our ability to organize a disciplined mass march and directly confront racists. A group of racists organized a Confederate Flag display on the state capitol grounds. The state sold them a permit. We weren't going to tolerate that. We had meetings ahead of time to organize a counter-protest. We had decided to explicitly make clear that this was a GDC action, and to use our own marshaling teams, and worked with a large variety of other groups. One especially important person in that entire process person is the aunt of Marcus Golden, who murdered by the Saint Paul Police Department in January 2015. She joined the IWW and the GDC shortly afterwards, and seems to be everywhere at all times, moving the work along.

The march began where Marcus was murdered, and ended at the Christopher Columbus statue on the capitol grounds, after ensuring that the Confederate Flag wavers were no-shows. The sheer numbers of people and organizations pledging to come, along with our clearly demonstrated militance, scared them off.

When Jamar was killed, GDC members mobilized quickly. Young Black activists began an occupation of the Police Fourth Precinct. The Fourth Precinct is in North Minneapolis, which is a heavily policed Black neighborhood. In the 1960s, the building of the Fourth Precinct was constructed as a community center called "The Way," in response to two Summers' of uprisings demanding racial justice in the USA. As a metaphor of how unfulfilled the promises made to the civil rights movement have been, I can't think of a starker local one than the transformation of a Black-oriented Community Center into a fortress of blue terror.

Once the occupation was established, which took a matter of minutes to hours, activists began setting up the infrastructure for a long haul. It was already cold, but it got arctic during the eighteen days of the occupation. GDC members were heavily involved in the direct confrontations with police, to be sure, but far more importantly, we created direct relationships with local militants and young people from the neighborhood, whose politics and responses were often directly at odds with the activists who had started the occupation.

Local youth tended to a far greater degree of militancy, and simply understood more clearly what was necessary to protect the encampment, regardless of whether the self-appointed official protest leaders thought. We often provided security at night, when cars would drive at us menacingly, or shots would be fired in nearby alleyways. We were not present in an organized fashion at the moment when White Supremacists showed up and shot people at the occupation, and so I can't say how well we would have responded that night.

An important point about the rise in our local appeal during the struggle for the Fourth Precinct was that we were a largely disciplined group that could reliably be counted on to do what we promised. Equally important is that while we showed up consistently and stayed in solidarity with the protest, we never relaxed our principled criticism of other groups' tactics. Critiques weren't made on social media or publicly, but we were consistent in pushing in person for more radical and militant approaches.

At one point, the self-appointed protest leaders had had enough of being challenged by local youth and militants like ourselves. Pissed that they were losing the obedience of the crowd, which was largely demanding increased militance, one of them grabbed a mic during a tense moment during the encampment and id'd one of our white members as an undercover cop. Frankly, we were fortunate that the person she accused has been active in anti-racist circles for decades and is locally well-known as a result. If the accusation had been made against one of our younger members, the outcome might have been less peaceful.

As a consequence of that event, and a lot of others similar to it, the GDC wrote and released a public statement explaining 'badjacketing' and demanding that no one involved in seeking justice should engage in it (6). We pushed that line hard for what felt like months, but was really just about a week during the occupation. Then the tide started turning and a large number of groups and individuals began to consider the downsides of that sort of action, and condemn it. I think the outcome of our stance against badjacketing actually was greater over time and after the occupation.

For those that aren't so familiar with the last year of activity in the Twin Cities, what have been some high points and challenges of this struggle against the police- and how has the GDC concretely participated in and contributed to this struggle?

With specific reference to our anti-police work, a few things have come together. Those of us who'd been involved in previous actions had some knowledge of police personnel and leadership already; like most municipalities, our local cop leadership would be laughably incompetent if they weren't so oppressive and largely untouchable. A few particular people had started to catch our attention over the years, among them especially Bob Kroll, who was elected President of the local cop union in 2015.

Kroll has a long and documented history of brutality on the job and off, and has been accused of wearing a "White Power" badge on a jacket, and being involved in a process where the then-chief presided over the demotion, retirement, or firing of every single Black officer in the MPD. He also called the first Muslim to serve in the US Congress a "terrorist."

We had already written up a report on Bob Kroll, summarizing his history with documentation, but hadn't really distributed it(7). When Kroll started lying in public about the details of Jamar Clark's murder by two MPD officers, we released the report along with a demand that local reports stop allowing him to comment on subjects related to race and policing, without mentioning his background. We had a big effect in publicizing Kroll's history, to the point that he's been complaining about how frequently people refer to his background, calling him a White Supremacist, etc. We've had little to no effect on local reporters, unfortunately.

While the Fourth Precinct occupation was ongoing, we caught wind of a fundraiser being held by Sheriff Stanek (heavily involved in the crackdown on the protesters at the RNC Convention in 2008) for his reelection at a bar and bowling alley in Northeast Minneapolis. The site was about ten blocks from the Minneapolis cop union's headquarters. We planned and announced a march to the cop union headquarters at night from a local park.

The very same day, however, the police forced the Fourth Precinct occupation out. There was a great deal of anger and disappointment over the course of the day, and people weren't ready to give up just yet. We went ahead with our planned protest, starting with about 20 protesters at our rally site.

We began to march not to the cop union headquarters, but to the bar and bowling alley where the fundraiser was being held. The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protesters were across the river in downtown Minneapolis, inside City Hall. When they left City Hall, a large contingent came and joined us outside the bar. By the time they arrived, many of the fundraiser guests had fled, and the rest had locked themselves inside. We held an impromptu rally outside the bar, and then marched to the cop union headquarters. It was an energetic, militant march. We'd made the cops so nervous that they'd installed security fencing around the property, and had placed snipers in the upper floors of the building across the street.

A few GDC members continued to help hold down the Justice4Jamar movement locally after the eviction from the precinct. They joined a new coalition called the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar, and showed up outside the Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman's office every Friday for "Freeman Fridays," keeping Jamar's name in the news and the demand fresh. I was out of the country at the time, but on one of the coldest days of the year, the GDC played a large part in a mass march. The cold caused some innovations: entering local Cub Foods for a while looked like fun!

Of course, the local police haven't stopped murdering people since Marcus Golden and Jamar Clark. This year we had a number of people murdered by the police: Michael Kirvelay, whose sisters called the police for help while he was in a mental crisis, and who was murdered by them; Phil Quinn, a Native man also experiencing a mental health crisis, was murdered in 2015. Map Kong, a Cambodian-American murdered in his car while having a bad reaction to drugs, Geno Smith, and Philando Castile. The last is a bit closer to me than the others, since Philando worked at the school where my son went for 7 years, and my daughter had been there for 6 years already. They both knew and loved Philando ("Mr. Phil," they called him), like all the students did. Personally, I'm grateful I started fighting against police murder when I did; I think if I hadn't had some actual experience I would have been far more shaken when it came that close to home.

We're still fighting for justice for Philando and all those murdered by the cops. After Philando was murdered, a group of mostly younger activists marched to Minnesota Governor's Mansion, not far from the school where Philando worked. That occupation remained in place for some time, but never reached the militancy or organization that we saw at the Fourth Precinct, for a bunch of different reasons. After the occupation was cleared out, the GDC organized and called for a rally and march to shutdown the two municipally owned liquor stores, which help to directly fund the police department whose officer, Jeronimo Yanez, murdered Philando.

We organized this as a GDC-led action, and as such we organized it in our fashion. We did a lot of turnout work, education about the connection between the stores and the police department, and publicly promised that we would picket the stores with the intention of denying them important Saturday evening business.

This action drew the attention of more racists who tried to troll us. This was average and expected. We also drew explicit threats from Wisconsin National Guard veterans who claimed they would show up armed, and posted images of personally owned military weaponry on our pages to scare us off. We took these very seriously and began research and documentation. Shortly after, we released our security report on the situation, along with a public statement that we were unafraid, provide for our own security and don't rely on police, and we were going ahead. We did create a few new security tactics appropriate to the situation, which were useful in keeping us all safe.

Despite the threats, the protest was large and well-attended. We rallied at a point midway between the two stores, not letting on which store we were heading to. Before we even began marching, the both stores closed, which represented significantly more economic damage than we'd even hoped to inflict by picketing one of the stores.

What kind of folks began to join and participate in the GDC? How was its composition similar or different from the IWW or the anti-police movement in general? So far, the GDC seems to have "succeeded" as a multi-racial organization - how is this?

Most significantly were newer Black members and other members of color. Some had joined prior to the precinct, but it's my impression that anti-confederate flag action, and the precinct occupation, were important moments in attracting Black members. The African People's Caucus of the IWW was active prior to both of these events, and I think that their work, which was often behind the scenes, was often the most important work done, communicating revolutionary and antifascist politics to people who may not have encountered them in this way previously.

Probably the best way to describe the membership of the GDC in general is that members often have direct experience with forms of oppression that are not based solely in the workplace, and a desire to confront those challenges from a revolutionary and consistent place. All of our working groups arose either from skills members already had or had developed and were willing to share, or from needs we had. In addition to Anti-racism and anti-fascism, and training people to do more effective pickets and direct actions, we struck working groups like cop watch, harm reduction, and survivor support.

New working groups seem to have a period of incubation after being struck, during which the people involved start to think out, collectively and carefully, what a GDC and community self defense oriented approach would look like, and then get started. Once disciplined action is taken, especially if it's successful, we seem to have an influx of new members who are also affected by or concerned with those forms of oppression. I'm happy with the way that this approach has found knowledgeable and skilled members and connected them with others.

The Twin Cities IWW has been a fairly sizable and active Branch for years - this no doubt provided a good basis to build from, but there has also been some informal controversy and debate within the Branch over some Wobblies' orientation towards the GDC. What were the concerns and how has that played out?

Yes. The local GDC wouldn't exist without the local IWW, and I strongly feel that GDC locals should encourage all eligible members to join the IWW and begin workplace organizing. In terms of controversy, it's my impression that there were criticisms; I was definitely aware from the beginning that a few members opposed the formation of a GDC, but there wasn't ever a clear debate or discussion. GDC members solicited critique and engagement from wobblies, but nothing much really came of it, unfortunately.

Some concern was definitely based in the notion that organizing against fascists would put IWW members as a whole at risk of fascist attack. A few other objections seem possibly to have been that this was macho adventurism, and a distraction from the work of organizing at the workplace. All of these deserve a serious response. In some ways, however, the GDC's more controversial ideas have become common sense. The idea that anti-fascism is optional for unionists, for instance, seems to be moot at the moment. This isn't as much because of our work, necessarily, as because of recent history: it's hard to retain any illusion about the role of the police, or the threat of fascism to workers, after Ferguson, or after Trump's election.

How has the GDC maintained a democratic culture in the context of constant action and growth? What are the main ways for Defenders to communicate, raise ideas, and debate issues? How does political development work within the GDC - what would you like to see in terms of political and educational culture within the GDC?

The people involved at the beginning were all wobblies with a fair bit of experience in the organization and a dedication to democratic practice. So in that sense there was already a basic common culture and attitude. I'm not certain we've always done this as well as we could, though we usually self-correct fairly quickly. I think over the last year the most important nuts-and-bolts contribution to a democratic practice and culture has been found in improving our paperwork and bureaucracy, actually. With regular minutes and agendas, asking people to write motions ahead of time, and being as organized as possible, our organization has grown in transparency.

I'm not certain that we currently have the practices and culture in place to maintain this without serious new effort. The rapid growth in membership proposes a challenge to this: it means that the serious and lengthy process of mutual education, which was the basis of our common understandings and analysis, and made our planning and actions easier and more coherent, will now have to be sped up and transformed into a process that can handle large numbers of new members.

There is a very serious need for lots of educational initiatives, as well as finding ways to encourage people to take part in them. We need lots of writing, lots of one-on-ones, lots of explanations, and lots of patience. If you've been around for awhile, get used to hearing the same explanations of ideas, acronyms, etc. That's a sign that we're growing. If it's irritating, please get involved in making the explanations better. Along with speedily connecting new members to working groups, I think continuing the practice of mutual education is our greatest current challenge.

What initiatives of the GDC are you excited about and what do you see as the biggest challenges and weaknesses to overcome as we move into the Trump era?

The GDC has experienced solid growth as an institution for the last few years. Here in the Twin Cities, we helped folks in St Cloud organize and apply for charters for a new IWW and a new GDC local, both of which I believe were just approved.

The projects we take on in the GDC are organized by working groups. As we've grown in numbers and capacity, the number of working groups has grown. Every new working group makes me excited.

The Survivor Support working group is our newest working group, and has already taken numerous successful direct actions. I'm really excited about this project. It remains the case that many more people of color are murdered by police than fascists, and many more women experience rape and violence at the hands of partners, friends, and acquaintances than they do from the faces of the Men's Rights groups. We must address everyday violence and oppression in our attempt to build Community Self Defense.

The post-election moment feels very new, at least at the moment. In the days immediately following, a very large swell of interest in both the GDC and the IWW happened, and a lot of my personal energy recently has gone into helping other groups charter by giving as much practical advice and history as possible. Because I am convinced that the GDC and the IWW have immense potential for the next few years, this growth is thrilling and exhausting at once.

It's thrilling partly because of the new energy, and the sudden appearance of people who are, perhaps for the first time, to fight. It's exhausting because the task ahead of us is immense, and will require a nearly constant process of mutual education.

Thankfully, creating trainings is something we've been doing well in the Twin Cities, and with the new energy, I'm hopeful we can continue to both grow and consolidate our growing power. We've started thinking about what the process of doing mass, mutual education would look like, and thinking of how to implement it. The point of all of our trainings, beyond the specific skills taught, is to spread the skills and analysis we have as widely as possible among the working class, in order to increase our confidence, competence, and militancy. The next year is going to lit, if we do it right.

Finally, we've been debating and developing a long-term strategy for GDC growth in the Twin Cities. Without going into details, I'll just say that the long term strategic and nut-and-bolts planning of our group is inspiring, and gives me hope.

The Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee Local 14 contact info:

Web: https://twincitiesgdc.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TC.GDC/

Twitter: @TCGDC

Contribute $: https://fundly.com/support-revolutionary-community-organizers-in-minneapolis

Address: c/o Twin Cities IWW 2 E Franklin Ave Suite 1, Minneapolis, MN 55404

Members of the First of May Anarchist Alliance are among those active in the Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee. For more information on First of May: m1aa.org

Notes

1 A nickname for members of the Industrial Workers of the World union (I.W.W.)

2 For a discussion of the "St. Paul Principles": http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/2/16/1065414/-A-Principled-Stand-on-Diversity-of-Tactic-Avoiding-Uniformity-of-Failure; For more on IWW activity during the 2008 RNC: http://www.iww.org/nl/node/4384

3 The Baldies were among the first anti-racist skinhead crews in the U.S. Anti-Racist Action, is a radical direct action anti-fascist network that was a key to fighting KKK and neo-nazi organizing from the late 80's until recent times.

4 David Irving is probably the most famous Holocaust-denier "historian" in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving

5 "Unionism and Anti-Fascism" (2013) https://twincitiesgdc.org/antifascism/

6 "No To Badjacketing: the State Wants To Kill Us; Let's Not Cooperate" (2015) https:// twincitiesgdc.org/badjacketing/

7 "Robert Kroll: Not Credible on Race or Policing" (2015) https://twincitiesgdc.org/2015/11/29/ kroll-report/

Burning Down the American Plantation: An Interview with the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement

By Colin Jenkins

The following is an interview with members of the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM), conducted over the course of a month between July and August of 2017. We discuss their formation, vision and goals for the future, and what they are doing to spark a reawakening of revolutionary politics grounded in black liberation, anarchism, and direct action.

First, can you tell us how and why the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM) came to fruition?

The political situation in the United States, and the world at large, is really dire and after many years of organizing, discussion, and reflection we came to the conclusion that we should lay out the foundational text for organizing that could lend some direction to the revolutionary movement in the country. If we look at the political and social problems in the US today, we can immediately see there is a gap between the activities of revolutionary organizations and the fortitude, seriousness, and capacity that must be developed to contend with the current situation.

There are huge sweeping political problems in the US, which could be resolved through reformist measures. The centralization of political power in two rather similar parties, the remarkable concentration of wealth into a few dozen people's hands (making this one of the most unequal countries in the world), and military industrial complex, which ties it all together, are some of the more acute political problems. One could imagine how there could be a structural change to deal with these - permitting other political parties, redistributing wealth, or ending the bloated military industry.

However, the most consistent and unresolvable feature of American life has been the dehumanization and destruction of black life. The trans-atlantic slave trade was the process that shaped the modern world, and particularly the US. The slave system pushed the country to civil war, though not to abolish it, simply because it was financially untenable. Immediately after the civil war the US did everything it could to reinstitute slavery, which today has been transformed into the prison industrial complex. So, in essence, the conflict in the 19th century is the same conflict we are fighting for today. Black Lives Matter was just a recent iteration of a war that never ended. It is in this context that we find ourselves.

As organizers, we come from The Base in Brooklyn. Many of us have been organizing for several years, and have been a part of various revolutionary projects and milieus. However, there is a trajectory of protest movements in the US that has become all too familiar and not too effective. If we look at the anti-globalization period, or the Iraq War, Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, or Black Lives Matter, there are clear trends and outliers. In each of these there were horrendous indignities that had to be addressed. People took the streets, had beautiful moments, and demonstrated extremely courageous acts of resistance. But these periods did not create the requisite revolutionary movements necessary to overthrow the state and capital, or to gain the strength to destroy their primary manifestations.

Unfortunately, the cycle of protest has become routine and familiar; lessons aren't passed down well to new militants, and older militants burn out without organizational coherence to keep the political ground firm. We felt we had to lay out a vision for the future and to begin the process of making a revolutionary organization that puts black liberation at the forefront. We intend to learn from the lessons of the past few decades and create a genuinely militant resistance that can eventually begin to garner the capacity to overthrow the state and capital.

Resistance movements throughout history include both underground and above-ground organizations. What do you view as the pros and cons of each? Despite the inherent risks, why are above-ground operations so important?

We believe that revolutionary political organizations must have both, and they must correspond. Black Liberation Army fighter, Russell Maroon Shoatz, argued that the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army had ceased to function accordingly, which he says was one of the main reasons the liberation movement was overwhelmed. The Party, according to Shoatz, didn't have a strategy for war before they started organizing, so when the underground army came into existence, the above-ground organization was already engulfed in a conflict they were unprepared for. Due to the above-ground organization being routed, the underground could no longer get new recruits and then it was only a matter of time until it was eradicated.

So for a revolutionary political organization to maintain its relations with the public, to push a coherent political line about important matters, and to develop new militants, an above-ground strategy is paramount. However, people associated with above-ground apparatuses are unable to engage in militant action. They are the ones who make their faces and names public, and therefore must be careful about doing activities where they could be implicated and targeted with long jail sentences or assassination. This work is essential to bring new people into new ways of organizing, from setting up neighborhood councils, to political education, to defense.

In short, we need both to be effective. The militant work gives teeth to the political organizing, and allows the movement to make good on its intentions. The public spaces and infrastructure allow the militants to continue their offenses, paving the way for liberated organizations to take root.

Your political program is laid out in the pamphlet, " Burn Down the American Plantation: Call for a Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement ." In talking about learning from militant struggles of the past, you mention" debilitating switch-backs between the two formations that Shoatz refers to as the 'hydra' and the 'dragon'." Can you talk about these two formations? Is there one formation that is more desirable than the other? If so, why?

Russell Maroon Shoatz illustrates the difference between the 'dragon' and 'the hydra' using examples from the Haitian Revolution. He describes the hydra as multi-headed, decentralized uprisings, and the dragon as an oppositional force with a hierarchical structure and leadership. The problems that arose from the dragon-style militias was that 1) a single leader could be corrupted or killed by the colonial power, thwarting its revolutionary potential, 2) once a leader took control of the country, the logical results of maintaining power: suppression of the governed populace, unequal distribution of resources, etc, led to the leader being deposed by the population. Shoatz concludes that the hydra-style organization is superior both militarily and in terms of revolutionary results; that is by organizing in a decentralized manner from the beginning, dispersal of power throughout the previously oppressed population ensures that self-governance will be built into the foundations of the revolution, and the result of the uprisings will be a society that has the integrity to defeat the colonial system.

In recent years we have seen a few mainstream instances of exposing how the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution kept chattel slavery alive by simply transferring it to the criminal punishment system, i.e. slavery is still legal under a code of criminality. While you point to this in your political program, you also seem to present a deeper analysis on the effects of whiteness and blackness, stating that "the first obstacle to addressing slavery in the US is the misconception that relates slavery with a specific labor code, rather than a system, a lineage, and a stratified code of bondage, dehumanization and captivity." Can you talk about what you mean here?

Slavery, in the US, is typically thought of as a coercive labor arrangement where black people were forced to work for free. While this, clearly, is true, it hardly addresses the dynamic and all-encompassing role of slavery as a social system and the role of anti-blackness in shaping human relations and creating what, as theorist Frank Wilderson calls, the non-human/human relationship. The modern world, in many ways, was established through the colonial process, and particularly through the slave trade. Most of the terms we use to understand and discuss the world were established through this process like Europe, Africa, capitalism, state, white/black, etc. With the advent of capitalism and state formation, the left typically argues that the exploitation of labor is born here, but in reality, the relation of terror from the slave process is closer to the core of this world system. Furthermore, the establishment of who is permitted into the family of human and who is forced into the non-human category is solidified through these formulations. So blackness becomes tied into the reality of non-human, which is called social death.

The black position in America becomes entangled in an all-encompassing web of violence that is perpetuated by state violence, self-hatred, and more importantly the deputization of the entire society, and civil society at large, against black life. While the state has blatant forms of repression: the prison/slave system, police violence, etc, civil society is also a killing field, or a battleground where every interaction with white supremacist society and its junior partners becomes a potential avenue where black life can be exterminated or put onto the plantation.

With the 13th amendment and other legal codes we see the growth of the slave system; so when chattel slavery was abolished for economic reasons, the state wanted to ensure that white supremacist society not only remained intact, but that the human/non-human relation continued, culminating in the eventual growth of the prison industrial complex.

This explains why social movements, even revolutionary ones, are often so empty in regards to black liberation. These movements typically have a goal of reinforcing civil society, or strengthening society to make it more democratic, or promoting goals like workplace democracy, community control over resources or policing, etc. In the black experience, civil society itself is the battleground. So, in effect, these coalition politics with reformist groups inadvertently strengthens white supremacy in unexpected ways. We believe that a politics of abolition and revolution in the US must start with the acknowledgement that civil society itself is where this war must be fought. Our political project, while attempting to strengthen embattled communities and build revolutionary militants, also underwrites everything that we are doing explicitly with the intention of building up the requisite capacity to destroy the physical and mental apparatuses that create the human/non-human relationships.

On activist milieus, Wilderson states, "They remain coalitions operating within the logic of civil society and function less as revolutionary promises than as crowding out scenarios of Black antagonisms, simply feeding our frustration... From the coherence of civil society, the Black subject beckons with the incoherence of civil war." We believe we need to position ourselves within this incoherence and create the capacity to destroy plantation society permanently.

Speaking of this relationship between revolution and reform, socialist movements in the US often seem to focus on one of two approaches: (1) reforming our current systems through outside pressure (voting, protesting), or (2) gaining inroads to our current systems (usually electorally) and revolutionizing them from within. By embracing direct action, anarchists do neither; but rather attempt to make these dominant systems irrelevant. Much of RAM's vision seems to be rooted in this approach, drawing inspiration from the Maroon communities of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Zapatistas in Chiapas, and the current project in Rojava (northern Syria). Can you tell readers about the vision here? What would this type of community look like in the modern US?

What we're hoping is that through this method of organizing from the ground-up, putting in place the communal structures of self-governance and defense, and building infrastructure outside of white supremacist, capitalist, and statist regimes, the colonial and imperial power that is the United States will, one day, no longer exist. To be able to create a different society, it is necessary to do so completely outside the legal and political parameters of this current one. For example, the judicial system cannot be reformed because its entire purpose -- racial sublimation and modern slavery, punitive measures, and warehousing of the poor -- is entirely contrary to the type of society we are working towards, and frankly it is an affront to humanity.

Even measures of soft power that masquerade as vehicles for social betterment, such as non-profits (which are usually funded by the democratic party) in fact operate as counter-insurgent tools. These organizations are meant to tie people into a charity relationship, and intentionally never give people the tools they need to be able to meet their own needs. The more people take control of their neighborhoods, the more people who join the movement and bring the skills they already have, the more concertedly we can build up the defenses necessary to defend these gains, the stronger the movement will grow.

Any time an organizer leaves to run for office, makes a career off writing about the movement, or feeds momentum back into capitalist, statist, or counter-revolutionary organizations, they are taking away from the skills, and communal resources, that people have committed to building towards free life. The first, and perhaps most important point, is to build up a visible political organization where people can develop the skills they need to build a different kind of society.

I have always believed that the original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense had it all figured out . They effectively placed the struggle for black liberation within the broader class struggle against capitalism, set forth a specific political program rooted in theory and education, and carried out real self-defense measures against police and white supremacists, all while providing crucial social services to the community. Despite the obvious ideological differences (Anarchist vs. Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), has RAM's political program drawn anything from the original BPP? If so, in which ways? And what improvements do you think can be made to their approach?

RAM owes a huge amount of its political vision to the Black Panthers, their fighters, and their coupling of education, defense, and community organization. The Black Liberation Army, and the Panthers, are undoubtedly the most important political force in recent US revolutionary history. Their focus on political education is something we find really important. In recent years, militants have accepted a more formal understanding of politics; but without a heightened political struggle, as exists in Greece for example, the lack of education has really disastrous effects for establishing any kind of continuity. We also appreciate how the Panthers had established a mentality of absolute struggle. In our current climate people focus on their political activities part time, and spend most of their time at work, or socializing which lends itself to careless thought and action.

The problems with the Panthers are well known, and a lot of their former members have written in great detail about them. The Panthers were an extremely hierarchical organization, which invariably leads to poisonous social relations amongst the members. The leadership was targeted by the government and a wedge was driven between them which made the organization weaker. Furthermore, huge amounts of party funds went to the leadership while lower level cadre struggled in prison. The Panthers had a lot of women in their organization but never fully grappled with feminism, like many revolutionary groups, until the Zapatista uprising in Mexico. Also, a split between the left and right in the organization developed, and some members wanted to further promote social programs, and go down an electoral route, while other members were immersed in the armed struggle and knew there could be no halt.

We believe collective decision making is paramount to revolutionary social relationships. We also believe that revolutionaries must have a complete and total rejection of electoral politics. As anarchists we argue that the state apparatus must be destroyed. But also pragmatically one must ask, what is the revolutionary's position in slave society? If we intend to end the slave system and capitalism then seizing, or being elected into, the very machinery that permits and enforces this oppression seems deceptive and duplicitous.

Where does self-defense fit into RAM's program? How is it carried out in real terms? Are there specific steps that need to be taken in this process of creating a viable self-defense apparatus?

Defense is an essential pillar and the first one we discuss in "Burn Down the American Plantation," because any political initiative, from neighborhood councils to anarchist infrastructure to the simple proposition of anti-state politics, will not be able to succeed if the requisite level of defense isn't able to protect its gains. On the one hand, defense is a social and communal process, tied deeply to revolutionary goals and organizations of self-governance. It is a fundamental paradigm shift for building a revolutionary society. One way to think about it is that the state pretends to take on the responsibility of defending its 'citizens' but in actuality fails in these duties, and is in actuality an apparatus for repression. The ability to defend oneself marks a departure from the role of victim in statist society. In fact, the ability to defend oneself and one's community is the only way to escape the state's carceral intentions. From Harriet Tubman to Assata Shakur, we see the continuation of movements as individuals become actualized and powerful when they are able to release themselves and others from bondage. Defense is essential for the development of individuals, and also for the revolutionary intentions as a whole. That being said, for defense to be successful, it's not just about being able to fight or break people out of confinement, but essential for it to be organized around revolutionary principles and relationships. The stronger the bonds of trust are between participants, the stronger the defense will be.

There are already very successful Antifa groups, guns clubs, and fight trainings going on around the country. We're hoping that by connecting these groups and projects together by underpinning them with specific revolutionary goals and strong political principles, we will be able to not only be legible to the broader public, but begin tying these groups to civic initiatives, and building towards a more impenetrable movement.

For our part, we've been doing a month-long education program called The Kuwasi Balagoon Liberation School that offers the foundational premise for RAM, study groups, pragmatic workshops, fight trainings, and skills like first aid, tech security, etc. As we expand the political body of RAM through this process, we are also working on building a defense team that strives for similar relationships and goals. The purpose of this defense team at this point is to literally be on call to defend our center from fascists, and to defend other political infrastructure we are building, such as safe houses or the Rapid Response Network. We are hoping that if we can establish good modes of operation, this team can eventually train neighborhood teams in self-defense and political organization.

The left in the US is fragmented by ideological differences, some of which are often very nuanced. The labels are endless: socialists, Marxists, anarchists, communists, democratic-socialists, Leninists, Maoists, Stalinists, MLMs, etc. RAM has chosen to orient itself in Abolitionism. Can you explain why this choice was made and how it can be beneficial to the broader movement?

We wanted to tie abolitionism to revolutionary goals, because to achieve the abolition of modern slavery, we have to completely restructure our society institutionally and psychologically. It is impossible to end prisons, structural oppression, institutionalized white supremacy without also abolishing the judicial system, police, and the state itself. Our proposal is not just a negation, but a proposal for how to construct relationships, and therefore social organization in a way that these things can no longer exist.

We also felt that there are so many dedicated individuals and groups, already doing important work, who may already agree with the revolutionary horizon we outlined in the text. If that is the case, then we hope that the long term intentions behind RAM will appeal to people from a broad range of backgrounds and projects and provide the foundation necessary for us to complement each other's work.

In the US we are fighting an uphill battle against the degradation of life under capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy that the need for a concerted revolutionary strategy was clearly apparent. There are so many different battle fronts to fight on, and rightly so. Rather than tying tactics to specific political tendencies, and arguing that one is superior to another, we feel that to achieve a revolutionary outcome, all tactics must be deployed strategically in conjunction with one another. We hope that this initiative will provide the foundation to do so, so that people in groups from various political tendencies can support each other's work. One way to look at it is that to begin to develop revolutionary relationships, that is ones built on trust, longevity, and commitment, there must be a way to overcome rivalries that develop through the struggle, and which, it could be argued, stem from the mentality of capitalism. The foundations of the society we are constructing must be built through the quality of our relationships.

What do you view as the benefits of an anarchist approach, as opposed to other leftist orientations?

Revolutionary anarchism is the foundational core of RAM, however, we also view the project as being largely non-sectarian and open to those who have similar political and social objectives. Anarchism is the only political theory that accurately addresses a wide array of oppressions. Furthermore, anarchism as a revolutionary practice offers a way out of the conundrum many 20th century revolutionary movements faced. The Leninist notion of attaining state power and wielding it ruthlessly has proven to be bankrupt, and today, the anarchist question is again at the forefront. The anarchist approach is the only ideological stance that demands the abolition of the nation-state, which we find tantamount to truly being a revolutionary movement. When we use the term abolition we are not only speaking of prisons, or courts, or singular institutions; we intend to abolish the prisons, patriarchy, the state, capitalism, and white supremacist society entirely.

As anarchists, we view revolution our central reference point, and all of our activity is centered on this vantage point. The revolution in Rojava also offers a current, ongoing example for anti-state struggle. With a history of armed struggle against the Turkish state, Kurdish guerrillas had created a culture of struggle unlike anywhere else in the world; coupling this with anarchist, feminist, and libertarian ideas they have made a living example for anarchists worldwide. The guerrillas also, wisely, waited for the best time to launch the struggle, and have made the only sustained revolution through the entire Arab Spring, expanding past the insurrectionary model of revolution.

The recent emergence of Bernie Sanders brought the term "socialism" back into mainstream discussions. Groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have gained momentum as a result, and are currently strategizing on ways to affect change through our political system. You have mentioned that RAM does not view our current political system as a viable avenue for resistance or change. Can you elaborate on why this attempt to change the system from within is bound to fail?

The current political system must be destroyed in order for any of RAM's pillars, from the neighborhood councils, to self-defense, to conflict resolution, to the co-operative economy to grow. Furthermore, the current political system, and civil society at large is already a state of emergency for black people in the US. We are living in a permanent state of conflict for huge swathes of people, and integration into that system is synonymous with defeat.

In regards to the dominant political system, it is primarily designed to give people the illusion of participation, to keep the poor away from the apparatuses of political determination, and to reinforce the state. The greater the level of participation in the political system the stronger the governing apparatuses become, which in effect bargain away people's potential for liberation.

Socialist and grassroots candidates, unfortunately, end up redirecting popular energy back into the very system that is maintaining our oppression. Often revolutionary momentum, which could have been put towards an actual paradigm shift or the beginning of a prolonged revolutionary conflict, instead reinforce the status quo by giving the illusion of opposition to the police, the judicial system, capitalist barbarism, etc. The political system (with complicity from the left) then perfects methods of repression, and revolutionaries begin having a difficult time recognizing genuine action from counterinsurgent action. So for us to build for revolution we must be opposed to the system and not pretend we can use it for our benefit.

Anarchists often refer to a diversity of tactics that must be deployed in our collective struggle for liberation. Do you believe in this approach? If so, can you explain to the readers what these tactics look like and how they interrelate with one another?

A diversity of tactics certainly is necessary for, on the one hand building new modes for society, and on the other tearing down oppressive relations and institutions. It's essential to get outside of the narrow framework that unfortunately liberal discourse has relegated this conversation to: it's not a question of violence or non-violence as a tactic, which is funny because this question seems to often arise from a liberal fear of reprisals, or more horrifically, a liberal fear of the success of a truly liberating revolution. Instead, we urge people to look at this struggle from the perspective of an insurgency. By studying insurgencies from around the world, especially the more successful ones, it becomes clear that multiple tactics are employed. The key is having an agreement about what we're working towards, and the principles that underline it. If that is the case, tactics are freed up from being associated with one political tendency or another and can be employed across multiple planes of struggle. You can see how useful it will be to have revolutionaries in place in workplace struggles, in the battlefield, in protests, in legal support, in blockades, in neighborhood organizing. If all these people are working in tandem, they can be mutually supportive by strategically coordinating to apply pressure at certain key moments to our enemy, while also building up the powerful relationships of trust necessary for this movement. The key is that all are committed to the revolution and uncompromising in this. The other positive side is that with a revolutionary horizon in sight, everybody, no matter what their level of engagement, can contribute to it.

There is a beautiful story about the Peace Mothers in Turkey, who found themselves on a hillside blockading Turkish tanks. It became a bit of a standoff, so to kill the time, they began dismantling landmines they found in the area. I love this story because in the US context 'peace' might infer that those mothers should not touch the landmines, like how liberals argue anarchists should not confront police or break windows. Similarly, mothers trapped in Cizre and Nusaybin during the Turkish siege brought tea to the youth brigades who were defending the neighborhoods with barricades and Kalashnikovs.

As long as there is the framework to build strong relationships, and everyone agrees on a revolutionary solution, every action becomes a militant action, and the impacts of individual initiatives is multiplied.

This brings me to one of your primary calls to action, where you state," The resistance in the United States now has a choice. It must rise beyond the limits of the protest movements that we have become accustomed to and organize revolutionary bodies with the intention of combatting the State, assisting the populace, and expanding our forces both quantitatively and qualitatively." Can you talk more about the limits of protest movements and the need to rise beyond them.

We have all participated in a variety of protest movements from the anti-globalization period to Black Lives Matter. It became clear, quite some time ago, that with the peaks and troughs of explosive momentum in the streets with its following repression, the movements didn't seem to be making any material headway. The stark reality of this conclusion came in the context of the Ferguson and Baltimore riots. They were by far the most aggressive street uprisings, with the strongest levels of solidarity and mutual aid, the US has seen for years. Yet they were quelled by a combination of brute force and, as mentioned before, counterinsurgent tactics in the form of self-policing 'community' groups, non-profits, and liberal protest actors. Regular life under the white supremacist state came back to those communities and many young participants ended up with long jail sentences, or died under mysterious circumstances.

There is an illustrative example from the Middle East. While many countries erupted in mass protests as part of the Arab Spring, these protests did not have a unifying revolutionary vision, and in most cases resulted in more reactionary political groups coming to power. Meanwhile, the forces of the YPG and YPJ in Northern Syria were slowly and methodically preparing, like the Zapatistas in Mexico, with strong educational programs, clear revolutionary goals, and building up their numbers very concertedly to establish a capable and determined militant organization.

When Assad's forces were weakened in Northern Syria due to the civil war, the YPG and YPJ were able to effectively take over the region and expel most of the remaining reactionary forces. They were prepared organizationally and politically, and chose only to act when they had the most advantageous circumstances. Immediately they were able to start implementing neighborhood communes, and co-operatives, because they already had a clear political intention to help restore people's capacity to meet their own needs.

This is a good lesson for us and shows a liberatory counter-proposal to the problem of exclusively participating in street demonstrations.

Speaking of reactionary forces, you talk about the "rise to prominence of the far right around the world and in the United States." In the US specifically, some ( myself included ) have characterized this rise as an inevitable conclusion to a national project with fascist tendencies deeply rooted in settler-colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. How do you see this trajectory playing out in the US? What are the immediate dangers of this rise and how can they be combatted by those of us on the left?

From Duterte in the Philippines to Golden Dawn in Greece, and Donald Trump at home, we see worldwide that fascist and far right parties and candidates have been coming to power. In many of these places previously, far right movements existed but were underground. But today, these organizations, inspired by international chaos and a changing world system, believe they can grow and offer an alternative world based on xenophobia, patriarchy, capitalism, and an extraordinarily powerful nation-state.

It is true that the state form is prefaced on its ability to oppress its population in order to govern. The US, like many states, was founded, and maintained, by denying the humanity of entire swathes of the population. The rise of fascism then is not an anomaly but a logical conclusion of the state form, the disorder of capitalist society, and the underlying foundation which is white supremacy.

When these far right leaders gain power, and exalt their xenophobic and fascist rhetoric, from Trump to Erdogan, their support base gets emboldened and takes action which necessitates a response. We have seen Kurdish people beaten to death in Turkey, a homeless black man stabbed to death in NYC by a white nationalist, the KKK marching and organizing nationwide, refugees being attacked in Europe, while government agencies now act with less fear of repercussions, like ICE and border patrol agents, and the police being encouraged to take extra legal measures by the executive branch.

Despite this barbaric climate, antifa groups have risen to the occasion and are fighting these groups back, preventing them from marching and organizing, shutting down their speaking engagements, and getting them fired from their jobs. Antifa groups have organized themselves and put their lives on the line, and even been severely injured and killed, while saving the lives of so many. This is very encouraging that so many are willing to risk so much to make their neighborhoods safe for the most vulnerable.

If we look at how to expand on this self-organized, militant activity, we can see an intersection between the underground railroad and self-defense units, while connecting all these activities and organizational structures through a political framework. If we are working towards revolutionary goals, anti-fascists, participants in the underground railroad, and neighborhood defense groups won't simply be a stop-gap measure, but ones that are learning how, and gaining the resources, to go on the offensive when it is possible.

Keeping the focus on neighborhoods, one of the five points of RAM's political vision is self-governance in the form of neighborhood councils. Can you describe what these councils look like in modern terms? How do we go about creating them?

There are so many different kinds of neighborhoods, from city to suburban to rural that how the councils work and what they deal with on a day-to-day basis must vary widely. It's helpful that we have a lot of examples to draw from, from the rural ones in Chiapas to the more urban examples in Bakur (Southeastern Turkey). Its useful to examine these, and how they are implemented, to have some vision. However, how they pan out in different towns, cities, regions, and blocks is going to be very different.

The one thing that should be universal is the political principles. For example, if there is a neighborhood association committed to working with the police then they are not engaged in the same political project. Due to this reason, we suggest that one way we build towards neighborhood councils is through establishing an underground railroad network. These connections must be built on clear political principles, and outside of state institutions. We also suggest that we can build towards neighborhood councils through pragmatic projects, oriented towards those facing oppression. For example, a tenant's solidarity network that is actively working against rent increases and built on horizontal solidarity can help renters in the short term and provide the experiences for working together as a commune. This is just one idea, and may or may not be relevant to every situation, however multiple projects can be attempted until groups find the right one. It's also important to note that any solidarity or autonomy achieved through these preliminary organizations must be defended; so whatever that necessitates, should be built simultaneously.

Another point of RAM's political vision is based in "conflict resolution and revolutionary justice." Can you tell readers what these mean and give example(s) on how they would look in practice?

Conflict resolution is intended for comrades, and for oppressed peoples who come into contact with our organizations, while revolutionary justice is the actions used by the oppressed in order to extricate themselves from their chains.

The premise of conflict resolution is built into the roots of revolutionary organizations, and prefaced on the idea of resolving problems before they start. The perspective differs from our judicial system in that it is not punitive; instead it's founded on the desire to restore the social fabric, and also to help each other develop as better people. This means that all the participants in conflict resolution are profoundly invested in each other.

There are multiple wonderful examples of how this can work: looking at the Zapatistas and their use of a mediator and agreement on restitution by every participant, or at civil society in Rojava with a group of neighbors based at the Mala Gel (people's house), or the tekmil of the YPG/YPJ, where participants offer reflections after every training. However, developing this for our particular circumstances will probably not be a matter of copying methods from other groups, but engaging the foundational premises of conflict resolution, and then doing a lot of trial and error.

We also believe establishing healthier means of conflict resolution is paramount for revolutionary organizations in the US. Personal conflict and infighting have destroyed most groups, so finding a method of resolving problems is incredibly important.

Revolutionary justice is already happening, in the form of riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, in prison uprisings, revolts in detention centers. It is important to recognize when it is happening and figure out ways to support it, both in the long and short terms.

How does RAM feel about working with other organizations? Socialist parties? Resistance movements? Are there specific criteria you have in considering potential allies and/or partners? Is there a line that must be drawn when considering these alliances?

At the moment there is very little infrastructure outside the state and capitalist enterprises, and even less knowledge about anarchism, abolition, and liberatory history and proposals. The most important first step is to build a solid political foundation to organize from. This means finding other revolutionaries through education and invitation to join organizing projects. This necessarily has to be a slow process, but it's important to do it right. The stronger, and more trusting, our relationships and organizations are, the more risks and assertive actions we can take. People should come to the movement and feel like they are removing the shackles of their previous life, are treated respectfully, and can develop new skills necessary for revolutionary change.

At the same time, it's important to spread knowledge among the general public, by education and programs, so that we spread throughout society and build new infrastructure. When it comes time for actions, they should be legible to broad swathes of the population; people should know who is doing these actions and why they are doing them.

The most important thing to do right from the start is to build up a strong foundation for our political proposals. The question of working with other organizations is only relevant once we have established ourselves and built up material gains. As we expand, and make our political intentions more widespread, we hope people who are committed to liberatory solutions will join the call for a Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement. The main intention behind the project is for individuals and organizations to join the movement and expand if they agree with the political principles. So hopefully it will be a matter of working alongside new participants.

Finally, as we move forward in our collective fight, what do you see as the most immediate concerns that must be addressed? Where do you see RAM in another year? Where do you see RAM in five years?

The political situation in the US, and in effect, the larger world, is so unstable and dangerous that our activities and their success is essential. Ordinary life in the US, for the black population especially, has always been a state of crisis and war. The conflict from the Middle Passage to the Civil War to Black Lives Matter has been continuous, and the struggle against social death, against being treated and perceived as less than human, continues unbroken. The difference today is that the US state is collapsing internally, and its power has been thoroughly eroded internationally, making the country one of the most dangerous entities in world history.

Revolutionaries in the US, then, must be prepared to fight and throw our entire lives into the struggle no matter where we are. For huge swathes of the population, slavery, constant conflict, and death are the norms, and as the country spirals into the unknown, this misery will become more pronounced. It is our place to fight side by side with those facing oppression, and to create alternatives so people can live with dignity.

With this in mind, the most important first step is to build RAM organization all around the country. The intention behind this process is to create a strong political foundation for our resistance. This allows all of our activities to become legible to the broader public and it connects disparate projects through a greater political trajectory. In one sense the political foundation should also be a development of the social: it is an invitation for comrades with similar levels of seriousness, commitment, and humility to begin working together. By joining this movement, people should be able to develop new skills, better ways of relating to one another, and chart out a path towards revolutionary relationships.

While acknowledging white supremacy as the foundation of the US and the larger world-system, we believe destroying its appendages and helping people flee bondage are some immediate guidelines RAM groups should follow. As we build stronger revolutionary relationships, we should also assist people in staying free, culminating in the establishment of a new underground railroad and a vastly stronger revolutionary movement.

We also would encourage RAM groups to create educational projects and public projects to articulate what we are fighting for, what we are offering, and what it means to become a revolutionary. As we expand we can help communities liberate themselves, and we will begin creating the political infrastructure to challenge and eventually overthrow the capitalist state. So the immediate objectives are for chapters to form, create educational infrastructure, and begin engaging with those affected by the worst aspects of the state and white supremacist society (prisoners, ICE detainees, shelters, etc.), eventually developing a modern underground railroad. People should also begin developing militant means of defense to protect these projects.

To conclude, RAM is also revolutionary strategy that is intending for long term objectives. We don't see this as daunting though; instead we view it as a relief. We don't need to rush against an impenetrable enemy every time the cops do something obscene; we don't need a pressure valve every time there is an indignity. Instead, we plan to build slowly and methodically so that we can gain the capacity to act decisively at a time and place of our choosing. We want to be as ready as possible to aid and assist those in revolt, provide infrastructure and resources, and also have new modes of operating in place, such as the councils or conflict resolution bodies, so that as the riot wanes, no one has to go back to a life of oppression, and we can push past revolt and into revolution.

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Anarchism, Paganism, and Resistance: An Interview with Rhyd Wildermuth

By Brenan Daniels

Below is a recent interview I had with Rhyd Wildermuth, the editor of the website Gods & Radicals, where we discuss the origins of the organization, paganism, and religion in anarchism.

What led to the creation and found of Gods and Radicals? How did the entire group get together?

Gods & Radicals was started by myself and my friend Alley Valkyrie two years ago. We're both anarchists, the self-educated 'street-variety' as it were, living much of our lives working with homeless and other mostly-invisible victims of capitalism. And we also talked to other mostly-invisible things, like trees and dead people and land spirits and gods. So we were the self-educated street-variety of Pagans, too.

For us, our anti-capitalism and our Paganism seem to flow into each other seamlessly. Our desire to protect the natural world and our desire to protect the vulnerable were both rooted in the same soil. And we knew lots of other Pagans who were also anarchists, and lots of other anarchists who were also Pagans, but noticed that few were ever talking about what seemed pretty self-evident to all us. Because of the overwhelming response we got after a presentation together at a Pagan conference in California, we realized there was massive desire to talk more about this. So we started the site, named it after the presentation we gave, and put out a call for writers, and we got flooded pretty quickly with offers to help. It was pretty amazing.

Tell us about the journal A Beautiful Resistance. What led to its founding and what is the goal of the journal?

Gods & Radicals is both a website and a non-profit publisher, and A Beautiful Resistance is one of our publications. The idea behind the name is pretty simple: we tend to forget what we're resisting for in the midst of all thing things we're resisting against. Resistance can be ugly, exhausting, full of sorrow and misery and pain. It can also be beautiful, and should be, because we're not just struggling against capitalism, against patriarchy, against racism, and against authority. Instead, we're resisting for something, for ideas and for people and for ways of being that are beautiful.

Also, we wanted to challenge an unchallenged idea in both anarchist and Pagan publishing: we wanted to pay all our writers, to re-establish writing and art as labor that must be compensated. With A Beautiful Resistance and our other publications, we split all the revenue after costs 50% with all the contributors, with the other half going back into the organization to start new publishing projects. We've been pretty successful so far on this.

How did you personally come to paganism and what exactly is paganism as it doesn't seem to be well understood in the general culture?

I can't and won't define Paganism for everyone, but I'll happily tell you how I define it for myself.

Paganism is the moment I lose my words at the sight of wildflowers breaking through sidewalk cracks in the poor areas of a city; the resurgence of the wild into the disciplined misery of the oppressed. It's the body that doesn't fit into the machine, the dream of buried rivers and streams under pavement. It's the tears I shed and the rage I feel when I see a river poisoned by an oil spill or see a mountain blown to bits to get at the coal underneath.

For me, it's all about relation to not just the human-world but the other-than-human world. The mountain that gets blown apart so industrialized capitalism can grind on, the river that gets poisoned so people can have cars-I'm in relationship with them. Just like when a trans friend is harassed or a Muslim neighbor is terrorized, I cannot stand by and accept that violence, because we are related, we relate to each other, and our existence is all bound up together.

I've always been like this, I think, but I didn't always identify the way I relate with the world as "Pagan." Animism and witchcraft also describe it just as well. The words matter less to me than the worlds of meaning they attempt to describe.

Many anarchists reject any religion, especially organized religion. How do you square your anarchist political beliefs with your paganism?

I've always wanted to answer this question. More often than not, the question I am asked is how I square my pagan beliefs with generally atheistic anarchist political theory.

First off, I-and Gods & Radicals-strongly rejects clericalism. Anyone who sets themselves up as a mediator between humans and the world is trying to control people. In fact, most of our political systems derive from earlier religious-authority forms, evolving from priestly-control of society to king- or politician-control with the advent of monotheism. What both secular Liberal Democracy and theocratic empires have in common is authority: that others (priests, kings, politicians, bosses) can and do have the authority to define the world for you. We reject that in all its forms.

Traditionally, atheist anarchism and Marxism make the mistake of defining non-European, non-white, and indigenous spiritualities as 'superstitious' or even primitive. Post-colonialists like Dipesh Chakrabarty have helped unravel that as European exceptionalism, the continued notion that mostly-white leftists are somehow more superior in their atheist views because they've progressed past religion. They're enlightened, the rest of the world is not, and all that.

So I see the insistence that leftists must always be atheists to be little more than that same European exceptionalism that led to colonial suppression of indigenous beliefs in the Americas and Africa. Re-embracing our own spiritual existences-and our ability to create new ways of being outside Capital and the state-is a key to our own liberation and also ongoing anti-colonialist efforts around the world. Otherwise, we're no different from the French in Haiti who tried to suppress indigenous African beliefs so the Blacks would make better slaves, or the Spanish and English who tried to wipe out First Nation's beliefs to 'civilize' them.

To use an anarchist term, we're expropriating our meaning back, or in Marxist terms, we're seizing the means of the "production" of meaning.

In what way does Gods and Radicals create and change the narrative surrounding paganism, as a religious belief, and anarchism as a political belief? What are the unique/new ideas or ways of thinking that G&R brings to the table?

Our primary influence has thus far been within Paganism, and it's also where we get the majority of our critics. There are racist elements in American Paganism particularly that don't like us. Also, our anti-clerical stance has made us a few enemies with the plastic-shaman, media-hungry elements that see us as a threat to their greed. And we've helped expose a few charlatans and leaders sympathetic to fascism and the alt-right. So, lots of enemies, but even more friends: we get emails weekly from people who thought they were maybe the only Pagan anarchists around. I like those emails a lot.

I think the way we change the anarchist narrative is precisely in what I mentioned earlier: we are undermining the European exceptionalism that crept into anarchism, and reminding people we can all create our own meaning.

One thinks of the way anti-Enclosure resistance movements in England and Wales adopted Pagan language and mysticism in their resistance: the Luddites, for instance, claimed to be led by a ghostly 'captain' who lived under a hill in a forest. That's a land spirit. Likewise, the Whiteboys in Ireland gave eviction notices to landlords in the name of an ancient land-goddess, and the Rebeccas claimed to have gotten their costumes from an ancient crone in the mountains. The narrative of those resistance movements is remarkably similar to the spiritual stories of indigenous and slave resistance in the Americas. Likewise, the ritual to Erzuli Dantor at Bois Cayman which sparked the Haitian Revolution, or the women's resistance to factory owners in Cambodia through possession by land spirits call the Neak Ta-resistance to oppression has very often been spiritual as well as physical.

By telling those stories, and by telling our own, we open up more space for these kinds of resistances, and also challenge the insistence that European-secular atheism is the natural, final evolution of humanity.

Such a view also helps us navigate away from the appropriative nature of Western spirituality. The capitalist creation of whiteness stripped people of their relationship to land and culture. "Hurt people hurt people," as they say, and that whiteness manifests now in a voracious theft of the culture and spiritual expressions of others. Dismantling that whiteness and healing the damage that was done (and that it does) will require creating new relationships to land and culture in which everyone engages in their own meaning-making.

Also, we're trying to provide a bulwark against the alt/new/fascist right. They gain power significantly by playing to that lost sense of meaning; they've been able to make so much headway on this precisely because many leftists demean spiritual expression. We're trying to fix that.

How can people support G&R and are there orgs/groups that G&R is allied with?

A few ways. First, we are always excited to meet new writers and artists. We pay for writing on our site now, and welcome as many diverse voices as want to write with us. Secondly, we are a non-profit and accept donations to help us pay our writers. Buying our books helps a lot as well-that's how we pay our print writers. And sharing our stuff, of course, is always really helpful, especially now that most social media sites throttle views in order to get their users to buy advertizing.

Other groups that we work with but aren't affiliated with directly, groups that might be of great interest to others, are Heathens United Against Racism and Appalachian Pagan Ministry, both of which are doing a lot of work to fight fascist organizing within Heathenry. And we have great relationships with quite a few Pagan communities elsewhere in the world fighting these same struggles, particularly against fascists.

The Chasm: On State Socialists and Anarchists (An Interview)

By Brenan Daniels

Below is an interview I had with both Tom Wetzel and two members of the Facebook page Anarchist Memes discussing the history between state socialists and anarchists, with the above individuals representing an anarchistic view of the situation. Part 2 will discuss the same idea from the view of state socialists.

It is well known that there was a split between Marxists and anarchists at the First International. However, how were relations between Marxists and anarchists before the split and how did this split affect relations generally speaking?

JA: Despite the first international or the Hague conference a decade later or even Krondstadt, the attack on Makhno's forces or the '37 may-fighting in Spain...I think the overall tone and relationship between anarchists and Marxists has been one of comradery and socialist kinship.

That said, I think that anarchists are well aware of the fact that Marxism is not homogeneous - not least because anarchists (in my observation) tend to have been Marxists first before adopting anarchism. The tendency is not to hold all of Marxism responsible for the opinions and actions of "tankies". We are aware that the POUM fought with the CNT in the aforementioned may-days, we are aware of the Pannekoeks', Luxemburgs and Lukacs's within Marxism and hold these people and Marxists like them in high-esteem.

OM: I would generally say, that as soon as these two tendency formed from early Socialism, there were elements of both hostility and cooperation. The problem is that, historically, there has been a tendency by some Marxist currents (Leninism and its Maoist/Stalinist derivatives) to prefer a reactionary victory over the victory of a competing leftist tendency in any given conflict. With other tendencies of Marxism though, like Left or Council Communism, the relationship was much more harmonious and cooperative, as mentioned by [JA]. Today, both of these histories seem to inform Marxist-Anarchist relationships in varying measure, while I see the current resurgence of ultra-authoritarian Marxist tendencies seen among young activists today as a problem.

Wetzel: The label anarchism wasn't really used by the libertarian socialists in the International Workingmen's Association. Bakunin referred to his politics as "revolutionary socialism." The main disagreement was over Marx's advocacy of building labor political parties "to win the battle of democracy" (as he put it) through gaining government power. This was the beginning of the party-based strategy that has always been central to Marxism.

The libertarian socialists put the emphasis on building mass union organizations, and their potentially revolutionary role. Thus, the libertarian socialists in the first international were in many ways precursors of the type of revolutionary strategy that was called syndicalism in the early 20th century. Marx's statement "The emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves" was strongly endorsed by the syndicalist militants of the 20 th century. Libertarian socialists have been influenced as well by Marx's analysis of how capitalism works.

In the US, it is known that anarchists and state socialists supported labor in their fight against capital, but how close was the relationship between the two groups at this time?

JA: The relationship between anarchists and Marxists in the United States has been overwhelming close, intertwined, and copacetic. Marxists and anarchists in the late 19th century and early 20th century shared common-causes and worked closely with one another - often co-mingling in abstractly socialist organizations like the knights of labor or the IWW (which is still welcoming to both anarchists and Marxists alike) and/or coming out to protest/agitate/strike etc. in defense of workers, marginalized, or imprisoned and/or executed Marxist/anarchist comrades.

OM: Not being from the US, I can add little to the situation there. In Germany, many radical leftists ID only as vaguely "radical left" without identifying fully with either Marxism or Anarchism, though.

Wetzel: In the period from early 1900s to World War 1, the growing revolutionary syndicalist movement of that era was influenced by both Marxist and anarchist ideas. There were a number of cases where Marxist and anarchist groups cooperated in building highly democratic worker organizations. In the IWW in the USA Marxists associated with the left wing of the Socialist Party cooperated with anarcho-syndicalists like Jack Walsh and Carlo Tresca. The important factory council movement in Turin Italy in 1919-20 was developed as a joint project of Antonio Gramsci's Socialist Party group and the Turin Libertarian Group. This was an independent shop stewards council movement based on stop work assemblies in Fiat and other factories. The councils were developed independently of the bureaucracy of the CGL (Socialist Party trade union).

This Marxist-syndicalist alliance was broken with the development of the Communist International in the early '20s. The Leninist parties insisted on working towards party hegemony in labor movements. Although the American Communist Party continued to adapt and use many syndicalist tactics and ideas in their organizing in the '20s and early '30s (such as elected negotiating committees, agitation around the flat incompatibility of working class and employing class interests), they were not opposed to top-down forms of labor organization in their ideology, and this became obvious after the turn of the Communist Parties to the Popular Front approach in 1936.

Talk about the situation between anarchists during World War 1 as it doesn't seem that that is too much discussed.

JA: WWI for anarchists was marked by controversy, activity, and suppression. Throughout Europe and the US, anti-war anarchists were incarcerated en-mass and hounded endlessly. Pushed further underground, many escalated their militancy (i.e. Galleaninists in the US who actively bombed targets and assassinated officials), while others waged free-speech fights and took part in all manner of anti-war and anti-capitalist activism. The rule that anarchists opposed the war was excepted by notable anarchist luminaries such as Kropotkin - and in turn, this support was denounced by others (and the majority) i.e. Goldman, Berkman, Malatesta.

OM: The rather marginal German Anarchist groups were heavily oppressed by the state, so they devoted relatively little time to internal controversy. Activities in general declined markedly, with military authorities often sending known Anarchists, along with other radical leftists, on suicide missions during WWI. Additionally, Anarchists lacked ideas and strategies for dealing with the war, being driven by events rather than taking on an active role.

Wetzel: Let's take each country separately. During the Russian revolution there were a variety of anarchist and libertarian socialist groups. Two groups that worked in an alliance during the revolution were the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries-Maximalist and the Russian Anarcho-Syndicalist Confederation. For example at the time of the October revolution the alliance between these two groups controlled the important soviet in Kronstadt and provided armed sailors to overthrow the Provisional Government. The October 1917 revolution occurred when the Soviet Congress took power and overthrew the unelected Provisional Government.

All the anarchist and libertarian socialist groups supported this move. However, the Bolsheviks got the Soviet Congress to let them centralize power in a new state via the Council of People's Commissars. The syndicalists and maximalists opposed this but continued to give "critical support" to the revolution because they believed they would be able to still organize for their view in the factory committees, soviets and unions. By 1921 however the militants of these groups were in prison and they were completely suppressed. Between 1918 and 1920 the Communist government also eliminated the last elements of worker collective control in industry and converted the soviets into rubber stamps of the party…including the overthrow of soviet elections that went against them.

The syndicalists and libertarian socialists of the '20s and '30s came to understand that Bolshevik policies and program had led to the creation of a new ruling class in Russia, based on the party and state bureaucracy…the industrial managers, elite planners, military officers, and the power of the party bureaucracy. The working class, in their view, continued to be an exploited and subordinated class.

In Spain the anarcho-syndicalist labor organization, CNT, was the majority union, especially in the industrialized regions of Catalonia and Valencia which contained 80 percent of Spain's manufacturing. Because of the long history of anti-labor violence and repression in Spain, both the CNT and the UGT (union shared by the Socialist and Communist parties) had armed groups. CNT had an organized system of clandestine armed cells in Catalonia, used for protecting workers in strikes. When the army attempted to seize power to crush the labor movement in July 1936, this clandestine armed organization smashed the army in Catalonia. CNT then built its own "proletarian army" with about 100,000 members and UGT built an armed militia also. Under cover of this armed power, the workers of Catalonia and other areas proceeded to engage in the most widespread direct worker seizure of capitalist property that has ever occurred…almost the whole of the economy in northeast Spain. Both the CNT and UGT farm labor unions had a revolutionary program and proceeded to collectivize millions of acres of farm land, creating more than two thousand collectivized village communities.

CNT proposed to replace the Republican state with a joint defense council of the UGT and CNT unions and a unified militia. They also proposed that the entire economy should be socialized under worker management. This was veto'd by the state socialists…the Socialist and Communist Parties. This was based on the Communist's naïve view that somehow they could get the capitalist "democracies" to let the anti-fascist forces buy weapons even though it was clear that a proletarian revolution was underway. So if they "respected government legality" this would protect the "international legitimacy" of the Spanish Republic. This didn't work.

The Communists in Spain pursued a strategy of trying to get control of the state through control of the police and army. After street fighting between CNT armed defense organizations and police in Barcelona in May 1937, the Communists were able to consolidate power in the national state and in 1938 began to nationalize the worker-managed industries, moving to create a managerialist type of bureaucratic class as they did in Eastern Europe after World War 2.

Various anarchist tendencies in the CNT also contributed to this result. At the outset of the revolution anarchists and syndicalists in the CNT were divided over the question of consolidating political or society-wide power. Some thought the decentralized and uncoordinated system of local committees was enough.

A minority wanted the CNT to take power in the regions where it could. This is what they did, under support of Buenaventura Durruti's large militia organization, in eastern Aragon in September 1936. The economy was coordinated via a regional congress of delegates and the village assemblies elected a defense council to replace the old state authority. But they failed to do this in Catalonia and Valencia which were the core industrial regions of Spain. Durruti thought they could negotiate with Francisco Largo Caballero (prime minister and head of the UGT and left wing of the Socialist Party) for an acceptable solution if they held their ground and went as far as they could in consolidating working class power.

Some anarchists in the CNT were confused about the concept of "power". Based on what happened in the Russian revolution, they thought of "taking power" as meaning that some new bureaucratic group would hold top down managerial power in some state. But "taking power" could also be interpreted as collectivizing power, via things like worker delegate congresses and coordinating councils. This would depend upon accountability to the masses via the base assemblies in the workplaces and neighborhoods. By rejecting the solution of building worker political power via workers councils in Catalonia, they found themselves forced into the hopeless situation of participating in the Popular Front government, where they were essentially captive to the socialist parties with their Popular Front strategy.

During World War 2, what was the situation in Spain and Russia, respectively, in which anarchists and state socialists found themselves on the same side or against one another? How did anarchists threaten the cause of state socialists or vice versa? How does this affect present relations?

JA: I don't think the present is affected by the internecine socialist fighting in Spain or during WWII. These historical episodes and the debates that still take-place about them, are not (as far as I can tell) having any negative impact per Marxist/anarchist coordination. Backing up a bit, I say internecine because Trotskyists and anarchists during this period often shared a similar fate and fought/died together - in Spain and Greece most notably.

Wetzel: I think there are several essential strategic goals that the radical left needs to work at:

First, there needs to be a revival of disruptive, collective strike actions by workers. Strikes are very important because workers have the power to shut down the flow of profits to employers, or shut down operation of government agencies. Doing this helps to change the mindset and outlook within the working class because it changes the situation from one where people confront their employers as powerless individuals to a situation where people can think in terms of "we". Strikes are learning experiences because people will learn how they confront all the institutions of the society - the media, the courts, the police, the union bureaucrats, the politicians. It develops "class consciousness" because people tend to think more in terms of "us" versus "them".

Workplace organizing is also important because the workforce has become much more diverse than in an earlier era and thus building mass worker unions with a democratic character means working to build bridges across the various differences in the working class and taking account of the different ways that groups in the working class are oppressed. This is another way in which a revived era of mass worker struggle would change the labor movement.

Rebuilding a real labor movement is not going to be an easy or simple task, partly because the inherited American unions are so intensely bureaucratized and controlled from the top. Back in the '30s radicals generally understood workers have to control their own unions. I think that rebuilding an effective labor movement is going to require building new unions outside the inherited bureaucratic unions of the AFL-CIO.

It's also more likely that working people will become more identified with unionism, if they are not so limited as they've been in their aims and not so controlled by staff and paid officers from HQ but are more authentically organizations workers form and run themselves. There have been various periods in the past where workers in the USA built organizations from below like this on a large scale, as during 1915-21 and 1933-35.

Secondly, and related to my first point, we need ways for working at training and supporting people who make the commitment to stick at the project of rebuilding worker organization and action. This would mean forms of public education outside academia developed by and for working class people. In rebuilding the "militant minority" in the workplace we're laying the groundwork for the radical left to once again have an actual presence and influence in the working class.

Third, for a long time there has been a general understanding by many on the left that fragmentation is a serious weakness. This takes various forms, such as single issue movements, or separation into a myriad of different kinds of movements - climate justice, Black Lives Matters, immigrant rights, tenant movement, each union focusing narrowly on its struggles with its employer, and so on,.

From a strategic point of view, I think we need to think in terms of developing a coalescing of forces into a kind of class front or working class social movement alliance. But I tend to think of this as a grassroots, horizontal kind of linkage, not via bureaucracies of unions and non-profits. This would be reflected in movements supporting the aims and struggles of other movements. There is some of this going on, but it will need to develop further.

It seems that due to the right wing onslaught in the 70s and 80s that much of the left has retreated to the academy. What are your thoughts on this and can it be reversed?

JA: I agree with your premise that the left has retreated to the academia and inward after defeats in the 60's and 70's. I don't know that this will be reversed any-time soon, but I am optimistic. I sense the youth of today are more politicized and enlightened than my generation (generation x), and that gives me hope. As well, the uptick in anti-fascist militancy (unfortunately, an uptick in fascism concomitantly) and propaganda-of-the-deed of late also gives me a sense (although, perhaps it's inflated or a product of my social-bubble) that an episode marked by a more tangible praxis is nigh.

OM: I would agree that there has been a retreat into the academy, but shortly followed by another retreat into subculturalism. With regards to reversal: Where I live, academic Anarchism has largely died out already (except for a few people in deep cover), while the subculture is slowly drying out due to self-isolation and increasing, self-imposed irrelevance. At the same time, I see a lot of discontent with Capitalism and popular demands for alternatives. At least theoretically, we should be able to build on this for a resurgence.

How is anarchism making a comeback today?

JA: Relative to our recent marginalization, I think so. My sense is that more people of know what it is and/or have some sympathy for it.

OM: If us Anarchists can get it together enough to publicly propose viable and attractive alternatives, I consider a comeback not only possible, but actually likely. The demand is there, but we need to deliver. For this, we need to abandon subculturalism and academic obscurantism and actually work in a more strategic and popularly appealing fashion.

How is state socialism making a comeback today?

Wetzel: With the Bernie Sanders campaign the concept of "democratic socialism" was widely popularized. This refers to a social-democratic perspective that doesn't really aim at replacing capitalism with a new socialist economy, but aims to use elections of people to state office to create laws and programs to restrict the predatory behavior of corporations and provide some benefits that would be of benefit to the masses, such as Medicare for All health insurance.

In Europe the old social democratic or socialist parties have been rotted out by commitment to neo-liberalism and austerity. This has led to either new left parties or things like change of leadership in the UK Labour Party, with an aim to pushing back against austerity and rebuilding support for the stronger social-democratic policies that were characteristic of Europe in the post-World War 2 era.

But this isn't really a comeback for the concept of socialism as state-management of the economy or centralized state planning. To the extent that "democratic socialists" or electoral socialists think beyond capitalism at all, they tend to think in terms of building worker cooperatives which would still operate in a market economy. So market socialism, in one form of another, has become the dominant vision for many socialists.

Can anarchists and state socialists ever work together? It seems that that would be so since they agree on so much.

JA: We excel in cooperation where specific issues are concerned...police violence or some local outrage etc. - what I think is difficult is getting socialists abstractly, together under a big umbrella that can connect our groupuscules up and harness our collective potential.

OM: In my experience, cooperation with anti-authoritarian Marxists (like leftcoms) is possible and productive, having participated myself in this. With the more authoritarian variants, only partial/punctual cooperation, usually on defensive issues like anti-fascism, seems practical.

Wetzel: They could work together I think in practical organizing projects such as building unions or cooperatives or tenant organizations or climate justice protests, etc. There have been state socialists as members in syndicalist unions like the IWW for example.

However, there may still be disagreements or conflicts in these areas. These disagreements are likely to happen over the question of how mass organizations are to be run. Libertarian socialists want mass organizations to be self-managed, that is, they want them to be controlled in a direct way by the rank-and-file members. They would oppose concentrating power in an executive body. Social-democrats and Leninists are likely to still favor some strategy of "boring from within" - changing leadership - in the inherited unions, rather than building independent worker committees, and grassroots unions apart from the inherited labor bureaucracy.

Dialogue might suggest areas where there can be agreement in relation to some goals or programs. But there is still the fundamental difference in how libertarian socialists and Leninists (and other state socialists) think about what socialism is. Workers self-management - and complete worker mastery of production -- is, in the libertarian socialist view, a necessary condition for working class liberation from the class system. It's not adequate to limit this to simply control of a coop or individual workplace but has to be generalized and coordinated throughout the economy, from a libertarian socialist point of view.

There is the related problem of how we view working class political power or society wide power. Even if libertarian socialists would support particular reforms in the context of the present system (such as Medicare for All in USA), in the end the old state has to be dismantled for the working class to be freed from its subordinate class position. That's because the state is based on top-down structures of managerial control that have the boss/worker relation of subordination built in. The state represents the concentrated defense of a system of class domination and exploitation, and the forms of inequality tied in with this. So working class political power would have to be based on some form of delegate democracy consistent with worker self-management everywhere and be accountable to the masses at the base, through workplace and neighborhood assemblies.

A form of direct communal power by the masses (via neighborhood and workplace assemblies) is also going to be essential to have a solution to the present worsening environmental crisis. The people need to obtain a very direct control over what gets put into the atmosphere and water through the economic system. So we can think of the socialist goal as having both a worker control and communal control dimension. But both require replacing the present hierarchical institutions - corporations and state - that dominate society.

Historically socialists have often defined socialism as democratic worker and community control over the political economy. Libertarian and state socialists have differed in working out the details.

Resistance, Anarchism, and the Black Bloc: An Interview with Lacy MacAuley

By Peter Schmidt

The University of California at Berkeley probably will not be the last American college to experience mayhem at the hands of "black bloc" militants.

In the weeks since President Trump took office, such activists have mounted destructive protests not just on Berkeley's campus but in the streets of Portland, Ore., and Washington D.C. Although the target of their Berkeley action, the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, has been sidelined as a result of controversy over his remarks about pederasty, other similarly incendiary "alt-right" leaders, such as the white supremacist Richard B. Spencer, remain on the college speaking circuit.

The "black bloc" label, attached to those who broke windows and set fires at Berkeley, refers not to a specific organization but to a specific tactic that involves wearing black clothing to blend in with other activists, shielding one's identity behind bandannas or masks, and causing disruption to get a point across.

Lacy MacAuley, a member of the D.C. Antifascist Coalition, has been a public face for such militants. In January, for example, she was a spokeswoman for DisruptJ20, the group that organized Inauguration Day protests, without permits, at which black-bloc activist destroyed property in downtown Washington and skirmished with the police. On a national level, she has provided media representation for anarchist and leftist activists for about 12 years.

In February, The Chronicle asked Ms. MacAuley about this month's chaos at Berkeley and the likelihood that other campuses will see similar activity. Following is an edited and condensed transcript of that interview.

Q. When protesters this month smashed windows and started fires at Berkeley, the university blamed such actions on "black bloc" members who had "invaded" the campus. Do you have any reason to believe that students were among the people who caused destruction there? If not, how would they have been drawn there?

A. The black-clad anarchists who were present at UC-Berkeley were a blend of students and nonstudents. The group was there in response to someone who was a vitriolic fascist, Milo Yiannopoulos. There didn't have to be a huge system of organization under that action. There was some organization, but I really think that most people were responding to the obvious signs, in front of everyone right now, that the fascists are starting to really gain a foothold and that represents a danger to all of us. That is why we responded in force.

Q. Tell me about the black bloc. Does it have any sort of leadership structure?

A. The black bloc is certainly not under some sort of hierarchy or leadership structure, as a rule. Most black blocs are really just people who are temporarily masking themselves because they fear retribution - either now or at some point in the future - due to their fighting injustices.

The political philosophy of many, but not all, of the people who participate in the black bloc is the political philosophy of anarchism. That is why people associate anarchism with disorder or violence. That is really far from the truth of what an everyday anarchist actually practices and believes.

Anarchism is based on mutual consent, and the so-called violent aspect of black blocs and anarchism really needs to be understood. I mean, can you really commit an act of so-called violence against a window, or is an act of violence something that you commit against a person? What most people in the black bloc would say is that it is not violence to break a window.

Q. How much of a presence are militant anarchists on or near college campuses? Are there specific places where we are likely to see them become active in the coming years?

A. The level of militancy will go up while we see our government, at this moment, actively impinging upon the rights of everyday people. We have already seen the U.S. government make reality policies like the Muslim ban, a "military operation" that enforces immigration law, and violation of trans youths' rights. To a lot of people, the only logical response is to make a strong stand against that.

When the only thing that you can do is flood into the street and demand that your right to exist be protected, that is what you are going to do. On college campuses, where there are a large number of people whose rights are being violated, I suspect you are going to see many more people who are going to be rising up.

Q. Back in the Vietnam War era, colleges themselves became the targets of militants. Are there specific actions by colleges that are likely to prompt actions against them?

A. Colleges that really protect platforms for individuals who are already rich, white males - who already have their voices amplified and valued much more than other people's voices - are going to see, probably, much more resistance.

We are not protesting because we don't respect free speech. We're protesting precisely because we have already heard these people. We have already listened, and we believe them, and we believe that they pose a threat to our right to exist. That is why we don't view what they are doing as a simple act of free speech. We view it as mobilizing for further violating our rights, and therefore we have to resist.

Q. A Tennessee lawmaker has cited the recent unrest at Berkeley in proposing legislation that would require public universities to discipline any student who tries to shout down a speaker. Do you see such measures as likely to be much of a deterrent?

A. It likely would have a chilling effect on protest at a time when we in our country absolutely need to be protesting. At a time that is so crucial to rising up, that would be the wrong action. It is valuable to consider that all of our systems, even in academia, absolutely privilege the speech of rich, white males and others who are somewhere on that ladder of privilege.

What we don't need to do is create more protections for people who already have a platform. We need to create a horizontal structure where everyone's speech is actually equal.

Q. If you are unhappy with the Trump administration or the current Congress, why not join, say, the College Democrats, and try to put new people in office?

A. The perspective of most of us who are anarchists, and who are participants in the black bloc, is that we don't see the two-party system as a viable way to conduct society. We don't see it as just and fair and valuing and respecting people's lives. So the best way is to actually inspire people to rise up, to resist, and to change the way that our system is actually structured.

Q. You have tweeted about being barraged with anonymous harassment and threats as a result of your political activities. Are college students who publicly espouse views and tactics similar to yours going to be safe?

A. We need to realize that, right now, that is going to happen to people who have the hope and the will to stand up and resist. Should you let it dissuade you from taking actions you need to take to protect what you love? No. Absolutely not.

Peter Schmidt writes about affirmative action, academic labor, and issues related to academic freedom. Contact him at peter.schmidt@chronicle.com.

This interview originally appeared online at The Chronicle and in the The Chronicle of Higher Education's March 10, 2017 issue .

On Queer Anarchism: An Interview with the Pink & Black Collective

By Devon Bowers

The following is an interview I had with Gywnevere, an administrator of the Facebook page Pink and Black anarchists, where we discuss her interest in anarchism, an anarchist take on the modern LGBT movement, and how people can learn more about queer anarchism.

If you can, tell us a little bit about the history of queer anarchism and how you yourself became an anarchist.

My introduction to the anarchist school of thought has come about rather recently, perhaps within the last six months I have fully come to appreciate where my beliefs lay. However, given my interest in politics, I believe it was inevitable. I grew up listening to Paul Harvey and Rush Limbaugh on the radio with my grandparents, often they'd discuss their feelings on it through their own lens. After 9-11 occurred, my mother joined in on politicking, and my immediate sphere of influence was cemented in as a right-wing echo chamber.

I have known that I was a transgender woman since I was old enough to create memories of the world, and as I began to critique my own beliefs and theirs it began to chip away at the prison which had been constructed around me. As I desired for other people to be free from the same cages I had to deal with, I steadily shifted towards libertarianism of the right. When Obama proposed the Affordable Care Act, I viewed it as an egregious overreach of government, and quickly took to the streets in protest, gave speeches, the whole nine yards. It was during that research that I first discovered the feelings of cognitive dissonance. While pouring through the thousands of pages of the legislation, I could not verify any of the right-wing distortions about it nor any evidence that it could be anything but a blessing for thirty million people. Yet, I still swallowed the bitter pill and forged ahead - ignoring it and my own principles.

From what I have seen these last few months, the history of anarchism is a principled one. More often than the adherents do not, an ethical stance is chosen through careful consideration of the complexities of a topic until it is picked clean as though carrion beetles defleshed it themselves. Emma Goldman's explanation for why she chose to stand up for her friend Oscar Wilde when he was convicted for his sexuality in the 1900s struck the biggest chord with me, "No daring is required to protest against a great injustice." Her collection of thoughtful pieces published in 1910, "Anarchism and Other Essays," shaped the lens through which I burned away my nationalist feelings, my internalized misogyny, and my support for the prison industrial complex. It's a lens through which I must continuously burn away what society constantly heaps upon us. Beyond hearing of other names here and there, I know little of the exact history of anarchism, as often state education glosses over an individual's ties to the community, their contributions, or the individual entirely. However, I continue to add writings and facts to my knowledge daily, and I hope others will take the opportunity to do the same with me. We all must start somewhere.

In what ways do you on an individual level interact with the mainstream LGBT movement, if at all?

I believe that the biggest way in which I interact with the community is by being very vocal, proud, and unapologetically secure in who I am as a femandrogyne individual. However, many of my friends are also somewhere in the community - even prior to my own coming out. If there was one issue which would make my blood boil during a holiday with my immediate family around it was the rights for LGBTQIA+ people. I still flashback to July 4, 2012 where I yelled at my grandmother for being ignorant and stormed off to another room while being yelled after by the two reactionaries left in the room. That incident uncorked the bottle on feeling as though the ideology I was a member of was wrong and that I should begin to be extremely vocal when something was an injustice - no matter the victim. After all, at that point in time, I was simply an "ally."

These days I spend most of my time posting thoughts into the void as myself based on the identities that intersect with my own life. For the past two years or so, I've also been running a page focused on bringing positivity or select information to individuals of the LGBTQIA+ community, but with the recent election results that has been ever-so-slightly changed. Keeping up morale and sharing information, both behind the scenes and at the forefront, has been my life for the last several years as I have grown to understand myself and others.

Why would you say that'd the history of LGBT people, especially more radical instances such as Stonewall, are glossed over while simultaneously being held up as important events in US history?

I do not recall ever hearing about anyone's sexuality when studying at public school or in any community college classes I had. The first time it was ever acknowledge was in a university course on American literature where the teacher wanted to highlight the identities of the authors so that we could better understand them.

It seems likely that such information is glossed over mainly because it is viewed as trivial. As I often recall seeing in other courses, "It is an exercise better left up to the student to figure out." I do not believe that is the only reason, however, because many of our textbooks are printed with the state of Texas, my home state, in mind. The Texas State Board of Education has a longstanding history of historical revisionism, inaccuracies, and outright errors which they convince companies to publish, as they are the largest purchaser of school texts in the nation. They carry a lot of weight, thanks in part to how our society has been constructed, and as such they dictate what is emphasized, ignored, and omitted based on their own traditionalist lens. I recall having a set of books for home, a set readily available in the classroom, and a set in the back storage if either were damaged, a grand total of six textbooks, for a single English class. I never understood it, in the past.

There seems to be a lot of support for groups like HRC, which in reality is a hotbed of white gay men who aid each other (I will include the link later) to the detriment of lesbians and transgender people. Why do you suppose this is?

If I am perfectly honest, I believe it is the byproduct of a traditionalist society within which we live. The clear majority of us were indoctrinated within households that viewed the male figure as superior or dominant which arose from the major influence that Christianity has had on our country's society both past and present. Couple that view of male superiority with the white supremacy that seethes within the United States, and it gives the predominant figure which is likely to be chosen to "normalize" LGBTQIA+ people: a white gay man. It is not that other platforms which aid transgender and lesbian individuals do not exist, it is merely that the most "socially acceptable" ones as described previously bubble to the top in our social consciousness.

Are there any strategies you use to get people, especially LGBT people, to understand that it is OK for LGBT people to defend themselves from violence? As we have seen, the only acceptable LGBT person is one who sits there smiling, while the other person screams that they should die and are going to hell.

I try to engage with them both in public and in private to help them grapple with their fear of direct action or their pacifist/peaceful ways. I share the resources that I have used to help me to shape my own stances on when violence is justified or not. I believe that the only way through which we can help people overcome our natural desire to protect everyone against those who cannot fathom such altruistic behavior without incentive is directly. One-on-one. Engaging with our friends, family, or even acquaintances and getting them to a level to where they may engage with others trying to fathom the kind of brutish behavior exhibited by those with a reckless disregard for those which lay beyond their in-group.

How can people learn more about LGBT anarchism?

Reading. Seeking out information. Filling one's mind with the observations and critiques which combine ethos, pathos, and logos in powerful ways. I found that "Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire" (2013) by Deric Shannon et. al. was a deeply insightful work which helped solidify my feelings about anarchism in place. It discusses why we must protect one another within this community, and those who have yet to realize they are a part of it, with our love and our actions. "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849) by Thoreau, while not particularly tied to LGBT anarchism, I believe is also a necessary read as it highlights the struggle to apply pacifism when the laws themselves are unjust and unethical. There's so much information online and elsewhere, but with this starting point I hope individuals that are just realizing that their liberty is at stake and threatened will gain as much information as they can as quickly as possible so that we may move forward together.

From Chiapas to Rojava: The Rise of a New Revolutionary Paradigm

By CIC

" Power to the people" can only be put into practice when the power
exercised by social elites is dissolved into the people.

- Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism

The largely unknown until recently Kurdish city of Kobane managed to attract the attention of the world with its fierce resistance [i] against the invasion of the Islamic State and became an international symbol, compared to the defence of Madrid and Stalingrad. The bravery and heroism of the People's Defence Units and the Women's Defence Units (YPG and YPJ) were praised by a large spectrum of groups and individuals - anarchists, leftists, liberals and even right-wingers expressed sympathy and admiration for the men and women of Kobane in their historical battle against what was often seen as IS "fascism." The mainstream media was forced to break the silence over the Kurdish autonomy and soon numerous articles and news stories were broadcasted and published, often depicting the "toughness" and determination of the Kurdish fighters with a certain dose of exotisation, of course. However, this attention was very often selective and partial - the very essence of the political project in Rojava (Western Kurdistan) was left aside and the media preferred to present the resistance in Kobane as some weird exception to the supposed barbarism of the Middle East. Without surprise, the red star, shining on the victorious flags of the YPG/J was not a pleasing image in the eyes of the Western powers and their media. The autonomous cantons of Rojava represent a home-grown solution to the conflicts in the Middle East, encompassing grassroots democracy, ethnic, social and gender rights and all this in rejection both of IS terror but also of liberal democracy and capitalist economy . Although the West preferred to stay silent on this issue, this ideological foundation is the key for understanding the spirit that wrote the Kobane epopee and fascinated the world, as the Kurdish activist and academic, Dilar Dirik, claimed recently[ii].

As the battles for every street and corner of the city were intensifying, Kobane managed to captivate the imagination of the left and specifically of the libertarian left as a symbol of resistance and struggle and soon it was placed on the pantheon of some of the most emblematic battles for humanity, such as the defence of Madrid against the fascists in the 1930s. It was not by accident that the Turkish Marxist-Leninist group MLKP, which joined the YPG/J in/on the battlefield, raised the flag of the Spanish republic over the ruins of the city in the day of its liberation and called for the formation of International Brigades[iii], following the example of the Spanish revolution. It was not the battle for Kobane itself, but the libertarian essence of the cantons of Rojava, the implementation of grassroots direct democracy, the participation of women and different ethnic groups into the autonomous government that gave ground to the comparisons with the Spanish revolution. Another association was mentioned briefly in several articles - the revolution in Rojava and its autonomous government were compared to the Zapatistas and their autonomy in the south of Mexico. The importance of this comparison might be crucial in order to understand the paradigm of the revolutionary struggle in Kurdistan and what it means for those who believe another world is possible.

The Zapatista movement is probably one of the most symbolic and influential elements of the revolutionary imaginary in the world after the fall of the state-socialist regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the morning of January 1, 1994, an unknown guerrilla force, composed of indigenous Mayas, took over the main towns of the southern-most Mexican state - Chiapas. The military operation was carried out with strategic brilliance and combined with the innovative back then use of the internet to spread the message of the revolutionaries, it echoed around the globe to inspire international solidarity and the emergence of the Alter-Globalisation movement. The Zapatistas rebelled against neoliberal capitalism and the social and cultural genocide of the indigenous population in Mexico. Ya Basta, Enough is enough, was their war cry that emerged from the night of "500 years of oppression", as the First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle stated. The Zapatistas rose up in arms when global capital was celebrating the "end of history" and the idea of social revolution seemed to be a romantic anachronism that belonged to the past. The Zapatista Army for National Liberation was forced out of the cities in twelve days of intense battles with the federal army but it turned out that the deep horizontal organisation in the indigenous communities could not be eradicated by any military intervention or terror. The masked spokesperson of the rebel army, Subcomandante Marcos, challenged the notion of historical vanguard as opposed to revolution from below, which does not aim to take power but to abolish it and this concept became central to the most mass anti-capitalist movements since - from Seattle and Genoa to the Syntagma and Puerta del Sol occupations and even the Occupy Movement.

Where are the similarities with the Rojavan revolution?

From Marxism-Leninism to Autonomy - a shared historical trajectory

The roots of the democratic autonomy in Rojava can be understood only through the history of the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK), the organisation, which has been central to the Kurdish liberation movement since its creation in 1978. The PKK was established as a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organisation in Northern Kurdistan, part of the Turkish state, combining the ideologies of national and social liberation. It grew to a substantial guerrilla force under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan and managed to challenge the second biggest army in NATO in a conflict that claimed the lives of more than forty thousand people. The Turkish state displaced hundreds of thousands and reportedly used torture, assassination and rape against the civilian population but did not manage to break the backbone of the Kurdish resistance. Since its inception, PKK has expanded its influence both in Turkey and in the other parts of Kurdistan. The leading political force in the Rojavan revolution - the Democratic Union Party (PYD) is affiliated with it through the Kurdistan Communities' Union, KCK, the umbrella organisation that encompasses various revolutionary and political groups sharing the ideas of the PKK. The ideology, which unites the different civil and revolutionary groups in the KCK is called democratic confederalism and is based on the ideas of the US anarchist Murray Bookchin, who argued in favour of a non-hierarchal society based on social-ecology, libertarian municipalism, and direct democracy.

Although the Zapatistas are famous for their autonomous government and rejection of the notion of historical vanguard, the roots of the organisation were also related to Marxism-Leninism and just like in the case of the PKK, the idea of self-governance and revolution from below were a product of a long historical evolution. The EZLN was founded in 1983 by a group of urban guerrillas, predominantly Marxist-Leninists, who decided to start a revolutionary cell among the indigenous population in Chiapas, organise a guerrilla force and take power through guerrilla warfare. Soon they realised that their ideological dogma was not applicable to the indigenous realities and started learning from the communal traditions of governance of the indigenous people. Thus, Zapatismo was born as a fusion between Marxism and the experience and knowledge of the native population that has been resisting both against the Spanish and later the Mexican state.

This shared ideological trajectory demonstrates a historical turn in the understanding of revolutionary process. The Zapatista uprising and establishment of the autonomy in Chiapas marked a break with traditional guerrilla strategies, inspired predominantly by the Cuban revolution, this was made more than clear in the letter EZLN spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, wrote to the Basque liberation organisation ETA:

"I shit on all revolutionary vanguards on this planet. [iv]"

It was not the vanguard to lead the people now; it was the people themselves to build the revolution from below and sustain it as such. This is the logic PKK has been shifting towards in the last decade under the influence of Murray Bookchin and this shift demonstrates an evolution of the organisation from movement for the people to a movement of the people.

Cantons and Caracoles - freedom here and now

Probably the most important similarity between the revolution in Rojava and the one in Chiapas is the social and political reorganisation that is taking place in both places that is based on the libertarian ideology of the two organisations.

The Zapatista autonomy in its current form originates from the failure of the peace negotiations with the Mexican government after the uprising in 1994. During the peace negotiations the rebels demanded the government to adhere to the accords of San Andres, which give the indigenous people the right to autonomy, self-determination, education, justice and political organisation, based on their tradition as well as communal control over the land and the resources of the areas that belong to them. These accords were never implemented by the government and in 2001 president Fox backed an edited version that was voted for in congress but did not meet the demands of the Zapatistas and the other groups in resistance. This event was labelled as "treason" and it provoked the EZLN to declare two years later the creation of the five rebel zones, centred in five Caracoles (or snails in English) that serve as administrative centres. The name Caracoles came to show the revolutionary concept of the Zapatistas - we are doing it ourselves, we learn in the process and we advance, slowly, but we advance. The Caracoles[v] include three levels of autonomous government - community, municipality and Council of the Good Government. The first two are based on grassroots assemblies whereas the Councils of the Good Government are elected but with the intention to get as many people as possible to participate in the Government over the years through a principle of rotation. The autonomy has its own educational system, healthcare and justice, as well as cooperatives, producing coffee, cattle, handcrafts etc.

We learn as we make things, we did not know about autonomy and that we were going to build something like it. But we learn and improve things and learn from the struggle - told me my Zapatista guardian Armando, when I visited the autonomous territory at the end of 2013. Freedom could only be practiced here and now and revolution was a process of constantly challenging the status-quo and building alternatives to it.

The Rojavan cantons indeed resemble the autonomy in Chiapas. They were proclaimed by the dominant PYD in 2013 and function through the established popular assemblies and democratic councils. Women participate equally in the decision-making and are represented in all elected positions, which are always shared by a man and a woman. All ethnic groups are represented in the government and its institutions. Healthcare and education are also guaranteed by the system of democratic confederalism and recently the first Rojavan university, the Masepotamia Academy, opened it's doors with plans to challenge the hierarchical structure of education, and to provide a different approach to learning.

Just as it is in the case with the Zapatistas, the Revolution in Rojava envisions itself as a solution to the problems in the whole country, not as an expression of separatist tendencies. This genuine democratic system, as claimed by the delegation of academics from Europe and North America [vi], that visited Rojava recently, points to a different future of the Middle East, based on direct participation, women's emancipation and ethnic peace.

Women's revolution

Gender has always been central to the Zapatista revolution. The situation of women before the spread of the organization and the adoption of women's liberation as central to the struggle, was marked by exploitation, marginalization, forced marriages, physical violence and discrimination. This is why Marcos claims that the first uprising was not the one in 1994 but the adoption of the Womens' Revolutionary Law in 1993, setting the framework for gender equality and justice and guaranteeing the rights of the women in the rebel territory to personal autonomy, emancipation and dignity. Today women participate in all levels of government and have their own cooperatives and economic structures to guarantee their economic independence. Women were and still form a large part of the ranks of the Zapatista guerilla force and take high positions in its commandment. The takeover of San Cristobal de las Casas, the most important city the Zapatista troops captured during the uprising in 1994, was also commanded by women, headed by comandanta Ramona, who was also the first Zapatista to be sent to Mexico city to represent the movement.

It is not difficult to compare the mass involvement of indigenous women in Chiapas in the Zapatista ranks to the participation of women in the defense of Kobane and in the YPJ - the Women's Protection Units, both depicted in a sensationalist manner[vii] by the Western media in the last months. However, their bravery and determination in the war against ISIS is a product of a long tradition of women participation in the armed struggle for social liberation in Kurdistan. Women have played a central role in the PKK and this is undoubtedly connected with the importance of gender in the Kurdish struggle. The Rojava revolution has a strong emphasis on women's liberation as indispensable for the true liberation of society. The theoretical framework that puts the dismantling of patriarchy at the heart of the struggle is called "jineology", a concept developed by Abdullah Ocalan. The application of this concept has resulted in an unseen empowerment of women not only in the context of the Middle East but also in the context of western liberal feminism. The women's assemblies, cooperative structures and women's militias are the heart of the revolution, which is considered incomplete if it does not destroy the patriarchal structure of society, which is one of the fundamentals of capitalism. Janet Biehl, an independent writer and artist, wrote after her recent visit to Rojava that women in the Kurdish revolution have the ideological role of the proletariat in the XXth century revolutions.

The ecology of freedom

The Ecology of Freedom is probably the most important among Bookchin's works and his concept of social ecology has been adopted by the revolutionaries in Rojava. His idea that "the very notion of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human" links patriarchy, environmental destruction and capitalism and points at their abolition as the only way to a just society. Such a holistic approach has been advocated and implemented by the Zapatistas as well. Sustainability has also been an important point of emphasis, especially after the creation of the caracoles in 2003. The autonomous government has been trying to recuperate ancestral knowledge, related to the sustainable use of the land and combine it with other agro-ecological practices. This logic is not only a matter of improving the living conditions in the communities and avoiding the use of agrochemicals, it is a rejection of the whole notion that large-scale industrial agriculture is superior to the 'primitive' way the indigenous people work the land and as such it is a powerful defiance of the logic of neoliberalism.

The road to Autonomy - the new revolutionary paradigm

The similarities between the system of democratic confederalism that is being developed in Western Kurdistan and the Autonomy in Chiapas go far beyond the few points I have stressed in this article. From slogans such as Ya Basta, adapted in Kurdish as êdî bes e to the grassroots democracy, communal economic structures and participation of women, the similar path the Kurdish movement and the Zapatistas have taken demonstrates a decisive break with the vanguardist notion of Marxism-Leninism and a new approach to revolution, which comes from below and aims at the creation of a free and non-hierarchal society.

Although both movements have received some bitter criticism[viii] from sectarian elements on the left, the very fact that the only major and successful experiments in radical social change originate from non-western, marginalised and colonised groups, comes as a slap in the face to the white and privileged dogmatic "revolutionaries" of the global north who have hardly been successful on challenging oppression in their own countries but tend to believe it is their judgement what is and what is not a real revolution.

The revolutions in Rojava and Chiapas are a powerful example for the world, demonstrating the enormous capacity of grassroots organisation and the importance of communal links as opposed to capitalist social atomisation. Last but not least, Chiapas and Rojava should make many on the left, including some anarchists, trash their colonial mindset and ideological dogmatism.

A world without hierarchy, domination, capitalism and environmental destruction or as the Zapatistas say, the world where many worlds fit, has often been depicted as "utopian" and "unrealistic" by the mainstream media, education and political structures. However, this world is not some future mirage that comes from the books - it is happening here and now and the examples of Zapatistas and Kurds are a powerful weapon to reignite our capacity to imagine a real radical change in society as well as a model we can learn from in our struggles. The red stars that shine over Chiapas and Rojava shed light on the way to liberation and if we need to summarize in one word what brings these two struggles together, it would definitely be Autonomy.​​

Originally published by the Cooperativa Integral Catalana.

Notes

[i] Dicle, Amed (2015) Kobane Victory, How it Unfolded

http://kurdishquestion.com/index.php/insight-research/analysis/kobane-victory-how-it-unfolded.html

[ii] Dirik, Dilar (2015) Whi Kobane Did Not Fall
http://kurdishquestion.com/index.php/kurdistan/west-kurdistan/why-kobani-did-not-fall.html

[iii] International Brigades Form in Rojava (2014)
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2015/01/international-brigades-form-in-rojava-no-pasaran-video-3100250.html

[iv] Marcos (2003) I Shit on All Revolutionary Vanguards on This Planethttp://roarmag.org/2011/02/i-shit-on-all-the-revolutionary-vanguards-of-this-planet/

[v] Oikonomakis, Leonidas (2013) Zapatistas Celebrate 10 Years of Autonomy With Escuelitahttp://roarmag.org/2013/08/escuelita-zapatista-10-year-autonomy/

[vi] Joint Statement of the Academic Delagation to Rojava
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/joint-statement-of-the-academic-delegation-to-rojava/

[vii] Dirik, Dilar (2014) Western Fascination With "Badass" Kurdish Women
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/10/western-fascination-with-badas-2014102112410527736.html

[viii]

Anarchist Federation Statement on Rojava (2014)
http://www.afed.org.uk/blog/international/435-anarchist-federation-statement-on-rojava-december-2014.html

"Spider Webs for the Rich and Mighty": A Libertarian-Socialist Critique of Criminal Law

By Colin Jenkins

As human societies have developed over the course of history, so too have corollary systems of order. In the most basic sense, the often informal development of customs, norms and ethics become inevitable in spaces where groups of human beings come together to interact with another. However, as the scales of human interaction have grown - from tribes to communities to nation-states - these informal codes of conduct have become formal systems of rule and order which have taken on physical identities in the form of states and governments.

In his influential essay, Politics as Vocation, Max Weber provided one of the most important analyses regarding the sociological development of the state. Weber introduced the concept of rational-legal authority in his attempt to explain the rise and justification of the modern bureaucratic nation-state. As a self-described "bourgeois theorist," Weber provided a strong breakdown of the modern state, tended towards justifying its purpose, and recognized the inherently forceful nature of its existence:

"'Every state is founded on force,' said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of 'state' would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as 'anarchy,' in the specific sense of this word."[1]

Perhaps most crucial was Weber's notion of a "monopoly of violence" for which he viewed as a legitimate power of the state:

"Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the 'right' to use violence."[2]

Weber's justification is predicated upon two important assumptions: (1) that a distinction between authority and coercion exists, and that authority becomes legitimate when "individuals accept and act upon orders that are given to them because they believe that to do so is right;" [3] and (2) that rational-legal authority itself is legitimized, via the political process, by the people under its rule. Despite the questionable nature of these assumptions, Weber's hierarchical structure has come to dominate our world. The formation of criminal law, while not just a modern phenomenon, has provided further justification for rational-legal authority. And the formidable development of modern criminal justice systems equipped with the means to carry out this "monopoly of violence" on a daily basis has assured the maintenance of Weber's state.

These legitimized systems of violence, authority and coercion have reached a point where they are accepted by most without hesitation: a common acceptance that begs to be questioned.

Law as Morality

"Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them."

- Assata Shakur

There has been an ongoing, centuries-long societal experiment to equate written laws with morality. The historical development of human societies have made laws necessary for reasons that will be discussed below, and the need to house these laws in justifications centered within authority and domination (also discussed below) have relied on an institutional "rebranding" of these hierarchical relations. One of the main tools in this rebranding process has been the inclusion of morality-based conditioning, which exists everywhere from parenting to public education. This is not a new phenomenon, but yet persists as a main tool in shaping customs and norms which are amenable with living under systems of domination. In his 1886 classic, Law and Authority, Peter Kropotkin touches on this deep conditioning process used to create an obedient population:

"We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence under the ferule of a law, which regulates every event in life - our birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship - that, if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all habit of thinking for ourselves.

Indeed, for some thousands of years, those who govern us have done nothing but ring the changes upon "Respect for law, obedience to authority." This is the moral atmosphere in which parents bring up their children, and school only serves to confirm the impression. Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels." [4]

This cultural conditioning seeks to establish widespread consent, or at least the appearance of such, through the construction of an artificial system of morality. As opposed to ethics and morals which are innate attributes of the human race - live and let live, treat others as you would expect to be treated, cooperate and co-exist, etc - these artificial systems of morality have been designed to make "rights" synonymous with things like authority, order and obedience, and "wrongs" as being synonymous with any and all dissent from this established order.

Governments play a major role in this cultural process, and modern systems of liberal democracy aid in this construction. In The Individual, Society, and the State, Emma Goldman sheds light on this phenomenon:

"Political government and the State were a much later development, growing out of the desire of the stronger to take advantage of the weaker, of the few against the many. The State, ecclesiastical and secular, served to give an appearance of legality and right to the wrong done by the few to the many. That appearance of right was necessary the easier to rule the people, because no government can exist without the consent of the people, consent open, tacit or assumed. Constitutionalism and democracy are the modern forms of that alleged consent; the consent being inoculated and indoctrinated by what is called "education," at home, in the church, and in every other phase of life.

That consent is the belief in authority, in the necessity for it. At its base is the doctrine that man is evil, vicious, and too incompetent to know what is good for him. On this all government and oppression is built. God and the State exist and are supported by this dogma." [5]

This artificial notion of morality, and the modern creation of "manufactured consent" via systems of "constitutionalism and democracy," is what Howard Zinn aptly referred to as The Conspiracy of Law. In transitioning the deliverance of authority from the "rule of men" to the "rule of law," according to Zinn, the power brokers have not only created their own sets of "Natural law," but have also made such laws nearly impossible to question:

"The modern era, presumably replacing the arbitrary rule of men with the objective, impartial rule of law, has not brought any fundamental change in the facts of unequal wealth and unequal power. What was done before - exploiting men and women, sending the young to war, putting troublesome people into dungeons - is still done, except that this no longer appears as the arbitrary action of the feudal lord or the king; it is now invested with the authority of neutral, impersonal law. Indeed, because of this impersonality, it becomes possible to do far more injustice to people, with a stronger sanction of legitimacy. The rule of law can be more onerous than the divine right of the king, because it was known that the king was really a man, and even in the Middle Ages it was accepted that the king could not violate natural law. (See Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, Notes 127-134.) A code of law is more easily defied than a flesh and blood monarchy; in the modern era, the positive law takes on the character of natural law."[6]

The repackaging of authority into morality (written law as natural law), and the arbitrary nature of this new authority, also make it nearly impossible to target:

"Under the rule of men, the enemy was identifiable, and so peasant rebellions hunted out the lords, slaves killed plantation owners, and radicals assassinated monarchs. In the era of the corporation and the representative assembly, the enemy is elusive and unidentifiable; even to radicals the attempted assassination of the industrialist Frick by the anarchist Berkman seemed an aberration. In The Grapes of Wrath, the dispossessed farmer aims his gun confusedly at the tractor driver who is knocking down his house, learns that behind him is the banker in Oklahoma City and behind him a banker in New York, and cries out, 'Then who can I shoot?'" [7]

Law as Authority

"As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves."

- Noam Chomsky

The need for written laws is something that is rarely, if ever, questioned. It is a common belief that such laws are necessary, and that "the need for law lies in the history of the human race."[8] In popular college textbooks like Essentials of Criminal Law, this common acceptance is housed in a rationality that can be summarized by the following: 1) People are individuals, and their desires, needs, and wants differ from those of others; 2) These differences cause conflict; 3) When people began to live in groups, communities, and societies, laws became necessary; and 4) Law became necessary as a means of social control, either to alleviate conflicts or to settle them in a manner most advantageous to the group.[9]

When viewed in this manner, laws are presented as a mechanism designed to serve the community for which they are applied. The assumptions for applying them under this rationale are numerous: for example, we must assume that all individuals within a given community/society are allowed equal access to basic necessities; we must assume that all individuals are treated equally under the law; and we must assume that material conditions (or the base economic system for which society rests) allow for free association among all members. Without this foundation, as summarized by these basic assumptions, the justification widely used in support of written laws becomes null and void.

Therefore, when applied to societies that are shaped by flawed economic systems - systems that disenfranchise members and fail to allow many to fulfill basic needs - laws no longer serve the community, but rather serve the most powerful members of that community. In this instance, laws are transformed from statutes designed to enhance the common good to statutes designed to control the disenfranchised members. When this transformation occurs, laws become weapons of authority, essentially losing their legitimacy within a given community or society. Kropotkin describes this transformation which is based in the need to establish the domination of the minority over the majority:

"The desire to dominate others and impose one's own will upon them; the desire to seize upon the products of the labour of a neighbouring tribe; the desire to surround oneself with comforts without producing anything, whilst slaves provide their master with the means of procuring every sort of pleasure and luxury - these selfish, personal desires give rise to another current of habits and customs. The priest and the warrior, the charlatan who makes a profit out of superstition, and after freeing himself from the fear of the devil, cultivates it in others; and the bully, who procures the invasion and pillage of his neighbours, that he may return laden with booty, and followed by slaves; these two, hand in hand, have succeeded in imposing upon primitive society customs advantageous to both of them, but tending to perpetuate their domination of the masses. Profiting by the indolence, the fears, the inertia of the crowd, and thanks to the continual repetition of the same acts, they have permanently established customs which have become a solid basis for their own domination." [10]

The establishment of authority and domination becomes necessary when a minority section of society decides that it is deserving of owning wealth and land far beyond the purpose of its own use. This development naturally leads to the disenfranchisement of a multitude of members whose size grows in a perpetual manner alongside the constant pursuit of more wealth and land by the elite. As this development continues, laws are reduced to serving this dominant minority. Kropotkin explains:

"But as society became more and more divided into two hostile classes, one seeking to establish its domination, the other struggling to escape, the strife began. Now the conqueror was in a hurry to secure the results of his actions in a permanent form, he tried to place them beyond question, to make them holy and venerable by every means in his power. Law made its appearance under the sanction of the priest, and the warrior's club was placed at its service. Its office was to render immutable such customs as were to the advantage of the dominant minority." [11]

As time goes on, these laws become customs that are widely accepted even by the majority-population for which they are designed to control, and to prevent from accessing basic human needs, through violence and coercion. This gradual process has led to the modern justifications given above, all of which ignore the historical process of minority rule via the disenfranchisement of the majority, to the point where the legitimacy of such laws are no longer questioned. As Kropotkin concludes:

"Such was law; and it has maintained its two-fold character to this day. Its origin is the desire of the ruling class to give permanence to customs imposed by themselves for their own advantage. Its character is the skilful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers, injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of punishment.

Like individual capital, which was born of fraud and violence, and developed under the auspices of authority, law has no title to the respect of men. Born of violence and superstition, and established in the interests of consumer, priest and rich exploiter, it must be utterly destroyed on the day when the people desire to break their chains."[12]

Criminal Law in a Capitalist System

"Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread."

- Emma Goldman

As with all societies, written laws become the primary mean of maintaining the status quo. The most fundamental purpose of such laws is to create and maintain a minimal degree of stability or at the very least a semblance of stability within certain areas of society. In the modern United States, the status quo has been shaped by a base economic system of capitalism that is characterized by multi-generational poverty, extreme inequality, and high concentrations of wealth and power. Therefore, when applied to this base, criminal laws are essentially statutes that are developed by legislators who either come from or are tied to those concentrations of wealth and power, and are placed upon the at-large population which has already been disenfranchised by the economic system. Because of this, a critical theory of criminal law becomes vital in deconstructing the nature and purpose of such laws.

In his essay Crime Control in Capitalist Society, Richard Quinney provides us with important assertions that must be understood before moving forward with this breakdown:

· American society is based on an advanced capitalist economy.

· The State is organized to serve the interests of the dominant economic class, the capitalist ruling class.

· Criminal law is an instrument of the State and ruling class to maintain and perpetuate the existing social and economic order.

· Crime control in capitalist society is accomplished through a variety of institutions and agencies established and administered by a government elite, representing ruling-class interests, for the purpose of establishing domestic order.

· The contradictions of advanced capitalism - the disjunction between existence and essence require that the subordinate classes remain oppressed by whatever means necessary, especially through the coercion and violence of the legal system.

· Only with the collapse of capitalist society and the creation of a new society, based on socialist principles, will there be a solution of the crime problem.[13]

The process of transforming laws into weapons of authority to be wielded by the wealth and land-owning minority over the disenfranchised majority, as touched on by Kropotkin, has reached its current stage via the promulgation of this "advanced capitalist economy" in the United States. This system, as an economic base, has allowed for the historical continuation of separating the masses from access to basic needs, while also fusing the law-making apparatus (the government) nearly completely with the wealth-owning elite (the former private sector).

When examining criminal justice systems found under capitalism, Marxist gatekeeper theory is invaluable. The most basic application of this Marxian analysis proves helpful in illustrating the positions of those who commit crimes versus those who create and enforce laws. Basic tenets of this theory include:

· Deviance (as determined by the artificial morality described above) is partly the product of unequal power relations and inequality in general.

· Crime, as established by the ruling class (with their own interests in mind) is an understandable response to the situation of poverty and mass disenfranchisement.

· Crime is often the result of offering society demeaning work with little sense of creativity.

· The base (economic system) disenfranchises the working-class majority; the superstructure (government and law creation) serves the ruling-class minority.

· The capitalist class (minority) co-opts the capitalist government to create laws that seek to maintain its power through coercing and controlling the working-class majority.

· "The heart of the capitalist system is the protection of private property, which is, by definition, the cornerstone upon which capitalistic economies function." Thus, written law reflects this fundamental value of property and profit over people. [14]

In the United States, the dominant ideology that espouses "individualism" and "exceptionalism" has been successful in merging manufactured morality and consent to the economic "virtues" of capitalism and patriotism, which are also manufactured in the same ways. Goldman explains the cultural effects of this process:

"This 'rugged individualism' has inevitably resulted in the greatest modern slavery, the crassest class distinctions, driving millions to the breadline. 'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen.' America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as 'unAmerican' and evil in the name of that same individualism."[15]

This merger serves to not only fortify the justification for written laws as tools of authority and domination over the majority, but also the unquestioned consent of those (in this case, the alienated working-class majority) being controlled and oppressed by such laws.

In direct contrast to a common belief in the need for law to address "natural" conflict in human societies, it is crucial to recognize the manufactured conflicts created by capitalism. The justification presented in the dominant paradigm possesses two fundamental flaws in this regard: the first of which lies in the view that conflict is in fact "natural" within all human societies; and the second being in the exclusion of material conditions as a factor in creating conflict. In order to be legitimized, this justification must rely on basic assumptions related to material conditions, most specifically the presence of an economic system which allows for equal and broad access to basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, etc. Much like the false assumptions in Weber's analysis of the modern state, any premise that fails to consider the manufactured conflict stemming from the material conditions of a society's mode of production finds itself lacking legitimacy and justification.

In reality, capitalism creates widespread conflict by alienating the majority. Therefore, in such a system, "crime" (especially regarding that which is routinely enforced) represents the actions of people who have become dehumanized, dispossessed, stripped of human creativity, and left without the means to fulfill basic human needs.

Conclusion

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

- Audre Lorde

If human beings are in fact individuals with "different desires, needs, and wants," as described even by the dominant criminological paradigm, then we must question the existence of hierarchical societies based in authority and domination. Such societal arrangements persist and have been accepted as "common sense" despite the inherent contradictions they impose. Within these arrangements, written laws have been identified as "social controls" needed to "alleviate natural conflict" and settle such conflict "in a manner most advantageous to the group (society/community)." However, when applied to societies that have been shaped by flawed economic systems (like capitalism) and historical processes that have led to wealth and land-owning minorities "governing" disenfranchised majorities, laws have taken on a different identity, mainly one that serves as a weapon of unquestioned authority.

Authority, in itself, is not a wholly illegitimate concept. Authority as a measure of competence or expertise may be extremely useful when serving society. However, when it becomes a means of social control, of domination by one over another, its legitimacy should come into question. Mikhail Bakunin perhaps explained this best in his treatise, What is Authority:

"Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the boot-maker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the boot-maker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others." [16]

Because they are constructed for the purpose of controlling the disenfranchised masses of people, modern laws represent authority of the illegitimate kind. Speaking of such laws, the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously proclaimed:

"I recognize none of them: I protest against every order which it may please some power, from pretended necessity, to impose upon my free will. Laws! We know what they are, and what they are worth! Spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the weak and poor, fishing nets in the hands of the government."[17]

In the modern United States, Proudhon's vision plays out every day. Under capitalism, laws are created by millionaire legislators who are financially supported by billionaire interests, enforced by hired guns of the working class (police), and ruled on by wealthy elites in black robes who are largely detached from their subjects. As capitalism naturally leads to greater concentrations of wealth and power, along with greater numbers of dispossessed citizens, crime and punishment becomes solely directed at the most marginalized of these masses. In the US, this includes the poor, the working poor, and people of color.

This correlation has never been more evident than in the neoliberal era (roughly 1980 until now), which is widely recognized as an intensification of the capitalist system. Since 1980, the total adult correctional population (those in prison/jail and on probation/parole) has increased from two million to seven million.[18] During this time, the prison population itself has increased 470 percent (from 320,000 in 1980) to 1.5 million in 2013.[19] Those scooped up by ruling class "fishing nets" and placed in "steel chains" are disproportionately poor and black.[20]

This scenario that has developed over the course of centuries has delegitimized any attempt to establish state authority, coercion, and its "monopoly of violence" via the criminal justice system. As long as capitalism is used to shape the social relations that are to be monitored and controlled, the state remains as nothing more than a tool to be wielded by the wealth and land-owning minority. And as long as the state remains a coercive extension of these social relations, the notion of criminal law will remain nothing more than a camouflaged totalitarianism designed to keep its boot on the neck of the disenfranchised majority.

References

[1] Weber, Max (1919), "Politics as a Vocation." Accessed online at http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Politics-as-a-Vocation.pdf

[2] Ibid

[3] Best, Shaun (2002), Introduction to Politics and Society (Sage Publications) Accessed online at https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/9547_017533ch2.pdf

[4] Kropotkin, Peter (1886), Law and Authority. Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-law-and-authority

[5] Goldman, Emma (1940), The Individual, Society and the State. Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-the-individual-society-and-the-state

[6] Zinn, Howard (1971), "The Conspiracy of Law." Appeared in The Rule of Law, edited by Robert Paul Wolff (New York: Simon and Schuster)

[7] Ibid

[8] Chamelin, N. & Thomas, A. (2009) Essentials of Criminal Law, 11th edition (Prentice Hall)

[9] Ibid

[10] Kropotkin (1886)

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid

[13] Quinney, Richard (1975), "Crime Control in Capitalist Society: A Critical Philosophy of Legal Order." Appeared in Critical Criminology, edited by Ian Taylor (Routledge)

[14] Covington, Jeanette (2000), Marxist Perspective on Crime. Accessed on November 29, 2015 at http://www.sociology.org.uk/

[15] Goldman (1940)

[16] Bakunin, Mikhail (1871), What is Authority? Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/michail-bakunin-what-is-authority

[17] Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1851), General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century. Republished by Courier (2013)

[18] Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), US Office of Justice Programs (2014). Accessed online at http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf

[19] The Sentencing Project: Research for Advocacy and Reform (2014). Accessed online at http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=107

[20] BJS (2014)

Juxtaposing Anarchy: From Chaos to Cause

By Colin Jenkins

Anarchy is synonymous with chaos and disorder. It is a term that stands in direct contrast to the archetype of society we have become accustomed to: hierarchical, highly-structured, and authoritative. Because of this, it carries negative connotations. Merriam-Webster, the consensus source of meaning within the dominant paradigm, defines anarchy as: a situation of confusion and wild behavior in which the people in a country, group, organization, etc., are not controlled by rules or laws; or, a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority. The implications made in these definitions are clear - any absence of authority, structure, or control most surely amounts to confusion, wild behavior, and disorder. In other words, human beings are incapable of controlling themselves, maintaining order, and living peacefully amongst one another. So we are to believe.

Far removed from the general presentation of anarchy is anarchism, a political philosophy rich in intellectual and theoretical tradition. Again turning to Merriam-Webster, we are told that anarchism is: a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups. Even from within the dominant paradigm, we see a wide range of divergence between anarchism, which is presented strictly as an idea, and anarchy, which is presented as the real and absolute consequence (though hypothetical) of transforming this idea to praxis. Juxtaposing these terms, injecting historical perspective to their meaning, and realizing the differences between their usage within the modern lexicon and their philosophical substance should be a worthy endeavor, especially for anyone who feels that future attempts at shaping a more just society will be fueled by ideas, both from the past and present.

While comparing and contrasting the various ways in which anarchy is deployed, we recognize three arenas: 1) Popular culture, which embraces and markets the association of chaos, wild behavior, and disorder; 2) Corporate politics, which uses the term as a pejorative, mostly to describe dominant right-wing platforms like the Tea Party and USAmerican libertarian movement; and 3) In activist and theoretical circles, where anarchism is understood as an authentic and legitimate political philosophy with roots firmly placed in the Enlightenment.

Pop Anarchy and Nihilism: Rebels without a Cause

The anti-authoritarian tendencies of anarchism are understandably attractive in a world that is overwhelmingly authoritative, intensely conformist, and socially restrictive. The conservative nature of American culture, which is notorious for repressing attitudes and beliefs that form outside of the dominant "white, Judeo-Christian" standard, begs for the existence of a thriving subculture that is based on rebellion, if only as an avenue of personal liberation and expression. The 1955 James Dean movie, Rebel without a Cause, offered a first glimpse into this nihilistic backlash against the deadening and soulless culture of conformity as it showcased the contradictory and often confusing nature of adolescence in white, middle-class suburbia.

On the heels of Dean was a baby-boomer revolution fueled by radical inquiry, hippie culture, bohemian lifestyles, and a "British Invasion." For the better part of a decade, the counterculture movement in the US that came to be known quite simply as "the '60s" boasted a wide array of meaningful causes, addressing everything from poverty to institutional racism and segregation to war. However, this brief period of revolutionary cause dissipated into a new and distinctly different counterculture through the 1970s and 80s, taking on a rebellious yet counterrevolutionary identity. In contrast to the existentialist nature of the 60s, which sought answers through philosophical exploration, the collective angst that developed in subsequent decades sought individual freedom through nihilism, self-destruction, and chronic apathy. Not giving a shit about detrimental traditions transformed into not giving a shit about anything. In turn, acts of defiance morphed from politically conscious and strategic opposition to oppressive structures to spiteful and self-destructive nothingness.

The revolutionary uprising of the 1960s, which had been stomped out by government suppression and maligned as an "excess of democracy," was effectively replaced by a reactionary insurrection bankrupt of any constructive analysis or productive goal. This nothingness was embraced by a significant counterculture that developed alongside the punk rock music scene, which flirted with anarchist politics before descending into an egoistic and narrow identity based in privilege. What followed was a brand of "pop anarchy" devoid any meaning beyond contrived images. Acts of rebellion were central, but a cause was neither constructed nor needed. The anarchist and revolutionary symbolism that screamed for meaning was reduced to shallow marketing schemes as remnants of legitimate angst were redirected into childish rants against parents, teachers, "the man," and "the system" - terms that often carried little meaning for those who used them. The exclusivity that developed made political organizing virtually impossible, and had an alienating effect on many. "Looking at the fact that most people who rear their heads at anarchist 'movement' events are roughly between 16-30 years old, with background influences of 'punk' or other 'alternative' persuasions," explains one former anarchist from the punk scene, "it is easy to understand why such 'movements' tend to alienate most people than interest them." A major problem that was exposed was demographics. "Punk primarily appealed to middle-class, staright white boys, who, thought they were 'too smart' for the rock music pushed by the corporations, still wanted to 'rock out.' It is also a culture that was associated with alienating oneself from the rest of society, often times in order to rebel against one's privileged background or parents." Because of this, "we have to admit that it was (and still is) exclusive."

By contrasting US punk culture of this time with its British counterpart, one could see the development of a counterculture that lacked revolutionary meaning or class context. As Neil Eriksen explains:

"The distinctions between US and British punk rock are based solidly on differences in the audience. In the US the counter-cultural character of punk is evident in the primary emphasis on style of dress and posturing. 'Middle class' youth can copy the style of the British punks and are afforded the economic and ideological space to make it a whole lifestyle, similar to the way the hippies dropped out, turned on and tuned in. It is primarily those who do not have to work for a living who can afford the outrageous blue, green and orange punk hair styles and gold safety pins. The working class generally cannot choose to go to work with orange hair. In England punk is much more complex, especially given the history of other sub-cultures such as the Mods, Rockers and Skinheads. British punks find in their sub-cultural expressions of music and attitudes, as well as styles, more of an organic indication of their experiences as under- or unemployed youth. In the US, punk has few organic working class roots, and it thus functions as a broad counter-cultural milieu that does not indict the system for lack of jobs, but tends toward nihilism and mindlessness."

The counterculture described above was a favorable, and almost inevitable, result of both appropriation from above and cooptation at the hands of capitalist profit. Revolutionary politics, in its authentic form, is not a profitable commodity. Instead, the radical roots of anarchist philosophy, which are briefly described in the definition of "anarchism" provided by Merriam-Webster, serve as a threat to any society that possesses extreme divisions of power and wealth. The United States - with its hierarchical governmental structure, no-holds-barred corporate landscape, and extreme divisions between the wealthy and everyone else (20% of the population owns 90% of the wealth) is no exception. For this reason, anarchism has (historically) been appropriated by the dominant culture (which is shaped by this 20%), diluted to anarchy, and served to the masses in the form of entertainment. This process has led to "gradual appearances in mainstream culture over the course of several years, at times far removed from its political origin (described by Situationists as " recuperation"). These appearances typically connected it with anarchy and were intended as sensationalist marketing ploys, playing off the mainstream association of anarchy with chaos."libertarianism

The most recent form of this appropriation has come in the popular television series, Sons of Anarchy, which depicts a California biker gang inundated with drama, drug abuse, senseless murders, gun-running, and gang activity. Despite glimpses and a few mentions of the fictional founder's manifesto, which included some scattered words by genuine anarchists like Emma Goldman and Pierre Joseph Proudhon, the show clearly chooses chaos and senseless, self-serving crime as its theme. The pinnacle of this appropriation, and ignorance of the rich history of philosophical anarchism, concludes with reviews that refer to one of the show's main characters, a ruthless, murderous, and power-hungry leader by the name of Clay Morrow, as a " true anarchist."

Liberal Enablers and the Right's Appropriation of Libertarianism

In the midst of the US government shutdown in October of 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor to criticize the move. "We have a situation where we have a good day with the anarchists," Reid said. "Why? Because the government is closed." Reid's comment was meant as a jab to the Republican Party, which was largely responsible for allowing the shutdown to take place, purely as a political ploy. A few days later, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren referred to "anarchist tirades" and "thinly veiled calls for anarchy in Washington" coming from Tea Party members in the House as the impetus for the shutdown. Warren even went as far as equating anarchists with "pessimists and ideologues whose motto is, 'I've got mine, the rest of you are on your own,' while ironically tying in neoliberal deregulation that "tolerates dangerous drugs, unsafe meat, dirty air, or toxic mortgages," as an "anarchists' dream."

"Anarchy" has maintained its status as a pejorative in the modern American liberal lexicon, but not by choice. Borrowing from the nihilism of pop anarchy, it embraces misconceptions, ignores historical roots, and guts the term of genuine meaning. Considering that such rhetoric is coming from folks who have advanced degrees in political science, careers as political pundits, and a working knowledge of history, it can only be explained as calculated fear-mongering. The fact of the matter is that the Republican Party is just as "statist" as the Democratic Party, if only in different ways. And while the approach of political sects like the Tea Party and USAmerican "libertarian" movements present a less-statist platform than their counterparts from within the establishment, their philosophical make-ups (if you can even call them that) include a blatant disregard for the public at-large, an underlying racism that is dangerously oppressive, a love affair with capitalism, a childish refusal to recognize needs outside of privileged interests, a fanatical support for gun rights, and a narrow-minded obsession with protecting private property and personal wealth - beliefs that are more in line with the self-absorbed, reactionary nature of fascism than with the revolutionary, "cooperative individualism" of anarchism. Ultimately, the Tea Party, much like the USAmerican "libertarian" movement, is focused on one goal: protecting an embedded array of privilege and maintaining the status quo; and the means to their end (at least, theoretically) is the coercive power structure of the market, as opposed to that of the state. If and only when the market hierarchy is threatened by, say, a popular uprising, a workers strike, or a movement for civil rights, this brand of "libertarian" views the state - in the form of domestic police and military forces - as a necessary component. In other words, these so-called "anarchists" are really nothing of the sort. Instead, they are more than willing to use state power to uphold historically-based inequities related to wealth accumulation, racism, and class division.

If the cheap political jabs used by liberals were packed with historical context, they could be closer to the truth. However, this would defeat the purpose. Parts of the right-wing have, in fact, appropriated and twisted anarchist philosophy, mostly through a concerted effort to adopt an ahistorical version of "libertarianism." In his "anarcho-capitalist" manifesto, Betrayal of the American Right, Murray Rothbard explained this intent:

"One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,' had captured a crucial word from the enemy. Other words, such as 'liberal,' had been originally identified with laissez-faire libertarians, but had been captured by left-wing statists, forcing us in the 1940s to call ourselves rather feebly 'true' or 'classical' liberals. 'Libertarians,' in contrast, had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchist; that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over, and more properly from the view of etymology; since we were proponents of individual liberty and therefore of the individual's right to his property."

Of course, like all others who claim this contradictory title of anarcho-capitalist, Rothbard either failed to recognize "how property results in similar social relations and restrictions in liberty as the state," or simply believed that "liberty" was synonymous with feudalistic ideals. As one anarchist (of the authentic variety) writer laments, the thought process of this faux-anarchism is that a "capitalist or landlord restricting the freedom of their wage-workers and tenants" is ok, but any such restrictions from "the state" is not. "It's an oddity that in the United States, the main current of libertarian thought has been twisted and inverted into a kind of monstrous stepchild," explains Nathan Schneider. "Rather than seeking an end to all forms of oppression, our libertarians want to do away with only the government kind, leaving the rest of us vulnerable to the forces of corporate greed, racial discrimination, and environmental destruction."

Since the Democratic Party's use of the term borrows from the simplistic, nihilistic version of "pop anarchy," rather than the complex, philosophical version of anarchism, it becomes useful within the modern political arena. The true right-wing appropriation of anarchism as noted by Rothbard, which is fabricated in its own right, becomes buried under the fear-mongering and falsely implied association by the likes of Reid and Warren. Historically, this same type of fear-mongering has allowed for fascist scapegoating (Reichstag Fire), capitalist scapegoating (Haymarket Affair), and unlawful state executions ( Sacco and Vanzetti), all designed to exploit widespread ignorance regarding anarchist beliefs and prevent authentic libertarian movements from spreading through the populace. "The figure of the anarchist has long dominated our national imagination," explains Heather Gautney. "It's a word that conjures up the lawless, the nihilistic and even the violent. It's the image Senators Reid and Warren invoked in their talking points against the Republicans." It's also an image devoid any real meaning. By removing its substance and demonizing its association, the establishment wins.

Anarcho-Punk, Underground Hip Hop, and Conscious Chaos: Rebels with a Cause

While "pop anarchy" took over much of the American punk scene in the '70s and '80s, it was only part of the story. Punk culture still served what Henry Rollins once succinctly described as "the perfect expression of postmodern angst in a decadent society," creating an outlet for rebellious urges seeping from the dominant culture. It also served as a catalyst for pockets of revolutionary politics. When done right, it was the perfect combination of expression and meaning. The hard, edgy, and chaotic sounds spilling from the music represented a form of liberation that was desperately needed, while the lyrics roared against the establishment and aimed at deadening conformity and the music industry's increasingly corporatized and cookie-cutter production value. The UK provided an example of this perfection when it birthed anarcho-punk.

"From the numerous situationist slogans that graced the lyrics of early punk bands, to the proliferation of anarcho-punk bands such as Crass and Conflict in the early eighties, punk rock as a subculture has had a unique history of having a strong relationship with explicitly anarchist and anti-capitalist political content over the years," explains an anonymous Colours of Resistance blogger . "Many anarchists today, including myself, are by-products of punk rock, where most become politicized from being exposed to angry, passionate lyrics of anarcho-punk bands, "do-it-yourself" zines, and countless other sources of information that are circulated within the underground punk distribution networks. Some are introduced to punk through the introduction to the anarchist social circles. Regardless of which comes first, the correlation between the punk scene and the anarchist scene is hard to miss, especially at most anarchist gatherings and conferences."

Within the anarcho-punk movement, "the possibilities for advances in popular culture in the dissolution of capitalist hegemony and in building working class hegemony" began to surface. "The fact that punk rock validated political themes in popular music once again," Eriksen suggests, "opened the field" for the left libertarian movements. As an example, punk initiatives like "Rock Against Racism were able to sponsor Carnivals with the Anti-Nazi League drawing thousands of people and many popular bands to rally against racism and fascism" and "openly socialist bands like the Gang of Four were taken seriously by mainstream rock critics and record companies, and thereby were able to reach a broad audience with progressive entertainment."

Punk ideologies that arose from this era touched on concepts like anti-establishment, equality, freedom, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, direct action, free thought, and non-conformity - many ideas that are synonymous with historical-anarchist thought. This social consciousness naturally led to activism, and specifically, acts of direct action, protests, boycotts, and squatting. These elements represented authentic anarchist philosophy and served as a counter to nihilistic and empty "pop anarchy," while politicizing many.

Another form of "rebellion with a cause" came from American hip-hop and rap. The rise of hip-hop in the US paralleled that of the punk scene, and shared many of the same revolutionary tendencies. While not explicitly anarchist, hip-hop took on an identity that mirrored authentic anarchist philosophy. Its anti-authoritarian nature was far from nihilistic, but rather survivalist; born in response to centuries of racial subjugation, economic strangulation, and violent oppression at the hands of domestic police forces. Hip-hop's birthplace, the Bronx (NYC), characterized its development. "Heavily influenced by the economically and socially oppressed ghettoes, along with the echoes of the last generation's movements for liberation and the street gangs that filled in the void they left," Derek Ide tells us, "the South Bronx provided the perfect matrix in which marginalized youth could find a way to articulate the story of their own lives and the world around them. In this historically unique context, a culture would be created through an organic explosion of the pent-up, creative energies of America's forgotten youth. It was a culture that would reach every corner of the world in only a couple decades.."

In the end, hip-hop and gangsta rap provided endless displays of socially-conscious and revolutionary tracks throughout the '80s and '90s, and combined with the punk scene to construct a form of "conscious chaos" that provided valuable social and cultural analyses as well as revolutionary goals that sought to establish a more just world. These counter-cultural movements represented an important about-turn from the contrived nihilism and "pop anarchy" that had surfaced in response to the "excess of democracy" in the '60s, and displayed elements that echoed authentic anarchism, as a revolutionary libertarian philosophy.

Authentic Anarchism and Its Philosophical Roots

The roots of Anarchism, as a school of thought, are firmly placed in the Age of Enlightenment and, specifically, within two major themes stemming from that period: liberalism and socialism. In a sea of definitions, one of the most concise and encompassing is offered by Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt in their 2009 book, "Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism." In it, they describe anarchism as "a revolutionary and libertarian socialist doctrine" that "advocates individual freedom through a free society" and "aims to create a democratic, egalitarian, and stateless socialist order through an international and internationalist social revolution, abolishing capitalism, landlordism, and the state." [1]

Anarchism's roots in the Enlightenment are undeniable. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Discourse on Inequality" to Wilhelm von Humboldt's "The Limits of State Action," the libertarian strain born of this time served as the precursor to the anarchist thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Their similarities are found in a philosophical examination of social inequities like personal wealth, private property, political power, and all forms of authority established within human societies - elements that are heavily scrutinized by anarchists. However, despite these roots, Schmidt and van der Walt tell us that anarchism should be considered "a relatively recent phenomenon" that emerged specifically "from the 1860s onward within the context of the modern working-class and socialist movement, within the womb of the First International." [2] For this reason, anarchism can most aptly be described as "socialism from below." In fact, the demarcation between enlightenment philosophy and anarchist thought is generally found in their distinct reactions to hierarchies created by systems of monarchy, feudalism, and theocracy (enlightenment) and hierarchies created by the exploitative nature of capitalism and the modern liberal, democratic state (anarchism).

The development and separation of anarchism from the Enlightenment was made clear by prominent anarchist thinkers at and around the turn of the 20 th century. In the years following the Paris Commune, Russian revolutionary anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, expressed his disgust with the idea of a "purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the State, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest," and "the shabby and fictitious liberty extolled by the School of J-J Rousseau and the other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would-be rights of all men, represented by the State which limits the rights of each - an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero."[3] A few decades later, in a critique of liberalism, Peter Kropotkin denounced the aim of all so-called "superior civilizations," which was "not to permit all members of the community to develop in a normal way," but rather "to permit certain, better-endowed individuals fully to develop, even at the cost of the happiness and the very existence of the mass of mankind." This separation had much to do with the newly developed social constraints stemming from capitalism. As Noam Chomsky explains, "It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association..." however, "on the same assumptions, capitalist relations of production, wage labor, competitiveness, and the ideology of 'possessive individualism' all must be regarded as fundamentally antihuman" as well. For this reason, he suggests, "libertarian socialism is properly regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment," while it also embraces its own identity through the inclusion of a class analysis and critique of the coercive structures stemming from the capitalist hierarchy.[4]

The socialist nature of anarchism represents a fundamental current in both its thought and process, yet is often overlooked by many who claim to be anarchists, especially in the United States. This misunderstanding is caused by both pro-market (and even pro-capitalist) "libertarian" movements that are ahistorical and seemingly blind to the authoritative structures of modern, industrial capitalism, as well as by the abovementioned "pop anarchy" phenomenon and "liberal enabling" that falsely limit anarchism to a vague and unsophisticated "anti-government" stance. Superficial dualities that have captured consensus thought, most notably that of "collectivism vs. individualism," are also largely responsible for this misinterpretation. Because of this, the virtual disappearance of class analysis from modern libertarian thought in the United States not only represents a significant departure from nearly two centuries of libertarianism, but also neglects to address a highly-authoritative and hierarchical private structure that has long surpassed its governmental counterpart. Schmidt and van der Walt explain the importance of rejecting "pop anarchy" stereotypes and maintaining this class analysis within anarchist thought:

"For anarchists, individual freedom is the highest good, and individuality is valuable in itself, but such freedom can only be achieved within and through a new type of society. Contending that a class system prevents the full development of individuality, anarchists advocate class struggle from below to create a better world. In this ideal new order, individual freedom will be harmonised with communal obligations through cooperation, democratic decision-making, and social and economic equality. Anarchism rejects the state as a centralised structure of domination and an instrument of class rule, not simply because it constrains the individual or because anarchists dislike regulations. On the contrary, anarchists believe rights arise from the fulfilment of obligations to society and that there is a place for a certain amount of legitimate coercive power, if derived from collective and democratic decision making.

The practice of defining anarchism simply as hostility to the state has a further consequence: that a range of quite different and often contradictory ideas and movements get conflated. By defining anarchism more narrowly, however, we are able to bring its key ideas into a sharper focus, lay the basis for our examination of the main debates in the broad anarchist tradition in subsequent chapters, and see what ideas are relevant to current struggles against neoliberalism."[5]

When considering and rejecting both public and private forms of restriction, the most fundamental element of authentic anarchism clearly becomes cooperation. This theme was thoroughly established by Kropotkin in his 1902 classic, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, in which he pointed to "the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle - has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race." This theme was echoed by Rudolf Rocker in his 1938 treatise on Anarcho-Syndicalism. Said Rocker, "Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our time, whose adherents advocate the abolition of economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society" while calling on "a free association of all productive forces based upon cooperative labor" to replace "the present capitalistic economic order."[6]

Why Does this Matter?

The importance of Anarchist theory lies in its critique of hierarchies and the uneven distribution of power emanating from such. This makes this school of thought an important component as we move forward in attempting to address the pervasive ills of society, whether coming from the state or corporate structures that tower over us. The mere questioning of these "authorities" is crucial in itself. As Chomsky tells us:

"… any structure of hierarchy and authority carries a heavy burden of justification, whether it involves personal relations or a large social order. If it cannot bear that burden - sometimes it can - then it is illegitimate and should be dismantled. When honestly posed and squarely faced, that challenge can rarely be sustained. Genuine libertarians have their work cut out for them." <[7]

While many socialist-oriented strains incorporate this same analysis, some do not. Essentially, regarding the formation of class-consciousness, anarchist theory of all varieties (syndicalism, mutualism, communism, etc.) act as ideal compliments to historically strong currents of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and Trotskyism, and should be included within all such theoretical considerations. When transforming theory to praxis, anarchism's inclusion of worker collectivization in the form of labor or trade unions prove valuable in this regard. In his treatise on Syndicalism, Rocker made a compelling argument for the usefulness of this brand of anarchism as a component to working-class emancipation. For the Anarcho-Syndicalists," says Rocker, "the trade union is by no means a mere transitory phenomenon bound up with the duration of capitalist society, it is the germ of the socialist economy of the future, the elementary school of socialism in general." He continues, "Every new social structure makes organs for itself in the body of the old organism. Without this preliminary, any social evolution is unthinkable. Even revolutions can only develop and mature the germs which already exist and have made their way into the consciousness of men (and presumably, women); they cannot themselves create these germs or generate new worlds out of nothing." [8]

Putting this philosophy into action is still of utmost importance. Creating a brand that is palatable and accessible to the working-class majority, without sacrificing its revolutionary tone and message, is also crucial. In his 2013 book, "Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street," Mark Bray stresses the importance of deploying a practical anarchism which avoids the esoteric idealism that so many genuine and well-intentioned anarchists get bogged down in. This pragmatic approach is perhaps most important when attempting to relay information via short interviews and sound bites. Bray points to three specific lessons he learned while interacting with mainstream media during his time at Zuccotti Park:

"First, I learned the value of presenting my revolutionary ideas in an accessible format. How I dress, the words I choose, and how I articulate them affect how I am received, so if my primary goal is to convince people of what I am saying, then it's often useful to shed my "inessential weirdness." Second, I realized the usefulness of letting tangible examples sketch the outline of my ideas without encumbering them with explicit ideological baggage. Finally, I concluded that the importance that Americans place on the electoral system dictates that any systematic critique should start with the corporate nature of both parties. Like it or not, that's where most people are at in terms of their political framework, so if you skip past the candidates to alternative institutions, for example, without convincing them of the bankrupt nature of the electoral system, you'll lose them." [9]

Essentially, anarchism is what democracy is supposed to be - self-governance. In this sense, anyone even remotely involved in the Occupy movement had the privilege, likely for the first time in their lives, to truly witness democracy (anarchism) in action. "This is not the first time a movement based on fundamentally anarchist principles - direct action, direct democracy, a rejection of existing political institutions and attempt to create alternative ones - has cropped up in the US," explains David Graeber. "The civil rights movement (at least, its more radical branches), the anti-nuclear movement, the global justice movement … all took similar directions." And, in a country where a large majority of citizens have given up on and/or no longer believe in their representatives, a little democracy may be exactly what we need, even if it's not what our white, wealthy, slave-owning "founding fathers" wanted. "Most (of the founding fathers) defined 'democracy' as collective self-governance by popular assemblies, and as such, they were dead set against it, arguing it would be prejudicial against the interests of minorities (the particular minority that was had in mind here being the rich)," Graeber tells us. "They only came to redefine their own republic - modeled not on Athens, but on Rome - as a 'democracy' because ordinary Americans seemed to like the word so much."

In our inevitable and necessary escape from the faux democracy of America's colonists and founders, anarchist thought will undoubtedly play a role. It is, after all, the only school of thought that can be described as authentic, class-based libertarianism. Its foundation is the reasonable expectation that all structures of dominance, authority, and hierarchy must justify themselves; and, if they cannot, they must be dismantled.

This covers ALL coercive institutions - not only governments, the state, police, and military, but also cultural phenomena like patriarchy, racism, and white supremacy, and most importantly, economic systems like capitalism. Unlike modern forms of "libertarianism" in the US, which ignore racist structures and the historical formations behind them, and falsely view the labor-capital relationship inherent in capitalism as a "choice," authentic Anarchism correctly views such elements as coercive and forced; and seeks to dismantle them in order to move forward with constructing a society based on free association, where all human beings have a healthy degree of control over their lives, families, and communities.

Contrary to consensus thought (propaganda), such as those rooted in "rugged individualism" and "American exceptionalism," there is a collective and cooperative nature to true liberty. We simply cannot gain control over our lives until we learn to respect the lives of all others. This is the essence of community. And we cannot begin to do this until we deconstruct illegitimate hierarchies of wealth and power, which have been constructed through illegal and immoral means over the course of centuries. Recognizing these structures and realizing that they are NOT legitimate, and therefore do not deserve to exist, is the first step in this process. Embracing contributions from this school of thought is crucial in this regard.

Fundamentally, Anarchism is a working-class ideology. Occupy Wall Street was largely influenced by it. Workers' co-ops are largely influenced by it. Any action that attempts to establish free association within society can learn much from it. Its foundational requirement of organic human cooperation and peaceful co-existence has been tried and tested throughout history - from hunter-gatherer societies across the world to Native American communities to the Paris Commune to revolutionary Catalonia to Chiapas. It provides a philosophical foundation - not a rigid blueprint - that allows for limitless potential in attempting to solve our problems, collectively, while trying to carve out a meaningful human experience for everyone. It may not provide all answers, or even most, but its foundation is worthy of building from, or at least considering. Its true value is found in its inclusion of historical formations as well as its role as a catalyst for new ideas and action - something we desperately need, moving forward.

Notes

[1] Schmidt, Michael & van der Walt, Lucien. Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism. AK Press, 2009, p. 33

[2] Schmidt & van der Walt, p. 34

[3] Guerin, Daniel. "Anarchism: From Theory to Practice." Monthly Review Press, 1970. Taken from the Preface by Noam Chomsky.

[4] Chomsky on Anarchism , selected and edited by Barry Pateman. AK Press: 2005, p. 122-123

[5] Schmidt and van der Walt, p. 33

[6] Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice, 6th edition. AK Press, 2004. P. 1

[7] Chomsky on Anarchism , p. 192.

[8] Rocker, P. 59.

[9] Mark Bray, Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street. Zero Books, 2013.