Aragorn!: The passing of an american anarchist

The Raccoon people live by simple rules: live life to its fullest, no concession to a world of misery, and run to fight another day.

I first met one of the Raccoon people when I was only a child. He was visiting my parents, dressed in the fashion of the time, and he treated himself to our food and our company. I had never met a happier person. I alternated between bouncing on his knee, wrestling with him over the last piece of bread, and racing around the jungle of our backyard with him, an adult unlike any I had ever met before, or since.

He left behind a little buckskin figurine to remember him by. “Rub this between your palms and say my name. I will not promise that I will come back to you but I promise that my memory will, and often times that will be enough.”

When he left our house my parents stopped speaking to each other. Something about his visit reminded them that they were not working out the way that they expected and each of them began to look for something else. Other people passed through, glass was broken, voices were raised not in song, and eventually feet walked in different directions.

Later in life I found more Raccoon people. They usually did not have time for me because I was looking and they had already found. They were a merry people, running in groups, speaking in code, dressing like explosions and carousels, Bottles in hand, holes in shoes, scabs on joints; these were a people worth knowing.

Aragorn!, Stories of the raccoon people

We are against bad things, therefore we are also against ourselves.

Aragorn!, Political Naïveté (Anarchist Library)

For me, the idea, the beautiful idea, is about—how do you connect ideas to living? It’s not about “the struggle.”

A Hell of a Mistress, the Beautiful Idea: An Interview with Aragorn! (CrimethInc. 19/02/2020)

We cannot speak of Aragorn! the person (for we did not know him), nor of his “activism”, or better, of his way of living anarchism (except indirectly, through what he and others have said of it). As for polemics about the person, we leave to others more finely practiced in such arts.

What we know of him and his anarchism we have learned above all through his writings, and it is with his written word that we share affinities.

If we speak of the passing of an “american” anarchist, it is not to identify his work as provincial, for it is only through being rooted in a time and place, in a story, in its passions and thoughts, in its spirit, that one can speak beyond one’s “self”. Aragorn! at times confessed embarrassment at “american” twists of “european” anarchism, but he also had little patience for what he viewed as often elitist and anachronistic visions of rebellion coming from europe. And, in the end, what mattered was how one lived anarchism, in both thought and action, and not the label; and real life must be grounded.

While of course I agree with and adhere to internationalist values that are sort of anarchist values, my interest has always been in doing what you’re going to do in the here and now. I’ve always distrusted people that proselytize across oceans.

A Hell of a Mistress, the Beautiful Idea: An Interview with Aragorn! (CrimethInc. 19/02/2020)

Aragorn! brought to anarchism a “post-leftism” or “post-workerism”, fed by the Situationists and Italian insurrectionism [ … the SI provide the best, most cruel, anarchist criticism of the first wave of anarchists. An anarchist who has not read chapter 4 of Society of the Spectacle (especially parts 90-94) and come away changed vis-à-vis the questions of revolution, timing, and politics is probably not capable of working with people in a contemporary context. I think these questions are central, even if they are not easily answered. Laughing at the Futility of it All: An interview with Aragorn! (Anarchist without content 13/10/2015)], along with a nihilist reading of anarchist politics, an effort to “decolonise” the tradition, and a turning to american indigenous ways of living for inspiration. For Aragorn!, anarchism is not an “activism”, a “theory” (though it includes these as well); it is rather an ethics, a way of being-in-the-world.

Aragorn! died this last February 13th. For him, for us, we share what follows.

[For testimonials and obituaries of Aragorn!, see CrimethInc., Anarchist News, Its Going Down, Gods and Radicals Press]

Anarchy Without Road Maps or Adjectives (2007)

(Anarchist Library)

Most tendencies within anarchist circles have a narrow conception of what exactly makes an anarchist, what an anarchist project is, and what the transformation to an anarchist world will look like. Whether Green or Red, Communist or Individualist, Activist or Critical, Anarchists spend as much time defending their own speculative positions on these complicated issues as they do learning what others have to offer — especially other anarchists.

As a result many find that they would prefer to do their projects, political and social, outside of anarchist circles. Either they do not think their particular project is interesting to anarchists but believe it’s important none the less (as in most progressive activism) or they do not particularly enjoy the company of anarchists and the kind of tension that working with anarchists entails. Both reasons are almost entirely accountable to the deep mistrust anarchists have of other anarchists’ programs.

Once upon a time there was an anarchist call for “Anarchism without Adjectives,” referring to a doctrine that tolerated the co-existence of different schools of anarchist thought. Instead of qualifying Anarchism as collectivist, communist, or individualist, Anarchism without Adjectives refused to preconceive economic solutions to a post-revolutionary time. Instead, Anarchism without Adjectives argued that the abolition of authority, not squabbling over the future, is of primary importance.

Today there are as many (if not more) divisions about what the abolition of authority should look like, as there were divisions on the question of the economic program for After the Revolution a hundred and twenty years ago. Anarchist activists (“organizers”) believe that a power-from-below will abolish authority. Class-struggle anarchists believe that the working class will end the authority of capitalist society. Collapsists believe that economic and environmental conditions will inevitably lead to social transformation and an end to authority.

Then again, many anarchists do not believe that the abolition of authority is of primary importance for anarchists at all. Their arguments are that authority cannot be simply understood (it is both capitalism and the state and neither of these). That anarchists do not have the (political, social, people or material) power to bring about this abolition, and that authority has transformed itself into something far more diffuse than the kings and monopolists of the 19th century. If authority can best be understood as a spectacle, today, then it is both diffuse and concentrated. This flexibility on the part of spectacular society has resulted in the effort for the abolition of authority (and the practice of many anarchists), for its own sake, to be perceived as utopian and (spectacularly) ridiculous.

Anarchists of all stripes agree that the revolutionary programs of the past have fallen far short of the total liberation of the oppressed. Leftists believe that the programs were likely to have been right but that the timing and conditions were wrong. Many other anarchists believe that the time for Programs is over. These perspectives are represented in the history of anarchism and are the source of endless contention in the founding of and meetings of anarchist groups.

History should be used to provide the context of these differing perspectives but is, instead, seen as providing evidence for one or another. Instead of trying to understand one another, to communicate, we seem to use the opportunity of our lack of success to fix our positions and argue for decreasing returns.

If anarchy does not have a road map then we (as anarchists) are free to work together. Our projects might not be of the same scale as the general strike, or even the halting of business-as-usual in a major metropolitan area, but they would be anarchist projects. An anarchy without road map or adjectives could be one where the context of the decisions that we make together will be of our own creation rather than imposed upon us. It could be an anarchy of now rather than the hope of another day. It would place the burden of establishing trust on those who actually have a common political goal (the abolition of the state and capitalism) rather than on those who have no goal at all or whose goal is antithetical to an anarchist one.

An anarchy without road map or adjectives does not ignore difference but instead places it in the context that it belongs in. When we are faced with a moment of extreme tension, when everything that we know appears about to change, then we may choose different forks in the road. Until that time anarchists should approach each other with the naïvete that we approach the world with. If we believe that the world can change and could change in a radical direction from the one traveled the past several thousand years then we should have some trust in others who desire the same things.

Nihilism, Anarchy, and the 21st century

(Anarchist Library)

Introduction

This pamphlet about nihilism is intended for an anarchist audience. Throughout the course of compiling this there was a certain temptation to preface sentence after sentence with ‘From an anarchist perspective’ or ‘As an anarchist’ because my evaluation of this subject material comes from an anarchist orientation. I resisted making such a pedantic statement over and over again within these pages but I would remind the reader that the assumption holds.

A few notes about the narrative arc that I intend here. My intention is to expose anarchists (who might not be otherwise) to the breadth of the nihilist contribution. I have gone further afield than I generally would. Normally I would be satisfied providing threads that an engaged reader could follow on their own without making the connections that seem obvious to me. I generally see my writing as living within the context that it does and therefore do not spend a lot of time explaining why I have arrived where I have.

Herein I have made different choices. I begin with a lengthy discussion about the history of nihilism. I am not a particular fan of the facts, names, and dates that makes a useful history, but made an exception in this case because I believe that the information should be accessible to more people than just those who are willing to slog through the many books on the subject that I have. With that said, I have made many errors of omission. If I ever do decide to write a book on history, it may very well be on nihilism, because the amount that I left out of this brief history still weighs on my mind.

I then provide some thoughts on the connection, or lack of connection, of nihilism to the socialist tradition. I will say, even though I will regret saying it later, that part of my intention is to approach certain topics with a stronger language than the current left or not-left discourse. I make the issue about socialism. I have included a previously published essay that makes a first pass at drawing out connections between nihilism and action in-this-world that may be useful to those eager to develop conclusions along these lines in real-time. Finally I have included a recent rant that will serve as an exclamation point to this pamphlet and a comma to our discussion about nihilism and anarchy.

Aragorn!

Chapter 1: A History of Russian Nihilism

An understanding of the Russian nihilism of the 1860s begins with an attempt to understand the concept of nihilism. This is naturally difficult because if there is a word that has even more loaded, and negative, connotations than anarchism it would be nihilism. This is particularly because the primary vehicle of our modern understanding of nihilism is through the fiction of Turgenev and Dostoevsky. Neither of these authors were particularly sympathetic to nihilism and provided nihilist characters primarily as a frame with which to drape their morality tales. The version of nihilism offered by these authors is then, primarily, a snapshot of the popular culture in which nihilism dwelt as much as it is a recollection of the trend. This time in Russian history is part of the story of nihilism and will be part of the story in bridging the gap between the mythological Bazarov, Verkhovensky, or Raskolnikov and figures like Nicholas Chernyshevsky, Dmitry Pisarev, and to some extent Sergey Nechayev.

What then was nihilism? Nihilism was a youth movement, a philosophical tendency, and a revolutionary impulse. Nihilism was the valorization of the natural sciences. Nihilism was a specific fashion style. Nihilism was a new approach to aesthetics, criticism and ethics. Nihilism was the contradiction between a studied materialism and the desire to annihilate the social order. Nihilism was also a particularly Russian response to the conditions of Tsarist reform and repression. Nihilism has become much more than it originally would have been capable of because of the viral nature of its value-system, practice, and conclusions. Nihilism’s effect is traceable through the history of Anarchism, through the formation and modern practice of terrorism, and through philosophical trends from deconstruction to existentialism.

Russia in the mid nineteenth century was a place of increasing tension. The revolution of 1848 that touched most of the European continent did not drastically affect Russia. As a result of the Russian campaign to subdue Napoleon (1812–1815) western ideas were brought to Russia. These ideas most clearly articulated themselves as a desire for a constitution defending values like human rights, a representative government, and democracy. When the Tsar (Alexander I) died in 1825 a regiment of soldiers refused to pay allegiance to the new crown, wanting instead the establishment of a Russian constitution. These westernized Russians were particularly frustrated because the colony of Poland was awarded a constitution by the Tsar. The ‘Decembrists,’ as they were called, were suppressed and remained a symbol of the possibility of social change throughout the century. Alexander’s successor, his brother Nicholas I, was an autocrat. He ruled Russia (1825–1855) with a combination of secret police (the Third Section), censorship, nationalism, and colonialism. After the failure in the Crimean war against the combined might of the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and France, Russia was in the dire situation of being forced to make major reforms or no longer be considered a player on the European continent. The timing of this military failure by Russia coincided with the death of Nicholas I.

His son, Alexander II, assumed the throne (1855–1881). His reign began with the negotiation of a peace deal with the major powers of Europe and a major domestic reform. Alexander II, in the sixth year of his reign, freed the peasants. This meant that as a class the peasants became “transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors” which meant that they had rights far beyond any other peasantry in Europe. This reform was coupled with changes to the military, judiciary, and local self-governance. This spirit of change was dampened by the comparison of the transformations not to the past, but to a mythological state. This sets the stage for nihilism.

The New People, as they were called, existed before the publishing of the book Fathers and Sons (1862) by Turgenev but found a hero in the character of Bazarov. It is worth noting the role of literature in Russian culture. Prose rose to prominence in the 1840s as the rise in publications of literary journals that printed novels in serial. This form affected Russian culture so dramatically that Alexander’s emancipation of the peasants is attributed, in part, to his reaction to Ivan Turgenev’s collection of Sportsman’s Sketches that depicted the life of the peasant. Literature was a respected form of social commentary that broached issues from the generation gap (in Fathers and Sons) to the psychology of men and women under great duress (Dostoyevsky) and in daily life (Tolstoy). This style of literature became known as realism due to its unflinching portrayal of contemporary life. The realist novel portrayed the experience of what was happening in Russian culture and in the 1860s that was nihilism.

Foundational Nihilism

Russian nihilism can be dissected, perhaps unnaturally, into two periods. The foundational period (1860–1869) where the ‘counter-cultural’ aspects of nihilism scandalized Russia, where even the smallest of indiscretions resulted in nihilists being sent to Siberia or imprisoned for lengthy periods of time, and where the philosophy of nihilism was formed. The other period would be the revolutionary period of Nihilism (1870–1881) when the pamphlet The Catechism of a Revolutionist inspired the movement-in-waiting into a movement-with-teeth with dozens of actions against the Russian state. The revolutionary period ends, of course, with the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II (March 13th, 1881), by a series of bombs, and the consequential crushing of the nihilist movement.

It is arguable that Mikhail Bakunin’s (1814–1876) “Reaction in Germany” (1842) with its famous dictum “Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!” both anticipated and instigated the ideas of the nihilists. Bakunin was considered, in Russia, a Westernizer because of his influences by the thinkers of the day from the Continent proper. In “Reaction” Bakunin engaged with the Hegelian view by asserting that the negative, and not the positive, is the creative driving force of dialectics. While he is inexorably linked to both the foundational and revolutionary periods of nihilism, Bakunin was a product of the earlier generation whose vision, ultimately, was not the same as the nihilist view. He stated this best as “I am a free man only so far as I recognize the humanity and liberty of all men around me. In respecting their humanity, I respect my own.” This general humanitarian instinct is in contrast to the nihilist proclamations of having a “hate with a great and holy hatred” or calling for the “annihilation of aesthetics” (Pisarev).

Nihilism was never a singular, or even a particularly disciplined, body of thought. This is attributable to the reality a) that the main nihilist philosophers (Chernyshevsky and Pisarev) never held academic positions, b) that publishing was heavily censored under the Tsar or, as is most likely, c) of the nature of nihilism itself. Nihilism never had enough momentum, enough time, or the right conditions to become a mature philosophy. This resulted in it being an approximation to a body of ideas rather than a body of ideas. While strong positions were taken along several theoretical lines, none were developed in the generational method necessary for these ideas to hold historical purchase. While natural science was seen as the most potent intellectual tool, more nihilist commentary was made in the field of aesthetics, this being related to the obscurity principle. The obscurity principle says that in times of repression the most cogent social commentary happens in the vehicle of fiction, where your intention is ‘obscured’ because you appear to be talking about something entirely different than you are. In the case of the nihilists, art was anathema because it aggregated sentimentalism, emotionalism, irrationalism, spiritualism, and was a waste of resources. This obscured the fact that nihilists were actually talking about the values of the current order embedded in the vehicle of art but this connection couldn’t be made more clearly in a context of censorship.

As a positive philosophy Nihilism took positions within the framework of established philosophy. Nihilist materialism boiled down to the view that “only what is perceptible exists”. Man, then, was “a complex chemical compound, governed strictly by the law of causality.” Ethics, as argued by Chernyshevsky and Pisarev, can be described as the ‘scientific’ justification for hedonism. The nihilist position on epistemology was realist and contrary to the phenomenalism of the time. Art was valuable in direct relationship to its ‘social usefulness’, however that is defined (which it was not). As these positions reflect, Nihilism was not at its strongest as a positive philosophy and due to the transformation of Nihilism from a position to an action there was never a particularly focused development of these ideas.

As a matter of course, nihilism became a more coherent position only in banned texts, smuggled into Russia from émigrés. The most prolific of these émigré’s was Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) who established the Free Russian Press in London where he published until his death. The Press was well known for its publications of radical literature that ranged from To the Younger Generation (1861), that argued for the replacement of the Tsar by an employee of the state, to the journals The Polar Star and Voices from Russia. His most well known journal was The Bell which was smuggled into Russia where it was quite popular through the foundational nihilist period by those who desired social reform. In hindsight his views were rather conservative, especially in light of what nihilism would become. From The Bell in 1865, “Social progress is possible only under complete republican freedom, under full democratic equality.”

It is as a political position that nihilism attracted attention and was transformed from a discussion between learned men into a social movement. Nihilist politics begin as a branch of the Socialist tree. They were most influenced by the French Socialism of the time, Charles Fourier (1772–1837), Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), Auguste Comte (1798–1857), John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), and obscure German materialists (Buchner, Moleschott, and Vogt). The nihilist contribution to socialism in general was the concept that the peasant was an agent of social change (Chernyshevsky, A Criticism of Philosophical Prejudices Against the Obshchina (1858)), and not just the bourgeois reformers of the revolutions of 1848, or the proletariat of Marx (a concept that wouldn’t reach Russia until later). Agitation for this position landed Chernyshevsky in prison and exile in Siberia for the next 25 years (although the specific accusations with which he was convicted were a concoction) in 1864. The first group, inspired by nihilist ideas, to form and work towards social change, did so as a secret society and were called Land and Freedom. This groups name was also taken by another, entirely separate group, during the Revolutionary Nihilist period. The first Land and Freedom conspired to support the Polish independence movement and to agitate the peasants who were burdened with debt as a result of the crippling redemption payments required by the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Polish independence was not of particular interest to the nihilists, and after a plot to incite Kazan peasants to revolt failed, Land and Freedom folded (1863).

Thus begins the first period of nihilist secret societies. The Organization created a boy’s school in a Moscow slum in order to train revolutionaries. In addition they had a secret sub-group called Hell whose purpose was political terrorism, with the assassination of the Tsar as the ultimate goal. This resulted in the failed attempt by Dmitry Karakozov on the 4th of April 1866. Dmitry fired a revolver, but had his arm jostled by an artisan (who died, before the potential assassin, of the excesses of drink as a result of his change of social status) at the last minute. Dmitry was tried and hanged at Smolensk Field in St Petersburg. The leader of The Organization, Nicholas Ishutin, was also tried and was to be executed before being exiled to Siberia for life. Thus ended The Organization and began the White Terror of the rest of the 1860s.

The White Terror began by the Tsar putting Count Michael Muravyov (’Hanger Muravyov’ due to his treatment of Polish rebels in prior years) in charge of the suppression of the nihilists. The two leading radical journals (The Contemporary and Russian Word) were banned, liberal reforms were minimized by reactionary afterthoughts, and the educational system was reformed to stifle the revolutionary spirit that lived there. This action by the Russian state marks the end of the foundational period of nihilism.

The lifestyle of the nihilist, or New People, is worth reviewing, if for no other reason, because of its similarity to youth movements of the modern era. While advocating for a callous hedonism and radical subjectivity, in practice nihilists actually tended towards a utilitarian and ascetic lifestyle. The fashion is a case in point. “Both sexes favoured blue-tinted spectacles and high boots. Other common features were a heavy walking-stick and a rug flung over the shoulders in cold weather; they called it a plaid, but it was not necessarily a tartan.” (Hingley) This, coupled with huge beards for men and bobs for women, a voracious appetite for cigarettes, an unwashed dirty appearance, and rude and outspoken behavior made the New People a sight to behold. The nihilists attempted to challenge the values of the day in a more meaningful way too. At the time, the question of woman’s emancipation was of great interest to reformers. For the nihilist the issues were regarding work and sexual freedom. Because a woman’s passport (which was used for general travel and not just travel abroad) was legally controlled by men — a father, or husband, had ultimate control of a woman’s life. The nihilists solved this problem by having ‘fictitious’ marriages. This allowed for an emancipation of women de jure if not de facto. This resulted in women having the freedom of mobility to pursue some academic pursuits (which were curtailed during the White Terror) and some enterprise. Finally, the nihilists adopted the credo that adultery was a natural, and even desirable trait, in contrast to the spirit of their time, or their own cultural composition (i.e. they were prudes).

More influential for the New People than philosophy, or political texts, was literature. The expression of the tension between generations by Bazarov in Father’s and Sons as the rejection of the romantic and idealistic postures, guaranteed his position as an icon of the nihilist movement. This was even though Turgenev’s intention was to portray the New People in a less than flattering light. The publication of Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done? (1863), which was written in prison, became the guiding light to the movement. Within its pages was a vision of the socialist values of the nihilist, an exposition of how to live with radical values intact, and how to practice nihilist non-monogamy. The power of literature on the movement is ironic because, of course, most of our modern understanding of the nihilist movement comes from the novels of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky. While Turgenev was non-judgmental in his depiction of the New People (and respected by the nihilists, Chernyshevsky having held correspondence with him), Dostoyevsky was in violent reaction to them. While Dostoyevsky was involved in radical activity against the Tsar in the 1840’s, during his exile in Siberia he became a Orthodox Christian, upon his return he became quite upset at nihilism in general and Chernyshevsky specifically. The last five novels of Dostoyevsky dealt with nihilism to some degree either centrally or as a major theme.

Revolutionary Nihilism

The entrance on the scene of one person symbolizes the transformation from the foundational period to the revolutionary period. Sergei Nechaev, the son of a serf (which was unusual as most nihilists came from a slightly higher social class, what we would call lower middle class), desired an escalation of the discourse on social transformation. Nechaev argued that just as the European monarchies used the ideas of Machiavelli, and the Catholic Jesuits practiced absolute immorality to achieve their ends, there was no action that could not be also used for the sake of the people’s revolution. “His apparent immorality [more an amorality] derived from the cold realization that both Church and State are ruthlessly immoral in their pursuit of total control. The struggle against such powers must therefore be carried out by any means necessary.” (Cleaver) Nechaev’s social cache was greatly increased by his association with Bakunin in 1869 and extraction of funds from the Bakhmetiev Fund for Russian revolutionary propaganda.

The image of Nechaev is as much a result of his Catechism of a Revolutionist(1869) as any actions he actually took in life. The Catechism is an important document as it establishes the clear break between the formation of nihilism as a political philosophy and what it becomes as a practice of revolutionary action. It documents the Revolutionary as a very transformed figure from the nihilist of the past decade. Whereas the nihilist may have practiced asceticism, they argued for an uninhibited hedonism. Nechaev argued that the Revolutionary, by definition, must live devoted to one aim and not allow for distractions of desire, compassion, or feelings. Friendship was contingent on Revolutionary fervor, relationships with strangers was quantified in terms of what resources they offered revolution, and everyone had a role during the revolutionary moment that boiled down to how soon they would be lined up against the wall or when they would accept that they had to do the shooting. The uncompromising tone and content of the Catechism was influential far beyond the character of Nechaev. Part of the reason for this is because of the way in which it extended nihilist principles into a revolutionary program. The rest of the reason was that it gave the revolutionary project a macho weightiness that the men ‘of the sixties’ did not.

In terms of what the Catechism offered nihilism, a quote:

“By ‘revolution,’ our Organization does not mean a regulated pattern in the classical, western sense, a movement that always stops and bows with respect before private property rights and before traditions of public order and so-called civilization and morality — one which until now has limited itself to overthrowing one political form to replace it with another that tried to create a so-called revolutionary-state. The only revolution that could be beneficial for the people would be that revolution which destroyed at its roots any elements of the state and which would exterminate all the state traditions, social order, and classes in Russia.” (Thesis 23, Catechism of the Revolutionary)

Nechaev appears to be attempting to bridge the gap between Machiavelli and a nihilistic anarchism in this thesis. Which, beyond anarchist hand-wringing to the contrary, is a sobering take on what horrors may be necessary for the abolition of the standing order.

Which is not to say that there is much to reclaim from the personality of Nechaev in general. The facts are clear. Nechaev imagined a secret revolutionary organization the Russian Revolutionary Committee, with himself as the fugitive member from which he was taking refuge in Geneva, where he met Bakunin. Bakunin, an admirer of Nechaev’s zeal and stories of his organization’s success, provided contacts and resources to send Nechaev back to Russia as his representative (he gave him the number 2771) of the Russian Section of the World Revolutionary Alliance (also an imaginary organization). Upon his return to Russia Nechaev formed the secret, cell based organization, People’s Vengeance. One student member of the organization Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov questioned the very existence of the Secret Revolutionary Committee that Nechaev claimed to be the representative of. This honest appraisal of Nechaev’s modus operanti required action. “On the evening of 21 November 1869 the victim was accordingly lured to the premises of the Moscow School of Agriculture, a hotbed of revolutionary sentiment, where Nechayev did him to death by shooting and strangulation, assisted without great enthusiasm by three dupes… Nechayev’s accomplices were arrested and tried.” (Hingley) Upon his return to Switzerland Nechaev was rejected by Bakunin (for most of the obvious reasons) and was eventually extradited back to Russia where he spent the remainder of his life at the Peter and Paul Fortress. He did, due to his charisma and force of will, continue to influence events, maintaining a relationship to People’s Will and weaving even his jailors into his plots and lies. He was found dead in his cell in 1882 under mysterious circumstances.

Among the revolutionary movement (nihilist or not) in the post-Nechaev period there was a clear division. This split was between the propagandists (who followed Russian émigré Peter Lavrov who published Forward! in Paris) and what was called the Bakuninists who believed in pushing the peasants into immediate social revolution. The focus of both groups was on ‘organizing’ the peasants. This included a Russian version of ‘Freedom Summer’ (which actually stretched to two years 1873 and 1874, the second of which was coined ‘mad summer’) where young men and women, in groups of 3 and 4, traveled to the rural villages to live, work and agitate among the peasants. This was inspired, in large part, by the belief that the Russian institution of the village commune was the shortest path to Russian socialism. The commune was a self-governing body that managed some village affairs and made decisions collectively.

The rural effort was a complete failure. The peasants often handed the nihilists over to the police before even getting a sense of what they were around for. The nihilists ‘disguised’ themselves as peasants with the unsurprising result of being entirely obvious from the moment they walked into a village. Furthermore, the concept of rural revolt was a-historical at the least, as the peasants did not have the ability to arm themselves in a meaningful way and did not actually have a tradition of successful uprising. The Russian, Ukranian, and Cossack revolts in the 17th and 18th centuries were quickly suppressed. The only near success, which began before the nihilists arrived on the scene, was in the Chigirin area on the River Dnieper near Kiev. In 1877 three revolutionaries, Stefanovich, Deutsch and Bokhanovsky, drafted a charter purporting to come from the Tsar calling on the peasants to take up arms — which they did, in the form of (antiquated) pikes, other farming equipment and a body of peasants one thousand strong. Hundreds of peasants were arrested and sent to Siberia, and the three nihilists were imprisoned in the Kiev gaol in what became known as the Chigirin affair.

A preliminary note on the role of women in the nihilist organization is in order. While, given their tenuous social gains under Alexander II, women were less easily convincible to join the project of dismantling society, once engaged were, if anything, more committed to action, violence, and seeing the project through, then their male counterparts. This is best exemplified by the direct taking up of arms during the revolutionary period beginning with the action of one woman, Vera Zasulich. Once the taking up of arms and the formation of secret societies was in full swing, women took no small part in the proceedings. An accounting in the People’s Will, the most famous of the nihilist secret societies, states that 1/4 to 1/3 of the organization were women. Nearly half of the Executive Committee were women. While the social mores of the culture that the nihilists came from were not entirely upset, which meant that there was still ‘women’s work’ — namely housework and typesetting, on the whole women had egalitarian relationships with the men.

There were many secret societies formed in the revolutionary period. Two of them, the Troglodytes and the Revolutionary-Populist Group of the North eventually settled into forming the second iteration of Land and Freedom in 1876 (although the name was not settled until 1878). This group resolved itself as firmly in the Bakuninist camp in reaction to the failures of the rural campaigns of years past. The notable events of the seventies originated in this reaction.

In December of 1876 there was a political demonstration in the Square of Our Lady of Kazan in St. Petersburg. When the police broke up the meeting they arrested, and convicted to 15 years of prison, a latecomer to the protest, a known revolutionary named Bogolyubov. He then, in an unexplainable act of intransigence, refused to take off his cap for the visiting General Trepov who was reviewing the prison he shared with the political prisoners of the trial of ‘193’. The infuriated General beat him on the spot and demanded he be flogged the next day, which was done with such vigor that Bogolyubov went mad. This resulted in a prison riot.

“Bars of cell windows were torn off and beaten against the doors, and prisoners were reputedly tied up by warders, beaten, kicked and hauled unconscious to the punishment cells. Outside the prison Trepov’s act created widespread indignation by no means confined to professed revolutionaries. A Russian gentleman’s honour was especially sensitive where the striking of blows was involved, and so Bogolyubov’s punishment was taken as a monstrous affront to the whole revolutionary movement, staffed as it very largely was by young people who retained certain social pretensions.” (Hingley)

Vera Zasulich was not personally acquainted with the principle actors but took it upon herself to take action. She sought an audience with the General in a reception room of Russian officials where upon she drew a revolver from her muff and fired, killing him. In an unexpected move the regime allowed for Zasulich to be tried by a jury, assuming that because she confessed to the act, they had the weapon, and there were witnesses, that the result was guaranteed. Instead the jury acquitted her and upon leaving the courthouse, where the police awaited her for additional arrest, a small riot occurred resulting in her being whisked away by her comrades. This act, and the accompanying scandal, launched a several-year wave of action from the nihilists against agents of the state, and attempts, mostly failed, at repression by the state.

In January of 1878 the Odessa police raided the printing press of Ivan Kovalsky who defended himself and his press with revolver and dagger (thereby creating a tradition of nihilists fighting it out till the end with the police) while his comrades burnt incriminating documents and attempted to incite the crowd gathered around for the spectacle. Kovalsky was eventually captured, tried, and put to death as the first Russian political execution of the time.

On the first of February, 1878, a police infiltrator was killed by revolutionaries, and a note informing the public of the execution was posted in Kiev, bearing the seal of the Executive Committee of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party (an imaginary organization). On the 23rd of February, Valerian Osinsky a nihilist from the south, shot the public prosecutor of Kiev twice. The victim was unhurt (perhaps due to the thickness of his fur coat). On May 25th, Gregory Popko stabbed to death Captain Geyking of the Kiev gendarmerie on a corner of the main thoroughfare of the city, and then escaped by fatally shooting a doorkeeper who tried to stop him and wounding a policeman. Michael Frolenko, a southern nihilist, became an employee of the ‘impregnable’ Kiev gaol and quickly rose to the rank of chief warder. On May 27th he walked Stefanovich, Deutsch and Bokhanovsky (of the Chigirin affair) out of the prison walls where they spent a week on the Dnieper River rowing to safety.

The northern nihilists began catching up to the exploits of the southerners in August.

At nine o’clock in the morning on one of the main streets of St Petersburg, Sergey Kravchinsky walked towards General Mezentsov, Chief of Gendarmes and Head of the Third Section, who was on the way to his office. Kravchinsky held a dagger lightly wrapped in newspaper; after passing the General, he thrust it in his back and twisted it, then leapt into a carriage drawn by Barbarian, a famous trotter, and escaped. (Hingley)

This was particularly notable because it happened two days after the execution of Kovalsky by the state.

February 9th of 1879 was the date of the shooting of Governor General Dmitry Kropotkin in Kharkov, cousin to Peter Kropotkin, by Gregory Goldenberg. Also in February of that year was the death of another police infiltrator and another gun battle with the police in Kiev. April 2nd was the attempted assassination of the Tsar by Alexander Solovyov who fired, and missed, five times, the Tsar suffering nothing more than a hole in his outer coat. Solovyov was hanged on May 28.

The repression over the next 8 months was severe, with 16 Nihilists being hanged throughout Russia including 14 in the region of Kiev. Remarkably, the only three nihilists (Popko, Kravchinsky and Goldenberg) who actually killed people escaped the scaffold. Popko escaped, Kravchinsky escaped to London (to be run over by a train) and Goldenberg hung himself after confessing his crimes to a fellow ‘revolutionary’ (actually police agent) who was planted in the cell with him. On the 20th of February 1880 a nihilist named Miodetsky took a shot at one of the two Governor Generals in charge of the repression, Governor General Loris-Melikov. Once again he missed his shot and was executed two days later. Nihilists made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in marksmanship.

The repression of the state raised the question, in stark terms, as to how effective the current strategy of Land and Freedom was. In June 1879, a conference was held to evaluate the methods of violence used by the group. This resulted in the dissolution of Land and Freedom and the creation of Black Repartition, which held that militant propaganda was the appropriate method for moving forward, and the People’s Will, which condemned the Tsar to death. Black Repartition exits the stage as they leave the arena of direct contestation with the state, but they are of note as the location of George Plekhanov, the most notable Marxist of the time and up to the period of 1905..

Before the exposition of the final act of the Russian nihilists play, it is worthwhile to take pause. Beyond just assassination plots and reading literature, the nihilists were engaged in what they believed was a deep challenge to all aspects of Russian life. Along with atheism, non-monogamy, bank robbery (with several tunneling episodes to their credit), and forgery (especially of the ‘passport’ documentation that served as the Russian’s primary identification papers) the nihilists lived in communal apartments with people their own age, sharing resources, and devoting their lives to ‘the cause’. The state made attempts to infiltrate the nihilists; in return the nihilists also infiltrated the state. Their subterfuge of the Kiev gaol has already been mentioned, but far more significant was the nihilist by the name of Nicholas Kletochnikov, who actually infiltrated the secret police (the Third Section), feeding the nihilists names of informers, locations of planned raids and copies of official seals. The popularity of the secret society gave the nihilists a degree of seriousness that doesn’t exist in the more ‘counter-cultural’ parallels to their lifestyle today, but the attempts at living both within and against the current order continues to be popular in the same way.

The last act of the Russian nihilists

After the dissolution of Land and Freedom, the People’s Will devoted themselves to the assassination of the Tsar. They did not see this death as linked to a larger social struggle. They did not have the infrastructure, social solution, or desire to assume power, and believed that the institution of the Russian autocracy was firmly in place. Their desire was not a coup, it was vengeance. The nihilists also held on to the belief that if their positive actions towards social change (like their organizing of the peasants) were so easily thwarted by the malevolence-of-neglect by the state than negative action (like assassination) would more likely result in substantive change in the system. Finally there was a fatalist and deeply-held belief that destruction was worthwhile for its own sake, and not because of humanitarian, political, or social reasons.

After assessing the failures of nihilist sharpshooters the decision was made to attack the Tsar with demolitions. In November of 1879 the nihilists attempted to mine the train route that the Tsar would take from Livadia, on the Crimean coast near Yalta, to St. Petersburg at three different points. The first was made near Odessa, organized by Vira Figner, and involved the attempt to insert a nihilist into the position of railway watchman, but when the Tsar took a different route this plan was abandoned. The second happened just outside Aleksandrovsk and involved an intricate plan of nihilist Andrei Zhelyabov (1850–1881) to portray the launching of a tannery business by day and to plant dynamite by night. When the train carrying the Tsar came through the explosives refused to ignite. The final point was organized, by Alexander Mikhaylov, near Moscow. It involved the renting of an apartment a mere 50 yards from the rail line, the digging of a tunnel from the apartment to the line and the setting of the charge at the train line. Naturally this plan sounds better on paper than in practice. The digging involved several more people than the neighbors believed lived in the apartment, which prompted the response to the queries about the household’s food consumption to be levied against a legendary cat and not a group of nihilists digging a tunnel to assassinate the Tsar. As with most tunnel digging, disposing of the dirt from the tunnel involved a system of dragging the dirt out of the tunnel and into a spare bedroom and then scattered through the yard at night. Naturally the land through which the tunnel lay was sandy and easily flooded resulting in an entirely miserable experience. As they approached the tracks the deafening sound of each passing train confirmed each diggers worst suspicion that they were about to be caved in upon. Naturally the train containing the Tsar was not the one derailed by the firing of the explosive; the only casualty was the Tsar’s jam from his Crimean estate.

As no nihilist was captured and the explosion was a close call there was a general consensus that this was the right approach. The next attempt was made at the Tsar’s Winter Palace on the 5th of February 1880. It involved a nihilist taking a job within the palace, smuggling amounts of dynamite into the cellar, and at the appropriate time igniting this explosive, taking out the guard’s quarters in between. Once again the timing of the action was off. The scheduled arrival of the Tsar was delayed which meant that the explosives went off prior to Alexander’s arrival. Eleven people were killed and fifty injured. The next attempt involved the submersion of a hundredweight of explosive under the Kamenny Bridge on the Catherine Canal, which the Tsar had to pass to travel to the train station, which was thwarted by the tardiness of one of the conspirators. Another attempt began as the ambitious mining of a road that the Tsar would pass from the harbor to the train in Odessa. When the Tsars travel plans changed the effort was abandoned.

The rest of 1880 found the nihilists concerned with tracking the traveling arrangements of the Tsar. They found that Sunday was the best day to strike, as the Tsar usually followed a singular route to and from the military reviewing grounds. It was on the corner of the Nevsky Prospekt and Malaya Sadovaya Street where the nihilists would strike. This involved renting an apartment, digging a tunnel and attempting to act like proper citizens. Their failure to convince their neighbors resulted in a raid on their premises by an inspecting party who did not happen to notice the piles of wet earth covered by straw and coke. On the 27th of February, Zhelyabov, the organizer of the operation, was arrested — which almost brought down the operation.

After the Tsar reviewed the troops, on March 1st, he visited his cousin the Grand Duchess Catherine. This meant that he would not likely travel the intersection where the nihilist plot was focused and instead required the use of the small (five pound) homemade hand grenades that were prepared for such a possibility. Four nihilists put themselves into position; two were able to launch their bombs, the second catching both the Tsar and Ignatei Grinevitski, who threw the bomb, both of whom died. Five members of the plot to assassinate the Tsar were ceremoniously hung on April the 3rd, wearing a placard stating ‘Tsaricide’. Those hung included Andrei Zhelyabov, Nicholas Rysakov, Sophia Perovsky, Nikolai Kibalchich and Timothy Mikhaylov. Their hanging was not by the dropping of the floor, or the breaking of their neck, but by the slow suffocation of those hung. The deaths took such a long time, and were so public, that the result was a loss of face for the regime.

Thus ends the period of Russian nihilism. The heir to the throne of Russia, Alexander III (1884–1894) was an autocrat in the old style, brutally suppressed any remaining nihilists who dared show themselves after the fall of the Tsar. He believed in ruling the empire by ‘nationalism, Eastern Orthodoxy and autocracy’ with which he was successful until his death. At which time his son Nicholas II took the throne to be toppled by the Russian Revolution of 1917.

That nihilism has continued to be an overlooked branch of the socialist tree is surprising given the innovations of the movement. Beyond just the nihilist approach to social change, which has clearly been influential far beyond the socialist tradition, is the systematic way in which nihilists attempted to extend their ideas beyond just their politics. Given the repressive environment in which their ideas flourished, the breadth and scope of the Russian nihilists continue to bear the fruit of committed individuals bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Bibliography

  • Nihilists; Russian radicals and revolutionaries in the reign of Alexander II, 1855–81 Hingley, Ronald. New York : Delacorte Press, [1969, c1967]
  • Russian Philosophy, Vol. II, Edited by James M. Edie and Mary-Barbara Zeldin, University of Tennessee Press [March 1994]
  • Brittanica 2003
  • Peter Marshall, in his book A History of Anarchism
  • Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice
  • Broido, Vera. (1977). Apostles Into Terrorist: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. New York: The Viking Press.

Chapter 2: What is Left? Nihilism vs. Socialism

The history of socialism is a noble tradition. It has been an epithet used by tyrants to curse their enemies and a flag by which working people transformed their workplace and the societies that they lived in. Almost every story we hear that involves someone standing up to authority involves socialism. It is the valiant story of individuals and groups who attempted to transform the status quo of their time against overwhelming odds. Socialism has changed peoples’ expectations of rights, fairness, work, and the kind of leadership they should expect.

On the one hand, socialism has completely transformed society over the past 200 years. More than just the revolutions that have had some success in various parts of the world under a socialist flag, socialism can be directly credited for the existence of unions that defend workers rights, a universal education system in most parts of the world, a general health care system (especially in many Western countries), and a system that hybridized elements of State protectionism and laissez fair capitalism.

On the other hand, socialism has been an abject failure. Socialism has never usurped Capitalism, in a meaningful or long lasting way, as an economic system. Most socialized systems of care balance the cruelty of benign neglect with the indifference of the queue. Even Libratory Socialism concerns itself primarily with navel gazing, the cacophony of the mob or the selfishness of the individual. Socialism has served better as a corrective to a world-system than it has as the transformation of one system for another.

The family tree

Socialism comes out of a historical lineage of ideas that stretches from the Ancient Greeks, the Polish Socinians, the Enlightenment and classic liberalism. While it is primarily understood as a political philosophy in resistance to the status quo of the 19th and 20th centuries it actually agreed with the majority of the choices that those in power made. It agreed that aboriginal people, wherever they were found, should be integrated into the life of the society, it agreed with the rise of industrialization (with very few exceptions), and it agreed with basic economic principles (wealth, price, exchange).

The tendencies in socialism that came to be known as ‘Marxist’ or ‘Communist’ exemplify this position. The rhetoric was always that the goal was the direct and communal control of society for the common benefit of all members. The reality was two-fold. The conception of history that came out of the Marxist tradition (dialectical materialism) dictated that the transformation of society would pass through capitalism, as it had through feudalism, to transform into socialism and eventually communism. This meant that progressivism was embedded within this (the dominant) branch of socialism. This meant (especially prior to the Russian Revolution) that the path to revolution had to pass through the industrialization of society, and that the places where industrialization was most advanced were the places where socialist revolution was most likely to occur. Imagine the surprise when the backward (industrially speaking) country of Russia became the location of the first socialist revolution. This surprise must have transformed to horror when Lenin’s policy of War Communism and the New Economic Policy, which mimicked the worst aspects of capitalist extraction of value and allowed a limited return to free trade, became the baseline on which the Soviet economy was based.

To what extent did the libertarian tradition in socialism also represent this position? While the basic position of libertarian socialism seems innocuous (who could be against ‘freedom’ or ‘liberty’?) the actual positions taken by libertarian socialists mirror the larger socialist movement. Instead of arguing for the creation of an administrative body to manage the transformation to a socialist society, libertarian socialists argue for ‘self-management’ in ‘free federations’ to deal with the question of power. Outside of the question of how practical (or often) these ideas are in a moment of contestation with the status quo is the question of what this practice means for libertarian socialists and whether this practice has informed socialism as a corrective to the worst excesses of the Capitalist system or as the correct vehicle for the transformation of society.

The primary mechanism by which libertarian socialists have practiced their socialism is by attempting to “build the new world in the shell of the old.” This practice extends from the idea that the socialist society must be exemplified by our behavior today. In order to create a self-managed society libertarian socialists would begin by self-managing their current struggles and organizations. In addition they would connect these self-management schemes through ‘federalism’ that would give them the ability to engage in self-defense and share resources. Over time, and especially in the past few decades these ideas have become increasingly popular in the capitalist space. Many work places no longer organize themselves in the classic ‘pyramid’ structure with a boss at the top and a clear organizational structure built on top of the line worker. Instead these work places have integrated the innovation of ‘self-management’ and allow for ‘teams’ to assume responsibility for the amount and form of their production. Arguably these innovations have been superficial, as the pyramid structure hasn’t been entirely destroyed but the experience of the line worker has qualitatively changed. Consumer cooperatives have benefited from libertarian principles. By cutting out the profit motive, they provide low cost services and goods to their members. By operating under principles of representational democracy there is a degree of control and participation far beyond the typical corporation. The secondary mechanism of libertarian socialist practice has been in revolutionary moments. Here it has always experienced the tension of its, ultimately, humanist perspective with the exigency of the revolutionary moment. This is best exemplified by the events in Spain where the CNT joined with the Catalan government in a common front against Franco’s fascism. This decision was based on the fear of isolation by the CNT and the belief that it was a higher priority to defeat fascism than to finish the revolution. Placing the war before revolution meant, ultimately, collaboration with the state against the revolution.

If socialism has been, at best, a corrective to the worst excesses of Capitalism then where else can we draw our inspiration from? If the mainstream of socialism (so called state socialism, communism, or social democracy) is solidly interested in the same progressive, economic assimilation as the dominant world then we could look to its rivals. If these rivals (libertarian and utopian socialists) have shown that they are co-optable or worse, that they are not capable of being effective in the time of crisis then where do we turn? If people couldn’t effectively combat the system of the 19th century when it was just becoming a worldwide system rationalizing everything, including its opposition, what hope do we have today long after the fact?

Russian Socialism

100 years later socialism was transformed by traveling to the rest of the world. African and Arab Socialism were innovations that reflected experiences that were authentically different than the socialism of the European Continent. The problem was that they were also directly reactionary to the Soviet Experience and were thus limited in their scope. They assumed colonialism, Marx, and a certain degree of nationalism. While these assumptions were relevant given the circumstances in which they occurred, they transformed these socialisms into purely political practice instead of more general political philosophy.

During the 19th century there was a strain of what is called socialism that, arguably, did originate outside of the mainstream of European thought. This Russian socialism prefigures Arab and African socialism in that it attempted, although by no means in these terms, to externalize the Russian experience in the vehicle of socialism. What Russian socialism had in common with European socialism was a belief in science as the means by which Christian parochialism could be challenged and by which the world could be truly understood. It also shared connection, through Russian émigrés like M. Bakunin and A. Herzen, to the greater Socialist movement happening in Europe. This is where the similarities end.

Philosophically the trajectory that Socialism was part of, the Liberal Tradition, advocated freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of thought. Even if the mainstream of Socialism eventually took a different tack from this origin, the basis of the Socialist project was in these values. These values were not part of the Russian experience. Instead Russian socialism started from a rejection of morality, truth, beauty, love, and social convention. As a political philosophy Russian socialism begins by questioning the validity of all forms of authority and ends by practicing the adage “The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!” The Russian Socialists did not see the path to social revolution as progressive. Instead of seeing an industrial proletariat as the revolutionary agent the Russians saw their own rural peasantry. In 1861, when the peasants were freed from servitude but chained to debt, the Russian Socialists believed an uprising was inevitable. When it did not occur, nor could be inspired to occur, the Russian Socialists took action. Instead of locking themselves up in the Library of England for 10 years the Russian socialists moved into group houses with their comrades, took daring and ridiculous actions (like handing a socialist pamphlet to the sitting Tsar), and eventually committed Tsaricide. Of course, we know the Russian Socialists by another name, Nihilists.

Nihilism meet Anarchism

“Not until the movement started by Proudhon had reached Russia did the “propaganda of action” come into it. In Russia the government, controlling the military, was able to check instantly any movement which might appear in any of the few big cities. In the country no movement could have effect.”

Marshall Everett

Libertarian Socialists also had another name that may be useful to differentiate from it from its Socialist brethren, anarchism. If Libertarian Socialism is overly concerned with self-management, federations, and workingmen’s associations then anarchism may very well have been concerned with how to integrate the Russian innovations of nihilism. Bakunin is the case in point. Revisionists, of the Libertarian Socialist stripe, would focus entirely on Bakunin’s positive agenda of arguing for collective action to achieve anarchy; freedom of press, speech and assembly; and the eventual voluntary associations that would federate to organize society, including the economy. They do not attend to his negative agenda of demolishing political institutions, political power, government in general, and the State. As Bakunin provided the Nihilists with a formative gift in his essay “Reaction in Germany” (1842), he also received a gift from the practice of the Nihilist Dmitry Karakozov and his failed assassination attempt of the Tsar Alexandar II. Ten years later this nihilist practice (that was is full swing by this time) became the policy of the largest anarchist federation on the European Continent. This so called “propaganda by the deed” is the primary historical vehicle by which we know anarchism (and which Libertarian Socialists spend much of their time apologizing for and distancing themselves from).

“Terrorism arose because of the necessity of taking the great governmental organization in the flank before it could discover that an attack was planned. Nurtured in hatred, it grew up in an electric atmosphere filled by the enthusiasm that is awakened by a noble deed.” The “great subterranean stream” of nihilism thus had its rise. From nihilism and its necessary sudden outbreaks anarchism borrowed terrorism, the propaganda of action.”

Sergius Stepniak

The difference between “propaganda by the deed” and the nihilist practice of assassination is intention. The anarchists continued, due to their relationship to Socialism, to believe in a positive, progressive route toward their social ends and to be engaged in violence against heads of states and their lackeys with the (utopian) belief that the population bearing witness to these acts would both see the fallibility of power AND would rise up to fill this void. The nihilists had no positive intentions. In the parlance of modern anarchism they only desired to take direct action against great offense.

“Anarchism and nihilism are two words familiar to the young and now attractive to them. They do not believe in building a new society within the shell of the old. They believe that the old must be destroyed first. That is nihilism. In a way it is the denial of the “here and now.”

Dorothy Day

Let us state it clearly. The Socialist conception of history is a progressive tradition. The Marxists call it historical materialism and it is well stated, in their own language, by this quote from the Preface to Marx’s Contribution to the Political Economy

No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

The Nihilist concept of history was not progressive. The Nihilist’s opposition to the state is just a special case of his or her opposition to almost everything: the family, traditional art, bourgeois culture, comfortable middle-aged people, the British monarchy, etc. and is not oriented around their formulation of how to achieve a better world. In practice there were plenty of Nihilists who may have desired an anti-statist communal society but did not particularly see their resistance to the regime as linked to this desire.

Socialism will continue to have its adherents, who are attracted to its perspective of history, its democratic perspective of inclusion and participation, and its apparent dominance in the field of social contestation. Its criticism of Nihilism begins with the position of deep revulsion at its a-humanist perspective and practice. If we were to review the history of Socialism, we would see that a rejection of humanism is not necessary to inflict involuntary horrors upon real living people. If there is a lesson to take from the Soviet Union, The People’s Republic of China, or the Khmer Rouge it is that good intentions, and the practice of historical materialism, can stack up the bodies as well as the systems they would oppose.

What Nihilism provides then is an alternative to the alternative that does not embed an idealist image of the new world it would create. It is not an Idealist project. Nihilism states that it is not useful to talk about the society you ‘hold in your stomach’, the things you would do ‘if only you got power’, or the vision that you believe that we all share. What is useful is the negation of the existing world. Nihilism is the political philosophy that begins with the negation of this world. What exists beyond those gates has yet to be written.

Chapter 3: Nihilism as Strategy

(Nihilism) stands like an extreme that cannot be gotten beyond, and yet it is the only true path of going beyond; it is the principle of a new beginning.

Maurice Blanchot, The Limits of Experience: Nihilism

If we desire another world, what is necessary for us to do to achieve this end? Specifically what changes must we enact personally, socially, and as a movement?[1] Beyond a coming-to-power, what is the task of resolving the contradictions of not only the current methodological system of social organization, but the partial solutions offered by others who would also pursue social power? To what extent must these changes happen now or can they be part of the action-as-consequence?

Here is where nihilism can provide some new perspective. A definition of nihilism[2] could be the realization “that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility.” This exposes one of the greatest idealistic flaws of modern activism: The articulation of the specific world-to-be as a result of your actions does not guarantee that world’s creation.

It is the tradition of the materialist conception of history that allows for the fallacy of causality to pollute the spirit of today. If production and exchange are the basis of every social structure throughout history then we can limit ourselves to studying them to understand how any transition to another world may occur. Therefore an understanding of economic systems should suffice to understand the strategic opportunities for transition. Since the vast majority of economics is understanding the relationship of institutions (which are only accountable to the current power structure) to each other, such an analysis seems like trying to understand an internal combustion engine from the motion of a car.

Materialism has largely been seen as an incomplete conception of history. This is partially due to the power structures embedded in the formation of most institutions but also due to the moral forces that challenge materialism’s functionalist underpinnings. In the simple case, a benevolent God created the universe and has some vested interest in how things happen here. Therefore moral systems exist in the name of God’s interests, as stated in holy texts and by fallible interpreters. Since the dispersion of the Reformation and the secularization of the rise of Science, morality is usually defined in relation to politics. This has led to the moral component to Marx’s analysis and of the Left in general.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. [The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels]

Moral value, or ‘good’, is defined by the specific cultural values of Europe, of a developed Christian worldview, and the developing beliefs in individualism, meritocracy, and mercantilism. These are still the hurdles that even the most starry-eyed of protesters trip over, sometime spectacularly.[3]

Historical evidence, if it is to believed, would actually demonstrate that the visions of “successful” social revolutionaries have shockingly little to do with the form of the new society they create. Take the French Revolution where the form of class society was to be changed. It did, from the three estates of church, nobility, and commoners to a powerful state, centralized bureaucracy, and burgeoning capitalist infrastructure. All it took was the Committee of Public Safety, a Reign of Terror, and a 15-year Total War effort that would transform warfare forever. For the Russian Revolution many differing tendencies aspired to revolutionary victory. Its eventual leaders called for “All power to the Soviets” and ended up settling for crushing their opposition and enacting the New Economic Policy.[4] The twentieth century has ended with a steep decline in not only successful social change but also a poverty of visionaries who are pursuing change at all.

Anarchism and nihilism share a common antecedent. Bakunin’s dictum “Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all life. The desire for destruction is also a creative desire.” in 1842 sparked both movements. Nihilism’s cultural peak was in the 1860’s, although its activism continued almost to the early twentieth century. It is arguable that anarchists inherited ‘propaganda by the deed’ from the Russian nihilists. Nihilism’s theorists[5] continued to be cited as precursors to the revolutionary activity in Russia until they were ‘disappeared’ well into the Bolshevik regime.

What does nihilism have to offer beyond a mere avocation of destruction? The nihilist position does not allow for the comforts of this world. Not only is God dead to a nihilist, but also everything that has taken God’s place; idealism, consciousness, reason, progress, the masses, culture, etc. Without the comforts of this metaphysical ‘place’ a strategic nihilist is free to drift unfettered by the consequences of her actions. “A nihilist is a person who does not bow down to any authority, who does not accept any principle on faith, however much that principle may be revered”[6] Philosophically much has resulted from the nihilist ideas on value, aesthetics and practice. Most notably in Adorno’s conception of Negative Dialectics, a principle which refuses any kind of affirmation or positivity, a principle of thorough-going negativity. The nihilist tradition includes Adorno, Nietzsche, Bakunin, much of classic Russian literature, Dada, punk rock, Heidegger, existentialist, post-structuralist and post-modern thinkers, and much of anarchism.

What does this really mean on the modern stage? Strategic nihilism allows for the possibility that there is no future. The possibility of radical social transformation then becomes unhinged from the utopian aspirations of its proponents. Their ‘hope’ can clearly be shown to be disconnected from the social and material reality of both the society as-it-is and the potential society that-could-be. If the destruction of the current order must be achieved, for our own potential to be realized, for its own sake, for the children, it may be better to do it with open eyes than purposely blinded ones. A strategic nihilist understands that an ethical revolution does not create an ethical society. An ethical anarchist is not one concerned with non-utopian social transformation, only an idealized one. A strategic nihilist understands that the infrastructure of the modern world embeds its own logic and inhabitants and the nihilist is willing to toss it asunder anyway.

Vaneigem states in Revolution of Everyday Life, that “Juvenile delinquents are the legitimate heirs of Dada.” This speaks to a positive nihilism that may be a comforting way in which we can approach the troubling consequences imbedded within nihilism’s logic. Anarchists have generally accepted property destruction in their humanist vision of a ethical social change. Things matter less than people. Nihilism informs us that this dichotomy ties us to the world we must supercede, before we are capable of actually having social relationships with people and not things. Strategic nihilism provides us a solution to existentialism and liberalism. It argues for an active pose in this world and for the inviability of reformist solutions. When confronted with the horror of your existence, race towards the bleak consequences, not away. Deal with the moralism explicit in your stated irrelevance by identity politics, communism, and postmodernism with a sword in hand. Moralists should be spared no patience.

What if you are struggling in ‘the movement’? Nihilism can provide you a suite of tools. The first is deep skepticism. Every action, every meeting, is filled with politicians-in-waiting who are easy to discern, with their plastic smiles and fluency with ‘the process’. A strategic nihilism allows its practitioner to see these types for what they are; and the ability to do with them what is necessary by your analysis, and not theirs.

The second is a new eye towards history. Whereas before it may have been easy to get caught up in the details of the who’s, when’s and why’s of the Paris Commune, now it is easy to see the failure in the partiality without getting bogged down in the specific halfmeasures. Time devoted to arguing how many angels dance on the head of a pin is time away from the pursuit of anything else.

Finally, a strategic nihilist position allows for a range of motion heretofore not available. The ethical limitations of ‘doing the right thing’ have transformed movements for social change. From pacifists and ethicists who sanctimoniously wait for the club to fall or the strength of their convictions to shatter capitalism, to adherents of the Vietnam-era form of social protest, it is clear that the terrain allowed by morality is bleak and filled with quagmire. Armed struggle groups, who led non-existent masses toward their better world have shown similar failure. If these are not the models that frame your conception of change, you are free to make moves on a chessboard that no one else is playing on. You begin to write the rules that those in power are not prepared for. You can take angles, you can pace yourself, you can start dreaming big again, instead of just dreaming as large as the next demo, action, or war.

Chapter 4: What I wish I had said September 12, 2001

Today, March 11, 2004, there was another major bombing in Madrid, Spain. The ‘facts’ in the case are still coming out (12 hours later) but it appears that the eye of accusation is envisioning the event as an Al Quaeda plot. The first 24 hours of mainstream news coverage after the September 11 attacks was an interesting glance behind the curtain. Not only were there reports (that I never heard followed up on) of there being additional attacks on government buildings in DC, but the blame for the attacks was all over the map: kind of a who’s who of America’s shit list.

The coverage then from the anarchist and left press was typically one-dimensional, as the initial response to the new Spain attack appears to be also. An example is in order. The report begins with a round or two of humanist hand-wringing, all about the children, the terror and how targeting ‘innocent’ people is no way to change the world. Then come the limp accusations about state terror. “How come we are forced to write this lament against the civilian population by a group without a state when the State does really bad things too. The State is even worse than the topic of my moralistic diatribe!” Then there is a point or two about bad policies and how, if there were anarchy, or justice, or whatever-in-the-fuck, this would never have happened. The report is wrapped up with the sober analysis about how we should change the world by changing the fundamental problem and not ‘play the same game’ as those with missile technology and a standing army.[7]

It is as if there were a central committee writing these things, press release style, making sure that no one is off script. There is no possible way that anyone could believe that there are people fighting a war against the system, people who I may not wish to win, but who am I to judge. Until the day that I take up arms against the state, resisting the enemy on the only field that it understands, I am going to keep my mouth fucking shut about the correct or incorrect ways to fight the totality…

I am not going to tell you about how my eyes are running with tears because of all the children who will not be coming home to parents tonight. My eyes are dry. They are not dry because of the greater crimes of the United States, or Spanish governments. Sure, their crimes are legend, but if I were to cry today about this one crime, what possible chance could I have to ever stop crying. This is the world I live in. If I am not going to burn myself to ash I have to deal with yet another headline about consequences as exactly what it is- people died in the course of a total war where one side has very few options at its disposal with which to attack domination.

My question is, to what extent will there ever be resolution to the Wars of Terror? Just as we know the pattern of behavior of the nonparticipant analysts of this latest action, we also know the behavior of the system itself. Of course there will be increased repression. Of course the ETA (the Basque separatists who were initially accused of the crime but may end up being off the hook for this action) will be crushed. More allies will join on to the American-lead War against Terror. More money will be spent that will result in a higher degree of examination into our personal lives and greater amount of militarization of our society. This cycle will repeat until either the entire social apparatus collapses under the weight of its own repressive infrastructure or there is total conformity under our compassionate overlords. I am betting on the former.

To defend acts of ‘terror’ would be to choose to spend an endless period of time debating points of history, philosophy, and values — to what end? I am not convinced that lashing out against the State in media savvy public displays of violence has much connection at all to dismantling it. If I knew that it did, I would use this opportunity to beg your action along this line, or at the very least to ask you to tape me up for my run at the prize. Moreover I am suspicious that what is being presented to me as reality isn’t the half of it.

I may not be a believer, and will not be a beneficiary either way, but I also do not think that the conclusion to this ‘total war’ is going to be anything like we suspect it is going to be. Revolutionaries, of every stripe, have been remarkably, consistently, wrong about the consequences of their behavior. What I do believe is that the radical action taken by a very few individuals today strike more awe in me than terror. The cognitive, spiritual, and a-humanist leap taken on a train in Madrid, much like the one taken by 15 hijackers in 2001, has more value to add to an understanding about what a revolutionary practice is going to look like in the 21st century than a 1000 black blocs or a million demonstrations against the state and for the cameras.

[1] The term movement is used to provide perspective here. It is a matter of scale in Western Culture to begin with the self and end with the society. While we reject this tautology, we embrace the clarity of its apparent simplicity.

[2] There are about as many definitions of nihilism as there are of Anarchism. The difference is that to the extent that there is a social phenomenon of nihilism it is largely regressive and insular. Anarchism has puppet shows, nihilism only has black coffee and cigarettes.

[3] When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family’s house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I’m having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can’t believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be. I felt after talking to you that maybe you didn’t completely believe me. I think it’s actually good if you don’t, because I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of independent critical thinking. And I also realise that with you I’m much less careful than usual about trying to source every assertion that I make. A lot of the reason for that is I know that you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I’m doing. All of the situation that I tried to enumerate above — and a lot of other things — constitutes a somewhat gradual — often hidden, but nevertheless massive — removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive. Rachel Corrie (to her mother)

[4] “This policy was initiated in 1921 to replace the policy of War Communism, which had prevailed during the Russian civil war and led to declines in agricultural and (non-military) industrial production… a policy of substituting a tax instead of requisitions; of allowing the peasantry to dispose of their surplus within the limits of “local trade”; of allowing the development of capitalist concessions to a delimited extent, and of state capitalism. This state capitalism, in industry and agriculture, was allowed a considerable field of possibilities in which to develop, while the proletarian government retained control of the key industries, state banking; that nationalization of the land remained and that the state held a monopoly of foreign trade.” Encyclopedia of Marxism

[5] Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, and Herzen

[6] Ivan Turgenev’s 1861 novel Fathers And Sons

[7] These thoughts courtesy of the ‘anarchist’ writer anarcho at anarchism.ws

Anarchy and Nihilism: Consequences

(Anarchist Library)

Introduction to Consequences

This is the second in a series of pamphlets that draw connections between the tradition of the political nihilist tendency of 19th century Czarist Russia and current anarchist thought.

As Nihilism, Anarchy, and the 21st Century (the first pamphlet in the series) begged the question of what relevance nihilism has to anarchy it could be argued that these essays beg the opposite question. What does anarchy have to offer nihilism?

That the range of anarchists includes the clowns from protest alley, micrometer-toting specialists of oppression-identification, and Marxists who wear black flags isn’t a condemnation of anarchist ideas but is a significant reason for pause. In that pause we have to challenge our assumptions about anarchy. What do we really share with others in the big-tent (or should it be called a circus tent) of anarchism?

These essays are increasingly specific. Perhaps this will give more people a toe-hold so that they scale their own heights. At the end of these essays there is a specific invitation.

There have been several opportunities for me to speak on nihilism over the past two years. What has been surprising in that time hasn’t been the apparent antagonism but the quiet interest and excitement. It is still unclear how this interest is going to materialize into a discrete practice, but I won’t be alone in answering that question.

Chapter 1: Consequences — On revolutionary despair

A nihilist is a person who does not bow down to any authority, who does not accept any principle on faith, however much that principle may be revered.

Arkady

  1. There is not a liberating vision for humanity. Every so-called revolutionary at best fails and at worst establishes yet another fiefdom. The rhetoric of liberation makes for great bedtime stories, keeps starry-eyed dreamers warm at night, and should be seen for exactly what it is. Charlatans either believe that they speak for the oppressed and that the weight of their opinion is greater because they summon the power of representation, or that they are the first ones to come up with the ideas that they have.
  2. The idea of a singular, recursive, or iterative approach to positive social change works better in a classroom than in lived experience. The kind of social science that results from these explorations resembles a secular monotheism. As an organization of society, or a modeling of the transformation of society, apocalypse has a long track record and it is entirely reactionary. This is to say that whether called an insurrection, a revolution, a singularity, or a collapse, a similar thing is intended: more of the same.
  3. Is the quiet misery of daily life preferable to a reactionary rupture? The lesson of the German Revolution (1918–1919) is the lesson of historical Anarchism: glorious failure. Whether it is France, Spain, Germany, or Russia the story of social revolution has not been one of triumph. Instead, and at best, it has been a set of stories about moments worth living.
  4. How many lives are we willing to sacrifice for our moment? Shall we stack them for barricades? Fill the trenches with them after the tanks roll in? Use their blood to write the history books that tell of our glorious time?
  5. Nechayev did not tell us how to be good people. His concept of an army, or even a secret society, of revolutionary supermen is laughable, but perhaps the reason for laughter isn’t immediately clear. Lenin was clear how much the Catechism influenced his thought. It was The Prince for the revolutionary set. The Catechism provides a moral roadmap, an action plan that has demonstratable results. List your human targets in order of their crimes, harden yourself, and eliminate these targets in order. The greatest criminals are the first eliminated.
  6. Psychology has made the role of superman an embarrassing one. The social milieu of radicalism only allows room for sensitive inhuman success stories. Broken people are highly favored as long as they are broken along the lines of survival and politeness. The Nechayevs of today fade out of sight after no greater crimes than petty larceny and broken hearts. The Machiavellis implement simple strategies to make sure the supermen stay occupied with irrelevancies.
  7. Revolutionary strategy is a failure from the perspective of providing a mechanism to get from here to there. This is not to say that there is not the possibility of wide social transformation but that to the extent that it follows the lead of the glorious losers (anarchists), Nechys, or Micheals of the past it will fail in succeeding either on its own terms or on the terms of being a liberated social change.
  8. This is not to say that we are free or satisfied. We are at an impasse. This impasse is one part frustration at the rhetoric of transition available to us (without words it is hard to understand where one is or where others are), another part anger at the grinding death of a denatured daily life and another part ennui at the futility of our social or political power. Without the ability to control our own life, political action, and social relationships, our vivid imagination lay fallow. There is nothing to eat here but a gray paste that keeps us alive. But for what?
  9. This problem extends to the west generally. We understand that past formulations are out of date. We lack for new ones.
  10. New efforts are being made but they are orthogonal to the approach of the humanist West. They are, to put it gently, more severe than the values and theory of modernity allow for. They are, ultimately, goal-less. These are actions that are interpreted by others but move so rapidly as to be entirely chased by the mullahs, fatwas, and analysts. These new efforts are the language of the disenfranchised humanity. There is no hope. There are only casualties.
  11. The suicide bomber is the muse of our time. They do not inspire us to sing of freedom, justice, and dignity but of consequence.

Chapter 2: Nihilism and Science

There is the history of nihilism that idealized natural sciences as a single solution to the question of material existence without God and another that would critique science upon empirical, ideological, and ethical grounds.

“A decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet,”

Bazarov

The history of nihilism is of a moment in time. Russia in the 1860s was a suffocating place. The majority of the population were serfs breaking under their new freedom (to make payments to their former lords by decree of the Czar in exchange for working their land) or choking under the superstition and conservatism of the Orthodox Church. Russia was also at a crossroads: having proven itself among the great empires of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon it also found itself an intellectual backwater. Very little of the democratic unrest that had affected the Continent had consequence in Russia. Even Czar Alexander II’s dramatic move of freeing the serfs was more motivated by his romantic sensibility after having read Turgenev’s “A Sportsman’s Sketches” than an urge to transform Russian society.

As a consequence of this environment historic nihilism embraced positions that we could largely understand as reactionary rather than as intentional. (This is something that is endemic to revolutionary traditions and, arguably, should be included in their definition.) Given how short the life span of the historic nihilist period was (spanning both the foundational and revolutionary period) it is hard to imagine what the consequence of a rigorous universal skepticism would have been if it had had the time to develop and transform. What would a group of people with nothing to lose have been capable of?

If philosophy is the practice of tilling the earth then it is no wonder that most thinkers spend their time wandering overturned soil searching for lost seeds and replanting. If nihilism was the political philosophy of skepticism in a time when society was framed by the Orthodox Church and Czarist regime it’s no wonder that it left very little room for tradition. If the Church represented spiritualism, superstition and sentimentality then a philosophy for the modern time would have to reject all of these things. If the Czar represented the ossified autocratic bigotry of a monarchy then freedom would have to be the progressive, democratic republicanism of France. This is the limitation of parochial skepticism.

How is inquiry limited?

The history of science is a semantic journey through eras. Science was once concerned with the formation of the world along with how we should live in it and was indistinguishable from Philosophy. The terms were synonymous. Later there was fragmentation: understanding the world through experimentation and sense perception (empiricism) became a discipline distinct from understanding the world through reasoning (Rationalism). This dialectic was resolved in the scientific world by Newton’s combining of the axiomatic proof with the mechanical discipline of physical observation resulting in the system of verifiable prediction that largely remains intact.

Science became a codified and bureaucratic process that involved the relationship between the practitioners of science, financiers of science, and an increasing number of Scientific Societies (post-16th century). The role of a Scientist became distinct from that of one who sought knowledge about the natural world. A Scientist was one who both went through training that framed the scope of their inquiry but, to succeed, because adroit at the political machinations of court, papal, and eventually secular society.

There were discontents to this normalization of inquiry. Alchemists blended understandings of multiple theoretical and spiritual traditions in the pursuit of solutions to speculatively enormous problems (transmutation, age, disease). The heterodoxy that alchemists relied upon was eliminated by the emphasis on quantitative experimentation, and reproducible results.

Technology, in the form of the Industrial Revolution, as an organization of social life insulated homogeneity by delivering results. Technology is best understood as a separate but related field of inquiry from Science with a field of vision further narrowed by the motivation of creating applications. The mass production of technology has never been the result of any other force than the desires of power. In terms of the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century this looked like the transformation of the social life of England into one of an urban population dominated by factories. It also involved the extraction of resources across half the globe (India being a generous source of capital for industrial England) into the control of very few.

In the name of efficiency the product is the goal not the process of discovery and examination.

What is the limitation of specialization? Questions are no longer the pursuit of technicians or philosophers, answers are. Solutions to human problems are framed in material terms along entirely different lines than the cause. Corrective lenses do not cure bad eyesight, or stop one from watching television or staring at a computer screen, but allow one to continue exactly the pursuits that eyesight is good for. This kind of leveling exemplifies the motivation of specialization. If the structure of daily life forces certain kind of behavior (for instance the ability to see books and screens) then the kind of characteristics that could develop by people without sight are left undiscovered. As daily life constrains our options further we are forced into narrower and narrow tunnels. Eventually we find that we have chosen one thing, at the cost of every other thing, and in the name of survival.

What form should our skepticism take?

There is an active conversation among radicals and greens that begs response. The classic presentation would be a dichotomy between the allegation that technology is neutral on the one hand and that it embeds an essential ‘negative’ value on the other. Clearly technology is neutral only to the extent that you assume the values of the present order. If those values are not assumed then technology is not any different than history, philosophy, or science. They are the weapons that power use to fragment and control the population. One cannot understand our society without having a working, theoretical, and practical knowledge of technology and as a result most will choose to. The value of understanding our society is up for debate though.

If, following the nihilists of the 1860’s, we were to advocate for a parochial skepticism then it would be enough to revolt against rent, usury, asphalt, bureaucrats and their henchmen, etc, etc. If we were to respond even further in kind it would be against the excessive aspects of our society that most resemble Czarist Russia. Our response would look like the opposite of the moral majoritarians and large government fetishists. Instead of valorizing natural science it is possible that this line of thought would lead to an ascetic ethical system along the lines of anarchists that eschew digital technology for analog. This far, and no further! would be their motto.

Skepticism ascends!

Assuming that parochialism is a limitation, which is probably true in the light of the failure of revolutionary movements of the counter-culture, then what is next for contrarians. What would a universal skepticism look like as a method of inquiry, social form, and practice? Would the nihilist practice of today look more like the obsessive scientist of Fathers and Sons or the paranoid murderer of Crime and Punishment.

If a political nihilism is a specific rejection of the world as-it-is it is still make priorities. Nihilism still has a legacy. The reason that the positive program of a Nihilism today wouldn’t include a DIY naturalist science isn’t just because of the implication of science having changed over the past 150 years but because the very notion of a positive program has changed in the eye of radicals. Any evaluation of a nihilist program has to take into account exactly how tentative it would be. A universal skepticism runs into similar problems that a universal positivism does, who exactly does the universalizing?

We will begin, with this limitation in mind, an evaluation of three specific approaches that both overlap and are contained within a nihilist perspective: Critique as practice, Avocation of the Deed, and Negation — as rhetoric, practice, and form.

Rhetorical negation is not the existential navel-gazing that appears indistinguishable from ennui. It is the position that political engagement with the present order is inconsequential but that articulating that political position is not. The writings of Tristan Tzara exemplify this position.

The practice of negation may very well be an artifact of the denatured intellectual environment of North America but represents the active non-activism that confuses participation in political projects without tying them to political (and politicized) social movements as an ‘armchair’ activity. This is a practice without strategy, possibly done for its own reward. The activities of many anarchist reading groups qualify for the position.

Formal negation is likely the most widely held political nihilist position. It is the practice of not submitting to the aggression of the dominant order by avoiding it. The sentiment that one does not attend political protests because they do not enjoy the presence of the police or do not vote because every choice on a ballot is shit are examples of this position.

The thread that runs through all of the negation approaches is the stance of non-participation as political practice. This lends itself to the criticism of nihilism as solipsism which serves as a nice counter-point to the criticism of leftists as rhetorically self-sacrificing moralists.

Avocation of the Deed would be the most stereotypical nihilist political position. Many would-be-nihilists use the claim of strategic avocation as a shield to discuss their desires. Knocking over electrical towers and phone lines are their own reward, linking them to The Generalized Struggle for Human Emancipation™ is window dressing. The question of sensational actions, of horrific deeds, remains a central question for radicals of all stripes.

The legacy of Propaganda by the Deed is evaluated incorrectly. On the one hand the vast majority of PbtD actions were not violent actions against capitalists, leaders, and bureaucrats but the practice of daily life. On the other there is an argument that if the revolutionary struggle was doomed to failure, due to lack of preparation and a thousand other reasons, that going out shooting (which PbtD could safely be described as) was a valid exit strategy. What were the alternatives? Life as an exile chasing every hint of Revolution like the Communards? Chasing every summit hoping for another Seattle?

Today’s avocation differs from PbtD by placing the emphasis on the deed rather than the history or public relations consequence. This may entail giving up a certain kind of power, since others become the managers of your message, as in the case of suicide bombers but the clarity of the deed speaks louder than any politician’s message.

The practice of Critique entails using a suite of empirical and intellectual tools to evaluate the behavior and actions of others. It is a practice that does not stand alone but leans on others and in that way is the most social nihilist practice. The idea that nothing should stand: belief, value, or paradigm and no positive program installed in their place is at the core of the nihilist project.

Conclusion

Nihilism in the 21st century differs from that of the 19th on one important question. Rather than being a reactionary political practice resulting from a specific political context (Czarist Russia) it now draws its inspiration from an understanding of the philosophical trajectory of 20th century, the revolutionary movements of the 19th and 20th, and a sober understanding of exactly how little these well-springs offer one who would resist.

In hindsight natural science was the liberating response to a society dominated by mystical reverence for leader and God. In the absence of a simple response to today’s similar and extended problems an anarchist nihilism offers a category, a frame of reference, rather than the pat answer political discourse tends to favor. Nihilists will not become black-clad boy scouts, summit hoppers, or politicize thriving off of the detritus of an excessive society. There will not be a comfort for those of us whose rejection of this society includes its opposition.

Chapter 3: Now is the time (and yet we wait)!

We are necessarily impatient. We can’t stand paying rent one more month. Being forced from cradle to toilet to classroom to cubicle to grave makes us boring. We hate ourselves and our condition even more.

But what to do? We are not so naïve as to believe the leftist line about ‘revolutionary’ groups like the Weatherman. We don’t accept that the problem with their strategy was a lack of mass base. We see their problem as lack of ambition.

Not only can you not bring down the castle walls by running full speed into them but it may be that this world has become sophisticated enough to no longer need castles or even physical presence to a large degree. This is the problem with most critiques of postmodernity. They assume that the postmodern would be a device used by the dispossessed in our arsenal against this world. This is not the case. What is the case is that the postmodern (and its accompanying condition) is yet another tool in the arsenal of this order. Postmodernism is the terrain upon which this order’s current travels can be mapped. This can particularly be seen in discussions of virtuality, identity, and the politics of deconstruction (as relevant tenure track pursuit and little else).

The first premise of postmodernism is that there are no ‘meta’ narratives. There is no single history or anthropology or system that enables us to know the real. While this is great news if you’re sick of the blowhard Marxist and Republican orators of the workers’ or entrepreneurs’ Coming Emancipation, it also leaves us very alone. On the one hand we now have a language to understand that every truth coming out of the mouth of our leaders, teachers, and specialists is suspect but on the other we are no longer presented with a Golden Brick Road towards the world of our desires.

The group who is best prepared to take advantage of this information is not the group with nothing to lose but the group with the most resources to bring to bear. If we are no longer interested in combining ourselves with others into shapes that can be placed on the board of politics and business, then those who do can have the board to themselves. They understand that the postmodern condition keeps us apart. Alone. They have trained us to believe in nothing and to accept the conditions of this world as universal.

The second premise builds on the first. If history is no longer a ‘true’ story (in the grand epic sense that Western Civilization classes or Marxists speak of), then progress is no longer that story extended into the future. If progress is no longer assumed on the world stage it may be that it wasn’t the right mechanism (or meta-narrative) to understand the material world, humans’ role in it, or much of anything at all. Where does that leave evolution? Isn’t evolution just an idealist-materialist ‘proof’ of progress in biological systems?

If we abandon progressive notions then we should, it would stand to reason (sic), abandon inclinations toward democratic institution building (as a partial step towards what we want), including participation in humanizing such institutions. Instead we are informed by the specialists of knowledge, if we don’t accept the progress modality, that we are at ‘the end of history’ where the present conditions are universal, fixed, and unconditional. This is another example of those who control ideology planting their value system onto the space burnt out by the postmodern controlled fire.

Another premise of postmodernism is that culture is the means of social transformation in a media rich world. This is mostly a rhetorical device alluding to something obvious (if you accept the premise). If the world is indeed media rich, cybernetic, illusory, and entirely without mooring on the foundations of the 19th century, including 19th century prejudices about labor and progress, then engaging with it must be in this new vocabulary. If you do not accept this, if you recognize it as a tragic mis-reading of Debord, most of the consequences of thinking of culture-as—transformative-lever can be seen as based on a faulty premise.

This is how postmodernism works. It takes a premise, let’s say that “Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation” (Debord) and turn it around “Representation is everything directly lived” and you have a clear argument for non-engagement. Why bother living in time and space? If life is merely representation then media is living on a greater scale than would be otherwise possible.

I recently attended a speech where one of the questions asked of the presenter, who was arguing against representation generally, went along these lines. “I am a computer graphics student and I have spent long days precisely measuring and evaluating a blade of grass with the goal of reproducing the form within the computer environment. How can you say that my work, both in the observing and the reproducing, is wrong?” This is a classic example of accepting the premise and basing, in this case, an entire career and life path on it. If we live in a media environment then oh, what a time savings that I myself do not have to go to a field to experience something called field. Instead I can download the Field Experience volume 1 and know field. Who are you to tell me differently? Do you have ownership of the concept of field that you would lord over me?

The point being made here is simply this: abandonment of understanding the mechanisms of control disarms us. In the case of postmodernism, confusing a set of academics with the actual power brokers who enact their ideas is a paralyzing problem.

What’s next then? If there are no castle walls because domination has found a way to succeed without necessarily materializing, then our project no longer looks like a siege. If virtualization has become part and parcel of the dominance matrix then single points of attack are no longer effective. There is no letter bomb large enough.

The simple answer is that we have to be patient. We have to have an engaged patience that is incomprehensible to the lethargy of the revolutionary left. Our role should not be to lay in wait for some mark to come stumbling along because that is never going to happen. Instead we must have total engagement in the social and political processes around us. Nothing should escape our attention. This could look like, and is not limited to, attending church (especially politically active churches), going to shareholder meetings, attending city council, toasters, Elks lodges, civic organizations and even leftist meetings. The idea is not that our efforts should be particularly supportive or even destructive to these groups (although pushing the boundary in both directions should be part of the process) but to understand how it is that modern acculturated civil society works. What does a social group look like and how does it react to the kind of stimulus that can be brought to bear? If you play the game how easy is it to integrate into an organizational form? To what extent do these forms accrue power, negligence and momentum? We need more information.

Chapter 4: When all Dictionaries are burned, will we start over?

Active Nihilism

As foretold by Raul Vaneigem in Revolution of Everyday Life, “There is no consciousness of transcendence without consciousness of decomposition.” The active nihilist sees in the unknown future and despair at our current situation, a call to arms. An active nihilist finds energy, a will to act, in the hopelessness of the conforming, rigid, asphyxiation of our society. Meaning is found in approaching the void rather than in the false knowledge of what is on the other side of it.

Terror

The primary modality of class society, whether it is by violence, hunger, or the threat of the elements. If every object, person, and moment is for sale, if there is nothing outside, then there is abject terror. When living is a contemptible act, it is terror. What is the opposite of this?

Nihilist Anarchism

We are not drifts of snow moving through reality. Things have happened. Choices have been made. These choices can be evaluated, not from a timeless doctrine but from a human scale. By this human scale the size, the scope, of the choices made is beyond comprehension. This being the case, and as the desire of conscious bodies is to understand, a frame of reference to begin to impact the world can be based on one of two options. Either shrink the world that you desire to understand and touch or assert yourself onto a world gone mad in such a way as to transform scale. Institutions, ideologies, systems, schools, family, capital, government and revolutionary movements have all developed beyond the body. Nihilist anarchism isn’t concerned with a social revolution that adds a new chapter to an old history but the ending of history altogether. If not revolutionaries then possibly epochanaries, for the transformation of society without a positive program.

Philosophical Nihilism

The answer to the existential question about what is knowable is, nothing.

Passive Nihilism

If the future is unknowable we are confronted with a choice. When all we know is terror many stop making choices. People break. If you have ever been confronted by the alarm clock and just shut it off and pulled the cover over your head you know passive nihilism. The pain of resisting, of being the false opposition, or the purged, justifies a thousand no’s. A million. The passive nihilist no longer has hope that their participation is necessary for the world to keep spinning.

Life

Is a terrorized body living?

Power

Hyphenated power doesn’t avoid the problem that power raises but tries to shift it somewhere else. We can, do, and will continue to hurt, dominate, and manipulate one another. We are creatures of power. To the extent that we do take responsibility for this it looks like shame. This confuses power with Christianity.

Hope

This coin has two sides that can’t be separated: expectation and desire.

Existential Nihilism

An existential nihilist remains at an impasse regarding a variety of core issues. If we cannot know anything then how can we make choices? When Nietzsche talked of nihilism this is what he was referring to. The trajectory of Western thought leads to unknowable questions and paralysis.

Strategic Nihilism

Revolutionary programs deserve the snickers that they get. The idea that yet another manifesto (YAM) or mission statement or action plan is going to make the tired activism of a new generation smells less of the death it wraps around its neck is ludicrous. Strategic nihilism argues for a new approach to social transformation that resembles the burning of a field rather than building the new world within the shell of the old or one last push by the working class to seize the means of production. An approach that concerns itself with exactly what the forms of social control are and their suppression falls far astray from models of recruitment, education, progress, or the crossed fingers that the next riot will be the Big one.

Positive Program

Shorthand for a positive program for social change, a positive program is one that confuses desire with reality and extends that confusion into the future. In the case of radicals this usually takes the form of stating programs along the lines of “ATR there will be no hunger” at worst and “The abolishment of class society will result in relations without limit” at its best. A positive program is an idealist legacy that forms the core of most revolutionary thought.

Causality

The belief that one event following another necessitates their relationship is erroneous, as posited by Hume. If causality cannot be assumed, or even accepted if argued, the efficacy of most political forms is limited, particularly as a way to transform the world.

ATR

After the Revolution

Revolution

The limited desire to change the world as modeled by the French Revolution. The Good News: Heads will roll. The Bad: The Bureaucrats win in the end.

Body

A body can be an individual. It can be a group of individuals. It can be a cultural or social unit. It can also be understood as a philosophical unit, a black box that accepts input from the world and responds in kind. It is not known but knowing.

Toward a non European Anarchism or Why a movement is the last thing that people of color need

(Anarchist Library)

While the intention of this essay is to evoke images of an anarchism with a center of gravity outside of the Continental Tradition it will do so while also questioning anarchists’ ability to live and think outside of authority. Because while the theory of a belief system opposing authority in the form of State and Capital may seem to naturally reject Eurocentric History and culture, in practice it does not. Moreover, the ability of non-white anarchists to articulate a vision (outside of the confines of either reclaiming national liberation struggles as libertarian or parroting New Left slogans as if they were not tired and trite) is still in question.

A word about language:[1] I have chosen to italicize the term People of Color even though it is the most “in vogue” term to describe people of non-European descent. That is, it comes with a set of political prerogatives that should be avoided. First, it focuses its concern on the most superficial component of non-white people, their skin tone. Second, it homogenizes these same people into yet another melting pot, that just happens to not include whites, but that tends to be just as successful at eliminating difference. Third, it racializes people. As opposed to respecting the cultural differentiation that should actually be the goal of a liberating self-awareness, it represses identity into only the categories discernable by blood quantum and the reflection of light. In this essay I will attempt to use the term non-white people when I refer to the locus of a non-European anarchism. This defines the problem as both being with whiteness and as surmountable, even by people of European descent.

Why is anarchism worth reclaiming?

While the semantics of anarchy (that is, without ruler) could illuminate the future discussion, any type of analysis of the potential of the anarchist tradition has to grapple with the ideology that is. This ideology can be seen as; a history of iconic figures, of increasingly radical ideas about social transformation, and of a practice that has been uniform only in its rejection by those in power. Understanding the repercussions of the use of language, the history (broadly defined) and the culture of the anarchist tradition will develop the possibility that anarchism has qualities worth reclaiming.

A history of Anarchism as an observation of individual anarchists.

The clearest origin of anarchism in the western tradition lies in ancient Greece and the argument of Zeno (the Stoic) for a society ruled by the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual.[2] While not specifically an anarchist position, Zeno serves as a practical counter-point to the ideal nation of Plato’s Republic. In the modern, post-Enlightenment era the first treatise in defense of anarchism came from William Godwin (1793)[3]. He argued that government is unnecessary and harmful to the conduct of human affairs. He also believed that society could be transformed into a world of justice and equality through education and propaganda, and not through specific political struggle. His influence of anarchism as a school of thought (and not just a movement for social change) cannot be overstated. The four fathers of (European) anarchism lived in the second half of the 19th century and included Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Pierre Proudhon and Max Stirner. They stand as the central figures in modern anarchist activism, anarcho-communism, mutualism, and individualism respectively. In the twentieth century such figures as Emma Goldman, known for her advocacy of contraception and free love, Sacco and Vanzetti, known for being anarchist martyr’s killed by the state, and Makhno, who fought against the Bolsheviks and White armies in the Russian revolution, inform a conception of anarchism as martyrdom and activism.

This introduction to a number of anarchists is an attempt to briefly allude to the mythology of the anarchist. Not from a rejection of these particular mythologies, as, in their opposition, these are some of the most human stories that can be told, but because understanding that there are deeper stories of actual human struggle and inspiration is what an observation of individual anarchists should provide us. It is not as a result of glamorous rebels that the anarchist tradition breathes life into human experience today. But these anarchist’s stories (can) exemplify the tradition without obscuring our part in it.

A history of Anarchism as the transformation of radical ideas.

While the origins of Anarchism seem most interested in the science of statecraft, anarchism has since evolved into a criticism of technology, religion, capitalism, and the state. This evolution happened because the principles that would lead one to conclude that the state was oppressive naturally led to the conclusion that those same systems also exist in other arenas of the human experience. What are these principles? Vaneigem has described them so —

“Although each of us starts along the path as a whole, living being, intending to return just as we were when we left off, we became completely lost in a maze of wasted time, so that what returns is only a corpse of our being, mummified in its memories. The striving of humanity after survival is a saga of childhood bartered away for decrepitude.” [4]

While Vaneigem’s choice of metaphors will be discussed later the principle of a “first man” runs through most libertarian literature. Bakunin in God and the State exemplifies the principle of contrariness.

“The abolition of the Church and the State must be the first and indispensable condition of the true liberation of society; only after this can society be organized in another manner, but not from the top downwards and according to some ideal plan, dreamed up by a few sages and scholars, and certainly not by decrees issued by some dictatorial power or even by a national assembly elected by universal suffrage. As I have already shown, such a system would lead inevitably to the creation of a new state, and consequently to the formation of a governmental aristocracy, that is to say a whole class of individuals having nothing in common with the mass of the people, which would immediately begin to exploit and subdue that people in the name of the commonwealth or in order to save the State.”[5]

Finally, the principle of cooperation (over competition) as articulated by Pyotr Kropotkin.

“Mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle…as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as if favors the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.”[6]

While not authoritative, most modern incantations of anarchism derive from these principles. The application and depth has evolved, but the idea that people were once free, can be again, and can do it ethically is a primary theme of the anarchist tradition.

A history of Anarchism: as failed and successful social transformation.

In practice this (social transformation) can be described as a type of activism. This happens often within larger historical movements, frequently as the action of determined individuals to transform reality, and most often as the rejection of alienated people refusing to participate in the social apparatus.

There have been a variety of movements that have had an articulated anarchistic reflection. They include the Free Spirit movement of the 13th and 14th century (scattered throughout the European Continent), where a woman is quoted as saying “I have created all things. I created more than God. It is my hand that supports Heaven and Earth. Without me nothing exists.” The Digger’s of the 17th century England who attempted to use public lands for living on, and were subsequently burned out of their homes. The Paris Commune where the city was liberated for 73 days before the army retook the city and slaughtered the Communards. The Russian Revolution where anarchistic Soviets provided a backbone to the revolution before they were co-opted by the Bolsheviks in the name of the people. The Industrial Workers of the World were a labor union that attempted to unite the workers into ‘One Big Union’ against capitalism as a whole and had some successes in early twentieth century America before many of their leaders were jailed or shipped to the Soviet Union. The ‘propagandists by the deed’ who successfully murdered leaders of France (Carnot, 1894), Austria (Elisabeth, 1898) and the United States (McKinley, 1901) before “saner” minds disabused them of their naïve notions of radical deconstruction. The Spanish Civil War (1936 — 1937) where millions of people collectivized their land and workplaces only to be defeated by their own compromises and the fascists (but especially the fascists).

Finally, in our parade of anarchistic moments, are the events of May 68 in France. When a coalition of students and workers brought the French nation to its knees for the month.

With the historical stage in place, know that the bulk of anarchy has happened on a much smaller scale. Whether it has been within the left counter-cultural space (living arrangements, small cooperatives), the self-help movement (alcoholics anonymous, etc.), or youth counter-culture the principles of living ethically, without hierarchies (and the people who love them), in cooperation with other people, and in opposition to authority is a major part of our human experience.

Why not anarchy?

While the ideas originating from Europe are not magical or more correct, it is impossible to live within the modern world without grappling with them and their repercussions. Most of these ideas are horrible, and result in conditions much like our own. The State, Capital, Religion (in the body of a Church), Industrialization, History (as living embodied by text), the list of these ideas made real goes on and on. While wholesale rejection of these ideas is an appropriate response to them, this rejection still forces us to understand ourselves in comparison (in reaction) to them (their ideas and institutions) and not on our own terms.

Anarchism is yet another ideological option (in a cast of millions) and suffers from exactly this fate. It can only be understood in the climate of European History, Politics, and Philosophy. While there are anarchistic stories than can be told outside of Europe[7] the bulk of the idea(logy) of anarchy comes from there. Any reclaiming of the anarchist tradition has to grapple with the shallowness of anarchism as the (self?) defined opposition to all other -ism’s. It is a political philosophy that has taken different conclusions from the same source material that it claims opposition to. The motivation, and capability, of people to make this leap should be met with great skepticism.

In the current scene this[8] is seen in a few ways, discussed next. One way is the reliance on models (and model thinking), second is the emphasis on aesthetics over living, and the third is the illusory commitment to community (or more appropriately communitarian ideas). A few examples are in order.

The idea that a new, better society will look like X, where X is the value of anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, social-ecology, or anarcho-primitivism[9], is classic model thinking. It has an advantage of being successful (Democracy, Fascism, Protestantism) in the eyes of History. It actually advocates “for” something (as if living (freely) were not possible without a roadmap) and doesn’t just serve as negation. In this regard anarchism has everything in common with communists (and their perfect worker), libertarians (and their perfect capital), and religiousists (and their perfect god).

The media serves as no one’s friend. Its portrayal of anarchists will always rely on a lens, an author, and an interpretation that (by definition) will focus on what can be seen from the outside. To the extent that we are media creatures we internalize these messages and make them part of our own understanding of anarchism. Black clothing, destruction of corporate facades, street battles are the most visible, the most commodifiable, and the obvious example of “seeing as living” vs. “living as living”. Specifically the tendency towards the visible creates the environment where anarchists eat their old, devaluing their knowledge, energy, and beauty in exactly the same way as the normative, youth-obsessed culture at large.

The rhetoric of anarchism says the correct things about community. It does not describe community as the suffocating pillow over individual acts of self-expression. It does not treat community as the great equalizer, as a leveler, where difference is a blemish to be removed (or covered up). Rhetoric aside, anarchists have not been successful at practicing any but the most superficial aspects of community. In this they reflect the disconnected society that they live in.

Anarchism could provide an antidote to ideological thinking. A criticism of authority should entail a criticism of power relations generally. An understanding of the power that people hold over each other could lead to an understanding of the power that ideas have over people, even if those ideas are anti-authoritarian. This is not the case. Anarchists, by and large, replicate the kind of thinking that they could (as in should) reject. This makes the most successful of them barely different from a contrary politician and the rest an isolated sect with demographic limitations that also demonstrate a limited view of the world.

This is the criticism that people of color make of Anarchism that speaks a truth. If an idea, or a scene, does not look like you then it cannot possibly be useful or meaningful to you. While this does imply a media (visual) fixation, the criticism is still correct (even more so) if by “anarchism doesn’t look like me” you are actually stating the “Representative anarchist people seem to only represent a certain (middle class, white, “counter-cultural”) demographic that is not mine. Moreover, there seems to be a worldview shared among this demographic that prioritizes a set of cultural values that I do not share. Or even understand. I will even go so far as to say that these cultural values quite possibly are part of the problem.”

Take for example the Vaneigem’s quote (see the source of footnote 4). While true in that a history of humanity can surely be told that positions us (as children) in a state of happiness (grace) before we were beset upon by Leviathan. It is not true in that both the linear model of growth (and innocence) is flawed AND the idea that general humanity (outside of the European paterland) consciously “bartered” for the current state of affairs is patently ridiculous.

The observation of this kind of (clearly benign and well intentioned) thinking is the reason that the answer to the question of Anarchy? for not white people is most often no.

Why is the anarchist tradition (specifically) worth reclaiming, even if not in name?

The anarchist tradition contains the possibility of serving as a bridge between the a-historicized and European thought from a position of strength for the not representable. While the possibility of tweaking the current machines of production, politics, and knowledge exist, they only do so within the realm of extreme power (over) relations. It is primarily the anarchist tradition that makes claims of challenging this power (that is, destroying and possibly rebuilding something that could be called the same name) as opposed to transforming pre-existing institutions into more humane golems. It is the anarchist tradition (not practice, but tradition) that alludes to the possibility that there may not be just one answer to the question “what should a better world look like?” It is the anarchist tradition that is possibly not universalist. This should be particularly appealing to people coming from non-European traditions and cultures. Not only is the history such that any possibility of seeing our way out of the current dilemma should be attended to but the idea that there may not be just one answer, that our specific cultural identities may inform our specific answers (and not a textbook or leader) is inspiring. Much of this has been known all along by just about everyone outside of the European tradition. Will an “enemy in the camp” allow for the possibility of “an exchange of hostages”. Can an extra-European anarchism allow for the framework where people not of European descent can communicate with those on the inside? Or will an extra-European anarchism create a momentum towards itself. Where those stuck inside the walls will be left to their own devices and can leave the castle whenever they are ready to join the rest of humanity.

Why that reclaiming should not involve a “movement”.

To push the analogy to it’s natural limit, it has rarely been the case that a siege was successful through direct confrontation. A siege may involve battering the walls and razing the gates but more likely involves the show of possibility (and mobility) that exists “out there”. Moreover, it is the act of starving (or ignoring) the denizens of stone and mortar out (to the wilderness?) that is rife with specific possibilities in the here and now. Part of this question involves understanding and discussing what participation looks like. What does it mean to live within the walls? Who are the border crossers? Are they compromised?

Because while the modern social/economic machine is everywhere it is not -everywhere-. Interesting (and interested) people live on the boundaries and inside. While they are not heroes they will continue to provide context to the dangerous apparatus (of statecraft, the academia, journalism, the gentle sciences…) and should not be wished (or willed) away.

What does need to change is the way in which these bordered people see appropriate action. They would petition the king, rally in the courtyard, or use just about any political contrivance to assist (their perception of) “the movement”. The possibility of (these more or less Machiavellian techniques) effectiveness is what attracts many non-whites. “If we can win today, it is more likely that we can win tomorrow.” goes the reasoning.

This is why a movement is the last thing that people of color need. Not only are movement politics an explicitly European construction (with all that that implies) but the belief that as the result of some specific victory (even if that victory is at the end of a long campaign) we will get a world that reflects our values will erupt is utopian[10] at best, War Machine thinking at worst.

How are movement politics specific to Europe? While a definition of movements could expand to fit just about all human behavior there is a certain recognition that when we talk about the (a) body of humanity exerting its will onto the stage of Nation States we are talking about the modern social movement. Without industrialization, and the urbanism that resulted, there would not be the ability for people to concentrate around symbols of power that have defined movements for social change. Without the Protestant fracturing of “the one great interpretation” (that is, the Catholics) there would not be a belief that “protestants” of every political stripe could be represented. Without the history of the French Revolution (1789–1793), the American Revolution (1775–1783), and the Russian Revolution (1917–1921) there would be no history of (successful) radical social change. In the field of human experience movements are best described as junk food, an immediate thrill of flavor and sensation upon a backdrop of empty calories and specious nutrition.

What would the differences be, if anarchism where located outside of Europe?

While generally criticism can be stated for its own sake, here I will offer something in conjunction. While I am not particularly interested in creating another adjective to the anarchist milieu, I am willing to accept the burdensome framework of the category of ideas that I am trying to represent. As the intention of placing anarchism outside of Europe has already been stated let this serve as an introduction to an extra-European anarchism…[11]

Extra-European Anarchism would be decentralized in regards to work. The rationalization of every aspect of the human experience has served nothing but to divide labor into equally unappealing parts. A decentralized society would favor whole people participating in projects of their own design as opposed to the imperatives of production (or of the decaying culture as a whole). Examples abound of what non-divisive work could look like.[12] These examples should be our guide.

Extra-European Anarchism would be decentralized in regards to power. Power exists. It exists now, intra-people, inter-people and extra-people. It will exist in the future. The elimination of power (of a pure equality) is a charlatan’s game. Once again, there are examples of what power relationships look like when the individual people who are affected by them create and “manage” them.[13]

Extra-European Anarchism would include extreme cultural differentiation. The idea of “one people” under any banner is a brutal lie. While self-interest (both personal and familial) allows for the practicality of observing greater truths than the self (defined as the one in relation to and not the one not in relation) it is always under threat of suppression. A primary characteristic of Extra-European Anarchism will include the natural, experimental, and vigorous difference between one culture and another.

Extra-European Anarchism would decenter personal relationships. It is the obvious result of the marriage between Religion and Capital (in the form of production) that has resulted in the twisted logic of the nuclear family. While appropriate for raising workers, the nuclear family is poorly suited for just about anything else. Decentered personal relationships would remove the magic spell of love from only existing between the dyad of a man and a woman (joined by certificate…) and re-enchant all interactions with those characteristics that are dreamed of when the word love is uttered.[14]

Extra-European Anarchism would contextualize violence as an appropriate part of the human experience. Currently violence is a problem. Not due to the violence that people are capable of inflicting on each other but due to the monopolization of violence by the state. Humans are capable of violence; capable of, interested in, repulsed by, and affected by violence. An Extra-European Anarchism would not attempt to channel violence into a specifically socially mandated form (like sports) but integrate violence into living in a way that both demystifies and spiritualizes the pain that we can inflict upon ourselves and others.

It is also important (in the context of this sketch) to discuss what an Extra-European Anarchism would NOT be.

Extra-European Anarchism would not be traditional. Tradition is a multi-headed hydra. It appears to advocate for ancient ways that have shown their use and truth through age and experience AND as an excuse for static behavior in the name of tradition. While most (if not all) cultural understandings of the world that exist today (and through our understanding of history) will live on in an Extra-European Anarchism, they will not do so because they are traditional.[15] They will survive based on their own truths, the precision of their mythologies, and their ability to reflect a daily life worth living.

Extra-European Anarchism would not be a utopia. Not only would a transition to a world that could be derided as “tribal” be cataclysmic but the ability of people to live with each other outside of reified power has not been attempted for quite some time. We will be rusty. Moreover, differentiation will result in a great deal of conflict. This conflict will look very different without War Machines contextualizing them, but will be by no means perfect.

Extra-European Anarchism would not be simple. It is homogenization that makes the world as tame as it is. If we were to stop being pasteurized before we faced our neighbors and the world the possibilities of our relationships would expand by multiples.

Extra-European Anarchism would not be moral. Morality (as in the valuation of individual human behavior) is a dangerous ideology (disguised as a type of common sense) that takes much more than it gives. An amoral universe is one without poles, where North and South might be controlled by the story as told instead of the Good Book. Where there may possibly be no Good and Evil.

There is much more to be told here (the seeds have been planted) but the rest of the story can wait. Suffice it to say that placing anti-authoritarian[16] principles outside of the sphere of the Eurocentric worldview is rich with possibility. It can allow for the discussion to happen outside of the shadow of specific historical figures, it allows for the vigorous contrariness of people to be seen as a central social principle and not a problem to be fixed, and it allows for an analysis of histories of cooperation as living possibilities and not just pull quotes off of posters from the 1960’s.

The project is to now practice living without the established paths to guide us.

[1] Language is a deep topic and has involved a lot of thinking on my part. It also necessitates decision-making and I make mine along several lines. I often choose to capitalize terms to invoke the possibility that they may have an “institutional” connotation that is not entirely comprehendible by real live people. Take for instance Capital. On one level we can understand a definition of capital that talks about it as the extracted value of labor under conditions where others own the means of production. Or we can understand it as a global system of the fluid exchange of money done within a political context carved out of the money holders desires. My use of capitalization is an example of the general commitment that I have to be intentional and thoughtful about my use of words.

[2] Kropotkin, Pyotr (1910) Anarchism The Encyclopaedia Britannica www.anarchy.org

[3] Godwin, William (1793) Political Justice and its influence on morals and happiness

[4] Vaneigem, Raoul (1994) The Movement of the Free Spirit. I hate to pick on Raoul here as I take his aphorisms to be in good faith, but that does not eliminate the fact that he tends to speak of death as bad, children as good, and of a paradise lost to be reclaimed by unfettered free wills. These are nice dreams, and you see the practice of these dreams in the advocating of such things as TAZ (The Temporary Autonomous Zone), RTS (Reclaim the Streets, a brand of TAZ), Evasion (TAZ, self righteous and on the road) and the “protest hopping” that has been in vogue since the events of November 1999. I do not discourage dreaming except when dreamers believe that they are awake.

[5] Bakunin, Mikhail (1871) God and the State

[6] Kropotkin, Pyotr (1902) Mutual Aid

[7] Adams, Jason (2002) Nonwestern Anarchisms rethinking the global context This is a complementary essay to my own. He possibly attaches the term anarchism to a variety of tendencies that may not be interested in the term but he covers the bases that need to be hit.  He tells another anarchist history, about not European people, and frames the tale under the stormy sky’s of the past two hundred years.

[8] The Eurocentric behavior of anarchists is a slow moving target that, because of my own participation in the anarchist body, I tend to not highlight. I do not feel some sense of vindication when the “crimes” of someone are exposed, with the resulting mixture of guilt, despair, apology, and apathy. I tend to only “criticize” when I am willing to take responsibility for the caring of the criticized. This is often seen as my insistence on being correct, but is actually my attentiveness to the struggle that accused people must endure.

[9] The full equation is theory plus the value of human inspiration (an easily quantifiable unit) — the value of compromises that must be made in the name of exigency (yet another quantifiable; as a log whose value will descend to zero as the value of freedom rises to infinity) = one unit of better world. Naturally X (as an accepted type of theory) multiplied by Y (the actual practice of that theory) equals the greater value of T. The full equation then reads XY + H — C = 1 bw

[10] The worst kinds of utopian thinking are the fixation on the most impossible characteristics of a system as their cause and explanation. The modern capitalist utopian believes that competition exists and forms the foundation of the current economic system. The classic idealist utopian connects faith to the creation of a new order and develops that world based on those assumptions.

[11] I went through a bit of torment before settling on the term “extra-European Anarchism”. While clearly my premise is to develop an idea of an “outside of Europe” anarchism I also feel a great deal of distress at the idea of centering Europe in the language. The balance between rejection and relationship must be kept.

[12] I am not interested in idealizing this idea outside of the realm of what can be lived now and later. The moments I find where I am working in the least divisive ways tend to be during conversation. I am better at listening than I am at writing.  There are plenty of histories that talk about what work looked like “back then”, some of which I trust, many of which I do not.

[13] Theorists of power should rankle at my free and loose use of the term. While I would attempt to capitalize (in theory) the word when I talk about power over, or the political power in this world, I am not necessarily consistent. Language is a terrain in which we can exert real power. I revel in this.

[14] The idea of words as combining in specific combinations to create complex potions and elixirs seems to me the source of many myths.

[15] Many of my most favorite people are Traditional people. They willfully sacrifice certain (alleged) benefits of this world for the benefits of the world that was. This relationship with the past as a relationship with people, knowledge and tomorrow is to be advocated for. This type of tradition has the flexibility to not have to call itself tradition to be Traditional.

[16] Anti-authoritarian is as slippery of a word as anarchism. While on it’s face it appears to be the opposition to institutions of authority, in the modern lexicon it has taken on a darker role. It can now be used to refer to the contestation with classic concepts of class struggle that only refer to the industrial proletariat with the more flexible position that also includes the rural peasant. It is an odd twist for a word, but worthy of pause.

Locating An Indigenous Anarchism (2005)

(Anarchist Library)

It’s easy enough to hedge about politics. It comes naturally and most of the time the straight answer isn’t really going to satisfy the questioner, nor is it appropriate to fix our politics to this world, to what feels immovable. Politics, like experience, is a subjective way to understand the world. At best it provides a deeper vocabulary than mealy-mouthed platitudes about being good to people, at worst (and most commonly) it frames people and ideas into ideology. Ideology, as we are fully aware, is a bad thing. Why? Because it answers questions better left haunting us, because it attempts to answer permanently what is temporary at best.

It is easy to be cagey about politics but for a moment let us imagine a possibility. Not to tell one another what to do, or about an answer to every question that could arise, but to take a break from hesitation. Let us imagine what an indigenous anarchism could look like.

We should start with what we have, which is not a lot. What we have, in this world, is the memory of a past obscured by history books, of a place clear-cut, planted upon, and paved over. We share this memory with our extended family, who we quarrel with, who we care for deeply, and who often believe in those things we do not have. What we do have is not enough to shape this world, but is usually enough to get us by.

If we were to shape this world (an opportunity we would surely reject if we were offered), we would begin with a great burning. We would likely begin in the cities where with all the wooden structures of power and underbrush of institutional assumption the fire would surely burn brightly and for a very long time. It would be hard on those species that lived in these places. It would be very hard to remember what living was like without relying on deadfall and fire departments. But we would remember. That remembering wouldn’t look like a skill-share or an extension class in the methods of survival, but an awareness that no matter how skilled we personally are (or perceive ourselves to be) we need our extended family.

We will need each other to make sure that the flames, if they were to come, clear the area that we will live in together. We will need to clear it of the fuel that would end up repeating the problems we are currently having. We will need to make sure that the seeds, nutrients and soil are scattered beyond our ability to control.

Once we get beyond the flames we will have to craft a life together. We will have to recall what social behavior looks and feels like. We will have to heal.

When we begin to examine what life could be like, now that all the excuses are gone, now that all the bullies are of human size and shape, we will have to keep in mind many things. We will have to always keep in mind the matter of scale. We will have to keep in mind the memory of the first people and the people who kept the memory of matches and where and when to burn through the past confusing age. For what it is worth we will have to establish a way to live that is both indigenous, which is to say of the land that we are actually on, and anarchist, which is to say without authoritarian constraint.

First Principles

First principles are those perspectives that (adherents to) a tendency would understand as immutable. They are usually left unstated. Within anarchism these principles include direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary cooperation. These are not ideas about how we are going to transform society or about the form of anarchist organization, but an understanding about what would be innovative and qualitatively different about an anarchist social practice vis-à-vis a capitalist republic, or a totalitarian socialism.

It is worth noting a cultural history of our three basic anarchist principles as a way of understanding what an indigenous anarchist set of principles could look like. Direct action as a principle is primarily differentiated from the tradition of labor struggles, where it was used as a tactic, in that it posits that living ‘directly’ (or in an unmediated fashion) is an anarchist imperative. Put another way, the principle of direct action would be an anarchist statement of self-determination in practical aspects of life. Direct action must be understood through the lens of the events of May ’68 where a rejection of alienated life led large sections of French society into the streets and towards a radically self-organized practice.

The principle of mutual aid is a very traditional anarchist concept. Peter Kropotkin laid out a scientific analysis of animal survival and (as a corollary to Darwin’s theory of evolution) described a theory of cooperation that he felt better suited most species. As one of the fathers of anarchism (and particularly Anarcho-Communism) Kropotkin’s concept of mutual aid has been embraced by most anarchists. As a principle it is generally limited to a level of tacit anarchist support for anarchist projects.

Voluntary cooperation is the anarchist principle that informs anarchist understandings of economics, social behavior (and exclusion), and the scale of future society. It could be stated simply as the principle that we, individually, should determine what we do with our time, with whom we work, and how we work. Anarchists have wrestled with these concepts for as long as there has been a discernible anarchist practice. The spectrum of anarchist thought on the nuance of voluntary cooperation ranges from Max Stirner who refuses anything but total autonomy to Kropotkin whose theory of a world without scarcity (which is a fundamental premise of most Marxist positions) would give us greater choices about what we would do with our time. Today this principle is usually stated most clearly as the principle to freely associate (and disassociate) with one another.

This should provide us with enough information to make the simple statement that anarchist principles have been informed by science (both social and physical), a particular understanding of the individual (and their relation to larger bodies) and as a response to the alienation of modern existence and the mechanisms that social institutions use to manipulate people. Naturally we will now move onto how an indigenous perspective differs from these.

In the spirit of speaking clearly I hesitate in making the usual caveats when principles are in question. These hesitations are not because, in practice, there is any doubt as to what the nature of relationship or practice should look like. But when writing, particularly about politics, you can do yourself a great disservice by planting a flag and calling it righteous. Stating principles as the basis for a politic usually is such a flag. If I believe in a value and then articulate that value as instrumental for an appropriate practice then what is the difference between my completely subjective (or self-serving) perspective and one that I could possibly share usefully? This question should continue to haunt us.

Since we have gone this far let us speak, for a moment, about an indigenous anarchism’s first principles. Insert caveats about this being one perspective among many. Everything is alive. Alive may not be the best word for what is being talked about but we could say imbibed with spirit or filled with the Great Spirit and we would mean the same thing. We will assume that a secular audience understands life as complex, interesting, in motion, and valuable. This same secular person may not see the Great Spirit in things that they are capable of seeing life in.

The counterpoint to everything being filled with life is that there are no dead things. Nothing is an object. Anything worth directly experiencing is worth acknowledging and appreciating for its complexity, its dynamism and its intrinsic worth. When one passes from what we call life, they do not become object, they enrich the lives they touched and the earth they lie in. If everything is alive, then sociology, politics, and statistics all have to be destroyed if for no other reason but because they are anti-life disciplines.

Another first principle would be that of the ascendance of memory. Living in a world where complex artifices are built on foundations of lies leads us to believe that there is nothing but deceit and untruth. Our experience would lead us to believe nothing less. Compounding this problem is the fact that those who could tell us the truth, our teachers, our newscasters and our media devote a scarce amount of their resources to anything like honesty. It is hard to blame them. Their memory comes from the same forgetfulness that ours does.

If we were to remember we would spend a far greater amount of our time remembering. We would share our memories with those we loved, with those we visited, and those who passed by us. We will have to spend a lot of time creating new memories to properly place the recollection of a frustrated forgetful world whose gift was to destroy everything dissimilar to itself.

An indigenous anarchism is an anarchism of place. This would seem impossible in a world that has taken upon itself the task of placing us nowhere. A world that places us nowhere universally. Even where we are born, live, and die is not our home. An anarchism of place could look like living in one area for all of your life. It could look like living only in areas that are heavily wooded, that are near life-sustaining bodies of water, or in dry places. It could look like traveling through these areas. It could look like traveling every year as conditions, or desire, dictated. It could look like many things from the outside, but it would be choice dictated by the subjective experience of those living in place and not the exigency of economic or political priorities. Location is the differentiation that is crushed by the mortar of urbanization and pestle of mass culture into the paste of modern alienation.

Finally an indigenous anarchism places us as an irremovable part of an extended family. This is an extension of the idea that everything is alive and therefore we are related to it in the sense that we too are alive. It is also a statement of a clear priority. The connection between living things, which we would shorthand to calling family, is the way that we understand ourselves in the world. We are part of a family and we know ourselves through family. Leaving aside the secular language for a moment, it is impossible to understand oneself or one another outside of the spirit. It is the mystery that should remain outside of language that is what we all share together and that sharing is living.

Anarchist in spirit vs. Anarchist in word

Indigenous people in general and North American native people specifically have not taken too kindly to the term anarchist up until this point. There have been a few notable exceptions (Rob los Ricos, Zig Zag, and myself among them) but the general take is exemplified by Ward Churchill’s line “I share many anarchist values like opposition to the State but…” Which begs the question why aren’t more native people interested in anarchism?

The most obvious answer to this question is that anarchism is part of a European tradition so far outside of the mainstream that it isn’t generally interesting (or accessible) to non-westerners. This is largely true but is only part of the answer. Another part of an answer can be seen in the surprisingly large percentage of anarchists who hold that race doesn’t matter; that it is, at best, a tool used to divide us (by the Man) and at worst something that will devolve society into tribalism [sic]. Outside of whether there are any merits to these arguments (which I believe stand by themselves) is the violation of two principles that have not been discussed in detail up until this point — self-determination and radical decentralization.

Self-determination should be read as the desire for people who are self-organized (whether by tradition, individual choice, or inclination) to decide how they want to live with each other. This may seem like common sense, and it is, but it is also consistently violated by people who believe that their value system supersedes that of those around them. The question that anarchists of all stripes have to answer for themselves is whether they are capable of dealing with the consequences of other people living in ways they find reprehensible.

Radical decentralization is a probable outcome to most anarchist positions. There are very few anarchists (outside of Parecon) that believe that an anarchist society will have singular answers to politics, economy, or culture. More than a consequence, the principle of radical decentralization means it is preferable for there to be no center.

If anarchists are not able to apply the principles of self-determination to the fact that real living and breathing people do identify within racial and cultural categories and that this identification has consequences in terms of dealing with one another can we be shocked that native people (or so-called people of color) lack any interest in cohabitating? Furthermore if anarchists are unable to see that the consequence of their own politic includes the creation of social norms and cultures that they would not feel comfortable in, in a truly decentralized social environment, what hope do they have to deal with the people with whom they don’t feel comfortable today?

The answer is that these anarchists do not expect to deal with anyone outside of their understanding of reality. They expect reality to conform to their subjective understanding of it.

This problem extends to the third reason that native people lack interest in anarchism. Like most political tendencies anarchism has come up with a distinct language, cadence, and set of priorities. The tradition of these distinctions is what continues to bridge the gap between many of the anarchist factions that have very little else in common. This tradition is not a recruiting tradition. There is only a small evangelical tradition within anarchism. It is largely an inscrutable tradition outside of itself.

This isn’t a problem outside of itself. The problem is that it is coupled with the arrogance of the educated along with the worst of radical politics’ excesses. This is best seen in the distinction that continues to be made of a discrete tradition of anarchism from actions that are anarchistic. Anarchists would like to have it both ways. They would like to see their tradition as being both a growing and vital one along with being uncompromising and deeply radical. Since an anarchist society would be such a break from what we experience in this world, it would be truly different. It is impossible to perceive any scenario that leads from here to there. There is no path.

The anarchist analysis of the Zapatistas is a case in point. Anarchists have understood that it was an indigenous struggle, that it was armed and decentralized but habitually temper their enthusiasm with warnings about a) valorizing Subcommandante Marcos, b) the differences between social democracy and anarchism, c) the problems with negotiating with the State for reforms, etc. etc. These points are valid and criticism is not particularly the problem. What is the problem is that anarchist criticism is generally more repetitive than it is inspired or influential. Repetitive criticisms are useful in getting every member of a political tendency on the same page. Criticism helps us understand the difference between illusion and reality. But the form that anarchist criticism has taken about events in the world is more useful in shaping an understanding of what real anarchists believe than what the world is.

As long as the arbiters of anarchism continue to be the wielders of the Most Appropriate Critique, then anarchism will continue to be an isolated sect far removed from any particularly anarchistic events that happen in the world. This will continue to make the tendency irrelevant for those people who are interested in participating in anarchistic events.

Native People are not gone

For many readers these ideas may seem worth pursuit. An indigenous anarchism may state a position felt but not articulated about how to live with one another, how to live in the world and about the decomposition. These readers will recognize themselves in indigeneity and ponder the next step. A radical position must embed an action plan, right?

No, it does not.

This causality, this linear vision of the progress of human events from idea to articulation to strategy to victory is but one way to understand the story of how we got from there to here. Progress is but one mythology. Another is that the will to power, or the spirit of resistance, or the movement of the masses transforms society. They may, and I appreciate those stories, but I will not finish this story with a happy ending that will not come true. This is but a sharing. This is a dream I have had for some time and haven’t shown to any of you before, which is not to say that I do not have a purpose…

Whether stated in the same language or not, the only indigenous anarchists that I have met (with one or three possible exceptions) have been native people. This is not because living with these principles is impossible for non-native people but because there are very few teachers and even fewer students. If learning how to live with these values is worth anything it is worth making the compromises necessary to learn how people have been living with them for thousands of years.

Contrary to popular belief, the last hope for native values or an indigenous world-view is not the good hearted people of civilized society. It is not more casinos or a more liberal Bureau of Indian Affairs. It is not the election of Russell Means to the presidency of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. It is patience. As I was told time and time again as a child “The reason that I sit here and drink is because I am waiting for the white man to finish his business. And when he is done we will return.”

Nihilist Animism (2016)

(Anarchist Library)

Ultimately everything I do, every project, everything I build, every relationship I start is going to fail. The world, to the extent that I am part of it, is also dissolving. This building/destroying is my expression of a feeling that lives somewhere between the Protestant work ethic, the will to inflict anarchy on the world, and an attitude against the projects of Man. I am satisfied living here, in this unstable place, continuing to do things that will blow away as soon as the center stops holding. I’m satisfied to call this nihilism, not because that is what it is, but because our culture is into naming things and I am into sending lemmings off of the cliffs of their own creation.

There is a current that breezily uses animism as a solution to the “problem of spirituality.” I have concerns. An older article on the topic, Sarah Anne Lawless’ “The Song of the Land: Bioregional Animism,”[1] both demonstrates and refers to the problems of immediatist spirituality rather well. On the one hand we benefit from the knowledge (mostly from anthropological data) of the seeming parallelism between many peoples (i.e. that everyone, in the past, was an animist) and on the other hand any attempt to practice animism either suffers from being a sort of cultural appropriation or a hokey stab in the dark that does not immediately satisfy a cultural need and feels embarrassingly small compared to the greatness of the whole earth.

There is a painful gap between being (or naming yourself) an animist and feeling the glory of the profane (and holy) things around you. This gap is enormous. It is filled with the mono-culture religions, civilization, and technocracy. This trinity makes the compelling claim that the holy holy is in fact achievable by ritual, law, and blinking lights. It claims this with the promise of personal salvation and potential of private revelation by way of priest, urban living, and new cell phones.

It an enormous provocation to say that kneeling alone by the bank of a river and being cleansed by the sacred is a pure, unadulterated animism. It may be a true moment (especially to someone enveloped in spectacle and lies) but it is not a complete one. At some point one packs up the REI equipment in the Subaru and drives back home. Sometime later one posts about it on Tumblr. One is not complete in the moment, but instead is an observer of one’s own life. That life can feel like a series of real moments punctuated by gaps of disconnection that look like daily life. Living can be like a problem that can be solved after retirement or whatever.

Animism (grand, capital A) began to die as the City was being born. This does not mean the urge died, but that urge primarily moves us against ourselves and towards camping trips, Eschatology, and faith–based approaches to the sickness of this world. Our question is whether mediated experiences are the only ones we are capable of. If that is the case, as is likely, then our capacity for revelatory joy is similarly curtailed, all arguments to the contrary. If we are indeed broken are we capable of NOT being broken? As anarchists who have an interest in how the world operates, and perhaps how we could perform as wooden shoes to it, we are naive about what grinding gears mean today. We think it is enough to change the world without realizing that troubleshooting gears is a quarter of what the world does. We have urges but little wisdom about the unforeseen consequences of our small strategies. This is the reason why we are so hungry for the possibility of animism, a spiritual practice where desire and capacity are mapped perfectly.

The reason we will not solve this problem like the little special snowflakes that we are is because of exactly that. Just as monotheism has succeeded in the deception that it represents a personal relationship between you and the almighty (parsed and mediated by priests, ministers, and the dining room table) animism needs a social fabric, outside of the civilized order, to keep warm. This social fabric isn’t as simple as playing outdoors with other children, starving for life lessons from the kitchen table where the elders sit and talk, or rituals that help you understand that you are a part of something large. But one can imagine such simplicity. One can imagine life without screens as that life just passed us by, but that is only a fraction of what it would take to live a whole life. While the cell phone may itself be sacred and alive, the things we see on it are mundane and ordinary and make us the same.

It is on infertile land that future spiritual practitioners attempt to live. These are hardscrabble lives, devoid of community or anything but scraps of information of how others did what you are trying to do. In this context it makes perfect sense that racial, silly, or fantastic elements (often the same thing) often infiltrate what is an impossible effort. It’s not that we can’t “go back,” it is that doing so is just as difficult as marching to somewhere completely new (whether Narnia or into the Star Wars universe). The new just seems easier.

What I would propose, what a nihilist animism would entail, would be an acknowledgment that a spiritual endeavor must come from a sociable practice. This might be a conversation between seven of us in the woods, or different sets in different places but it has to pass the test of the I/we. If you can find a group of people who are willing to ride the tension of being individuated, having undergone the great pain of core alienation in the modern world, while not privileging one’s own experiences in a group then you could begin. This would look like a long waiting, while the traffic passes overhead, while your devices beep, bop, beep in your car, when you could be doing other things, for the world around you to expose its language to you. This would not happen quickly. It would probably take years and then it could shape a set of principles, a path to walk, that would make sense to your set of people. This is why it is impossible to imagine in this world, the context has shifted too radically to imagine building a set of tools over years before even thinking about using them. The context has shifted too radically to imagine doing anything so long term with sociability.

This long listening project does not make sense in a world of traffic, screens, and bullshit dichotomies like I and we. But this is the start. One, find a set of people, two, find a language. That language should probably not be a public one because the task that comes next is all too vulnerable. We are talking about creating something that the history of the current order has done a bang–up job of genociding, mocking, and parading in front of the slavering consumers of modern spectacle for their amusement. Keeping this language secret will be nearly impossible in a world of social media but the task isn’t nearly complete then. Finally this language has to become meaningful. With it a set of people, who will have to become multi-generational, have to disassemble and recreate a world that does not suffer from monotheism, civilization, and modern technology.

That impossible task set I share with you is the closest thing I would put forward as a recommended practice. A world-weary rebuilding of the very reasons we should do things together at all. A practice I am myself incapable of participating in because I have been broken by the same things as you. My mind is no longer limber enough to learn a new language. My heart is too scarred to do something so honest with a group of new people and too experienced to do it with the monsters I surround myself with (for other reasons). To go deep enough to subvert the conditioning and violence of this world is just impossible enough that I can imagine the kind of person who would attempt it but I have no idea what will result, even in a best case scenario.

I dream of free actors who live without fear. I imagine words that speak beyond comprehension. I imagine the same goals that I have expressed lived by people who care for one another, who laugh at the empty sociability of our era, who are the anarchy unleashed unto the world. I imagine connections to the world that I am not capable of. This impossible set of conditions and potentials is why a nihilist animism appeals to me at all. It names capabilities I don’t have in a world I can’t imagine living in. That’s all one can ask of oneself.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140305154119/http://sarahannelawless.com/2014/02/21/the-song-of-the-land-bioregional-animism/

To Dance With The Devil (2007)

(Anarchist Library)

We would like our relationship with capitalism to be simple; we are against it. But behind the simplicity of taking a firm stance is the tragedy of the anarchist archetype. A fixed stance against capitalism, hierarchy, god, the state, oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia (and more); demonstrating curiosity only to find new things to say “no” to. If anarchism[1] is going to continue being interesting, relevant, or challenging into this century, then our reactionary pose has to be confronted.

Let’s establish terms. Let us enclose our understanding of capitalism within an anarchist framework rather than a dictionary definition or being enclosed within it ourselves.

Up till now anarchists have defined themselves along the lines of “people who are against all systems of authority” with the systems listed (usually in about this order) being the state, capitalism, the church, civilization, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, etc. This negative definition follows Hegel’s “critique of everything that was hitherto held to be the objective truth,”[2] placing anarchists in the role of being socially conscious solipsists, watching the world they refuse to participate in.

Why, then, doesn’t anarchism define itself as the idea of being for such values as freedom and equality? Freedom and equality, much like all the terms anarchists are against, are open-ended words that demand further engagement before anyone has any idea what they mean. Does freedom mean the same thing that the US says it is for and that it institutes as a personal right?[3] Does equality mean the same thing that Communists mean when they refer to it? The taint of the varied uses of these terms has meant that modern anarchists minimize their use of them.

The negative definition of anarchism is not subject to the same scrutiny. Is this because there has never been, nor will there ever be, a regime ruled by the tyranny of being against? Is it perhaps because anarchists do not see their own complicity in the things that they are against (as demonstrated, for example, by their participation in the political process of petition and ballot[4])? Anarchists are a part of the very system they are against. The line between the constituent parts of that whole and the unified whole is left, by and large, unexamined.

For this, the activist imagination[5] is largely to blame in recent times. Anarchists draw as much, if not more, on the perception that the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the Sixties were effective models of political and social change. As a result they draw inspiration from the so-called influential militants rather than the spontaneous actions of people, from the meeting and the protest rather than the riot or work slowdown, from the politics rather than the humans. This practice turns the negative definition of anarchism on its head as a positive and reactionary view of social change.

We must learn the moves

To the extent that an anarchist definition of capitalism deviates from the Marxist one, it does so along the lines of being emotional and value-laden.

For the capitalist and the property owner it [property] mean[s] power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working, the power and the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else, those who are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owner of both[6]

or

Capitalist… economies make human interactions into commodities: policing, medical care, education, even sexual relations become services that are bought and sold.[7]

This follows the habit of otherworldliness; defining a system that each of us partakes in as separate and outside of ourselves and our activity. While They exploit, force, and commodify, we do something else entirely. Organize resistance, plant community gardens, group bike rides, or protesting them, something outside of their recognition.

The useful thing about the negative anarchist definition of capitalism is that it is not ambivalent, describing capitalism as some post-modern creature that we can pretend to have a relationship of power with, as the culmination of history, or something that could be taken or left.

A distinct element of the anarchist understanding of capitalism is that it uses the same language of personal responsibility (although in this case, that of others) that is used to determine one’s own behavior. The way you challenge the commodification of human life is to change your relationship with commodities personally; by consuming less, consuming more strategically, or consuming on “your terms.” Capitalism is understood less as a social phenomenon than as a violation of the anarchist principle of means and ends being inseparable.

The Marxist definition of capitalism, by contrast, is not subjective. Capitalism is the mode of production that extracts the greatest possible amount of surplus value by the class of private owners, and that consequently exploits labor power (aka the proletariat). This definition is about value, class, power, and production. Those who hold to this economic orientation further claim that through a scientific evaluation of economics, particularly the labor theory of value, the problems with capitalism can be dissected and deeply understood. Furthermore the solutions provided as socialism, or more radically as communism, arguably have been analyzed through this scientific process rather than a subjective one.

This definition leaves out most human understandings of what living capitalism is. Capitalism is not living on credit, paying rent, dealing with bureaucrats, not having the time to spend with friends and loved ones, but is the exploitation of one’s labor power by the productive forces, thereby creating class tension. The struggle to understand oneself in capitalism (by this definition) is the class struggle, a conflict which, when resolved, is the only hope for the oppressed class.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.[8]

For anarchists the useful characteristic of this definition is to understand the objective, in this case economic, gaze. It is often said that if you want to read a mainstream perspective that takes Marx seriously you need to read the Wall Street Journal. They may rarely mention his name but economic tension, class conflict, is managed by the readers of the Journal while the rest of society obsesses about the plight of celebrities and reality show outcomes. At the same time that this objective calculation of our situation is useful, it is also a mechanism by which our powerlessness to bring about any change in the situation is rationalized and perpetuated. For every laughable Communist denunciation of anarchist optimism is an anarchist demand for class war by the children of the rich. Rhetoric aside, the only real class war is of the owners against all.

Classic Liberals define capitalism as the social system based on the principle of inalienable individual rights, including life, liberty, and property. This definition is the most common ideological understanding by Americans. It accepts the notion of a society comprised of a balanced relationship between individuals and the ruling order, ie the state. A place where self-governing rational individuals respect each others’ rights, the state is checked by the process, and keeps out of the way of the citizenry. This Lockean notion underscores a kind of theoretical logical consistency that sits well for many defenders of the current economic system by placing our role as rational actors on a stage of somewhat human scale. The disconnect between this idea (with its ethnocentric notions of property, rationality, and the individual) and the reality of the state’s monopoly on violence, determines exactly how much life, liberty, and even property the individual is actually allowed to have.

Anarchists would do well to recognize liberal capitalism’s reliance on the social building blocks of principles (rights), negotiation (the social contract), and checks-and-balances (voting). Capitalism-as-exchange ends up being invisible in this definition of capitalism, and that is what makes this definition such an effective way to defend intellectually the relationship one has to capitalism. Unchecked domination, inherited power, and the irrationality of believing in the state’s desire to defend an individual’s rights are invisible here. Who could be against rights, the ability of individuals to enter into contracts with each other and the state, and our ability to keep the state in check? This is the way people can understand themselves within a functioning social order where their own invisibility within it is far less important than the obviousness of defending every aspect of it. Sometimes if it seems believable then it is believed.

Finally, capitalism is defined in the US as the current economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned, and profits are gained in a free market. Used in this way, we accept capitalism’s ahistorical nature (always existing, outside of context, space, or time) and the existence of a free market. This is another economic understanding that differs from the Marxist one; it has a different mythological framework, one where capitalism-itself is the sun, rather than the exploitation of labor.

In this view, capitalism never sets and each of us if free to sell ourselves as labor and buy cheap products shipped from around the world. Truly free. The sun was placed there before the US was founded and since then nothing else has happened; everything here has grown under its light. The freedom we have as consumers is the same as the freedom we have as investors. The connections these ideas have to reality wither in comparison to their rhetorical and propagandistic social power within US culture. This myth is powerful: powerful enough to keep people in misery playing the lottery, powerful enough for people to put themselves in cargo containers to be shipped across the ocean, and powerful enough for people no longer to see capitalism as something to struggle against. Conscious class struggle in the US is a non-starter either strategically or ideologically, Marxist (even marxist-with-a-black-flag) rhetoric to the contrary.

Whether defined by anarchists, Marxists, political philosophers, or economists, the assumptions in defining capitalism frame the ability to think outside, against, and in relation to it. Since anarchists have assumed that they are somehow outside of capitalism, that it is something outside of their experience, their daily lives, and their principles, they have not had a coherent way to engage the liberal notions of individual rights, the economic view of society, or the positive perception that capitalist social relations have had on a preponderance of people.

Under the pale blue moon

Tensile strength is the amount of force required to pull something apart. Most of us test tensility every day and, like many properties, we do not need to measure it to understand its effects. A romantic relationship ends because of a series of small inconsiderations. Workers grumble about an asshole manager but nothing happens besides the complaining. A radical returns to her family home for the holidays even after she has declared her rejection of normative values and relationships. Tensility has a variety of axes: economic, emotional, cultural.

If we were to be generous in approaching an answer to the question of why the current economic system works so well (emotionally, ideologically, materially) for so many people, it would not be because people are naturally inclined towards shopping, petroleum, or property-rights but because they prefer greater tensile strength over less. One desires a connection to the land that they live on that is greater than what a contract, bank, or surveyor can provide. One desires relationships that don’t fall easily under the categories of friend, lover, or family. One desires escapes from even the most pleasant situation one finds oneself in. The simplistic solutions of against approaches to these problems are brittle; they crack at the slightest change in orientation from their strength. Critique weakens tensility rather than strengthening it.

The coordination of capitalism with the political apparatus, religion, and cultural expectations regarding relationships makes it seem natural. These relationships developed over time, largely by force, and are worth studying. What is the relationship between the people who go to the same market on Tuesday, the same church on Sunday, and attend the same concerts on Friday nights? Compare this to a group that meets once a year under a flag of truce and spends the rest of the year in open hostility. The anarchist project would be to engage with these examples not because they are worth emulation but because they demonstrate principles of tensile strength.

Tensility can be seen as the relationship between frequency, intensity, variety, and duration of encounters. In the first example we see relationships with relatively high frequency and variety, with low intensity (with occasional high intensity around music) that happens over a long period of time, probably years. In these relationships, even without knowing each other’s names, we have a closeness that is not about class composition, shared alienation, or the political project of the total transformation of society. In the second example there is far less closeness with low frequency and variety but high intensity that happens over a long duration. The difference of tensility between these two examples results not from the participant’s connection to a shared struggle or idea but from variety, frequency, and manageability.

If there isn’t a simple for to the anarchist against, then perhaps the problem is one of scale rather than goals. As long as society exists on an enormous scale, the scale of 300 million, 1 million, or even a hundred thousand, it is not possible to believe that it will not form a monopoly on violence, an ideological system that preaches freedom while practicing constraint, and an economic system that alienates for the purpose of expediency. Perhaps anarchism is the recognition that a society worth living in should be of a scale within which one can actually have some kind of direct impact.

There is nothing that can be done to reclaim capitalism. Not only has it been the ideological foundation for the extraction of resources and the economic basis of human suffering for centuries, but the term remains a meaningless abstraction. At the same time there is the false opposition of anarchist anti-capitalists; pretending to stand outside capitalism the same way they would stand in protest outside chain stores or a gathering of world leaders reflects the weakness of individualistic action. This isn’t improved by the anti-capitalism of left communist traditions whose meek declarations of total opposition are only slightly less individuated than the practices of boycott and self-flagellation.

In this essay there has been no definition of anarchism itself other than to acknowledge the inadequate definitions that have preceded us. In addition, the positive anarchist principles[9] are an inadequate beginning to an anarchism of today; they are the elegant principles of another time. If anarchism is to face the challenging times ahead it must become the mongrel beast born of the disparate parts of its stately and negative origins. It must become capable of recognizing the complicated relationship between living in the world and against the world, and instead of erring in the direction of liberalism or asceticism. Anarchism must never become a contract between anarchists and a society that doesn’t exist, and it should never be a settled question. Anarchism is conflict without compromise, without rulers, and with the choice to engage with the world on our own terms. The fight is more important than the outcome.

[1] The term used throughout this article is anarchism. While I generally support the idea of there being a distinction drawn between a system called anarchism and the desire for something called anarchy, with one being critiqued as an ideology and the other as something else, I also believe that it is a waste of time to confuse the terms with the distinction. In addition, the amount of attention placed on the difference between the two terms has created an anarchyism, an ideology of terms. As a consequence the critique of ideology has become a parody of itself.

[2] Marcuse, Herbert; Reason & Revolution. Part II, The Rise of Social Theory www.marxists.org

[3] Which isn’t actually true. The Declaration of Independence only refers to free states; the Bill of Rights refers to the freedom of speech, the press, assembly, petition, and arms.

[4] Even to the extent of participating in the elections of politicians (mayor of Arcata, Gonzalez in SF) and petitions (which is what protests are) to the state.

[5] The activist first and foremost believes in her/his own role in cause-and-effect. Their imagination leads them to believe, “If we activists do X, then the government/company/agency/group/person will do Y. And if Y (or any compromised version of Y) happens, then we are responsible and should take our bows and issue our press releases.”

[6] Cutler, Robert M. (ed.); From Out of the Dustbin: Bakunin’s Basic Writings 1869–1871 (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985).

[7] CrimethInc.; Fighting For Our Lives: an anarchist primer

[8] Marx & Engels; The Communist Manifesto

[9] Solidarity, Mutual Aid, and Direct Action

Oh come and dance with me, Raccoons

We’ve feet and the time to share

We are the people who have chosen life

More than they would know

Oh come run with me, Raccoons

they can’t understand

grayness and the death of routine

from which they run away

Oh come sing with me, Raccoons

food and rest aren’t easy to find

Let’s find the world beneath

where we would rather be

(We dance) because we are alive

We are not of shadow or gray

But of bone, fur and high spirits.

To Life!

Stories of the Raccoon People

(A rich portrait of Aragorn!’s life and of his tireless work as a publisher, in different media, is offered in an interview that he gave to the CrimethInc. collective. More of Aragorn!’s writings are available at the Anarchist Library, an online collection which he helped to create. Until March 4, 2019, Aragorn! kept a blog up and running, which can still be found here.)

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