Tomás Ibáñez writes on the inherent (contradictory) duality of the anarchist imaginary and anarchist practice, from Redes Libertarias (05/12/2024).
When I opened the computer to start writing this text, I was tempted to title it: “In Fiery Praise of the Negativity of Anarchism”, since my purpose was precisely to reflect on this inescapable, and often undervalued, dimension of anarchism. However, I soon realised that this forced me to leave out much of what constitutes anarchism. In particular, the positive side of anarchism that also defines it was marginalised. So to remedy this unfortunate amputation, I had no choice but to undertake the elaboration of a second article, entitled this time: “Enthusiastic apology for the anarchist dream and its intermittent embodiments in reality”.
However, as my commitment was to submit a single article to Redes Libertarias, I finally opted to renounce this first title and to merge the two reflections into a single text. There would be no point in recounting this anecdote here, proper to the private sphere of the writer responsible for this article, and it is of no substantial interest, were it not for the fact that the decision to merge the two reflections has had the beneficial effect for me of putting the spotlight on the intrinsically dilemmatic character of anarchism itself. Indeed, from that decision I have come to perceive it as something cut from the same cloth as the two-faced deity called Janus in ancient Rome, endowed with two diametrically opposed but inseparably united faces.
Anarchist radical negativity
To illustrate anarchist negativity one can turn to Mikhail Bakunin who saw in “the passion for destruction a creative passion”, or to Max Stirner who considered that “the eradication of fixed ideas” (his famous spectres), which pervade our minds, was the condition for the destruction of our docile submission to the execrable authority of the instituted. However, apart from these historical references, this negativity is, in my opinion, based on two of the various basic characteristics of anarchism.
The first is its scrupulous respect for the autonomy of individuals and collectives, as well as for the inalienable principle of self-organisation. Let no one think or decide for you, let no one organise your life, or the form of your struggle, are expressions that resonate strongly in the anarchist sphere. This respect leads it to reject outright any temptation to inject from outside struggles, both the principles that should guide them and the forms they should take and the goals they should pursue. All these elements must be formed within the struggles themselves and be directly the work of their protagonists, without anything coming from outside to channel them (not even anarchism itself). This is the necessary condition to not render vulnerable the full autonomy of those who revolt against the mechanisms of domination, oppression and exploitation that govern our societies.
It follows, moreover, that if autonomy is to be truly cherished, as anarchism claims to do, it cannot be overlooked that autonomy can only be achieved by practising it, and that this peculiarity precludes any kind of intervention outside the autonomous process itself. Autonomy is an integral part of the action that strives to achieve it, or in other words, autonomy cannot be achieved in any other way than through its own exercise.
Respecting the autonomy of those who lead the struggles implies, therefore, rejecting any vanguardism and dirigisme, and requires refraining from formulating positive proposals (be they organisational, goal-setting or defining ways of acting) that do not arise from the struggle itself.
From these basic considerations, all that remains is to strive to contribute to dismantling the mechanisms and instruments of oppression that impede the exercise of autonomy, without introducing into this exercise our own schemes, our own principles and goals, given that these have been predefined in other struggles and in other historical circumstances.
Anarchism is thus presented as an instrument of destruction of the instituted, leaving it to the practices developed in the struggles to shape alternatives, material realisations and general principles, gradually tracing, through situated practices, the trajectory to follow.
This does not mean that when anarchists get involved in a struggle they should leave their own weapons, ideas and proposals outside the battlefield; they carry them with them and it would be absurd to ask them to let go of their way of thinking, being and acting. It is simply a matter of letting oneself be carried along as much as possible by the dynamics of the struggle, rather than trying to guide it decisively, since there is always the possibility of stepping out of it if, at some point, it contradicts one’s convictions and one’s own schemes.
The second basic characteristic of anarchism, in relation to the subject under discussion here, is its radical refusal to reproduce what it seeks to combat, that is to say, to generate in its own way effects of domination and mechanisms of oppression. To use an expression I owe to comrade Rafa Cid, it is a matter of anarchism being literally “indominant”, i.e., devoid of domination effects, in order to be coherent with its own presuppositions.
However, insofar as we are totally immersed in the system we are fighting against, it is inevitable that it will leave in our way of being and in our proposals certain traces of the very thing that characterises it. This means that it is difficult to prevent the logic of domination from leaving traces in what we think and build because we always do so from within the system in which we live.
Formulations and realisations that are radically alien to the existing system, and contrary to its characteristics, can only emerge from that which the system does not control or contaminate. In other words, the new, the radical creation, emerges in the spaces that escape the system and that means that this “new world that we carry in our hearts” can only be thought and emerge from outside the system that we fight against, that is to say, from its ruins. Consequently, the task of anarchism is to bring about the collapse of the system, reducing it to mere ruins on which other flowers can truly sprout, which accordingly clearly places it in the realm of radical negativity.
It is precisely because anarchists considered that what we have the capacity to project before we have destroyed that which exists, since it is formed in what we project, will always bear the marks of what presently is. That is why Max Stirner advocated replacing the concept of revolution, aimed at promoting a social form to replace the existing one, with the concept of a permanent insurrection against the instituted; an insurrection that does not seek to overthrow the existing social institution in order to replace it with a new social institution arising from a hypothetical revolution, but is limited to attacking at all times the existing one that is unbearable.
Whether we consider the first of the two characteristics of anarchism I have mentioned or the second, it is clear that anarchism places resistance against the existing system at the centre of the game board, leaving it to this resistance against the established power to create the conditions for building, on the ruins of what has been overthrown, the outlines of values different from the existing ones, and of social forms different from those in force. What is incumbent on anarchism in this process is basically to contribute to the destruction of what has been instituted, and to continue practising resistance as soon as alternative social forms have been established, which, by the way, are not prefigured in anarchism, but will eventually be created by the autonomous struggles themselves in the process of the destruction of capitalism.
The indispensable anarchist dream
In the face of the stubborn negativity of anarchism, in accordance with its most defining principles, it is, of course, its second side that explains why it arouses so much fervour among those of us who are framed within its coordinates.
The joy of feeling a part of an extraordinary tradition of struggle and a magnificent historical experience that ignores borders and cuts crosses cultures is as important to our self-definition as anarchists as the corpus of libertarian writings that forge our identity and shape a shared culture, or the practices of solidarity and mutual support that weave the libertarian space.
Even if the obstacles facing the utopia that animates us seem insurmountable, the hope of overcoming them at some point is the key to encouraging the spirit of struggle, and even to maintaining the intensity of resistance. Even if negativity is seen as the most coherent perspective of anarchism, it is still true that fighting for something and not just against something, as well as pursuing goals and trying to get others to share them, gives a strong impulse to struggles and gives them a different tone, much more convivial and optimistic than that emanating from pure negativity.
To build and live in the present some of the aspects of the anarchist dream, to experience the comradeship that is forged in the heat of shared ideas and common yearnings, to feel the union in the elaboration of shared projects and the enthusiasm of participating in their realisation, all this is irreplaceable in the configuration of anarchism. To imagine what does not exist, but could nevertheless come to be, and to cherish the promises that nestle in utopia, are elements that contribute to forging an identity that makes us feel part of an intimate community in which we immerse ourselves by our own choice and decision, and not by legal, labour, national, gender or family obligations, among many other sources of ascribed determinations.
Now, could it be that these aspects of anarchism, which are, in the end, what motivate us to a large extent to be in tune with its postulates and its work, turn out to be contradictory to the essential negativity of anarchism?
Could it be that the establishment of principles, the definition of goals, the elaboration of models of society, the constitution of a specific identity, the formation of its own culture, with its symbols, its memory, its emblematic figures, etc., would violate its indominant character, so that when the anarchist dream becomes involved in a struggle, it would be in conflict with the full autonomy of those who have undertaken it?
By way of an uncertain conclusion
It seems quite clear that anarchist negativity, on the one hand, and the intoxicating anarchist dream, on the other, are not simply different aspects of the same entity. They are not distinct but complementary elements, but clearly antagonistic aspects. In fact, negativity and the anarchist dream are simply incompatible. In other words, the anarchist dream is opposed to the very thing that anarchist negativity pursues, and makes it impossible for anarchism to achieve its objectives of preserving the autonomy of struggles and of the collectives that animate them. By throwing itself into struggles wrapped in its own cherished and precious attributes, it is clear that anarchism injects into them principles elaborated outside of them.
In short, the anarchist dream puts anarchism’s indominant character in a bind, leading it to contradict its own anti-leadership principles and its radical commitment to autonomy. For its part, anarchist negativity completely marginalises, and virtually eliminates, everything that forms the appeal and richness of anarchism by deeming the anarchist dream to be far from indominant, and insufficiently anarchist, so to speak.
This being the case, it seems that one can only recognise the intrinsically dilemmatic character of anarchism, and note that two clearly antagonistic and undeniably contradictory entities or realities coexist within it.
However, the contradictory need not be disqualified and rejected on principle, since Aristotelian logic does not rest on any imperative and absolute mandate. In addition to the existence of other types of logic (and there are some…), it is also worth bearing in mind that certain realities can be simultaneously antagonistic and symbiotic (power and freedom illustrate this figure perfectly).
Perhaps the richness of anarchism lies precisely in knowing how to maintain the constant tension between its two facets, assuming that it is precisely the contradiction they draw that preserves it from falling into the placid immobility of things that are unproblematic or that present themselves as such. Anarchism is what lives and moves at the precise point where the tension between these two irremediably opposed, but intimately intertwined, facets of wanting to live collectively free, while at the same time wanting to live radically indominant, is extreme.
It is precisely its inability to keep this tension alive that leads much of anarchism to underestimate the importance of the negativity that characterises it and to privilege what I have called here the anarchist dream. However, it turns out that the focus on the anarchist dream leads to a certain frustration in the face of the evidence that its realisation can only be realised, and only partially, in relatively small spaces and in small numbers. This frustration, which does not necessarily lead to taking refuge in inaction, sometimes leads to a search for scapegoats instead of a calm analysis of the reasons for this stagnation and the exercise of a certain self-criticism in the face of one’s own inadequacies.
To the extent that post-structuralism, conceptualised among others by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, or Jacques Derrida (not to be confused with the American spawn of French Theory, nor with the dead end of postmodernism) has brought into question certain postulates that anarchism inherited from the Enlightenment, such as, among many others, to mention here just two examples, the belief in grand narratives and the confidence in progress, it has been quite easy to make post-structuralism and its thinkers the scapegoat responsible for the stagnation and for the weakening of the vigour of the class struggle and the fragmentation of the front-lines of struggle.
What is worrying is that this focus on the search for scapegoats distracts from the fact that the drastic changes undergone by capitalism and the societies it shapes render certain models of confrontation with the system inoperative, outdated, and cause those who cling to them to stagnate.
To carefully scrutinise these changes is the first condition for inventing and articulating new forms of struggle that dismantle the established system and open the way to another form of life closer to the anarchist dream.
Negativity and positivity in anarchism: An inextricable but contradictory duality
Tomás Ibáñez writes on the inherent (contradictory) duality of the anarchist imaginary and anarchist practice, from Redes Libertarias (05/12/2024).
When I opened the computer to start writing this text, I was tempted to title it: “In Fiery Praise of the Negativity of Anarchism”, since my purpose was precisely to reflect on this inescapable, and often undervalued, dimension of anarchism. However, I soon realised that this forced me to leave out much of what constitutes anarchism. In particular, the positive side of anarchism that also defines it was marginalised. So to remedy this unfortunate amputation, I had no choice but to undertake the elaboration of a second article, entitled this time: “Enthusiastic apology for the anarchist dream and its intermittent embodiments in reality”.
However, as my commitment was to submit a single article to Redes Libertarias, I finally opted to renounce this first title and to merge the two reflections into a single text. There would be no point in recounting this anecdote here, proper to the private sphere of the writer responsible for this article, and it is of no substantial interest, were it not for the fact that the decision to merge the two reflections has had the beneficial effect for me of putting the spotlight on the intrinsically dilemmatic character of anarchism itself. Indeed, from that decision I have come to perceive it as something cut from the same cloth as the two-faced deity called Janus in ancient Rome, endowed with two diametrically opposed but inseparably united faces.
Anarchist radical negativity
To illustrate anarchist negativity one can turn to Mikhail Bakunin who saw in “the passion for destruction a creative passion”, or to Max Stirner who considered that “the eradication of fixed ideas” (his famous spectres), which pervade our minds, was the condition for the destruction of our docile submission to the execrable authority of the instituted. However, apart from these historical references, this negativity is, in my opinion, based on two of the various basic characteristics of anarchism.
The first is its scrupulous respect for the autonomy of individuals and collectives, as well as for the inalienable principle of self-organisation. Let no one think or decide for you, let no one organise your life, or the form of your struggle, are expressions that resonate strongly in the anarchist sphere. This respect leads it to reject outright any temptation to inject from outside struggles, both the principles that should guide them and the forms they should take and the goals they should pursue. All these elements must be formed within the struggles themselves and be directly the work of their protagonists, without anything coming from outside to channel them (not even anarchism itself). This is the necessary condition to not render vulnerable the full autonomy of those who revolt against the mechanisms of domination, oppression and exploitation that govern our societies.
It follows, moreover, that if autonomy is to be truly cherished, as anarchism claims to do, it cannot be overlooked that autonomy can only be achieved by practising it, and that this peculiarity precludes any kind of intervention outside the autonomous process itself. Autonomy is an integral part of the action that strives to achieve it, or in other words, autonomy cannot be achieved in any other way than through its own exercise.
Respecting the autonomy of those who lead the struggles implies, therefore, rejecting any vanguardism and dirigisme, and requires refraining from formulating positive proposals (be they organisational, goal-setting or defining ways of acting) that do not arise from the struggle itself.
From these basic considerations, all that remains is to strive to contribute to dismantling the mechanisms and instruments of oppression that impede the exercise of autonomy, without introducing into this exercise our own schemes, our own principles and goals, given that these have been predefined in other struggles and in other historical circumstances.
Anarchism is thus presented as an instrument of destruction of the instituted, leaving it to the practices developed in the struggles to shape alternatives, material realisations and general principles, gradually tracing, through situated practices, the trajectory to follow.
This does not mean that when anarchists get involved in a struggle they should leave their own weapons, ideas and proposals outside the battlefield; they carry them with them and it would be absurd to ask them to let go of their way of thinking, being and acting. It is simply a matter of letting oneself be carried along as much as possible by the dynamics of the struggle, rather than trying to guide it decisively, since there is always the possibility of stepping out of it if, at some point, it contradicts one’s convictions and one’s own schemes.
The second basic characteristic of anarchism, in relation to the subject under discussion here, is its radical refusal to reproduce what it seeks to combat, that is to say, to generate in its own way effects of domination and mechanisms of oppression. To use an expression I owe to comrade Rafa Cid, it is a matter of anarchism being literally “indominant”, i.e., devoid of domination effects, in order to be coherent with its own presuppositions.
However, insofar as we are totally immersed in the system we are fighting against, it is inevitable that it will leave in our way of being and in our proposals certain traces of the very thing that characterises it. This means that it is difficult to prevent the logic of domination from leaving traces in what we think and build because we always do so from within the system in which we live.
Formulations and realisations that are radically alien to the existing system, and contrary to its characteristics, can only emerge from that which the system does not control or contaminate. In other words, the new, the radical creation, emerges in the spaces that escape the system and that means that this “new world that we carry in our hearts” can only be thought and emerge from outside the system that we fight against, that is to say, from its ruins. Consequently, the task of anarchism is to bring about the collapse of the system, reducing it to mere ruins on which other flowers can truly sprout, which accordingly clearly places it in the realm of radical negativity.
It is precisely because anarchists considered that what we have the capacity to project before we have destroyed that which exists, since it is formed in what we project, will always bear the marks of what presently is. That is why Max Stirner advocated replacing the concept of revolution, aimed at promoting a social form to replace the existing one, with the concept of a permanent insurrection against the instituted; an insurrection that does not seek to overthrow the existing social institution in order to replace it with a new social institution arising from a hypothetical revolution, but is limited to attacking at all times the existing one that is unbearable.
Whether we consider the first of the two characteristics of anarchism I have mentioned or the second, it is clear that anarchism places resistance against the existing system at the centre of the game board, leaving it to this resistance against the established power to create the conditions for building, on the ruins of what has been overthrown, the outlines of values different from the existing ones, and of social forms different from those in force. What is incumbent on anarchism in this process is basically to contribute to the destruction of what has been instituted, and to continue practising resistance as soon as alternative social forms have been established, which, by the way, are not prefigured in anarchism, but will eventually be created by the autonomous struggles themselves in the process of the destruction of capitalism.
The indispensable anarchist dream
In the face of the stubborn negativity of anarchism, in accordance with its most defining principles, it is, of course, its second side that explains why it arouses so much fervour among those of us who are framed within its coordinates.
The joy of feeling a part of an extraordinary tradition of struggle and a magnificent historical experience that ignores borders and cuts crosses cultures is as important to our self-definition as anarchists as the corpus of libertarian writings that forge our identity and shape a shared culture, or the practices of solidarity and mutual support that weave the libertarian space.
Even if the obstacles facing the utopia that animates us seem insurmountable, the hope of overcoming them at some point is the key to encouraging the spirit of struggle, and even to maintaining the intensity of resistance. Even if negativity is seen as the most coherent perspective of anarchism, it is still true that fighting for something and not just against something, as well as pursuing goals and trying to get others to share them, gives a strong impulse to struggles and gives them a different tone, much more convivial and optimistic than that emanating from pure negativity.
To build and live in the present some of the aspects of the anarchist dream, to experience the comradeship that is forged in the heat of shared ideas and common yearnings, to feel the union in the elaboration of shared projects and the enthusiasm of participating in their realisation, all this is irreplaceable in the configuration of anarchism. To imagine what does not exist, but could nevertheless come to be, and to cherish the promises that nestle in utopia, are elements that contribute to forging an identity that makes us feel part of an intimate community in which we immerse ourselves by our own choice and decision, and not by legal, labour, national, gender or family obligations, among many other sources of ascribed determinations.
Now, could it be that these aspects of anarchism, which are, in the end, what motivate us to a large extent to be in tune with its postulates and its work, turn out to be contradictory to the essential negativity of anarchism?
Could it be that the establishment of principles, the definition of goals, the elaboration of models of society, the constitution of a specific identity, the formation of its own culture, with its symbols, its memory, its emblematic figures, etc., would violate its indominant character, so that when the anarchist dream becomes involved in a struggle, it would be in conflict with the full autonomy of those who have undertaken it?
By way of an uncertain conclusion
It seems quite clear that anarchist negativity, on the one hand, and the intoxicating anarchist dream, on the other, are not simply different aspects of the same entity. They are not distinct but complementary elements, but clearly antagonistic aspects. In fact, negativity and the anarchist dream are simply incompatible. In other words, the anarchist dream is opposed to the very thing that anarchist negativity pursues, and makes it impossible for anarchism to achieve its objectives of preserving the autonomy of struggles and of the collectives that animate them. By throwing itself into struggles wrapped in its own cherished and precious attributes, it is clear that anarchism injects into them principles elaborated outside of them.
In short, the anarchist dream puts anarchism’s indominant character in a bind, leading it to contradict its own anti-leadership principles and its radical commitment to autonomy. For its part, anarchist negativity completely marginalises, and virtually eliminates, everything that forms the appeal and richness of anarchism by deeming the anarchist dream to be far from indominant, and insufficiently anarchist, so to speak.
This being the case, it seems that one can only recognise the intrinsically dilemmatic character of anarchism, and note that two clearly antagonistic and undeniably contradictory entities or realities coexist within it.
However, the contradictory need not be disqualified and rejected on principle, since Aristotelian logic does not rest on any imperative and absolute mandate. In addition to the existence of other types of logic (and there are some…), it is also worth bearing in mind that certain realities can be simultaneously antagonistic and symbiotic (power and freedom illustrate this figure perfectly).
Perhaps the richness of anarchism lies precisely in knowing how to maintain the constant tension between its two facets, assuming that it is precisely the contradiction they draw that preserves it from falling into the placid immobility of things that are unproblematic or that present themselves as such. Anarchism is what lives and moves at the precise point where the tension between these two irremediably opposed, but intimately intertwined, facets of wanting to live collectively free, while at the same time wanting to live radically indominant, is extreme.
It is precisely its inability to keep this tension alive that leads much of anarchism to underestimate the importance of the negativity that characterises it and to privilege what I have called here the anarchist dream. However, it turns out that the focus on the anarchist dream leads to a certain frustration in the face of the evidence that its realisation can only be realised, and only partially, in relatively small spaces and in small numbers. This frustration, which does not necessarily lead to taking refuge in inaction, sometimes leads to a search for scapegoats instead of a calm analysis of the reasons for this stagnation and the exercise of a certain self-criticism in the face of one’s own inadequacies.
To the extent that post-structuralism, conceptualised among others by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, or Jacques Derrida (not to be confused with the American spawn of French Theory, nor with the dead end of postmodernism) has brought into question certain postulates that anarchism inherited from the Enlightenment, such as, among many others, to mention here just two examples, the belief in grand narratives and the confidence in progress, it has been quite easy to make post-structuralism and its thinkers the scapegoat responsible for the stagnation and for the weakening of the vigour of the class struggle and the fragmentation of the front-lines of struggle.
What is worrying is that this focus on the search for scapegoats distracts from the fact that the drastic changes undergone by capitalism and the societies it shapes render certain models of confrontation with the system inoperative, outdated, and cause those who cling to them to stagnate.
To carefully scrutinise these changes is the first condition for inventing and articulating new forms of struggle that dismantle the established system and open the way to another form of life closer to the anarchist dream.