Several people have recently said to me—half-jokingly—“You anarchists must be happy now that the Republicans are dismantling the government!”
I’m afraid I replied angrily and bitterly that such a remark (even half in jest) represents a serious misunderstanding about the nature of anarchism, which—in all its varieties—includes a strong critique of any form of hegemonic oppression by any kind of “authority.” Since at least the 1970s many anarchists have been attempting to point out that even worse kinds of tyranny than the State can arise out of “late” forms of capitalist modernity. In effect, in countries like the US and Europe, where the state has developed “soft” forms of oppression as well as covert forms (based on “biopower,” etc), it could be said that Work(ie, alienated wage slavery, consumer fetishism, “leisure” and corporate “imagineering”) may well constitute a more immediate form of oppression than State power. The boss is a far more potent source of misery for most of us on an everyday basis than any politician. The waste of our energy and creativity for someone else’s profit never stops, whereas even the police do not oppress us every day of our lives!
Gustav Landauer long ago pointed out that “the State” is not something entirely external to the self, but rather a relation entered into by each individual in a complex resulting in loss of autonomy and existential authenticity—self-repression, as it were. The decision to break with these internalized forms of oppression must precede any outward “political” or “revolutionary” action, lest such action result merely in new forms of hegemony and alienation. This “inner” revolt does not depend on any historic historical fatedness (as in “vulgar marxism” or other forms of determinism). Revolt is itself a free act, and can be carried out at once.
It may even happen that the state is not the worst of our nightmares. Look at Scandinavia or Holland in the 1970s. Surely a genuine social democracy provides a relatively firm ground on which to build “the kernel of the new society (anarchism or confederal democracy) within the shell of the old,” to paraphrase the IWW’s manifesto. And now that I’m old and sick I confess I prefer a kind government to the mean-spiritedness and lack of social imagination of the American police-state, even if it disguises its bad consciousness by ripping off the noble term “libertarian” (which used to mean anti-authoritarian!)
Frankly, we oldtime anarchists feel that people who vote deserve the politicians they get. The job description of US president is “psychopathic murderer”—why is everyone always so surprised when each new incumbent takes on the role? Does anyone ever run for dog-catcher on the promise NOT to catch dogs?
It won’t matter much when the present lot of assholes “deconstruct” a few bureaucratic boondoggles if the military and the banks continue to rule for the benefit of the One Percent, will it? Corporations—including the marvy innovative godkings of Silicon Valley—make far worse tyrants than a few two-bit jerks in the legislature—or the executive! The “Spectacular” Internet is destroying the last vestiges of human society—and capitalism has already destroyed the “environment”—politicians are merely their most enthusiastic clones, drones and suckers.
The real source of today’s misery in the US is the sinking sensation of all liberal bourgeois smug elite masters of the universe that our class has been kicked out of power by a bunch of rednecked whitetrash. Let’s try to get over the ressentiment and whining and tearfulness and read a bit of Kropotkin, Bakunin, Stirner, Emma Goldman—or even Abdullah Öcalan(who?!)—and learn what anarchism is really all about. And then…
Well… “One nevva knows—do one?”