With the conclusion of the G20 protests in Canada, the inevitable post-mortem dissection has begun in earnest. Activists prepare to file lawsuits, organizers vow to do things differently next time, police pledge to investigate further, the media highlight the purported “destruction” before moving on to the next big story, and world leaders promise to continue their efforts unhampered by the misguided protesters. And, as is by now par for the post-protest course, pretty much everyone seems to cast blame on “the anarchists.”
More recently, in the aftermath of the Oscar Grant verdict in Oakland, the media fan the flames by blaming the few stray acts of window-breaking and looting on “self-described anarchists,” while police officials emphasize that this de facto terrorist segment justifies their conduct vis-à-vis protesters in general. More rifts develop in the streets, and although a tenuous solidarity is at times expressed as well, the lasting images once again are of anarchists acting in seemingly unproductive ways that put the interests and safety of larger movement contingents in jeopardy.
These are but two recent examples of a phenomenon that has been regularly played out in North America since at least the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. Antipathy toward anarchists seems to have increased steadily since then, not only from corporate elites and law enforcement officials, but from a number of fellow movement participants as well. Ironically, this comes at a time when interest in anarchism among activists has greatly expanded, and likewise when its impact upon American activism in general has seen a strong resurgence in recent years.
Critical voices regularly chastise anarchists without indicating that they fully understand what anarchism actually is. But anarchists as well oftentimes seem to act in contravention of both historical and political senses of what anarchism represents. This is further made problematic by the basic fact that anarchists generally eschew doctrinaire definitions and ideological litmus tests, suggesting that people ought to be free to define their own actions and ideas in the manner of their own choosing. And yet, a kind of orthodoxy that increasingly seems like “fundamentalist anarchism” may be taking hold among some sectors that posture as “real revolutionaries,” who denigrate as “pathological” those who would seek to deploy their version of anarchism in less spectacular ways than overtly “smashing the state” by striking at some of its symbolic targets.
Interestingly, this plays right into the hands of the caricature of anarchism as violent, bomb-throwing, chaotic behavior that seems to be the first question one gets asked when their anarchism is presented in mixed company. Indeed, I always enjoy getting that inevitable query: “Isn’t anarchism just violence and destruction?” To which I usually reply: “How many people would you estimate have been killed by anarchists in the last hundred years? Now, how many would you say have been killed by liberals, or conservatives, in that time frame? If a lawyer or corporate manager were here before you now, would you ask about the blood on their hands or just let it slide as part of business as usual? The state didn’t save us from the violence of anarchy — it simply monopolized it, institutionalized it, and expanded its role in our lives.”
I recently had the opportunity to facilitate a series of workshops on “Anarchism and Nonviolence” in the U.S. and Canada. As one might expect, spirited conversations ensued in which many powerful young voices felt challenged by the notion of being nonviolent in a world that in their lifetimes has appeared as inherently violent. Indeed, these issues get at the heart of matters of ethics, tactics, and visions for the future, comprising some of the most basic concerns for social movements and individual consciences alike. One of the exercises we did in these workshops was to create a working definition of anarchism, and then one of nonviolence. Comparing the two lists, many overlapping values emerged: self-governance, rejection of domination, respect and mutual aid, antiwar and anti-oppression practices, solidarity, a radical egalitarianism, and the politics of “prefiguring” the future society. Further, it was pointed out that both notions, (an)archism and (non)violence, trace their linguistic origins to the negation of something — yet have developed proactive self-definitions despite an initial reactive framing.
And the synergies don’t end there. Among the anarchist milieu, we find figures such as Emma Goldman, who dabbled in the use of revolutionary violence in her younger days but came to reject it in her later years. She once told her comrade and coconspirator Alexander Berkman that “violence in whatever form never has and probably never will bring constructive results,” and further elucidated her position that “methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose.” In the end, Goldman saw nonviolence and revolution as intertwined:
It is one thing to employ violence in combat as a means of defense. It is quite another thing to make a principle of terrorism, to institutionalize it, to assign it the most vital place in the social struggle. Such terrorism begets counter-revolution and in turn itself becomes counter-revolutionary.… The one thing I am convinced of as I have never been in my life is that the gun decides nothing at all. Even if it accomplishes what it sets out to do — which it rarely does — it brings so many evils in its wake as to defeat its original aim.… If we can undergo changes in every other method of dealing with the social issues we will also have to learn to change in the methods of revolution. I think it can be done. If not, I shall relinquish my belief in revolution.
Ira Chernus, in chapter five of his book American Nonviolence, assesses Goldman’s transition:
It is not surprising that Goldman eventually endorsed nonviolence. Her anarchist views embraced the fundamental premises of the nonviolent abolitionists. She believed that all people should be treated as equals because no one should have authority over another…. She believed that when people do have authority over others they are coercing others, and thus they are bound to do violence. She believed that no one could achieve right ends by wrong means. Her anarchism also foreshadowed important ideas that would later shape the nonviolence tradition. She believed that all power is based on consent. No one can impose their authority upon another.
Another parallel to consider is the inherent anarchism of Mohandas Gandhi’s worldview. Known of course as an iconic figure of nonviolence, Gandhi likewise borrowed from and advanced many aspects of anarchism in his social and political philosophies. As described by Josh Fattal in the Winter 2006 edition of Peace Power, Gandhi’s anarchism was made plain in myriad ways:
Mohandas Gandhi opposed the State. The State is the military, police, prisons, courts, tax collectors, and bureaucrats. He saw the State as concentrated violence. “The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.” Gandhi recognized that the State claims to serve the nation, but he realized that this was a fallacy. “While apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, [the State] does the greatest harm to mankind.” According to Dr. Dhawan, Gandhi was a philosophical Anarchist because he believed that the “[the greatest good of all] can be realized only in the classless, stateless democracy.” While Gandhi advocated democracy, he differentiated between direct democracy and western democracy…. He had no more appetite for majority democracy of America; “It is a superstition and an ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority.” By centralizing power, western democracies feed into violence. Thus, he thought decentralization was the key to world peace…. Reiterating the idea of Anarchy, Gandhi said, “In such a state (of affairs), everyone is his own ruler. He rules himself in such a manner that he is never a hindrance to his neighbor.”… Gandhi’s concept of swaraj elucidates the connection between the individual and society. Swaraj translates into ‘self-rule’ or ‘autonomy.’… The principle of swaraj ultimately leads to a grassroots, bottom-up, ‘oceanic circle’ of self-ruling communities.
Anarchists will recognize many familiar themes here, including autonomy, self-governance, decentralization, self-sufficiency, and a federated network of horizontal communities. As Gandhi explained:
Independence begins at the bottom… It follows, therefore, that every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its own affairs…. In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever-widening, never ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose center will be the individual. Therefore, the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from it.
There are more such examples — as well as some that contradict the thesis being advanced here, of course — but a fuller exposition will necessarily await another opportunity. The point of offering this nexus between anarchism and nonviolence at this juncture is simply to suggest that we look for ways to support and bolster both paradigms since they are increasingly coming into contact with one another in the real world of on-the-ground activism and organizing. Rather than repeat useful but by now tired mantras about respecting a “diversity of tactics,” we might consider instead looking to generate a “complementarity of tactics” in which the choices we make are mutually-reinforcing. This is particularly true in an era when provocateurs and propagandists alike can easily exploit the tensions among movement cohorts to denigrate all.
It seems to me that this is a matter of urgency for our movements. I’m not going to assert that my reading of anarchism as inherently nonviolent is somehow correct or true. I am, however, strongly suggesting that anarchists consider the implications of the moment in which we find ourselves. The “useful idiot” sense of anarchists becoming the justification for the escalating police state and all of its retributive techniques against activists in general has become palpable (even as we recognize it as obviously fallacious and revisionist). What worked once or even a few times as a tactic can grow stale when done repeatedly, and frankly begins to seem neither creative, spontaneous, or very anarchistic at this juncture. Not to mention that it has created a situation so rife with the prospect of infiltration that it cannot even be certain any longer whether anarchists themselves are in fact guiding their own course of conduct and self-definitions.
This may not win me any new friends among fellow anarchists, yet it needs to be said: Anarchists ought to publicly and demonstrably proclaim their nonviolence, especially in the context of mass demonstrations. This will make it clear that any violence done in that theater — which time and again is used to legitimize mass arrests, bloated police budgets, and the rest of the fascistic enterprise — is not the product of anarchists but more likely of agents of the state itself. After all, that is the basic notion being advanced, isn’t it? To wit: the state (including its corporate underwriters and beneficiaries) is inherently violent both overtly and structurally; anarchists above all reject the state and thus would do well to highlight the fundamental contrast. “The state is violent, and we are not” would be a very good place to start the discussion.
“It is one thing to employ violence in combat as a means of defense”, attributed to Emma Goldman in the post, does not seem to fit the nonviolence philosophy as I understand it. While speaking out against violence as a form of political action, she’s nonetheless reserving full freedom in employing it in physical self-defense, which in our violent, capitalist society, always finds cause for occasion.
Goldman’s quote reminds me of a much later one by Malcolm X, “I don’t favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I’m also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people” and “Concerning nonviolence: It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself, when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks”. Once again, these statements seem to recognize the futility and even ineffectiveness of employing violence as a political form yet reserve it entirely, in physical self-defense against violent aggression.
I am therefore left unclear of what “nonviolence” elevated to a form of politics in itself means; especially when as this post does, and often happens, Gandhi is cited as a primary example. Leaving aside his anti-Black racism and his reactionary Indian caste attitudes, with regard to nonviolence, I only need mention Gandhi on South Africa w. I’ll recall that during the `Kaffir Wars’ in South Africa he was a regular Gunga Din, who volunteered to organized Indians to put down the Zulu uprising; he encouraged the British to raise an Indian regiment for use against the Black Zulus. Is nonviolence then a philosophy to be applied only to political movements, as a self-imposed limitation, but all’s fair in love and war?
The last quick addition I wanted to make is to introduce a quick Marxist perspective in this, since the article is making connections between anarchism, which at least in its most serious class struggle variant shares many similarities with Marxism. It may be useful for people thinking about these connections to read Leon Trotsky’s 1911 essay, “Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism”, which can be read online: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1911/11/tia09.htm
Trotsky makes the point that “In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses.”
And focusing on the anarchists, he writes, “But—contrary to the anarchists and in direct struggle against them—Social Democracy rejects all methods and means that have as their goal to artificially force the development of society and to substitute chemical preparations for the insufficient revolutionary strength of the proletariat.” It should be noted that pre-WWI Marxists often called themselves “Social Democrats”
Marxism, and famed Marxist leader Rosa Luxemburg was an excellent articulator of this point, concerned itself with raising the consciousness of the workers, to spur on their own limitless capacity for self-organization and effective mass political action. In the essay, Trotsky’s opposition to violence as a political tool is not guided by some absolutist moralistic consideration but by an understanding that violence or individual terrorism is counterproductive to raising consciousness and mobilizing on mass as a class. A point, I’m sure many of the more serious anarchists of the time could agree with, despite their opposition to the creation of a workers state post-revolution.
The moralist take on nonviolence, which to my mind recalls Gandhi, in respect to his support for the British war against Black Africans, makes this final quote, from the same essay, by Trotsky all the more relevant: “In his own words Trotsky wrote, “There is no need to belabour the point that Social Democracy [Marxism] has nothing in common with those bought-and-paid-for moralists who, in response to any terrorist act, make solemn declarations about the ‘absolute value’ of human life. These are the same people who, on other occasions, in the name of other absolute values—for example, the nation’s honour or the monarch’s prestige—are ready to shove millions of people into the hell of war.”
And so I’m left with the question what exactly is nonviolence, what are its takes on self-defense, because this would very much affect how it relates to anarchism, at least in its most mature and class conscious manifestations, surely represented by the likes of Emma Goldman.
Musa Al-Mumtaaz
http://www.class-struggle.com
I agree. Thanks for writing.
What a wonderful, measured essay—thank you. It is, actually, a fine example of the kind of careful, responsible reasoning I’ve often encountered in conversations with anarchists; when you don’t expect big brother to pick up the pieces (or render the whole discussion impotent from the outset), one has to really choose one’s words carefully, as you have done.
The whole issue of “anarchist violence” at these protests, however, does bring to mind discussions we had around the Gaza Freedom Flotilla incident. The violence, after all, is what tends to attract media attention. It again represents a challenge to the nonviolent to find creative ways of making sure their courageous actions aren’t drowned out by a few exceptional incidents of destruction.
More and more energy continues to be consumed by this distraction of the so called violence of those who threw rocks or damaged or took property. In this case, it is a highly philosophical and ideological rhetoric but it is still ultimately focused on the distraction rather than the core issue that I feel should be the focus. The state’s violence and perhaps secondary the media’s role.
I can’t help but feel that every minute that is spent defending, attacking, or analyzing the “anarchists” and their “violence” at the Meserle Verdict rally, the G20 protest or anywhere is a failure of our movements and a success for the corporate media that knew where to point the Camera’s to distract us and the Police that new how to spin the sound bites. My response every time has been,”Who cares?” Who cares if they are “real” or “fake” anarchists? Who cares if they were local or “outside” agitators? Who cares if they were activists or undercover cops? Who cares if they broke windows or stole sneakers?
The cops killed another young person of color and got a away with a slap on the wrist. The cops once again declared marshal law and over reacted and embezzled insane amounts of tax payer dollars to violently abuse folks regardless of whether they threw rocks or just spoke out. The Media once again ignored the overwhelming voice and tone of the community and highlighted a caricatured violent version of communities of color. That’s where the focus needs to be, that’s what I want to talk about.
The wisest thing I heard at the rally was a young black male who was asked to say something about outside agitators and make a call for non-violence and he said MLK was once called these names. He told the crowd that as far as he was concerned the cops from Napa and all sorts of suburbs were the only outside agitators he was worried about. “Everyone is welcome here”, was his mantra but the focus is what was so wise to me. I just really wish everyone would stop talking about this and come back to the reason there was a rally, which is ultimately so much more important.
It also makes me realize how conservative our movements are in this country that we can get so shocked and distracted cause people break a few windows and loot a corporate giant, that we get off topic and off message.
The problem with focusing on the dichotomy of violence vs. nonviolence is that violence casts too wide a net in describing what most urgently needs opposing. That is, if we are saying that the “basic notion being advanced” is that we reject all forms of violence, and therefore reject the state, then we’re making an unnecessary categorical grouping between dissimilar forms of violence.
Is it productive to group, say, a mother who uses violence to defend her child, with a soldier who, unprovoked, uses violence to attack a child? Of course not. In fact, it would be more convincing to argue that the two acts are moral opposites.
Now, you or I may be sympathetic to pacifism, and have our own personal reasons to refuse to use violence even in the case of defending ourselves or a child, but it hardly makes sense to group such acts under the same “violent” banner as truly repugnant forms of violence. Instead, aren’t we more concerned with rejecting the state because it uses violent domination and exploitation as means to organize society? Are we really as concerned with violent self-defense, or the activist who violently destroys military weaponry, for example, as we are with violent oppression?
More troubling is that domination, exploitation, oppression, etc., are not solely the result of violence. They can be accomplished quite effectively using nonviolence too: propaganda, indoctrination, dogma, education, etc. (cf. the Catholic Church). The negation of violence doesn’t necessarily mean the negation of domination or coercion.
Nevertheless, my intention here is not to either defend or criticize the breaking of windows or throwing of rocks at cops during protest demonstrations, but to suggest that we should instead be focusing on a thorough examination of whether the tactics and methods used are effective tools to accomplish what we really hope to achieve. In some cases, certain tactics should be criticized not because they’re somewhat violent in nature, but because they’re counterproductive, assholish, or just plain stupid.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jason Laning. It is unfortunate that some people lump self-defensive measures and insurrection against tyranny with things like murder and rape into one big indistinguishable stew called “violence”.
Please distinguish for us then, the difference with the insurrectionary violence used by nativists and supremacists to ‘defend’ their way of life and ‘resist’ a tyrannical system that they believe wants to end it? The slippery slope of legitimation even winds up being the exact logic that takes us to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. I’m not a purist by any means, and people can and should make their own choices — but for me, any use of violence (even in self-defense) ought to be done with a heavy heart and as an absolute last resort, never celebrated or used in a way that exposes others to its inherent dangers. After all, if your insurrection succeeds by way of force, what message do you think you’ll be sending to the next cadre out there waiting to launch their own righteous revolution? Perhaps we can break the cycle and instead get there by another path…
Hi Randall, one initiates and the other doesn’t. I grant you that an initiator may try to twist the facts, but the facts are still facts, and this possibility doesn’t mean we should do away with such a crucial distinction. I am non-violent in the sense that I oppose *initiation* of violence. But I do not oppose a human being’s natural right to defend herself.
I hate violence as much as the next guy; I agree with you that it’s a reluctant last resort. Still, to discourage somebody from physically defending herself from a brutal oppressor just because her defense would be “violent” would be morally reprehensible. To discourage a group of slaves from insurrection would be so wrong as to aid and abet the slave-owner. (Not saying you would do that.)
Since there is nothing morally wrong with self-defensive violence, the only objection to it can be based on practical concerns. And here the answer is always the same: the reason it is impractical is because you *object* to it, not vice versa. If every liberal were to stop these misguided objections to self-defense and would take action, there would be a successful, justified revolt.
The worry about what happens afterwards (e.g. other cadres) is legitimate, but ultimately it should not stop us from doing what we know to be ethical right now. When you see a child being kidnapped and raped, you intervene with defensive force, even if it’s possible (for all you know) that the child could grow up to become the next Hitler. Future possibilities (which are mostly based on fear) do not veto out taking action against present actualities.
You make some good points, AcK, and you make them well — thanks for that. I would not tell another how to best self-defend or revolt against the slave owner. (I’m not sure that either of these scenarios completely applies to the posture of anarchists in the North American mass demo context, but that’s another matter entirely.)
The “future possibilities” argument is an interesting one. It seems to me that when people become accustomed to using force to win their cause, the continuation of that mindset into the future is much more than merely a possibility. In other words, we become what we do — whether we initiate or respond — and this comes to define the rules of engagement in the culture(s) we create. Haven’t we seen this time and again, where oppressed peoples rise up with force, and in turn become the oppressor of others even to the point of committing genocide — all the while arguing that the other side started it and that this was part of a “never again” self-defense strategy? It’s an historical Pandora’s box…
These are super complex questions, of course, and I stand with the anarchists in their right to choose what works for them. I’m simply trying to broach the issues and open space for the debate. Your reasoned points have added much to that, so thanks again!
Thanks to folks for the excellent comments, which I largely agree with. Obviously a full exposition of the violence/nonviolence issue needs more than just one short article, and the questions of context, above vs. below, effectiveness, etc. are critical ones. What I was suggesting in the article is that in the particular context of North American mass demonstrations, even the appearance of what (to a layperson or the media) remotely looks like “violence” seems to be yielding diminishing returns at this juncture. When we reach a point where our actions are being fomented, encouraged, exploited, and used to justify repression of others, this might well be a moment to reflect and revise the tactics accordingly. The discussion might be framed in moralistic terms, but I was focusing here on the strategic questions that appear most urgent right now, in the hope of sparking precisely that much-needed debate. Thanks again for contributing to it….
Randall — It’s the moralistic terms that sidetrack the strategic questions by limiting their scope. “The state is violent, and we are not” is the beginning of a discussion that only applies to strict pacifists.
I suspect that the antagonism between nonviolent protesters and ‘violent anarchists’ at these demonstrations has less to do with a difference of opinion about tactics, and more to do with a different overall strategic, and perhaps ideological, framework. My guess is that the ‘violent anarchists’ are less interested in registering dissent, or gaining positive media attention, and more interested in directly acting against the interests of the G20 (i.e., “fucking shit up”).
Some questions I would like to see answered by both sides might be: What can protesters hope to achieve now that the world is already well aware (thanks to past summits) that a tiny group of activists are really pissed off about these types of global economic summits/groups? Are the protests having any effect on the actions of G20 leaders? Would it still be possible to shut down one of these summits, and what might that accomplish? Does throwing a rock at a cop or breaking a window actually hinder the interests of the G20 or does it help them? etc.
Thanks Jason. Actually, I don’t think there’s a single anarchist who would disagree with the statement: “The state is violent, and we are not.” The question, of course, becomes how we define the meaning of “violence,” which I intentionally did not do in this article. Undoubtedly, we can have our debates about the meaning of the term, but in the larger context of what’s working (or not) we should consider how our actions are perceived by others and who else is being impacted by them. It’s not moralistic — it’s called solidarity.
Actually, I don’t think there’s a single anarchist who would disagree with the statement: “The state is violent, and we are not.”
It would seem that there are at least two or three in this comment thread alone (and every single anarchist involved in the Spanish Civil War, etc.).
Also, there is some dissonance between your statement that you “would not tell another how to best self-defend or revolt against the slave owner” and your insistence that “anarchists ought to publicly and demonstrably proclaim their nonviolence.” Slaves they are not, but you’re certainly advocating how anarchists should “self-defend or revolt” against forces who intend to do them harm.
Anyway, I’m sympathetic to your underlying point that property destruction and attempts to antagonize the police at these demonstrations may be counterproductive (although I would similarly like to see an analysis of the effectiveness of nonviolent protests in this arena), but find that the framing of the violence/nonviolence dichotomy only detracts from the discussion, as is so aptly demonstrated by this thread, with hardly a reference to the productivity of current tactics and strategies, or ideas for new ones.
I think you’re missing the point, Jason — it depends how “violence” is defined and proponents often point out that it’s not violent to resist oppression, genocide, etc. My “ought” statement is a suggestion, not a dictate, as the entire context of the article makes plain. And I do think that the violence/nonviolence dichotomy is an important one to explore, and that it adds to rather than detracts from the discussion. Indeed, it is my intention here precisely to enable and facilitate the debate so that we are all at least talking to each other rather than at or (even worse) about each other. Solidarity has a better chance of taking hold when the issues are talked about openly and honestly.
Jason you are a badass. Good points all.
When Randall says “we” reach a point where “our” actions… One thing is absolutely clear and that is that Randall and most of the folks in agreement do not advocate those actions, do not own those actions and the real intent is to challenge a particular response to the violence of the state. I am a young person thankfully or regretfully I didn’t live the struggles of the 60’s nor a time period close enough in proximity to where the 60’s are still tightly framing the discourse for my activism. That said i’ve seen quite a bit of fracturing of movements and coalitions even within tiny organizations and i’ve read about the same phenomenon born of largely the same disputes that we are tackling here today in the legendary 60’s.
The amount of time, ink, energy and passion consumed by the Non-Violence and Black Power movements attacking each other and each others tactics seems in my reading of history like a major tactical mistake. Black power militancy was a justifiable reaction to the STATE’s violence and racism by one group with one reality. Pacifism and revolutionary non-violence and civil disobedience was a justifiable reaction to the STATE’s violence by a different group with a different reality. These are generalizations about race, class, and levels of privilege and clearly there are as many exceptions as life stories but massive trends tightly correlated with levels of privilege cannot be denied.
Fast forward to today and rather than learn from this history it seems we are doomed to repeat it. It seems we are doomed to spend endless amounts of time, ink, energy and passion on identifying the “right” (effective is a common euphemism) politics and tactics and philosophy and in the process defining the “wrong” (ineffective also a great stand in) ones as well.
Empathy not ideology should be the thing to cling to here. Let’s look at the tactics that rub us the wrong way and not say first, “that’s ineffective” let’s say first that’s justifiable and expected because the STATE did this, and if the STATE continues to do this it can only expect that.
MLK put it best when he said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”. I don’t want to make MLK out to be a saint and everything he said instantly beyond reproach but here he found a way to affirm his approach, his ideology, his tactics while empathizing with a different approach, ideology etc. Instead of attacking one as ineffective or ignorant or wrong, He put the spotlight back on the STATE. If the messaging from the movement King represented and the movement Huey P. represented took this approach at every critical juncture then the state’s violence would always be the target of so many activist’s time, ink, energy and passion. The young man I mentioned in my previous post understood this instinctively and it is also interesting that he evoked Doctor King in his statement, perhaps he took a page from MLK, and I advocate that we all grab that page.
Well said, Pablo. Unquestionably, the real violence in our midst is largely (perhaps even exclusively) perpetrated by the state apparatus and its various franchises. Yet movements ought to cast their gaze internally from time to time as well, and this piece was intended to engage the debate in a meaningful and mutually-useful way. When I say “we” I indeed intend to say that I/we all “own” at least part of the actions taken by fellow activists in the movements we are part of; I would never disavow comrades (in fact, I’ve spoken out publicly on behalf of many who were not particularly popular) even if I disagree with their choices for either moral or tactical reasons. What I will do — what we all have an obligation to do — is to raise the question(s) in a principled and empathetic way, as your invocation of MLK nicely suggests. That was my aim here, and I hope it is received in that spirit. Many thanks for your insights!
Other than militant occupation of space and property destruction (which is nonviolent), there isn’t any other nonviolent tactic that adequately represents the hatred and spite I have for the state and capitalism. I propose that everyone resist the most empowering way they feel is possible and shut the hell up about the actions of others. Violence, while I’ve never personally used it, attracts me because it is the most extreme way of expressing rage and negating the humanity of those who are participating in the highest echelons of the apparatus of capitalism and the state. I have no compassion and no pity for those individuals who make a career out of destroying life and liberty of others. To me, they are as inhuman as the guns, pens, and BlackBerries they wield. They are gears that must be alive and lubricated to make the violent system work. They are the fingers that pull the triggers, they are the fingers that type the foreclosure notices, they are the fingers that send healthcare claim denials. Let them fry.
Thank you Comrade. Now, back to work on the collective farm….
I think there is some value in staring down the State in the immediate aftermath of State violence. I point to the vivid example of the man and the column of tanks after the Tiananmen massacre. This is certainly a far cry from organised nonviolent movement, perhaps even originally irrational, but definitely within kairos. I refer to this disproportion in the apparatus of violence as effective in the rational (that is, the balance of proportionality) counter-point, though their irrational embrace must be total as to leave no possibility of feelings between the interstices of that space and time. Thus, kairos. But also, there is too much physical space between protest movements and protesters themselves in the face of State violence. People are not arm in arm protecting each other in the North America I’ve seen. There are no phalanxes. The movements are a soft sponge.
Who is “The State,” really? Doesn’t it include soldiers — young adults who are being ordered to do what they do against protesters? When I participate in a demonstration, I try to imagine those soldiers having a change of heart and joining us one day. Will throwing rocks at them hasten that day or prevent it?
Well stated. Part of the “problem” with anarchism is that the term has been coopted by angry, (typically young), reactionaries to social injustice. Anarchy is confused with nihilism. Violence doesn’t solve the problems at hand, but it sometimes allows one to feel as if they have “done” something about “it.”
Elizabeth,
If violence doesn’t solve the problems at hand, are we to believe that violence has never solved anything?
What about ending slavery (not the union army, but actual slave revolts and threats they posed to the southern aristocracy)?
Ending Hitler’s reign of terror (not the violence of the Soviet and US Armies, but of the hundreds of revolts, guerilla actions, and attacks from inside the German empire, including the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the revolt at Sobibor)?
Achieving almost all improved labor conditions in the United States (the great labor wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including use of force with guns and explosives to shut down businesses, prevent scabs from taking union jobs, and attack bosses for their injustices)?
Preventing white settlers from ENTIRELY wiping out the indigenous (it was armed resistance that prevented many nations from being wiped out in their entirety, and ensured that some nations still have even the small semblance of sovereignty the have today.)?
Stopped the war in Vietnam (armed GI resistance and fragging, the NVA and the armed resistance of the Vietnamese)?
Now, in all these instances, unarmed, and nonviolent movements have aided in the effectiveness of armed or violent partisans or participants. However, they were only effective because people used a plethora of tactics and supported each others’ inherent right to use force to destroy much greater violent system.
I support your tactics, the tactics of non-violence all the time. Why would there be an automatic dismissal of violent tactics?
We’ve been playing this game for 500 years in the Americas, and I would argue that only at times that mass movements that employed BOTH violence and nonviolence used a diverse range of tactics that any change has actually come to the conditions of people living in this continent.
I’ll also ask one final question of all the pacifist on this board that refuse to support comrades that use violence.
Are you a supporter of Nelson Mandela? If so, can you tell me what he went to prison for in the first place? He seems to be a huge icon on the left, especially amongst those that propose that non-violence is the only solution, yet he was engaged in ARMED attacks against the South African state. Are you to disavow him and the millions of other non-white, non-first world peoples that have used violence against overwhelming oppression? Are the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto to be condemned? Are the slaves who revolted to be condemned? Are the Chinese peasants that at this very moment are attacking police and state officials in response to forcible evictions from their land to be condemned?
I will never condemn anyone for using non-violence, so why am I to be condemned if I view violence as a sometimes necessary tool?
I am an anarchist. And I am indeed angry. I’m also a parent of two kids, a participant in my neighborhood association, a board member for a trade union, a co-owner of a collective business, and someone that can’t merely be written off as a nihilist or a starry-eyed teenager.
There are real reasons that folks are angry, that folks are full of rage, and are ready to explode. Those feelings are completely understandable and should not be used in some sort of argument as something that is negative.
One final point for everyone that stands on this side of this topic.
The basis of nonviolence, whether that of Gandhi or of U.S. Catholic Workers is that property destruction is a necessary tool within the toolbox of non-violence. Gandhi condoned the burning of British wool mills, and the destruction of British made products. Plowshares in the U.S. and the world have been attacking and destroying military equipment and other property for many decades.
So are these tactics to be dismissed as well? And if so, is this actually an argument about resisting global empire and the oppression it represents, or is this more of a way to justify never leaving your privileged and safe conditions to actually struggle?
I would have to agree with most of this post. I am an Anarchist and Catholic Worker. I believe in Solidarity and refuse to denounce those who use property damage as a way to voice there outrage. I believe that a revolution necessitates a multitude of tactics.
I can tell you for a fact that black blocers are not police provocateurs, although of course it’s possible that occasionally they’re infiltrated. Legal, nonviolent organizations are also infiltrated all the time so this is completely beside the point. And since black blocs are formed by people working in affinity groups (friends who know each other well) it’s actually much LESS likely they’ll be infiltrated than some formal mass organization.
Anyway, you can take my word for it that there are MANY people who think cop cars deserve to burn and bank windows deserve to be broken, and think it’s absurd to even call this “violence.” In her critique, Emma Goldman was talking about assassinations, bombings, and bank robberies, extremely common anarchist tactics of the day. I’m sure she would laugh out loud if she knew that present-day “anarchists” who are really sanctimonious religious moralizers, were denouncing broken glass and a few smashed symbols of capital.
It’s beyond stupid to blame the black bloc for police repression. What the police and their masters do is their own responsibility and THEY should be held accountable. In any case, they will repress dissent even if it takes “nonviolent” form. Anyone with any familiarity with Seattle 99 knows they pepper sprayed and beat peaceful civil disobedients before any windows had been broken. The State needs no excuse to crack down on the opposition.
I recommend you stop spouting abstract moral dogma, climb down off your high horse, stop reading religious claptrap, and look at how historical change has actually been achieved by the oppressed. Time and again it has meant directly confronting the oppressors, not politely whining at them. “The rich are only ever defeated when they’re running for their lives” said revolutionary CLR James.
Hmm, seems like an unanticipated event, no? I mean, on the one hand you dismiss certain tactics as not really violent because they’re just a little broken glass and symbolic destruction, yet you also want to take on the mantle of a real revolutionary directly confronting the oppressors. Can you have it both ways, comrade? No one ever said that it was violent to smash symbols, or that anarchists were to blame for state repression. The point is that some of what has been transpiring is simply playing right into the hands of repressive power, and not liberating people from it — or at least that is a perception shared by a number of people in movement culture. You may want to dismiss them as sanctimonious religious moralizers, but that doesn’t sound like an expression of solidarity to me. Let’s leave the revolutionary vanguardism to the communists, okay? Anarchists work with people rather than on them….
To me the lack of solidarity lies in the perspective that suggests that the black block could easily be “provocateurs” and the “useful idiots” of the police (your words). You hedge these words by saying it’s a “palpable sense” or a “perception shared by a number of people.” Don’t be mealy-mouthed, what do YOU actually think? Is window-breaking playing into the hands of police or not? I happen to think it plays into the hands of police to encourage a snitch/surveillance culture and denounce vandals. Yes I will get testy when someone suggests comrades are police agents – you either back that up or keep your accusations to yourself.
There’s no contradiction in what I’m saying: window-breaking is hardly “violence” AND it will almost certainly take REAL violence to overthrow capitalism. This is almost self-evident to me. But anyway you’re the one who brought up the topic of “violence” and started throwing around quotes about “terrorism” and “the gun” and so forth. You’re the one who’s associating window-breaking with killing people, to what end I’m still not sure. Yes, you’re right, some people are so pacified, brainwashed, domesticated and sheep-like they think a broken window is “terrorism.” As an anarchist I’m not going to play that game or concede one inch to that worldview.
The black bloc is a tactic, not an organization, as you well know. It has been very effective on a number of levels, from giving individuals a place to express their justifiable rage, to spotlighting symbols of empire and helping to create a “credible threat” sensibility. Yet as a tactic it can also be influenced, manipulated, and even guided by people with differing agendas. Now that the tactic is known and anticipated by authorities, it has become easier to hijack both the narrative and course of conduct despite the best intentions of authentic participants such as (presumably) yourself. So while I sincerely appreciate your passion, I also believe that movements have to be able to talk about these implications openly and fully. It would also be good to acknowledge that not all of “the anarchists” in our movements are necessarily smashing stuff and street fighting, embodying a multitude of tactics instead. I am not arguing that any one set of them is inherently more effective than another, but more so that the sense of vanguardism creeping into the black bloc ethos is starting to take on some challenging qualities that strain the limits of anarchism and impact the choices of many other players in the movements. So don’t back down, for sure — but being willing to talk is good.
So-called “pacifism” and “non-violence” are really just an obsessive desire to keep one’s hands “clean.” But this isn’t possible. As the author correctly notes, liberals and conservatives kill all the time. The Democrat Party is literally murdering and torturing people every day in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan; their police are brutalizing and even killing in communities of color. So someone who donates to MoveOn.org or votes for Obama is in fact supporting a vicious terrorist organization.
A “pacifist” who clutches their pearls over a broken window is in fact giving the police an excuse to harass, beat, and imprison people. The more “pacifists” complain about the black bloc, the more they’re digging their own grave, since police will feel more emboldened to crack down on all kinds of dissenters.
A “non-violent” activist is someone who facilitates the violence of the powerful.
And by the way, slavery would never have been abolished, nor India freed from colonial rule, without some serious violence.
As Howard Zinn said, we don’t know what would have happened if nonviolent strategies had been used en masse to withdraw cooperation from the Nazis or US slaveholders, although there certainly were successful instances of nonviolent resistance throughout those conflicts. We always must keep looking back, back, back in history to see what leads to war, to understand the root causes and to acknowledge where people cooperated too long with injustice.
One thing we do know is how nonviolence was used, powerfully, in the US Civil Rights Movement, which could easily have become a huge blood bath, a second Civil War, if armed resistance had been widespread. Were civil rights activists any less angry than any of you? I doubt it. Anger can lead to positive action — which involves discipline.
One of you wrote that you are a dad with two children. Think about how you handle your anger at home, with your kids in mind. How do you model conflict resolution for them? My guess is that you don’t smash things or hit people. Would you promote another standard out in the streets? If so, what is the lesson for them?
Barbara Deming wrote wisely about the efficacy of nonviolence, and she had a lot of practice at it in extremely volatile situations. I always go back to her “two hands” approach — using one hand to move your adversary in the direction you want, and the other hand to protect them from harm. Choosing to see your adversary as a possible future ally is part of the key. In my own experience as a peace activist, I’d say that about half of my colleagues were once actively involved in the “war machine.” They changed, and because they did, that has given me faith in the possibility of transformation for every person. Behind every black visor in a line of police or soldiers is someone who is probably young and afraid. Don’t write them off. Win them over.
Um, destroying capitalism is not about “conflict resolution.” It’s not that capitalists and I are having an argument. They’re literally killing my brothers and sisters and stealing my life. For you to come along and say they’re a “future ally” I should “protect” is offensive, and shows your extreme ignorance and, I’m certain, your position of privilege. I doubt you have ever really experienced any severe oppression or victimization in your life, or if you have you’ve clearly internalized your own victimhood and seem to prefer to meekly be abused rather than stand up for yourself and your dignity.
Your history of the civil rights movement is distorted at best. You’re ignoring race riots and all kinds of things that today’s extreme fundamentalist “pacifists” would undoubtedly call “violence.” I’m pretty sure that a few things got broken on the way to trying to enforce rights for blacks, rights which, by the way, they still don’t really enjoy today. You could hardly call the civil rights movement an unqualified success.
Playing the victim you have to have a “bad guy” and for your fantasy the evil you choose to blame your failure is capitalism.
Anarchism, collective or individual, is deeply flawed, which is why it has an extremely small following in the United States.
Any examples of the success of ANY form of anarchism?
“And if it is a despot you would dethrown, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.” -Kahlil Gibran … Clearly, by “destroy” the suggestion here is not to break windows or light fires.
This quote comes from Gibran’s discussion of freedom, in “The Prophet.”
Just thought it applied, in some way, to the topics at hand here.
Peace.
Speaking as an anarchist who owns guns, I think it’s important to distinguish between the issue of whether force is JUSTIFIED, and whether it actually accomplishes anything. For example, I’ve seen plenty of police abuse videos depicting situations in which the victims of the state mercenaries had every right to resist, including with deadly force. But I’m glad they didn’t. Why? Because a couple fascists might die, their victims would die, and nothing much else would change.
(As another example, I had the means, and I think I had every right, on May 6, 2003, to gun down a dozen federal extortionist thugs who showed up at my house to try to shut me up. I didn’t. I let them in. Because righteously dying in a gunfight, even if I took some of the bastards with me, would have accomplished nothing.)
However, the same can be said for passive resistance. If one righteously sits there while a state mercenary beats the hell out of him, and no one else pays any attention, what was the point? If passive resistance makes other people wake up to the violence inherent in the state, great! But how often does it?
I own firearms in the hopes that I won’t ever have to actually fire them at someone. And statistics show that normal people just HAVING firearms deters MILLIONS of crimes every year. I doubt passive resistance would do that much. But for such a thing to work on the state, there have to be a LOT of people both able and willing to use force to stop the “government” aggressors. If a million people let it be known that they were done being “taxed,” and would resist by force any federal extortionist who showed up at their houses, that would be the end of the IRS. If a FEW people do that, however, it just makes for a photo-op for the jackboots to slaughter a couple more “extremists.”
In conclusion, there are MILLIONS of instances, every single day, in which people would be morally justified in using force, even deadly force, against so-called “law enforcers.” But it wouldn’t do any good, as long as MOST people still worship at the alter of the state. What matters is having enough people understand self-ownership, and the inherently illegitimacy of “government,” so that we have the means and willingness to effectively defend against “legal” aggression. And then we probably won’t even need to.
Woooah. You’re way out there. (This is coming from someone who is on the right of the political spectrum). I’m all for limited government and the reduced taxes that go along with a smaller government, but recognize the need for government to protect our national interests and liberty.
I suggest you exercise force on election day to achieve your goals. If that’s not good enough for you, go live in Somalia. No government to speak of there and lots of people with guns.
While there’s much too much to unpack and comment on here, I wanted to point out – in the same spirit of nuance inherent in your own post – that there’s a difference between what you term “passive resistance” and nonviolent social action. Nonviolent means of action span much wider than simply taking a “righteous” beating or walking the other way, which Gandhi himself would consider worse than using violence to defend oneself.
It’s wrong to imagine that our only options are violence or, essentially, nothing. The history of nonviolence shows that it has often found insightful ways of responding to violence (even direct violence) that does not depend upon the use of violence. I’m not saying that you’re wrong about the futility of unseen “righteous” beatings. I’m just saying that that’s not what is meant by nonviolence or nonviolent action. In addition, nonviolence has often unmasked the violence of the state – more-so than any instance of violent resistance, which only justifies and normalizes the inherent violence of a state apparatus. There are many possible examples.
Peace.
Exactly — which is why I like reading Waging Nonviolence.
I used to distribute “The Commemorator,” a newspaper that commemorated the accomplishments of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Once, when I went to Oakland to pick up the papers, I met two elders that had worked to break the union color-line in Arkansas and Oklahoma. They criticized the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense for holding on to the gun too long. The BPP had a pattern of getting arrested on trumped up charges, posted bail (thus bleeding their coffers) and then the charges were dropped by the police. This definitely didn’t work. Huey could not work out of prison as Geronimo Pratt could not. I feel it’s irresponsible to jeopardize ones freedom and ability to work at these problems. One robs the children of the results that ones energy and orientation could produce.
If you don’t like to be stung by hornets, you don’t kick the nest. The black bloc, or anyone that breaks windows at such important rallies is kicking the nest and I don’t give a hoot for them. There are black folks that have violence visited upon them and this anarchistic activity of breaking things to protest police brutality is not in the same boat. It’s a luxury the blacks cannot afford.
The true hard work to make change is being done by diligent people, not silly youth like the anarchists in Portland that burned an effigy of a marine at a rally. If you want to burn an effigy, consider further the person you create. A youth like yourself that made the choice to go into the military is not necessarily a warhawk and their psyche is placed in a perilous situation by policy makers that wear suits. I believe the effigy needs a suit. When these soldiers return, they need our sympathies and support for, after all, the peace movement fought so that they’d never have to go, and the peace movement lost. We can win, albeit late, by giving them our love, and we need to know who our common enemy is… the present state of suits.
I adore the value of non-violence. It should cause a growth in more creative forms of resistance, but I don’t know how anarchists “organize” group expression. It seems like they don’t. All of these groups need more poetry.
Randall,
Thanks for citing American Nonviolence. I had not heard of it before reading your piece.
In your quotes from Gandhi, I kept expecting to see one that endorsed anarchy directly. Here it is:
“My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. . . . The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on non-violence.” Let me know if you need the source.