In On Community,
a recent pamphlet on Gustav Landauer, Larry Gambone suggested the need for an
"antipolitical movement" to dismantle the state, in order to
eliminate obstacles to non-statist alternatives. It was no longer possible, he argued, merely to act outside the
state framework while treating it as irrelevant. To do so entailed the risk that "you might end up like the
folks at Waco." In an earlier
work, Sane Anarchy , he suggested
a few items for the agenda of such a movement.
I now submit a list of my own (after a few pages of preliminary
comments), as a basis for discussion.
Many anarchists
oppose in principle such use of the political process for anarchist ends. It is unethical, they say, for anarchists
to participate in the political
process. Voting entails selecting a
representative to exercise coercive force in our name; and appealing to such
representatives for action is in effect a recognition of their legitimacy. This is a view shared by many varieties of
anarchists. At the left end of the
spectrum, anarcho-syndicalists prefer to ignore the state; hence the Wobblies'
split with De Leon and the elimination of the "political clause" from
the IWW Preamble. Many individualist
anarchists, voluntaryists, and right-libertarians (Wendy McElroy, for instance)
also take this position. The only
acceptable course is to withdraw all consent and legitimacy from the state,
until "the last one out turns off the lights."
The problem with
this line of argument is that the state is an instrument of exploitation by a
ruling class. And exploiters cannot, as
a group, be ethically "educated" into abandoning exploitation, because
they have a very rational self-interest in continuing it. If most ordinary people simply withdraw
consent and abandon the political process altogether, the ruling class will
just drop the pretense of popular control and resort to open repression. So long as they control the state apparatus,
a small minority of dupes from the producing classes, along with well-paid
police and military jackboots, will enable them to control the populace through
terror. A majority of Italian workers
may have supported the factory occupations of 1920, but that didn't stop the
black shirts, paid with capitalist money, from restoring the bosses'
control.
But I'm not
calling for "anarchist politicians" to run for office and exercise
political power, like those who served the Generalitat in Catalonia. Our involvement in politics should take the
form of pressure groups and lobbying, to subject the state to as much pressure
as possible from the outside.
The answer, then,
is active engagement to dismantle the interventionist state, without which
exploitation would be impossible. This
can be done only by broad-based, ad hoc coalitions, formed on an issue-by-issue
basis. A good example is the ACLU-NRA alliance
against Janet Reno's police state. The
congressional opposition to the Reichstag Enabling Act (oops--USA Patriot Act)
of 2001 includes elements as disparate as Paul Wellstone and Bob Barr. Keith Preston argues that a viable
anti-state movement will have to get beyond obsession with right and left.
An entirely new
ideological paradigm needs to be
developed. One that rejects the
traditionalism and economic elitism of the Right and the statism of the
Left. One that draws on the best and
most enduring elements of classical liberalism, libertarian socialism and
classical anarchism but adapts these to contemporary circumstances within a
uniquely American cultural framework that appeals to the best within our
libertarian and revolutionary traditions.
Political and economic decentralization should be our revolutionary
battle cry....
The original
principles of classical anarchism--elimination of the authoritarian state,
control of economies of scale by cooperative
partnerships of producers, individualism, genuine liberation of outcast
groups, resistance to war and imperialism, decentralization, voluntary
association, intellectual and cultural freedom, mutual aid and voluntary
cooperation--remain as relevant as ever in today's world.
Karl Hess argued a
long time ago that the flower of liberty should not be disregarded because its
petals are red and black, instead of red white and blue. That, in turn, brings to mind David De
Leon's remark in The American as
Anarchist that an anarchist movement genuinely native to the United States
might prefer the Gadsden flag over the Red-and-Black.
We must also
remember that "solidarity" is not something we reserve for our
ideological clones. Recently a reader
poll at Anarchy: A Journal of Desire
Armed asked, "which of the following
should we give solidarity to?" and then listed a number of groups--as if
solidarity were some kind of special favor, and not something we were ethically
bound to. We must show solidarity for
any victim of injustice, when they are in the right, regardless of their
overall position. If more of the left
had expressed outrage over Ruby Ridge and Waco, it might have been the
beginning of a coalition of right and left libertarians against the police
state.
But there is a
whole cottage industry of obsessive anti-rightists devoted to preventing such
cooperation. I recently forwarded, to a
Marxist discussion list, an article about a 15-year-old kid who beat a drug rap
because of the prosecution's ignorance of the law. I posted it because I thought the story was inspiring, not
because I agreed with (or was even aware of) the right-wing ideological
background of the source. An immediate
response came from an associate of Chip Berlet, who seized on the opportunity
for another "Right Woos Left" screed, without even commenting on
the “subject” of the post. The attitude
of such people toward the libertarian and populist right, it seems, is "I
agree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death to stop you from saying
it."
The Internet has
opened up exhilarating possibilities for forms of opposition based on large,
decentralized associations of affinity groups.
The potential for such organization is alarming to those in power. A 1998 Rand study by David Ronfeldt ( The
Zapatists "Social Netwar" in Mexico, MR-994-A) warned that
internet-based coalitions like the pro-Zapatista support network could
overwhelm the government with popular demands and render society
"ungovernable." This study
was written before the anti-WTO demonstrations, so the post-Seattle movement
doubtless has our overlords in a panic.
Such forms of organization make it possible to throw together ad hoc
coalitions of thousands of affinity groups in a very short time; they can
organize mass demonstrations, issue press releases in thousands of venues, and
"swarm" the government and press with mass mailings, phone calls and
emails. This resembles the "excess
of democracy" and "crisis of governability" that Samuel Huntington
warned of in the 1970s--but an order of magnitude beyond anything he could have
imagined then. In the case of
dismantling corporate state capitalism, our allies include not only anarchists
and the libertarian left, but populists, constitutionalists, and libertarians
on the right.
One important feature of this decentralized
form of organization is its resilience in the face of state attempts at
repression or decapitation. We should
strengthen this feature by organizing redundant telephone, email and Ham radio
trees within each radical organization, with similar redundant communications
links between organizations, to warn the entire resistance movement as quickly
as possible in the event of mass arrests.
And when the state
attempts piecemeal arrests of a few leaders, one organization at a time, we
should spread the news not only to "radical" groups and alternative
press outlets as quickly as possible, but to the mainstream press. If you belong to an organization whose
activists have been targeted in this way, spread the news far and wide on the
net and in print, with contact information for the officials involved. If you find such a message in your in-box,
take the time to call or email the jackboots with your complaints, and pass the
news on to others. I recently called a
local police force to protest the illegal arrest of some demonstrators after I
saw an article in a newsgroup, and was told by a harried operator that they
were so overwhelmed that they had to refer callers to the state police. Every crackdown on an organization should
result in the state being swarmed with phone calls, and the press being
saturated with letters and press releases.
This is especially
urgent in the present atmosphere. As of
this writing (February 2000), the state is taking advantage of the 9-11
hysteria to see how much repression the public will tolerate. For example the jackboots forced the
shutdown of IRARadio.com by threatening their ISP with seizure of assets for
"supporting terrorism" (without need of a trial, of course). Since then, left-wing political activists
have been subjected to all kinds of harassment. Nancy Oden, a national Green
party organizer, was subjected to humiliating treatment in an airport
and denied passage. A group of SOA
Watch activists were arrested by the US Border Patrol when they tried to enter
Canada for a peaceful demonstration.
The FBI has hinted in its literature that right-wing groups too
"obsessed" with the constitution, or with monitoring the actions of
federal law enforcement, may be added to the list of
"terrorists." As Morris Dees
and Chuck Schumer have said, it's dangerous when people don't trust their
government. Every time the state puts in
its toe to test the water, it needs to be badly scalded by public opinion. How long will it be before the Gestapo try
to resurrect "criminal syndicalism" as a form of terrorism, and shut
down the IWW?
At the same time,
we must remember that our "political" strategy is only
secondary. We are forced to pursue it
only because the state actively interferes with our primary activity--what the
Wobblies call "building the structure of the new society within the shell
of the old." This means
self-organization at the grassroots level to build "alternative social
infrastructure"--things like producers' and consumers' co-ops, LETS
systems and mutual banks, syndicalist industrial unions, tenant associations
and rent strikes, neighborhood associations, (non-police affiliated)
crime-watch and cop-watch programs, voluntary courts for civil arbitration,
community-supported agriculture, etc.
The "libertarian municipalist" project of devolving local
government functions to the neighborhood level and mutualizing social services
also falls under this heading--but with services being mutualized rather than municipalized. (See also Brian A. Dominick, An Introduction to Dual Power Strategy).
Peter
Staudenmeier, in a workshop on cooperatives at Ann Arbor, referred to such
alternative forms of organization as "social counter-power." Social counter-power takes the concrete forms
of "prefigurative politics" and
"counter-institutions."
Prefigurative
politics is a fancy term that just means living your values today, instead of
waiting until "after the revolution"--in fact it means beginning the
revolution here and now to the extent possible. This might be called the everyday aspect of social
counter-power. And
counter-institutions, of which co-ops are often an example, are the structural
aspects of social counter-power.
Jonathan Simcock, on the Total Liberty homepage,
described a vision of Evolutionary Anarchism that included :
“…Worker Co-operatives, Housing Co-operatives, self-employment, LETS
schemes, Alternative Currencies, Mutual Banking, Credit Unions, tenants committees,
Food Co-operatives, Allotments, voluntary organizations, peaceful protest and
non-violent direct action and a host of similar activities are the means by
which people begin to "behave differently", to go beyond Anarchist
theory, and begin to build the elements of a new society.”
Our emphasis
should be on building this society as much as possible without seeking direct
confrontation with the authority of the state.
But I am not a political pacifist in the sense of ruling out such
confrontation in principle. No matter
how industriously we work "within the shell of the old" society, at
some point we will have to break out of the shell. At that point either the state will initiate force in order to
abort the new society, or it will be so demoralized as to collapse quickly
under its own weight, like the Leninist regimes in 1989-91. But either way, the final transition will
probably be abrupt and dramatic, rather messy, and will almost certainly
involve at least some violence.
On the revolutionary
question, I think we should have two guiding principles. The first was stated by Ed Stamm in his
statement on the anti-WTO protests of December 1999: "any revolutionary activity must have massive popular
support." This will occur of
itself if our educational and organizing efforts are successful. It will never be accomplished by vanguardism
or "propaganda of the deed."
Second, it should not be attempted until we have built as much as we can
within the existing structure. The
birth pangs do not take place until the gestation is completed. There are some aspects of a stateless
society--for example complete workers' control of industry, or land ownership
based only on occupancy and use--which cannot be fully accomplished short of
final destruction of the present system of power. But we should achieve everything we can short of this before we
begin the final push.
Anyway, there's a
lot we can do short of revolution. In
attempting to roll back the state, we should remember that our progress doesn't
depend on converting a majority of people to anarchism. We just have to appeal to the values we
share with them on particular
issues. And we don't have to segregate
ourselves into an ideologically pure, separatist movement of "real"
anarchists and wait for the other 99/100% of society to come around. Progress isn't all or nothing. As Larry Gambone argued in "An
Anarchist Strategy Discussion,"
“...a mass (populist) orientation requires
that one search for all the various beliefs and activities that are of a
general libertarian and social nature found among ordinary people. These would consist of any form of
decentralism, direct democracy, regionalism, opposition to government and
regulation, all forms of voluntary association, free exchange and mutual
aid.”
In other words, we
must approach people where they are, and make our agenda relevant to the things
that concern them (see also Gambone, Sane
Anarchy).
Anarchists belong
to countless social and political organizations in which they are a decided
minority. We can act within these
groups to promote a libertarian agenda.
That means making common cause with movements that are not anarchist per
se, but aim nonetheless at pushing society in a freer and less exploitative
direction. Some may be nominally on the
right, like home-schoolers and gun rights people. But the divide between populism and elitism, or between
libertarianism and authoritarianism, is a lot more important than the fetishism
of left and right. To quote Gambone again,
in What is Anarchism?
“The future of anarchism, if there is one,
will at best, involve a few thousand people, as individuals or small groups, in
larger libertarian-decentralist organizations.
(Some will choose to work alone, spreading the anarchist message through
writings and publications.) It is
imperative that such people, so few in number, yet with potential influence,
should know what they are talking and writing about.”
People who call
themselves "anarchists" are probably not even one in a thousand, and
may never be. But names aren't
important; substance is. Huey Long
said that if fascism ever came to America, it would be in the name of
"100% Americanism." If
anarchy ever comes, it will probably be in the name of
"decentralism," "participatory democracy," or
"economic justice."
But why would the
ruling classes allow even a piecemeal rollback of the state apparatus? Why would they not prefer repression to even
a partial loss of privilege? The answer is that they will use open,
large-scale repression only as a last resort.
(Even if we are in the opening phase of such a repression in the
aftermath of 9-11, the state will likely keep it low-key and sporadic as long
as possible). Such repression is
unlikely to succeed beyond the short-term, and could well result in a total
loss of power under extremely bloody circumstances. Ruling classes are often willing to make short-term bargains to
preserve their long-term power. Even
though the ruling elites took the initiative in creating the New Deal welfare
state, for example, they did so only as a necessary evil, to prevent the far
greater evil of public insurrection.
And of course, we cannot underestimate the human failings of denial and
shortsightedness, the desire to postpone the inevitable a long as
possible. Ruling classes are as prone
as anyone else to the "boiled frog syndrome."
Whenever it is
strategically appropriate, we should coordinate the political program with the
non-political program of alternative
institution-building. The social
movement can be used to mobilize support for the political agenda and to put
pressure on the state to retreat strategically. The political movement can provide political cover for the social
movement and make mass repression less feasible.
Even when it is
imprudent for the social movement to resort to large-scale illegality, it can
act as a "shadow government" to publicly challenge every action taken
by the state (much like the shadow system of soviets and workers' committees
before the October Revolution). Even
though such "shadow institutions" may be unable to implement their
policies in the face of official opposition, that fact in itself is an
opportunity to demand, "Why are you using government coercion to stop us
from controlling our own schools, community, etc.?" (This can be especially effective in
pointing out the hypocrisy of the Republicans' bogus "populism," with
their appeals to decentralism and local control). The objective is to keep the state constantly off-balance, and
force it to defend its every move in the court of public opinion.
Not all reductions
in state power are equally important, and it could be disastrous to dismantle
state functions in the wrong order. The
main purpose of every state activity, directly or indirectly, is to benefit the
ruling class. The central or structural
functions of the state are the subsidies and privileges by which the
concentration of wealth and the power to exploit are maintained. The so-called "progressive"
functions of the state (despite Arthur Schlesinger's fantasies to the contrary)
are created by the ruling class, acting through the government as their
executive committee, to stabilize capitalism and clean up their own mess.
Therefore it is
essential that the state should be dismantled in sequence, starting with the
structural foundations of corporate power and privilege; after a genuine market
is allowed to destroy the concentration of power and polarization of wealth,
and remove the boot of exploitation from the neck of labor, the superfluous
welfare state can next be dismantled.
This should not be confused with the social-democratic
"anarchism" of Noam Chomsky.
I do not advocate strengthening the state to break up "private
concentrations of power."
Capitalist power could not survive without the state. The only issue is what state functions to
dismantle first.
Since I approach
this largely (although not entirely) from Benjamin Tucker's version of
mutualism, I begin with the big three forms of statist privilege according to
Tucker--the money, patent and land monopolies.
BANKING
As a minimal first
step, repeal all market entry barriers to credit unions which are more
restrictive than regulations for ordinary commercial banks. The ultimate goal is an end to all
restrictions on the formation of mutual banks and the private issuance of
banknotes, and all state-mandated backing for currency. The banking industry would no doubt heartily
oppose this. Its stooges, like Phil
Gramm (who normally waxes eloquent on the glories of the "free
market"), would shamelessly invoke the public's right to a government
guarantee of "sound money."
As in most cases, the solution is exposure: of the hypocrisy of the New
Right according to their own avowed "free market" principles, of the
inequity of the privileges they support, and of the extent to which the average
person is forced to labor for their benefit.
Gary Elkin argued in "Mutual Banking" that the reform might be accomplished
through the back door with LETS or barter clubs, using the pretext that they
were only facilitating exchange rather than creating money.
PATENTS
The minimal first
steps here are to end patent protections for any product or technology developed
with government money, to eliminate the R&D tax credit, and to scale back
patent law (including GATT IP protections) to something resembling traditional
Anglo-American patent law. The latter
means, among other things, significantly reducing the term of protection, and
requiring the holder of a patent to work it in every country where privileges
are claimed. The ultimate goal is to
eliminate all patent laws.
As in the case of banking, the
pseudo-"free market" hypocrites will noisily appeal to the need to
reward innovation and protect every fledgling Thomas Edison from theft of his
hard work. The solution, again, is to
proclaim the facts and the opposition's hypocrisy as loudly as possible. For example, in response to the alleged need
to recoup research costs, we point out the high percentage of R&D that is
underwritten by government spending. Or
the fact that, according to business surveys, 86% of new technology would be
developed without patents merely for the sake of maintaining competitiveness. Or that much of the concentration of
industry results from buying up patents (for example the U.S. chemical industry
being virtually created from scratch when Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer
gave away seized German chemical patents to a handful of U.S. companies).
LANDLORDISM.
Our ultimate goal
here is an end to legal guarantees for absentee land ownership, and their
replacement with property rights based on occupation and use. This is a case where the new society cannot
be built until the shell of the old has been cracked open. There is only a limited amount that can be
done in intermediate steps, short of a decisive and final dismantling of state
power. Like the right of absentee
ownership of industrial means of production, the plutocrats will not surrender
the legal principle of absentee land ownership without a political
Armageddon.
So long as the
state is bound in legal principle to enforce property rights of landlords, any
victory won by squatters will be only short-term and local, without permanent
results of any significance. But the
other side of the coin is that squatters are indigent and homeless people with
very little to lose--after all, some people reportedly commit some minor crime
around first frost every year just to get three hots and
a cot until spring. If every vacant or
abandoned housing unit in a city is occupied by the homeless, they will at
least have shelter in the short term until they are forcibly evacuated. And the political constraints against
large-scale brutality (if the squatters restrict themselves to non-violent
tactics and know how to use the press to advantage) are likely to be
insurmountable. In the meantime, the
squatters' movement performs a major educative and propaganda service, develops
political consciousness among urban residents, draws public attention and
sympathy against the predatory character of landlordism, and--most
importantly--keeps the state and landlords perpetually on the defensive.
Even within the
existing legal framework, tenant unions strengthen the hand of occupiers
against absentee owners and reduce landlords' ability to exact rent by
monopolizing property. Karl Hess,
in Neighborhood Power, referred to tenant strikes which led to the
legal expropriation of the landlords.
In some cities, the laws regulating collective bargaining between
tenants and landlords required tenants to put their rent into an escrow account
during a strike. Some slumlords were
eventually forced into bankruptcy by rent strikes, and were then bought out
with their tenants' escrow money! The
legal branches of the movement, like tenant unions and neighborhood assemblies,
can also be used to apply pressure and political cover for squatters. The squatters' and tenants' movements can
escalate and mutually reinforce pressure on the state.
Some states grant
homestead exemptions for average-sized residential properties or family
farms. Others provide bankruptcy
protections for a principal residence.
Both practices should be expanded as widely as possible, perhaps through
referenda and initiated acts. As in the
case of all other taxation, tax relief should occur from the bottom up, by
removing as many ordinary people as possible from the tax rolls.
Government
ownership of land should be eliminated as quickly as possible, through a new
homesteading policy. This is one case
in which property rights based solely on occupation and use can be established
without displacing existing proprietors.
Parcels of land big enough for subsistence could be provided at no cost,
but with perpetual covenants attached to the deed by which absentee ownership
would be unenforceable in court, and likewise even possessory rights would be
unjusticiable for more than one such
parcel in the same hands. This
policy may be partially qualified in a
couple of instances mentioned below.
IMPERIALISM
AND MILITARISM.
The national
security state, military Keynesianism, foreign imperialism, and state-promoted
globalization, all interact massively not only to bolster corporate capitalism
at home, but to bring the people and resources of the entire world under the
control of transnational corporations.
Our ultimate goal, not realizable until the final liquidation of the
U.S. government, is to dismantle the armed forces and devolve their functions
and resources to decentralized federations of local militias. In the meantime we must press to eliminate
all foreign military obligations and limit the mission of the armed forces to
defending the territory of the United States.
A military budget commensurate with this
mission would be far less than $100 billion, effectively eliminating the
military-industrial and military-scientific complexes, and the system of
state-planned capitalism at the commanding heights of the corporate
economy. Along with it would go the
imperial presidency and the whole extra-constitutional structure created by the
National Security Act. Also eliminated
would be the School of the Americas, the CIA's Operations Directorate, and the
rest of the rabbit warren of agencies which support military dictators, secret
police and death squads around the world.
The best way to promote this is to take
advantage of every opportunity to expose their evil deeds. We should do everything possible to disseminate
the kinds of information available, for instance, in William Blum's Killing
Hope or the Virtual Truth Commission website, and show solidarity with
organizations like SOA Watch. Every
public statement by someone like Jean Kirkpatrick or Maudlin Albright, about
how much the U.S. has done to promote freedom and peace in the world, needs to
be challenged. The public needs to see
facts--facts by the ream and by the truckload--to see for themselves the
hundreds of thousands, the millions of atrocities committed on a global scale
since 1945 with active or passive U.S. complicity.
Larry Gambone's
scenario in Sane Anarchy, of mass protests in the capital providing
political cover for local libertarian movements, is quite relevant on an
international scale. When the U.S.
government prepares to crush an uncooperative regime like Guatemala or
Nicaragua, the movement here at home needs to undertake mass demonstrations and
general strikes in support of the target country's independence.
Finally under this
heading, the U.S. should with all deliberate speed disengage from global
agencies of economic governance like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO. Third World debt should be forgiven or
eliminated, as quickly as can be done without a total collapse of the banking
system. International patent law
accords should be abrogated, and the U.S. should scale back its recognition of
international patent rights commensurate with the scale back at home--ideally
to the point of eliminating them altogether.
In the absence of the U.S. role in bolstering landlord-general
oligarchies and encouraging IMF pressure toward corporation-friendly laws, the
ordinary people of Third World countries could take their societies in the
direction of cooperative or mutualist forms of economic organization.
This is another
area in which a mass movement can be used to pressure the state in the proper
direction, build solidarity with foreign resistance movements, and educate the
American public. The role of
anti-globalization demonstrations, in drawing public attention to secret
meetings and contesting the authority and expertise of the oligarchy's pet
suits there is priceless. But two
caveats are in order. First, the
demonstrators should refrain from smashing windows and blocking streets; such
tactics only reinforce the public perception that "radicalism" is at
odds with the mores of the average person, and needs to be contained in the
interest of "public safety."
Second, we should
contest the perception of right-wing anti-globalists (think Perot and Buchanan)
and AFL-CIO bureaucrats who see globalization as a benefit to the Third World
at the expense of the American people.
We should draw attention to the fact that globalization benefits only
corporate elites, at the expense of ordinary people in both the West and the
Third World. The best way to fight the
"race to the bottom" is through strategic alliances between American
labor and workers' movements in the developing world.
Anarchists should
also cooperate with the efforts of people in other countries to organize
grass-roots, mutualist alternatives to the state and to capitalism. The collapse of communism left a political
vacuum in the former Soviet bloc. The
vacuum was filled by an alliance between, on the one hand, transnational
corporations and the IMF, and on the other a new authoritarian state dominated
by the mafia of former ty ap
atchiks. The civil society of Russia
had atrophied under seventy years of totalitarian brutality, and there was no
tradition of grass-roots organization to replace the authoritarian system.
In society after society, from the Soviet
bloc to South Africa and Indonesia, the old authoritarian system of power
crumbles only to be replaced by a new form of authoritarianism. The reason is that there is no alternative
libertarian system capable of challenging the state. In Argentina right now, the left is calling for the creation of
workers' councils, for a federation of such councils with delegates recallable
at will, and for a workers' militia to defend the councils. But that is the kind of thing you organize
the nucleus of in the twenty years
before the central government
collapses, not afterward. Once a
conventional nation-state government is established, no matter how
"progressive," the nation has a new spokesman on whom the
transnational corporate order can exert pressure. We can be sure that representatives of the IMF and the U.S. State
Department have already met behind closed doors in Buenos Aires, and threatened
(as they did Allende thirty years earlier) to "squeeze the Argentine
economy until it screams" if it repudiates the neo-liberal agenda.
The
anti-globalization movement here must aid those in the Third World trying to
organize unions, peasant cooperatives, and other grass-roots organs of
empowerment. Americans today, as in
Tocqueville's day, are an unusually ingenious people when it comes to
spontaneous, voluntary forms of social organization. One vitally important aspect of such activity is to encourage the
development of intermediate, human-scale technology that can increase the
economic productivity and self-sufficiency of peasant communities. A shared set of Appropriate Technology Sourcebook --an indexed collection
of 150,000 pages available on fiche or CD-ROM for $495--is probably the best
single thing that a cluster of Third World villages could have. (Except for sending all the landlords and
generals to Boot Hill--but one thing at a time).
We must fight to
restore an absolutist understanding of the due process guarantees of the
Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and to dismantle the police state that has
grown up in the name of fighting drugs, terrorism, gangs, and other crime. Fighting for an absolutist interpretation of
the Bill of Rights is much more important than repealing the substance of drug
prohibition, because procedure is generally more important to liberty than
substance. I'd much rather live under
the substantive drug laws of Turkey or Singapore, enforced according to the
ACLU's standard of due process, than the reverse.
At the highest level, this means
eliminating Operation Garden Plot and the entire infrastructure of executive
orders providing for martial law and domestic surveillance of
"subversives." It means overturning
Jackboot Schumer's unconstitutional "counter-terrorism" legislation
and the USA PATRIOT Act.
It means cutting off the head of civil
forfeiture (a doctrine borrowed from the prerogative law of bodies like the
admiralty courts that so offended the Revolutionaries) and cauterizing the
stump. No one should ever forfeit
property to the state without being convicted of a crime, period. This should apply not only to drug law, but
to all other forms of regulatory enforcement by "administrative
bodies" like the IRS, EPA, etc.
Under the heading of the Fourth
Amendment, this means prohibiting "no-knock warrants" merely to
prevent destruction of drug evidence; no "sneak-and-peek" searches in
which suspects are unable to prevent the planting of evidence; no snooping of
bank accounts, email or internet usage without a warrant from a local
judge. It means the citizen must
be guaranteed a "reasonable expectation of privacy" against
warrantless searches by flyovers, infrared or other high-tech means, etc. It means an end to public surveillance
cameras mated to biometric technology, along with all attempts to make writing
checks and other daily activities dependent on some form of biometric identification
system. Court rulings must be overturned
that make it unlawful to resist even an unlawful invasion or arrest.
An absolutist reading of the Bill of
Rights also means restoring the principle of posse comitatus against domestic
police action by the National Guard, and prohibiting cooperation between local
police and Delta Force, military intelligence, or other regular military
assets. It also means restoring the
power of free juries to decide questions of law as well as fact, and to refuse
to enforce unjust laws. The erosion of
jury rights, like that of much of the rest of our civil liberty, reflects the
loss of the Eighteenth Century Commonwealth, or Anglo-republican, understanding
of common law due process, and its replacement by a
Blackstonian/Mansfieldian/prerogative law framework.
There are several grass-roots movements
that could cooperate fruitfully with anarchists. One is the anti-drug war movement, including state level
movements to decriminalize cannabis entirely or only for medical purposes. The cannabis front is especially smart
tactically, because the feds depend on states and localities (through
"joint task forces") for the overwhelming bulkj of enforcement. Since most drug arrests and seizures are for
pot, these state initiatives can throw a monkey-wrency into the gears of the
drug war even if pot remains illegal at the federal level. Another tactic is to pressure local police
forces not to ticipate in federal
jackboot thuggery--for example, the Portland PD's recent decision not to
cooperate with Ashcroft in racial profiling of Middle Easterners and South
Asians. Finally, cop-watch programs of
all sorts are a way to serve notice to the police that the public eye is on
them, and to expose issues of abuse of power to a wide audience. In all these projects, we can f!
ind much common
ground with organizations like the Fully Informed Jury Association, the ACLU,
and the National Lawyers Guild.
TRANSPORTATION
Our goal is to end
all state subsidies to highways, trucking, airlines, railroads, and merchant marines. All infrastructure spending should be funded
by user fees, assessed pro rata according to the cost imposed on the
system. The state power of eminent
domain should be abolished. These
policies underwrite the cost of shipping freight, and thus subsidize the
centralization of the economy.
This centralization leads to great
inefficiency, and could not occur unless it were subsidized. Most factories operate at several times
maximum economy of scale. Even when
they operate at peak efficiency in terms of unit cost, this is offset
(according to Borsodi's Law) by increased distribution costs. Specialists in economy of scale like Walter
Adams estimate that peak efficiency for most firms of manufacturing are reached
by plants serving about one percent of the U.S. market. According to Barry Stein, this scale could
be reduced by two-thirds with only about a 5% increase in unit cost of
production, more than offset by reduced shipping costs. Kirkpatrick Sale believes that most kinds of
light consumer goods could be produced by factories of fewer than fifty
workers, and that communities of a few thousand could be self-sufficient in
everything but the most capital-intensive items. Eliminating the transportation subsidy alone would take us a long
way in this direction.
Full-scale worker
control of production, like land ownership based on possession, cannot be
achieved until the state is finally dismantled by some dramatic and
revolutionary process. These are the
last bastions of privilege, which the ruling class will never surrender until
the final extremity. But much can be
done to reduce exploitation, even under formal capitalist ownership. Exploitation of labor--i.e., the extraction
of surplus value--is impossible without state intervention. Every system of exploitation has involved a
ruling class that controlled access to the means of production, in order to
exact a tribute in the form of unpaid labor.
In the case of American capitalism, banking laws enforce an artificial
scarcity of credit and keep workers in debt slavery--both powerful forms of
labor discipline. As a result, workers
are forced to sell their labor in a buyer's market. But without such restrictions on access to cheap capital, and
without other forms of exploitation like patents, taxes, etc., the availability
of abundant cheap credit would drastically alter the balance of power between
capital and labor, and wages would approach value-added.
In such an improved bargaining position,
unions can likewise achieve a measure of de facto veto power over decisions
affecting the production process. One
impediment to such control, however, is federal labor law. All restrictive labor legislation, but
most particularly Taft-Hartley, should
be dismantled, leaving in effect only Norris-LaGuardia, which removed federal
troops and court injunctions from labor disputes altogether. This would mean an end to the federal role
in supervising certification votes and guaranteeing the right to organize, true
enough. But it would also mean an end
to restrictions on secondary sympathy and boycott strikes, general strikes,
sit-downs, and other forms of direct action.
All these tactics, by which the labor victories of the 1930s were won,
are now illegal--a loss for which the paper guarantee of a right to organize is
pretty sorry compensation. It was
probably easier to organize a union in the 1930s by entering a plant in a
flying squadron, and telling workers to "shut her down," than it is
today to persuade people in cold blood to risk their jobs and spend years
jumping through all the NLRB's hoops.
For labor to wage
a successful class war, it must think in terms of war, not "rights"
or "the law." The mainstream
unions are psychologically addicted to the legacy of the New Deal "social
compact." Their inability to think
outside the limits of the NLRB process is a severe handicap. Labor must think in terms of war, using all
the means at their disposal, limited only by strategy and by their own sense of
justice, without regard to "established procedures." One of the most effective things we could do
would be to send a copy of the Wobbly pamphlet "How to Fire Your
Boss" to every union that has just lost a strike. It's at that point, when they've been kicked
in the teeth for playing by the bosses' rules, that they might be interested in
learning how to play by their own rules.
Instead of organizing and striking according to the bosses' labor laws
(and giving the bosses a chance to break the union and replace them with scabs),
workers need to do what works--unannounced one-day strikes at random intervals,
"good work" strikes, "open mouth sabotage," working to
rule, etc.
All legislative
barriers to union-controlled pension funds, and to investment of pension funds
in company stock, should be repealed.
Corruption and fiscal accountability are indeed issues; and some union
rank-and-file may understandably be afraid to put all their eggs in one basket
(Enron, obviously). But control of a
major voting bloc of shares is one way for workers to exert control over
corporate policy, if they can effectively control the union officers. In some cases, such a bloc of shares might
make an employee buyout more feasible.
Most existing
"employee-owned" companies don't go nearly far enough. The shares aren't equal, managers have more
voting power, and shares can be marketed so that the cooperative nature of the
enterprise decays. Such enterprises are
often organized along the same centralized, top-down lines as capitalist
enterprises, only with the board elected by employees. But any step in the
right direction is better than what we have now, and we can encourage new forms
of cooperative organization with department self-management, election of
managers, non-marketable shares, etc.
And a union local is a lot more amenable to genuine, grass-roots
democratic control than the state.
Apologists for capitalism like to crow that we already live under
"pension fund socialism," because workers own so much of the means of
production through pension fund stock.
Let's make them crow out the other side of their mouths.
J.K. Galbraith
moralized on the theme of "private opulence and public squalor," but
failed to recognize it as resulting from the very nature of "public"
property. State property inevitably
becomes squalid because it is administered by bureaucrats; in the absence of
private or small group proprietary interests, nobody has any personal reason to
take care of it. Most environmental
damage takes place on government property.
All the despoilation of "public" land by the oil, mining,
timber and cattle industries is done by businesses that use their political
influence to get access rights or leases far below market value. If the land is auctioned off instead of just
leased at sweetheart prices, the bidding is open only to companies in the
industry that wants the resources. Just
another form of crony capitalism.
But imagine, for example, if the lumber
companies actually had to buy the land where the giant redwoods grow. The government would sell the land in
publicly advertised auctions, accepting bids over several months by mail and
over the Internet. Bidding would be open
to all interested ties, including
environmental groups, not just a handful of lumber companies. It would hardly be profitable in these
circumstances to destroy the trees for lumber at their market price. A similar policy regarding oil industry access
to ANWR would make the issue of pollution a moot point.
The status of government
land with such resources complicates the issue of homesteading policy. Until large timber or mining companies
completely disintegrate under the effect of dismantling subsidies and
privileges, such valuable land can hardly be open to ownership based on
possession; it would amount to giving it away free to the present
despoilers. (Of course, ownership could
be awarded to the actual human occupiers working the land, rather than to the
fictitious corporate entity; but this would probably be politically impossible
so long as the corporate elite retained any sizable amount of power.) Such land might instead be auctioned off to
industry at market prices before any general homestead policy was implemented. Covenants could be attached providing that
ownership would be based only on immediate possession and use after the
property changed hands for the first time.
When workers finally established labor self-management, these resources
would become the cooperative property of those working them.
This would still
leave the problem of economic rent, with producers cooperatives which
controlled valuable land being in a position to extract excessive prices. But I imagine that, in a system of property
ownership based on possession, local associations for mutual defense would
develop some way to regulate ownership of especially productive land in an
equitable way.
FEDERAL
DEBT
Although I would
prefer to repudiate the federal debt, this would probably be politically
impossible in the short run. By the
time a majority was convinced of the justice of such a policy, the state would
be on the verge of collapse anyway--and that's a lot of interest to pay in the
meantime. So the immediate policy
should simply be to retire the debt as fast as possible with budget
savings. Short of renouncing the debt
enirely, it might be possible to take some intermediate steps along lines
advocated by populist and antifederalist groups in the 1780s. For example, some restrictions might be
placed on honoring bonds at face value if they were sold to third ties.
A distinction might also be made between small-scale bond holders and
large scale holdings by the wealthy and by banks and corporations.
TAXES
Military spending,
police state spending related to consensual crimes, corporate tax loopholes,
and interest on the national debt, probably amount to half of federal
revenue. All such savings should be
translated into tax reductions. Since
the wealth of the plutocracy results from state policies that allow them to live
off the labor of producers, the producers should be the first to benefit from
tax cuts, and the plutocrats should be the last. All targeted corporate tax exemptions and credits should be
eliminated, and the corporate tax rate then lowered to be revenue neutral. All personal income tax cuts should take the
form of increases in the personal exemption.
This would eliminate the income tax for the overwhelming majority of the
population, and let the coupon-clippers pay the full price of their
"executive committee." As the
market effects of eliminating state capitalist subsidies are fully felt, the
ranks of the plutocrats will quickly thin out.
And the differential effects of applying tax cuts from the bottom up, in
improving the relative competitive position of those on the bottom, will act as
a partial remedy for past wrongs.
DECENTRALIZATION
AND MUTUALIZATION OF "PUBLIC" SERVICES
Police, utilities,
health and welfare services should all be devolved to the community or
neighborhood level, and run whenever possible on a cooperative basis with
control by the "customer." At
the same time every population unit of a few thousand people--small towns and
urban neighborhoods--should organize government on the pattern of direct
democracy, with public meetings and boards of selectmen, to exercise control of
such government functions.
City-wide school
boards should be eliminated, and each school turned into a consumers co-op,
with the principal and staff becoming "selectmen" responsible to
the parents. I tried to figure out the minimal tuition for a quality
education, on the assumption that the
parents of twenty or thirty kids pooled their own money to form a
cooperative school. Taking into account
things like renting a house for class space, and hiring teacher(s), the annual
expense wouldn't be over $1500 per pupil.
Existing "public" schools, on the other hand, spend upwards of
$6000. Most of the difference lies in
the proliferation of parasitic
bureaucrats with prestige salaries, and the fact that the state's aura of
majesty requires specially designed Stalinist architecture on the most
expensive real estate in town.
This is a common
pattern. When you try to figure out how
much it would cost to organize a service for yourself, from the bottom up, and
com e it to what you're paying now, it's stunning. Where does all the money go?
It goes to support parasitic
centralized bureaucracies with no incentive to economize. It's amazing how creative and thrifty
ordinary people can be when they're spending their own money, instead of stolen
loot.
"Public"
and municipal hospitals should be made public in fact and organized on a
cooperative basis, with the trustees directly responsible to those who use
them. I'd like to see the reaction of
white-collar bureaucrats, who ooze smarmy platitudes about "public
service," when they find out the public really is the
boss.
But the issue of
control is only a first step.
Ultimately, we have to get away from our blind worship of authority in a
white coat, and our belief that the "experts" reside in a big glass
and steel building. As with schools,
decentralization to the neighborhood level would result in massive savings in
overhead. And taking responsibility for
our own health would reduce the demand on hospitals significantly. I envision a clinic in each neighborhood,
owned by its clients, with a minimal staff of MDs and a lot more primary care
done house to house by nurses and
paramedics. Sort of a cross
between the Berkeley Cooperative Clinic and the Chinese "barefoot
doctors." As much as possible,
emphasis would be shifted to prevention, and integration of allopathic with
naturopathic and nutritional medicine.
When such methods were not enough, members of local clinics would have
access to more specialized, high-tech equipment owned jointly by all the
neighborhood co-ops in a region. The
medical school curriculum would resemble something set by Andrew Weil, instead
of by the drug companies.
The ultimate goal
in every case is to organize these services on a voluntary, cost basis, funded
by user fees and dues rather than taxes, and thus eliminate the distinction
between state and society. But the
feasibility of doing this in the short term varies from case to case, and in
some cases must await the final liquidation of the state. Some things, like education, cannot be done
on a voluntary, cost basis until the liquidation of privilege results in a more
egalitarian distribution of wealth. One
candidate for immediate reorganization on a cost basis is utilities. Much of the incentive to urban sprawl lies
in the fact that inhabitants of older, central areas are forced to pay higher
rates to subsidize those in new developments (along with zoning codes against neighborhood
grocers and other mixed-use development, which should also be abolished). The elimination of subsidies to fossil fuels
and nuclear power, and to utility companies, along with control by rate-payers
in small decision-making units, will be a powerful incentive to conservation
and the use of alternative energy. Many
will choose to leave the grid in part
or altogether, and dig their own wells, generate their own power, or compost
waste.
In the case of
police and fire service, the trend should be toward incorporating citizen volunteers
in the regular organizations. In a way,
this resembles the practice in some co-ops of requiring members to perform
services themselves to avoid the creation of a se ate caste of wage-workers. The encouragement of widespread firearm
ownership as a deterrent is a way to reduce as much as possible the need for an
organized police force. The
encouragement of armed neighborhood watch organizations, at the expense of
"official" police forces, is another step in the right
direction. At some point such voluntary
organizations should be merged into the "public" organizations, with
the posse comitatus entirely supplanting professional law
enforcement. Combined with free local
juries empowered to judge both law and fact, and with popular militias, this would
be in many ways a return to the anglo-republican libertarian ideal of the
Eighteenth Century.
Local government
and social services are an area in which grass-roots
"counter-institutions" can be especially effective in coordination
with the political movement.
Neighborhood assemblies, cop watch/ neighborhood watch organizations,
tenant unions, etc., are an excellent way to form the nucleus of a future
non-statist form of local community organization. Such organizations can coordinate their activities with
neighborhood co-ops, mutual banks, and LETS; they can undertake projects in
energy and self-sufficiency. Earlier
experiments like the Berkeley co-ops, the Black Panther school milk program, or
the Adams-Morgan Organization (detailed in Karl Hess' Community Technology) are excellent models to build
on. There is a very broad area in which
the decentralist, populist politics of Karl Hess overlaps with that of Lorenzo
Komboa Ervin; it is far too broad a front for the state to suppress, if the
community strongly supports it.
AN END TO
PROFESSIONAL LICENSING AND OTHER FORMS OF REGULATORY CARTELIZATION
This means no more
use of medical licensing boards to enforce the drug industry's "standards
of practice" and stamp out alternative medicine. That means no more artificial inflation of doctors' and lawyers'
fees through market entry barriers.
That means an end to cartelization of the broadcast industry, and the
replacement of the FCC licensing system with something resembling the common
law of riparian rights. Such a system
would allocate the broadcast spectrum on the basis of "first come, first
serve." The burden of proof would
be on the offended party, rather than
the accused.
Ken Darrow and
Mike Saxenian. Appropriate Technology
Sourcebook . Volunteers in
Asia/Appropriate Technology Project (Stanford, 1993).
Brian A.
Dominick. "An Introduction to
Dual Power Strategy,"
http://messmedia.rootmedia.org/dualpower/dpintro.htm
Lorenzo Komboa Ervin. Anarchism and the Black Revolution. Anarchist People of Color website,
http://www.illegalvoices.org/apoc/books/abr/index.htm
Larry
Gambone. "An Anarchist Strategy
Discussion ," unpublished.
On
Community (Red Lion Press,
2001).
Sane
Anarchy (Red Lion Press,
1995).
"What
is Anarchism ?" Total Liberty vol. 1 no. 3 Autumn 1998.
Karl Hess Community Technology (Breakout Productions reissue, 1995).
Hess, and David
Morris. Neighborhood Power: The New
Localism (Boston: Beacon Press,
1975).
Keith Preston.
" Conservatism is Not Enough: Reclaiming the Legacy of the Anti-State
Left " American Revolutionary
Vanguard website,
http://www.attackthesystem.com
Jonathan
Simcock. " Editorial for
Current Edition " TL Homepage,
http://www.spunk.org/library/pubs/tl/sp001872.html
Ed Stamm. "Anarchists Condemn Anti-WTO Riots" The Match!
Spring 2000.
Peter
Staudenmaier. " Anarchism and
the Cooperative Ideal"
The Communitarian
Anarchist vol. 1 no. 1