Well, hello everyone, and we’re going to
start our fifth topic, that is, Anarchism
- our fifth topic in this NPTEL ideologies
course 2019-20.
Our topic is Anarchism.
Now there’s a popular perception that an
anarchist is someone who goes around furtively
hiding and throwing bombs at institutions
or people or into crowds of people - well
in fact that form of anarchism is very, very
rare.
And anarchism itself is a substantial body
of political philosophy in its own right,
a substantial ideology in its own right.
Well, much of anarchism starts from a similar
place to Marx.
Marx shows that capitalist or commodity producing
systems are very powerful and very constricting
- they actually shape human nature or restrict
human nature to their own ends.
Commodity production - capitalism -both shapes
and restricts and constricts human nature
until its only expression or only permitted
expressions serves it ends, serves the ends
of capitalist or commodity production.
But Marx leaves open the possibility that
we can create better systems.
If markets are human creations, we can do
something about them.
And Marx’s intended work on the state, which
he never got around to writing - he died before
he could - Marx's intended work on the state
may well have addressed some of the relevant
issues.
He died before he could complete that work,
but he clearly intended it.
And other theorists - liberal theorists for
their part - never hesitated to expound there
are accounts of the state.
Even if they often disagree, as we have seen
there are different forms of liberalism, liberals
may disagree with one on one another over
the state.
But anarchists take a very different position;
in sharp contrast to both Marx and liberals,
anarchists express far greater suspicion about
all forms of the state and about other forms
of authority both political and religious.
And they do that even if many of them criticize
capitalism in terms very similar to Marx's
own terms.
Indeed anarchists were significant participants
in 19th century socialist movements; the International
Workingmen’s Association, also called the
First International, was created when Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon’s followers joined forces with
Marx's followers in 1864, even though - well
their disagreements between Marx’s & Prudhon
caused the organization to collapse in 1871.
But since then anarchists have at times gained
quite substantial political support- for example,
among landless peasants in Russia shortly
before the 1917 in Bolshevik Revolution - and
they have had a strong influence.
They have left, anarchists have left a strong
influence on the thinking and organization
of trade unions in France, in Italy and in
Spain as well as in Argentina, Uruguay, and
, and that influence has persisted despite
decades of fascism in Spain and brutal military
régimes in Latin America and Central America.
More recently, anarchist ideas have found
fresh expression in the Occupy movements in
the United States and less obviously in the
United Kingdom in the wake of the 2017 financial
crash.
Such movements, among other things, have focused
on something we have already noted: the failure
of social democratic parties like the Democrats
in the US or Labour in the UK to oppose the
policies which caused the crash
Now, we need a short update there.
The Labour Party is currently - this is 2019
- showing the beginnings of a potentially
very strong willingness to restore the social-democratic
state, at the very least to revive it to re-strengthen
it, and possibly to renationalize, to re-socialize
substantial areas of the British economy.
But anarchist movements the modern anarchist,
the up to date or contemporary anarchist movements,
have also pointed out the way, for example,
state bailouts for the failed banks, the banks
which crashed in 2007 and so on - how these
failed bailouts helps the banks to consolidate
their hold on land and property - because
they simply took over houses and other property
on which people could no longer pay their
mortgages.
We might even see it as a land grab, see that
process as a land grab.
The failed banks themselves had huge influence
on policy and legislation.
For example, the crash put millions out of
work and those with mortgages often had their
homes repossessed by the banks which had lent
them money in the first place.
Secondly, when the Obama administration, the
first Obama administration in the United States,
passed what was apparently new legislation
on the financial sector, the financiers in
Wall Street went out into the street and opened
bottles of champagne to celebrate because
they had nothing to be afraid of from the
new legislation.
Anarchists, anarchism’s central concern
over episodes like this is like Marxist concern,
anarchism’s concern is that such episodes
are not episodic but they’re systematic.
According to anarchist’ thinkers, established
power invariably expands far beyond the limits
apparently placed upon it and far beyond what
the public would tolerate if they knew about
it.
Anarchist critics often site a very impressive
body of evidence for this.
In earlier times the French Revolution soon
collapsed in a reign of terror.
The Russian Revolution in 1917 had similar
results - it resulted in a state which by
the time it collapsed in 1991 had almost no
public assent whatever.
More recently global scandals have emerged
over the extent of E-electronic surveillance
by the US government including illegal surveillance
of its own citizens - and hacking the phones
used by heads of government even in friendly
states.
That process relied upon willing cooperation
by major IT corporations.
In India, highly repressive colonial legislation
has never been repealed or has been repealed,
reintroduced, and vigorously used despite
severe criticism and damage to the possibility
of peaceful dispute resolution.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958,
which has even been used with retrospective
effect, is an obvious example.
Noam Chomsky is perhaps the most famous anarchist
thinker today, and he has spent many decades
detailing abuses of power by the United States
government and its allies.
What this indicates is that anarchism retains
a profound suspicion of established power
of all kinds.
This suspicion extends to religious authority
here again, the evidence is very substantial.
The Roman Catholic Church has publicly admitted
covering up several scandals of child abuse
including substantial amounts of child sex
abuse by priests.
And in addition sharp criticisms have been
made of concubinage in Hindu caste society
as a religiously sanctioned abuse of economic
power and social status.
I draw that from Hira Singh’s book published
in 2014; it’s called Recasting Caste.
Now it’s perhaps not surprising that anarchism
has had considerable influence in certain
countries and regions which have historically
had strong religious traditions; these include
France and Spain, and almost all of Latin
America.
The anarchist critique of religion, however,
applies to all religions because of their
claim to spiritual authority, which in many
cases is unquestionable.
A great strength of the anarchist analysis
of religion is that religion works hand-in-hand
with political and financial power
Now, the anarchist critique of the religious
claim to authority is further strengthened
by the fact that religions impose standards
of good and evil or acceptable and unacceptable
conduct.
Those standards are enforced and policed by
priests, imams, rabbis and any number of other
religious authorities in any number of faiths.
According to anarchists, those standards amount
to an enormous number of controls on humanity,
even to the extent that thinking certain kinds
of thoughts becomes a moral crime, a sin.
Well we shouldn’t be surprised that anarchism
has had global appeal but this has been strengthened
by the extent of oppression, suffering, and
abusive of power material and spiritual, all
over the world.
We should not be surprised that anarchist
tendencies are found all over the world.
Anarchist thinkers have influenced political
movements in India, China, Japan, Korea and
parts of Africa, not least during the struggles
for liberation from colonial domination.
In the period immediately after the Russian
revolution, anarchist were so popular that
the Bolshevik party almost regard them as
rivals.
And where the state has collapse, which it
has done many times in terrible civil wars
- many of those result from global drives
for natural resources - well, in such conditions
are returned to self-generated local community-based
organization dispute resolution may well offer
fresh hope.
Anarchist thinking is also found in records
from earlier times, ideas which we would today
call anarchist occurred in ancient slave rebellions
and they figured in the thinking of diggers,
a group called Diggers in the English Revolutions
in the 1640s.
Anarchist thinking also appeared in the French
Revolutions of 1789 and 1848, and the Paris
commune of 1871 had an anarchist element;
one of the most successful anarchist movements
was the one led by Emiliano Zapata in Mexico
in 1911.
Although Zapata himself was ambushed and killed
in 1919 and his mentor Ricardo Flores Magón
was imprisoned in the US and murdered in prison,
the Zapatista legacy survives in the form
of EZLN - The Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
In Brazil, a contemporary Anarchist movement
is the MST the movement for rural workers.
Both aim to regain control of land from large
cattle-ranching oligarchies which have dispossessed
peasants of communal lands.
I should add that today the current Brazilian
government under Jair, President Jair Bolsonaro
has done a great deal to make the task of
regaining control of land from ownership oligarchies
very much more difficult.
You’ll be aware of the international coverage
of this matter.
Well, anarchism has had a kind of global appeal
despite frequent allegations that it is optimistic
and even utopian about human nature.
And what is its optimistic view?
It is that societies must be founded on and
informed by mutual respect, compassion and
cooperation.
This has even being called a mystical streak
in anarchism, a belief in I - quote - ‘almost
unlimited possibilities of self-development’.
And that has the further implication that
all human beings can create a harmonious society
and lead harmonious lives.
I take that from Anthony Heywood’s [Andrew
Heywood’s] commentary on anarchism 2000
or 2007, but leading an anarchist life can
take enormous moral and physical courage.
Gandhi may well be the outstanding modern
example of that.
He was partly influenced by the writings of
Leo Tolstoy, which have an anarchist element.
And he inspired millions of Indians to withstand
enormous physical and political violence by
the imperial British State without retaliating
violently or hating the colonizers themselves.
Gandhi in turn inspired leaders elsewhere
such as Martin Luther King in the United States.
Ccontemporary anarchists have also been influenced
by philosophic insights in Taoism and Zen
Buddhism particularly on the nature of self-reflection,
respect and natural harmony.
Now such ideas may be very attractive but
anarchist movements have almost never, really
never held significant political office, and
anarchist arguments for the reform of the
state and the economy seemed to figure only
rarely in general political life.
But anarchist thinking has had and continues
to have much greater influence than it is
often recognized as having.
The reasons for this neglect, which amounts
to censorship by silence, are very serious.
They also tell us something about the nature
of established political and economic power
irrespective of the ideological positions
taken by those who have such power.
Well historically, anarchist greatest successes
came during the Spanish civil war.
That was a bitter conflict which ended in
1939 with victory for the fascist general
Francisco Franco and led to 39 years of fascist
dictatorship.
During the Civil War the largely anarchist
republican movement held substantial areas,
most notably the province of Catalonia.
And they held them for long enough to establish
a functioning system based on and embodying
anarchist thought.
In the 1930s, Spain already had a mass anarcho-syndicalist
Trade union the “Confederacion Nacional
del Trabajo”, CNT, and it had another group,
the “Federacion Anarquista Iberica”, FAI,
which spent most of its time in the political
underground.
In July 1936 the CNT, the confederation of
trade unions in particular, decided to fight
the Morocco based Spanish generals who revolted
against the government of the day the popular
front, popular front government in Madrid.
On the 18th of July the government was formed
and reformed thrice in one day and the ministers
involved then concluded that resistance to
the generals would be futile.
But the CNT moved swiftly; they seized the
weapons held by military garrison and by the
civil, by the civil guards, the Guardia Civil.
Crucially, the CNT also took control of factories,
transport systems and land at that time two
percent of land owners owned 67 percent of
the land and many of the small holdings were
too small even to feed a family.
Especially in Catalonia, the locally based
and anarchist-inspired economy was highly
successful and the provinces whole political
life took on anarchistic character which still
endures.
The workers of the CNT-FAI took over the transport
system in the provincial capital Barcelona,
and they improved it substantially.
The republican side faced enormous political
and military odds and was eventually betrayed
on several fronts.
The Western democracies blockaded Spain under
a purported non-intervention agreement which
France and Britain favoured; but the United
States and the United Kingdom covertly, secretly,
helped Franco's forces; that is in work by
Noam Chomsky.
Secondly, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin
decided to help Republicans, that is, the
anarchist movements, but it did so on terms
which effectively destroyed the Republican
movement.
The Soviet Union Soviet Union insisted on
extortion at payments for weapons and thereby
bled Spain's gold reserves, and it further
required that the anarchists subordinate themselves
to the existing popular front.
That was the government which had already
decided not to resist Franco.
Stalin’s motives were utterly instrumental;
he could not face the prospect that an anarchist
or anarcho-socialist movement in Spain could
undermine the Spanish Communist party, and
he also feared that the anarchists would take
control of British investments in Spain.
Britain was a presumed Soviet ally in, I quote,
“a democratic alliance” against Nazi,
Germany.
I have taken those materials from Ward’s
book on anarchism 2004 and from Guérin’s
book, a detailed book on anarchism, published
in 1970 and reissued in 2010.
Well, the Spanish government itself may well
have been alarmed by the success of the CNT’s
rapid moves, moves to reorganize not only
agriculture but all work - with the free participation
of peasants and other workers.
This was an enormous threat even in conception
to the Spanish government.
The CNT had over a million members at the
time in the mid-1930s, and one of its Regional
Congresses in Catalonia decided to collectivise
land, but the peasants were given a choice
in this.
The slightly better off ones opted for individual
property, while the poor farmers chose collectivization
among the workers.
Industrial workers - 90 percent chose to join
collectives, and that created a rare joint
movement of both agricultural and industrial
workers.
Now under the broad umbrella of the trade
unions, the collectives were run as groups
of small units, and in accordance with anarchist
principles membership was not compulsory.
Even those who had opted out could still trade
through shops run by the collective or by
communal bodies, and they could receive some
of the benefits of membership.
In Catalonia where there was a tradition of
small and medium-sized farms only a few pilot
collectives were created.
But in the neighboring province of Aragon
more than three quarters of the land was socialized.
Well, anarchist thinking seems to have been
followed as closely as possible.
For example, regional planning in Catalonia
at that time and in other parts of Spain was
federal in nature.
Agricultural yields improved immediately;
the collectives turned out to be more successful
than the communes, and when graduates of agricultural
colleges contributed their knowledge, yields
rose by between 30 and 50 percent.
In the Levant - a particular part of Spain
the citrus farmers outperformed big private
farmers, even in business dealings and they
accounted for 70 percent of the trade.
The local bodies further more organized the
lectures films and plays, which the largely
illiterate peasants relished.
They also showed a great degree of solidarity
which greatly impressed the visiting British
independent Labour Party member Fenner Brockway.
The number of people involved in such agricultural
self-management soon reached half a million
in a total of some 900 collectives.
The Catalonian achievements in industrial
self-management were even more impressive;
Catalonia was the most industrialized area
in Spain and for four months in 1936, almost
all the factories and public services in the
provincial capital, Barcelona, were under
workers’ self-management.
In fact, many of the private owners who were
terrified of the workers had fled.
In October 1936, 600,000 attended a trade
union congress in Barcelona.
And it was highly significant that qualified
engineers from the professional classes also
participated, unlike their counterparts in
other parts of Spain and in Italy.
On the 24th of October 1936, the Catalan,
the Catalonian, government issued a decree
confirming or ratifying the new state of affairs.
All establishments with over 100 workers were
to be socialized, and in fact farms of all
sizes were socialized because many of the
farmers were heavily in debt.
The new system was highly successful, especially
in running urban services and foreign services,
foreign observers I beg your pardon, foreign
observers were full of praise for the workers’
enthusiasm and commitment.
But the successes were undermined even by
the pre-Franco Government.
Some of its ministers were pro-Soviet, and
they feared the prospect of genuine workers’
control.
They also decided against the takeover private
factories and lands.
The agricultural Minister was strongly Stalinist.
He was called Vicente Uribe, and he even told
private landowners that the Communist party's
weapons were at their disposal - and he ensured
that they got imported fertilizers which were
denied to the socialist, to the socialized
farms.
Now, Uribe and his fellow Stalinist Juan Comorera,
who was put in charge of the Catalan economy,
even mobilized small and medium-sized farmers
against the, against the Socialist farmers.
They disguised large landowners or small holders
and then they privatized the organization
of Food supplies in Barcelona.
As if that were not enough the 11th mobile
division under Commander Enrique Lister invaded
Aragon with tanks, but even then the peasants
resisted - and as soon as the Lister division
had gone, they rebuilt their collectives.
The communist Party seemed to realize how
much it had, how much damage it had done.
But whether it is realized, its leaders realized,
how much they had reinforced the position
of the landowning classes is less clear; perhaps
the question arises of whether the Republican
government was even on Franco's side, or if
it wanted solely to make sure the anarchist
movements got nowhere.
The Spanish civil war ended in April 1939,
and Franco’s regime, which endured for nearly
40 years, was so brutal that after his death
the Guardia Civil, the civil guard themselves,
had to be protected against violent revenge
by the public.
The historical record is that anarchist movements
have been hated, feared and crushed by all
forms of established power, whether by broadly
capitalist states or by communist or state
capitalist ones, or by established religious
authorities.
Anarchist ideas, including ideas on political
economy, are therefore essential to an understanding
of the challenge anarchism poses to all forms
of authority.
Well, we’re coming to the main anarchist
ideas and I’ll give you the headings now.
We’ll put up a Powerpoint slide for you
once I’ve prepared that.
But I’ll briefly introduce the two main
types of anarchist ideas first, and then we
will look at the main themes in anarchism.
Anarchist thought falls into two broad types,
collectivist anarchism and individualist anarchism.
The greatest difference between the two is
in their respective approaches to economics
or political economy, but they have a strong
common element in what amounts to an implacable
opposition to the moderated or managed capitalism
favored by social democrats or Keynesians
and also to the now-defunct state socialist
or state-capitalist systems.
The most obvious examples of those were the
Soviet Union and until relatively recently
China, even though China remains a one-party
state, as does North Korea, or more precisely
the democratic People’s Republic in Korea.
But collectivist anarchists reject social
democracy for doing nothing more than soften
capitalist exploitation without ending it
or even replacing it with a better system.
They reject state socialism, on the other
hand, for creating exploitation by the state
as well as having a monopoly over political
power.
So, individualist anarchists reject social
democracy for in fact, in effect, enabling
the emergence of both by private and public
monopolies and for limiting property rights
and freedoms.
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