Great piece by David Graeber. This has been a topic that has been weighing on my mind for weeks now. For most Americans the word "anarchy" conjures up visions of masked malcontents smashing windows and looting television sets. History buffs will be quick to remind us that President William McKinley was assassinated by self-confessed anarchist Leon Czolgosz. TV pundits today attempt to discredit the Occupy movement by calling them "anarchists." But what the media fails to tell us is what anarchism really is.This is not the first time a movement based on fundamentally anarchist principles – direct action, direct democracy, a rejection of existing political institutions and attempt to create alternative ones – has cropped up in the US. The civil rights movement (at least, its more radical branches), the anti-nuclear movement, the global justice movement … all took similar directions. Never, however, has one grown so startlingly quickly.
Our rulers, anyway, seem to labor under a lingering fear that if any significant number of Americans do find out what anarchism really is, they may well decide that rulers of any sort are unnecessary.There is no discussion about the pillars of the anarchist philosophy such as direct democracy, opposition to authority, and nonviolence. We are just fed horror stories about how anarchism will lead to a Somalia/Mad Max scenario where roving armed gangs rule the countryside. What they don't tell you is that the decision making process at the Occupy protests looks more like Athenian democracy than a some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland. While there are many different strains of anarchism, most anarchists consider themselves anti-coercion, anti-aggression, and anti-corporate. Anarchism at its core is a peaceful democratic movement. But anarchism's major problem is that successful examples are hard to find in human history. Perhaps the most famous attempt at an anarchist society outside of hunter-gatherers and pirate colonies was in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. This experiment, famously described by George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, was short lived but radically transformed Spanish society in a short amount of time. However the experiment was short lived; once Stalin joined the Republican war effort, he moved quickly to crush the anarchists who he viewed as aligned with Leon Trotsky. Since then anarchism has been viewed more as an oddity than a legitimate political philosophy.
The pundits are half right, the Occupy movement is anarchist to some extent. It's leaderless, they make all of their decisions through direct democracy in general assemblies, and they believe in direct action. But its not just the Occupy movement that has adopted some or all of these tactics. The protests of the Arab Spring have been described as leaderless, anti-authoritarian movements using direct action to get what they want. Youth all over the Middle East saw societies with skyrocketing costs of living, no jobs to pay for it, and no freedom with which to voice their concerns. Nobody believed these movements would succeed in obtaining their aims. Many of the same criticisms levied against the Occupiers were used against the Arab Springers. That their lack of an anointed leadership and coherent set of demands would lead to their downfall. But here we are, almost a year later, and these protests succeeded in toppling four governments. What pundits don't realize is that the strength of these movements comes from the very thing that they believe is their weakness.
After all, since 2007, just about every previous attempt to kick off a nationwide movement against Wall Street took exactly the course such people would have recommended – and failed miserably. It is only when a small group of anarchists in New York decided to adopt the opposite approach – refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the existing political authorities by making demands of them; refusing to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order by occupying a public space without asking for permission, refusing to elect leaders that could then be bribed or co-opted; declaring, however non-violently, that the entire system was corrupt and they rejected it; being willing to stand firm against the state's inevitable violent response – that hundreds of thousands of Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa began rallying in support, and a majority declared their sympathies.This is why the Occupy movement has been so popular, because it offers something different. Occupiers view the system as being deeply flawed and corrupt. Government and corporations have become one in the same. We have a government that caters exclusively to the richest 1% of its citizens. A government where Wall Street bankers are hired as regulators and politicians are hired as lobbyists. Giving a corrupt government like this a list of demands only legitimizes that government. This is where anarchism offers something entirely different. By refusing to play by the old rules, by refusing to give demands, by refusing to appoint leaders, it doesn't simply aim to reform the system, they want to overhaul the system from the ground up. Whether the Occupy movement will last or will even succeed at bringing about the change that they want, remains to be seen. But the mere fact that it is so popular and it has lasted this long proves that people are looking for alternatives. Who knew those alternatives would be Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon?
