dissemination

If it were possible to achieve an equitable society in which the individual was able to act autonomously, engaged in voluntary mutual co-operation without any sort of coercion, without the use of violence, who would oppose this idea?

In an ideal world, a principled struggle that was entirely non-violent would be highly desirable. We are aghast at the thought of harm inflicted against other human beings, the deaths of individuals especially those whose actions are entirely neutral. However, this is happening all around us – this is not an ideal world.

The historical record illustrates over and over how a diversity of tactics have been required to bring about systemic change. Die hard pacifists will point to the examples of the movements led by Gandhi against British colonialism in India, and the African-American Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King as its figurehead as examples of successful struggles against an unjust state of affairs. However, in each case this is an oversimplification. To an extent we are in accord with the sentiments of Orwell, who surmised that the tactics and strategy employed by Gandhi were effective against a regime that perceived itself in the fashion that the British Empire did, but would not work against a brutal totalitarian state. It is often forgot just how much of the British exit from India was not solely the product of non-violent civil disobedience. Behind Gandhi and his followers, many other Indians adopted far more militant methods to expel the British from the country.

Regarding the fight to achieve civil rights in America, it is pertinent to consider how the non-violent approach taken by Martin Luther King and the SCLC would have fared had it not been backed by the militant doctrine espoused by the likes of Malcolm X. Given the choice of negotiating with more or less militant factions, it is natural that the establishment will gravitate towards those who are more ‘reasonable’. However, would they even decide to negotiate in the first place without the serious threat unrest mushrooming to the point that the economic livelihood of capitalism is threatened with serious disruption?

By asserting one facet of a struggle over the other, and attempting to frame it according to moralistic discourse, one fails to perceive how each feeds into the other, and change emerges holistically through an intertwined set of processes. The object of this stratagy is to create divisions that emerge within a resistance that ultimately leads to its failure.

If one is attacking by forces that are determined to maintain inequality and the status quo, what does it achieve to project a front of dignified acceptance. Surely self-defence must be considered as noble endeavour, that safeguards the wellbeing of one’s comrades against the enemy. We would not go along with Gandhian principles to the extent that we agree with absorbing the blows of the oppressor in the hope that the sheer nobility of one’s actions will lead the oppressor to see the wrongs in his own behavior (eventually). For us this appears a very naïve take upon the human condition, especially as it manifests itself today.

Great things can be achieved through peaceful action. But to relegate oneself to it, to deny the capacity for self-defence, this has its limits. There are times we must fight for our ideals, when no other alternative is available to us. In these circumstances we must act.

Why does the idea persist that the average person is in need of an outside authority to structure and direct her life?

This paternalistic notion presupposes that the vast majority of human beings are incapable of organising themselves, that the typical human cannot be trusted to manage herself. She needs to be guarded against her own incapacity to function without governance from above. Bereft of the guidance of her superiors, she is doomed to come to harm, to be subjugated by those stronger than herself in a war of all against all. Furthermore, collectively humans are only prevented from indulging their basest tendencies by the presence and pressure of the Big Other. We not only require an apparatus of authority to oversee our lives that is grounded in the manifestation of tangible and present physical force ensuring compliance (in the words of Max Weber, the state alone has a monopoly on the use of ‘legitimate’ physical force – no act demonstrates this more clearly than a thwack from a police officer’s truncheon), but also must internalize authority. All means of manufacturing consent work to engender a state of total acquiescence on the part of both the individual and society as a whole.

Governance implies rule from above. Government is the network of institutional power through which this rule is executed. While governments are subject to change, governance remains enshrined, an article of allegiance in our present systemic order. We trade off our agency and autonomy to a higher power in exchange for order and security. Few are given to questioning the need for governance. The thought that people might govern themselves, which is no more than the assertion of the will and sense of the individual tempered by his compassion, solidarity and consideration for others, is unpalatable.

How could a community can organize in such a way that no ruling group can dictate to others how to act, and all decisions are made through consensus as a manifestation of the collective will? We are led to believe such thoughts are nothing more than naive dreams, unrealisable in the face of a harsh reality. In fact anthropology suggests many hunter-gatherer societies operated in this way, and thus an integral part of human development was marked by the presence of collective self-management within communities. If this possibility is conceded, nevertheless we are told that these kinds of relations between autonomous individuals could not work in the present day. We are conditioned by the projection of fear onto our lives, the elevation of threat levels to the point at which our unease propels us to concede control to a greater force that claims the ability to protect us against all of the world’s ills.

Governance entails authority. Since we will not submit to any authority, necessarily we must work to erode the hegemonic position of the concept of governance as an essential facet of everyday life. Only with examples that counteract this logic can we illuminate and define the other types of organisation which might enrich our lived experience and empower both the individual and the collective.

Put simply, our opposition to democracy as it exists today resides in the fact that it is not democratic.

Opposing ‘the democratic’ to democracy may seem absurd to some, those whose idea of participation extends no further than placing a cross in box every few years. However, this is testament only to the success of the many means of obfuscation that are employed with the intent to confuse and placate. The fundamentally undemocratic nature of democracy as it exists today (and indeed, has always existed*) is something felt by many, but unable to be articulated clearly.

It is this above all else that leads to frustration, apathy and disdain for politicians, as the representatives of our present hegemonic order. For some the problem is simply that the wrong politicians wield power, and inserting the correct ones (and where are they to be found?) would rectify it. This gives too much credit to politicians, who are nothing more than symptoms of the wider problem. By all means hold them in complete contempt, most are sorely deserving of it. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking the fault with democracy lies with bad politicians.

We are inculcated to believe in the superiority of representative democracy over all its competitors, as the final destination of the systemic development of our species. No other system of organising life and its contents could work better. They have all been tried and shown to be worse, have they not? We are urged to consider the brutality of totalitarian states, or feudalism. Things could be worse, you see? So be happy with what you have got.

This line of thinking is little more than a dead end. Change is constant. We exist in a permanent state of flux, there is no end point beyond a cataclysm that wipes out our species. But the objective of this rhetoric is clear: deter people from imagining other ways we might organise ourselves. Hinder our capacity to create and innovate. Deny us the freedom to sketch out what a better world might look like.

This illusory limit is so pervasive, so potent, that many truly believe liberal democracy to be the highest form of organizing principle possible in our society. However, people are beginning to test this limit. A yearning for the democratic in everyday life can be felt. It is up to all of us to try and articulate this desire, to map out other ways that we might recover the dimension of the democratic.

*Athenian democracy, whilst it had many admirable attributes, excluded women entirely, and required a property qualification for participation. Naturally, the huge number of slaves who underpinned the economy of the Athenian state were not able to vote or hold political, on account of their being slaves.

This blog is intended to act as a space for ideas and their dissemination, hence the name. We hope to articulate something meaningful here, something representative of our own experience. If it connects with others who feel the same, all the better.

We are a loose collective of individuals. Our views are not homogenous. Amongst us there are a range of different perspectives and ideologies.

Our rallying point is opposition to capitalism. We are inspired by various strands of anti-capitalist thought. Libertarian socialism, autonomism, anti-authoritarian communism, social ecology, anarcho-syndicalism. All these currents and more have something to offer us. We are not dogmatic in our approach. We do not seek to define ourselves according to a specific label or definition, to tie our colours to the mast.

But we will need to structure our ideas around certain organising principles. Opposition towards capital, towards the tremendous inequalities of wealth and access to resources that make a mockery of the pretense towards a civilised society. Opposition to all forms of oppression, whether on the basis of gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality or any other facet of identity. Opposition towards essentialist doctrines.

There is a notion of the irreducible minimum, the absolute bare minimum that all human beings require in order to live a fulfilled life. Food, water, shelter, education, healthcare. The fact that billions of human beings go without these is as damning an indictment as can be imagined. Our species can no longer tolerate this disconnect. Our freedom and autonomy is mutually dependent upon one another. No one of us can be truly free and autonomous unless all are.