Anarchism and Power (Noam Chomsky)

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NonZeroSum
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Anarchism and Power (Noam Chomsky)

Post by NonZeroSum »

___________

Noam Chomsky v Olomouci
https://youtu.be/oGGOtkwJB3k?t=38m22s


Question:

Let's go through a big issue and that is anarchism, you call yourself an anarchist or an anarcho-syndicalist to be precise and so my question or actually I would like to pose more questions on this topic but the first question is very simple but I guess the answer should be very complex, what would an anarchist society look like? And second question how to communicate anarchist ideas because my experience is well I'm not an anarchist myself, but kind of sympathizer, my experience is that people when you say the word anarchy, people imagine a lack of order, people imagine lack of security, something like the Hobbesian state of nature; the war of all against all, and so on and I think that the general idea of anarchism in the general public is very much influenced by this misconception, so how to communicate anarchist ideas?

Answer:

Well within I mean the first thing to do is to overcome the misconceptions, to explain what you mean by anarchism, now it’s a pretty broad concept, like in general the concepts of political discourse are very far from precise, I mean to try to explain what liberal means, or capitalism means, or any term you pick, they're often used in highly varied and complex and often contradictory ways and anarchism is no exception.

But I think if you try to find a sort of core themes running through anarchist thought an action, there are some, basically it seems to me one should think of anarchism as not a specific set of doctrines, but just a kind of a tendency in human thought and action which asks whether, which tries to detect and discover structures of authority, domination and hierarchy, and there are plenty of them, and challenge them, ask them to demonstrate their legitimacy, recognizing that they are not self-justifying, they have a burden of justification.

That's true all across the spectrum of human life, from patriarchal families to imperial systems and everything in between, wherever you find the structure of domination, hierarchy, somebody giving orders and somebody taking them, whatever it may be, you have to ask is that legitimate, well you cannot assume that, you shouldn't assume that it is legitimate, because it's been like that for… that's not a justification, you have to ask is it legitimate? When you do you generally find that it can't be justified, there are cases you can think of cases where you can make up a justification, but try it, it's pretty hard, most of the time the justification is the way power is distributed, that's not a justification.

And anarchism is the effort to discover such systems when they can't justify themselves, to dismantle them and to move towards greater freedom, justice, opportunity, individual creativity, cooperative activity and so on, it's just a tendency in history and I don't think it's hard to communicate to people, I think they take it for granted if it's brought to their attention.

And you see it for example, take one of the major achievements of the last 50 years in many societies the United States, many others I'm sure, has been the expansion of women's rights, it's changed enormously and how did it happen? Well since this structures of oppression were identified they kind of disappeared, not instantly of course, there was resistance, still plenty of resistance, but it's a general truth that power prefers darkness, if it's exposed to the light it erodes, if people can see it, it erodes, and this happens all through history, where does it lead? So what would the final goal be? I don't think anyone is smart enough to say that, to say what it would be, this is something that's a constant ongoing effort to try to expand the realm of justice, freedom, independence, breakdown of authority and so on, and I don't see that you should have any limits.

And you can think of all kind of concrete cases, so for example just think of the forms of authority and domination that exists in our societies, one of the dominant ones is wage labor, if you go back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution in England, in the United States, other countries, people who were being driven into the industrial system, bitterly condemned it, in the United States, in the mid 19th century, when the industrial revolution was beginning, working people described wage labor as equivalent to slavery, the only difference was that wage laborer was supposed to be temporary, where as slavery's permanent, actually that was such a widespread idea that it was a slogan of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln accepted it, that's when northern workers went to war in the civil war, that was one of their slogans, want to eliminate chattel slavery and literal slavery, and what they called wage slavery, no influence of Marx or European radicalism, this just came straight out of popular understanding, the popular understanding of free and dependent people, who felt the rights are being taken away by being forced into a system where they have to sell themselves to survive.

I mean they understood you read their, they had their own, this is the period of the freest press in American history, maybe any history, of the working class press, what were called factory girls, young women taken from the farms and forced into the textile mills, had their own journals, a very rich literature, and one of the themes was that if you if you sell what you produce for a price like you're an independent crafts person, you make something, you sell it, you're selling what you produced, if you work for a wage you're selling yourself, you're losing your freedom, the only thing that you're selling is yourself, you're losing your freedom, your dignity, your independence, your worth as a person.

Well you know over the century of the your century and a half this has kind of been instilled in the people's heads and the intuitive understanding of the absolute injustice of this relationship has been kind of suppressed, but I think it's right below the surface, I don't think it takes much for people to recover the understanding that what was second nature a century and a half ago, maybe some work, but that's the kind of thing that organizers and activists are doing and that's a kind of oppression and domination I think should be eliminated and we know how to do it, should be eliminated by enterprises that are managed and run by their participants, not you know not a particularly obscure or even utopian concept that happens in many cases, for example there's a in Spain – Basque country, there's a huge conglomerate, Mondragon which is more or less run on these principles, not quite but something like it, it's owned by the participants, they select their own managers, they don't manage themselves, but it's under recall-able, and so on and so forth, that's a step towards overcoming the deep oppression of the wage labor system.

In the United States in the old industrial regions, the so called rust belt, where the factories have been abandoned and so on, there's a spontaneous spread of worker owned and worker managed enterprises, not huge ones, but it's pretty substantial ones, in fact they are now one of the more progressive unions, the United Steelworkers is right now involved in discussions with Mondragon and the Basque country to try to integrate their activities, these things come very naturally to people, it seems perfectly obvious thing to do and I don't think there's difficulty in communicating it, what's the point you know once people are freed from the oppression that comes from just reflexively adopting the customs and conventions in which you survive.

It's rather similar to the women's movement in this respect, so for example if you'd ask my grandmother whether she was oppressed she wouldn't understood what you're talking about, that's like asking does she breath, if you ask my mother was she oppressed, she knew it and she resented it, but she thought there's nothing you can do about it, my daughter is totally different, they won't even bother answering, those are changes that have taken place just through exposing power to the sunlight and seeing it evaporate, and I think this can happen in many domains, so what would an anarchist society look like? Well you know a final result, I don't expect the final result, human life is too complicated, but you can see easy steps towards more freedom or elimination of illegitimate structures of authority and where it goes is for people to make their own decisions about.
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Re: Anarchism and Power (Noam Chomsky)

Post by BrianBlackwell »

Anarchy, by its modern definition, is the absence of a ruling class. That's about it. The complexity of the topic in general discussion is not derived from the philosophical position itself, but rather from the depth of fallacious intellectual entanglements held the non-anarchist initiating the investigation. This is primarily a result of his/her convoluted cultural indoctrination; as the writhing, knotted facsimile of logic necessary to justify government requires a lifetime of reinforcement. In short, it's not difficult to explain or understand anarchy, but it's a beast of a task to unravel all the layers of horse-pucky that the initiate brings to the conversation.

The anarchist merely acknowledges the self-evident truth that each individual owns themselves, and thus is not morally bound to obey another. By extension, he also recognizes that everyone else owns themselves, and so he IS morally bound to recognize this ownership via his actions. This is sometimes stated as "my freedom ends where your nose begins." This obviously implies that it ONLY ends where your nose begins, and nowhere else. And, of course, your "nose" would also include your property, i.e., anything which falls under the domain of your ownership.

Another way of clarifying this idea, is to say that all human interaction should be voluntary (the term voluntarism, or voluntaryism is often used synonymously with anarchy, which helps to focus the idea and circumvent the negative chaotic stigma associated with the latter term). This approach to the topic irons out all the kinks, and answers many questions. It also completely rules out the notion of government; which, by definition, is the will of others imposed upon the individual; involuntarily and under threat of violence.

All "law" is ultimately backed by the punishment of death, not by mutual agreement of the concerned parties. Punishment may begin with the confiscation of property (fines, etc.), but if this is resisted, the individual will be subject to imprisonment, and if the arrest is resisted, physical harm will be implemented to whatever degree necessary, up to and including murder. Without this implicit threat of violence and death, government is not government; as it would simply be making suggestions or requests, rather than demands. Government is inherently an institution of immoral violence. In considering its morality, remember that law does not merely apply to crimes which have a victim, but to a mile-long list of victimless infractions.

Relevant to this discussion is the fact that the very notion of a morally justified ruling class is an imaginary construct -- such a thing cannot inherently exist. To reveal this undeniable fact, one need only ask the question, "from where does the ruling class derive its right to rule?" In the past, the answer may have been "from God"; but this, of course, cannot be verified, and so is not a legitimate claim. In the modern west, the answer is "from the people"; but do the people have the moral right to rule each other? If I cannot rightfully claim to rule you on a one-on-one basis (this would be slavery, regardless of degree), and no number of people can claim to rule over another (even if we had 1,000 people, each does not possess the right, so the sum of many zeros is still zero), then being utterly bereft of this right, how may we bestow it upon another? We cannot.

There is much more we can discuss -- democracy, hierarchy, organization, justice, etc.(and I'm willing to do so) -- but for the sake of relative brevity, I will leave it here. The only addition I will make is to answer the question, "what would an anarchist society look like?"

We all know the answer quite well, as we live in one most of the time. When we go to the mall, all interactions are voluntary. When we drive on the road, all interactions are voluntary. We can still have stop signs, even if they are not backed by the threat of violence. People don't stop at a four-way intersection because they fear getting a ticket if they don't (they can clearly see there are no cops around); they stop because it is logical and fair to do so. The only time this practical anarchy is violated is when a state enforcer imposes his presence upon the otherwise peaceable interactions of human beings by pulling you over because you surpassed the purposefully and unreasonably low speed limit, or stops you to look in your bag for "illegal" leaves, or to ask you for papers relative to some "privilege" or piece of property (like when selling newspapers on a corner, or driving your car).

Of course, this is not to imply that all interactions will be peaceful -- human nature is what it is -- but adding a thieving (taxes), violent (law enforcement, war), self-serving (corruption, cronyism), and inefficient (wasteful and prolonged processes) system on top of the whole thing is not the answer. Personally, I believe the overwhelming majority of people are of a decent enough nature not to slaughter each other randomly in the absence of law, and a purse-snatcher is far less likely to victimize someone among an armed populace of self-sufficient adults than he is within a society of infantilized and helpless subjects of a ruling class whose enforcers are more likely to show up after a crime than during one.

So, how will a voluntary society work? Much as it does now, or maybe different... the whole point is that it will be up to the individuals to decide, without the costly, ineffective methods imposed by an unjustified ruling class who only seeks its own benefit.
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