A-Infos (en) Perspectives on Anarchist Theory - Vol. 6, No. 1 Fireflies in the Night By Kevin Van Meter

[Worker <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>(http://flag.blackened.net/ias/newsletter.htm)]

 ________________________________________________
      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
            http://www.ainfos.ca/
        http://ainfos.ca/index24.html
 ________________________________________________

This is a brief, but strategic look at our present crisis, the
potentialities that are unfolding within it, and the terrains of
struggle that are opening before us.  This is an attempt to go
beyond the ideological limitations of anarchism in its present
form.  Here the poet, the romantic, and the revolutionary
make up our new trinity.

1. The Poet. "Against this monster, people all over the world,
and particularly ordinary working people in factories, mines,
fields, and offices, are rebelling every day in ways of their
own invention."  - CLR James, Grace C. Lee & Pierre
Chaulieu. In the present crisis we find the anti-authoritarian
left lost in the night, donning ideological blinders, preventing
it from seeing the fireflies dancing right before their faces.  It
has lost the simple power of observation, it no longer sees
the paths out of the woods, or the strategic approaches that
are build on the immanent actions of the oppressed.

1.2 A revolutionary approach to the present crisis. With the
above said, I would, for strategic reasons only, like to
approach the different facets of the crisis we are now faced
with.  To begin, this crisis is the first of its kind, in the
post-globalized world, to be taking place within the system.
There are no barbarians at the gates; these "enemies of the
western world" are inside the castle walls.  Empire is
everywhere.  It is found at the genesis of this crisis; its form
is reflected in this crisis and "it is called into being and
constituted on the basis of its capacity to resolve conflicts",
hence it justifies itself in this crisis; we are witnessing a new
stage of the development of capitalism.

Power itself has become raw, direct, and immanent, but it is
the massive production of information and images in the
wake of September 11th that shields this fact from the
populace.  This crisis is also a test of immaterial production,
for if it fails, the ghost of power will be nose to our nose.  But
what about nationalism or the hyper-patriotism that we are
now witnessing?  Once again we see the corporation dressed
in red, white and blue, but this time it is the media
multi-nationals, and not just Lockheed Martin, who is hiding
behind the robes.  Finally we must remember this crisis, as
with globalization, is an attempt and not an absolute.  The
guardians are constructing a new order even after the cracks
have appeared.

1.3 War against terrorism, dissent: The war against terrorism
is an attack on our present cycle of struggle; against all those
who resist, be they the ruling class of Islamic
Fundamentalists or those of us un-Americans who dare to
question the interests at play here.  The process of
globalization has created a diverse set of antagonists, not all
with the same liberatory purpose.  The guardians have
attacked our newly constructed commons in an attempt to
marginalize and restrict our movements.  We see an apparent
crisis of the state-form, uneasy in its footing, and straining its
power networks; its over-response is a compensation for this.
It has realized that it can not contain the multitude.

The Haitian Revolution in its time was a powerful example
of the abilities of the slave population not only to resist, but
also to construct their own society.  Its mere existence was a
threat to the system of slavery that existed in the United
States, South America, and the rest of the Caribbean.
Subcomandante Marcos (among others) is our own
Toussaint L'Ouverture.  While the guardians have closed our
commons, they have not, and cannot wipe out our grog
shops, networks, relationships, everyday resistances,
temporary autonomous zones, and the multiplicity of
examples that are anticipating a better world.  It is these
spaces that we need to facilitate, expand, and organize from.
But we must know how to find them first.

2. The Romantic. "One of the gravest obstacles to the
achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs
those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings'
consciousness.  Functionally, oppression is domesticating.
To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it
and turn upon it.  This can be done only by means of praxis:
reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it."
-Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

CLR James, Mutual Aid, and the Crisis of Anarchism: "...
there was a parallel between Kropotkin's insistence on the
way the tendency of mutual aid asserted itself and Marx's
insistence that workers expand their own self-organization in
response to capital's exploitation." When theory blinds us to
the simply observable social phenomena and this theory no
longer applies to the reality that we are confronted with, this
theoretical form must be challenged, furthered, and
expanded.  Additionally theoretical developments always
followed social reality or cycles of struggle.  The ideological
blinders of my anarchist colleagues have prevented them
from approaching this situation theoretically and they have
missed the proverbial boat on the revolutionary potentials of
this crisis.  Anarchism, in its present form, needs to be
pushed to its theoretical limits and beyond.

Viewing this crisis in this form, where our once illuminated
spaces have turned pitch black has prevented anarchists from
seeing the numerous potentials, opportunities and terrains of
struggle that exist.  In defining our views on these
ideologically anarchist grounds, and seeing every situation in
terms of an 'anarchist movement', and hence defining our
space in a limited fashion, we have self-marginalized the
anarchist and anti-authoritarian viewpoint.  Here my
argument against the limits of anarchism in its present form
takes on two distinct aspects. The first involves a substantive
critique of the form itself and the second is a critique of the
application of the present form.  Anarchism, especially
American anarchism, has not been part of the larger
philosophical developments of the past 40 years since the
world-wide movements of 1968.  For example it has
reinforced the cult of the worker instead of revolting against
work itself.  As a post-Enlightenment theoretical
development whose major theorists were militant social
actors rather then  arm chair philosophers, anarchism has
remained a simple set of principles and has not throughly
developed its concepts. While its major strength has been
these militant social actors, this form has not been conducive
to answering the challenges of a changing world and the
philosophical developments that are reacting to these
changes.  Also, by not reacting to these changes, these
principles have solidified into a limited ideology.  For
anarchism to be a viable and fruitful methodology it must
shed its present ideological form and in doing so, develop its
concepts and a synthesis with other theoretical
developments.

Anarchism has become an ideological totality, defined
against other ideological totalities.  This is a totality, not as in
totalitarian, but in one system as defined against other 'one'
system(s), as a whole defined against other wholes.
Anarchism has become an absolutist dogma based upon
objective 'truth claims', justified outside of the experience of
everyday social actors.  This is what Deleuze and Guattari
refer to as 'tree thinking'.  Trees are singular, where every
development or deviation is unified in a single norm.  The
anarchist tree is defined against other trees of the state,
capital, police, war, etc.  This anarchist tree must relate
everything, every development to itself.  To sum up these
related critiques, anarchism in this form has solidified to a
simple oppositional ideology incapable of reacting within
reality and our present crisis.

Anarchism is justified as the point of departure rather then
the endpoint of the thinking process or dialog.  To state "I
am an anarchist!  So XYZ..." reflects the process of
solidifying anarchism as a totalizing ideology.  To counter
this it requires that we see anarchism as a conclusion in our
thought process and the end of an argument.  In this way our
thought process is immanent, of us, rather than
transcendent, or of a system, god or natural development
that is justified and concluded before this thought process
even begins.  This is reflected in the definitions and contexts
we set in our approach to 'creating anarchists', specifically
anarchist movements and organizations.  We are spreading
the anarchist message as defined against other messages,
convincing others that anarchism holds the golden kernel of
truth.  This belief of objective truth, that stands at the core of
anarchism, liberalism, and the Enlightenment from which it
originates, has continued the dynamic of the us vs. them,
right vs. wrong.

It is this very anarchism to which the space to organize has
been closed.  This form that the limited analysis of our
present crisis has stemmed.  It is this anarchism that has lost
its ability to observe existing social phenomena that are
taking place far from the tree and can not be defined or
related to it.  Ideological anarchism has ignored its own
methodological developments, even those that are similar to
the philosophical developments of the last 40 years.

So what is this social phenomena that I am speaking of?  It is
a diverse set of everyday resistances, self-organized activities,
networks, relationships, and terrains of struggle.  Some
phenomena are related, while others are not.  Some are
connected underground, often with no knowledge of the
other similar activities.  We can listen to conversations,
dialogues, and discussions that run counter to the context set
for this crisis, most of which are separate from any organized
'movement' or the leftist critique.  We see relationships being
forged and new ways of being coming into existence.  We
see the desire for community and a life beyond work.  We see
human solidarity and expressions of grief that are not defined
by nationalism or patriotism.  In addition, new potentialities
are being created by this crisis.  New alliances and
relationships can be formed.  New spaces are being carved
out that can be used as staging grounds for resistance.  New
issues and campaigns organized.  And new possibilities for a
free society.  But these activities and spaces, our fireflies in
the night, cannot be defined by and tied to an ideology; even
one as liberatory as anarchism.

Our only task now is to create a new anarchist methodology;
many, many anarchism(s), a multiplicity of anarchism(s);
influenced by the theoretical developments post-1968 and by
the immanent activities of social actors today.  In this CLR
James, among others, offers us a smorgasbord of
possibilities, all contained within the general foci of
immanence.  Here we see the bridge between Kropotkin's
Mutual Aid and James' work.  James  looked at the
revolutionary activity of the slaves of Haiti and its effect on
world politics (especially here in the United States where the
black population was still enslaved), the struggles of African
people and women in his own day, and the workers' councils
of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.  James believed that all
of these illuminated the self-activity of oppressed peoples,
and their ability to organize their own activities.  Once the
"(Hungarian) people erupted spontaneously, the rest
followed with an organic necessity and a completeness of
self-organization that distinguishes this revolution for all
previous revolutions"  It is the workers councils that
developed out of these spontaneous activities; workers
councils against the union, the party, the state, work and the
social factory.

To conclude this section, our task as anarchists is to
understand these broader theoretical developments, the
power of observation, of self activity, and the rejection of
anarchism in its present form: that of ideology.  Anarchism,
if it is going to be a vibrant form of struggle, needs to move
away from justifying itself outside of the self-activity and
mutual aid of ordinary people.  In this return to its
methodological form, its immanent form, a place of which
those in the autonomist Marxist school have been chewing
over for the past 50 years, I am proposing a new synthesis.  A
form of anarchism made up of a series of interconnected
concepts.  Multiplicity is nothing, with out non-heirarchical
organizing, anti-statism, mutual aid, and direct
democracy.

The Plane of Immanence and Revolutionary Strategy Today:
Immanence, the space where struggles are taking place on
the most basic level and where organized resistances develop
out of these struggles, already exists.  We see this brightly in
the example of the Reclaim the Streets movement.  This
movement is obviously a development out of, and is affected
by, previous struggles, it has blurred ideological lines in favor
of methodological and hence immanent ones.  The need for
such tactics in the anti-road struggles (where it rises from in
England), the creativity and mode of struggle that emanates
from this is not immediately translated to the climate here in
the United States or, more specifically, New York City,
where I was first introduced to them, or even in suburban
Long Island where the organization that I work with first
used them.  Each of these actions, each location, is different,
is immanent, is particular.  It is the general form that is
translatable.  Also within this cycle of struggle we see the
hope and strength that anti-authoritarian movements have
taken from the Zapatistas, a struggle which also cannot be
copied and developed in another locale.

Food Not Bombs, Radical Cheerleaders, Critical Mass,
Pirate Radio, our Temporary Autonomous Zones, Free
Skools and the thousands of activist collectives and projects
that make up this new movement don't have rigid ideological
litmus tests, exclusive membership, or other forms of
activism that would be defined as something separate,
something outside of society acting upon it to change it.
'Do-it-yourself' ethics is a call to an anarchism that is 'in the
here and now'.  Here 'activism' is no longer limited to the
activist.  No longer limited to the forms of social change that
seek to transcend the existing social order or to those which
are justified outside of the experience of the oppressed
multitude.

To return to our original purpose of dealing with our present
(post-Sept. 11th) crisis, the anti-authoritarian movement has
fallen back on its old ideological foundation for answers and
approaches to this crisis.  No one can fault them for this, but
unfortunately these ideological roots are based upon
transcendents; on principles that are outside our own
experience.  Be they justified by evolution, primitive
societies, material production, or human nature, they are all
insufficient in approaching this crisis.  Developing forms of
struggle on the plain of immanence, through our experience
and the everyday resistances happening everywhere and
always will not only forge this new anarchism but it will
create a counter-existence to that of the system.

It is this plane of immanence, this self-activity that will form
the base of our new methodologies, our new anarchism(s).
The fireflies in our neighborhood will light their own paths,
communicate with other fireflies, create their own little
rebellions, and multiply.

Rhizomes twinkling in the moonlight: "Rhizomic thinking' is
about multiplicity, living in/with variety and difference,
cultivating productive schizophrenia (the 'cop' and the
'revolutionary aren't the only voices in our heads).  'Rhizomic
people' are multiple, fluid, shape shifting, always resisting
the temptation of this or that.  They are this, and that, not
this, not that, and then some." - Statement from the Maine
Center for Justice, Ecology, and Democracy

The firefly is the perfect metaphor for this project.  It carves
space out of the night while communicating in subtle ways
with its brothers and sisters.  Our fireflies are not limited in
their action, flight pattern, or intensity.  Our fireflies are
rhizomes, twinkling in the moonlight.  They are the
in-between, without center, they are networks of
interconnected roots.  Our fireflies are not the negative of the
night; they are part of the night, dancing outside and against
the night, ignoring the night, and creating the day to their
own rhythms.

Our first task as anti-authoritarians, as revolutionaries, is not
to orchestrate these fireflies or invite them to our dance, but
to facilitate, expand, further, and create our own dances and
hence these spaces and resistances.  In this, power is being
confronted and created, and we have maintained our
immanence, our ontology.  We have not separated our theory
from reality with the purpose of finding the one true tune.
Our second task is to inspire.  These dances, and tunes are
infectious, along with our series of principles and concepts,
visions and dreams.

Our project is a fundamentally new way of looking at the
world, a way to deepen our politics.  Here we are organizing
out of reality; out of already existing resistances, our struggle
becomes immanent.

3. The Revolutionary. "I take my desires for reality because I
believe in the reality of my desires!" - May 1968, Paris
Approaching Mass Powerlessness: In the wake of September
11th , the mass powerlessness felt by the populace is the
ghost of power butting up against their daily reality.  In a
society with few avenues of participation this reaction is one
that can be expected.  We also see the desire for community,
for communication, to be with others facing this crisis.  All of
these are opportunities to offer deeper relationships, deeper
possibilities and avenues for participation.  (Beyond "1,2,3,4
we don't want your racist war" Who is "we"?  Who is
"your"?).  Community dialogs, especially those of Paulo
Friere's Popular Education where participants confront,
analyze, and act out of their experiences, are the beginning
of these new relationships.  The simple act of
communication with our neighbors and fellow community
members is a powerful act.  The creation of space for dialog
is another plateau to reach.  Talking with people, not at them
is a revolutionary act!

The opportunity to question the definitions of this crisis has
also arisen, and this is already taking place on many terrains.
Whose quality of life are we protecting by bombing
Afghanistan, by this "war on terrorism"?  Similarly the
opportunity has arisen to create deeper relationships with
those who we have not before; with Muslims, Arabs,
immigrants in our own communities, with the older peace
movement.  We should not, however, confront the unity of
the state with our own unity.  Rather we confront their
misused solidarity, their unity with multiplicity, with
difference, hybrid identities and dynamic potentialities.

The whole desire for an 'anarchist presence' in the anti-war
movement is misplaced.  The anti-war movement is a middle
class construct in itself.   A united left against the war is the
limitation of voices, of vision and of the potential for
revolutionary change.  The "revolutionary" voice becomes
one among many; one of the voices against the war.  It is not
just what we are against that separates us from the
authoritarian left but also what we are for.  Leave the left to
have their demos, the slogans, and shitty newspapers all of
which don't have the basic elements to communicate with
ordinary people.   For the anti-authoritarian, the possibility of
dialog, deeper relationships, positive institutions and
projects, and movements for justice, are just too numerous
to ignore.   The potentialities for community building, for
organizing deeper in our communities, for creating
accountable democratic structures, local politics and
projects, and for expanding our existing circles cannot be
ignored either.  We must not allow this crisis to cover up all
of the other vital issues, concerns, and campaigns that
deserve our attention.

This does not mean that we don't make demands.  We
demand by becoming visible.  We demand reform and
revolution.  For example, to demand that this "police action"
be taken to the United Nations for resolution, is a demand
with many pressure points.  Contained within it is the
realization, and demand, that the UN is itself an
undemocratic institution based upon undemocratic nation
states.   Similarly demanding that all of the nuclear reactors
be turned off plays on the existing concerns of the populace
and contains the fact that nuclear power is dangerous,
destructive to our environment, etc.   Demand that our civil
rights be maintained, demand respect and dignity for
immigrants, demand a safe food supply, demand the end of
work.

Finally these demands, spaces, dialogs, struggles,
community building activities, and fireflies in the night are
furthering the accumulation of contradictions.  They are
furthering the stresses on our hyper-reality, on the
production of images and information, on the systems of
power, and on the system itself.  All of our activities are
forcing open the contradictions in our society.  As these
contradictions accumulate, as the system attempts to
compensate for them, deal with them, commodify them, new
possibilities fill these cracks, new worlds become visible and
are realized.

New potentialities, New terrains of struggle: This crisis has
created new potentialities and new terrains of struggle.
Exploring these potentialities and the new possibility for
relationships will lead us down interesting and challenging
paths.  To not seek out these potentialities is to ignore the
immanent reality and to lose opportunities to challenge our
existing order and to create new ways of being.  Seismic
shifts have created new mountains for guerillas to fight on;
new terrains to struggle on.  These guerilla armies are tactics
rather than organizations; they are fighting binary opposites,
against transcendence.  They are multiple, hybrid, always
and everywhere, struggling for immanence, for reality.  On
many mountains the fireflies are dancing.



*******
                       ********
       ****** The A-Infos News Service ******
      News about and of interest to anarchists
                       ******
  COMMANDS: lists@ainfos.ca
  REPLIES: a-infos-d@ainfos.ca
  HELP: a-infos-org@ainfos.ca
  WWW: http://www.ainfos.ca/
  INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org

-To receive a-infos in one language only mail lists@ainfos.ca the message:
                unsubscribe a-infos
                subscribe a-infos-X
 where X = en, ca, de, fr, etc. (i.e. the language code)