A century ago, Anarchism was an international mass movement involving millions of adherents. Anarchists dominated the radical wing of the international labor movement. The anarchist communities that sprang up in nearly every major city were a conspicuous part of urban life as anarchists were a visible and recognized minority alongside various ethnic and religious groups. Over a twenty year period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century anarchists assassinated the head of state in every major country. The very term “anarchist” struck fear into the heart of politicians, monarchs and robber barons everywhere. The ruling class never knew when or where the anarchists might strike again.

A few years ago, I came across a book on the historic anarchist movement, that claimed a unique characteristic of anarchism was its utter failure to achieve any of its objectives. I had to laugh. The reality of course is that anarchism was one of the most successful mass movements ever. Yes, the state has yet to be abolished. No nation to date has adopted the black flag as its own. Yes, the international bourgeoisie retain their power. Class rule is with us now as much as ever. However, when we look at the state of things in the industrialized world a century ago we see that history has indeed moved in our direction.

Anarchists were at the forefront of the movement for the eight-hour workday. The Haymarket martyrs gave their lives for this cause. At one point it was illegal to organize labor unions. Striking workers were regularly gunned down by government agents and private thugs. It was a federal crime in the United States to distribute information about contraception. Orphaned children were confined to slave-like conditions and used for medical experimentation along with the mentally handicapped, juvenile delinquents, homosexuals and others. Prison conditions often rivaled those of Nazi concentration camps. The death penalty was regularly imposed for burglary and grand larceny. People of African descent were regularly murdered and terrorized by gangs of racists while authorities looked the other way.

Anarchists were among the earliest and most militant opponents of all of these conditions. The eight-hour day, the right to organize unions, read sexually explicit literature, practice contraception and obtain abortions and engage in antiwar protests, prison reform and countless other rights and privileges that we take for granted today did not exist at the time of the classical anarchist movement. Roger Baldwin was inspired to found the American Civil Liberties Union after hearing a speech by the anarchist and pioneer womens’ rights advocate Emma Goldman. Anarchists were among the earliest opponents of the mistreatment of homosexuals as well. In many ways, things have advanced considerably over the past century.

Anarchism declined as a mass movement largely because of the treachery of the statist left. The Communist revolution in Russia of 1917 was a seeming success for the radical workers’ movement. Many workers began to drift towards Communism unaware that the Bolsheviks had stabbed the revolution in the back. The defeat of the Spanish anarchists through the combined efforts of the Fascists and Communists in the 1930s largely sounded the death knell for the historic anarchist movement. Today, anarchism largely consists of scattered handfuls of people operating on the fringe of the statist left opposition culture.

This is precisely the problem. Anarchists have yet to adapt themselves to the situation presented by the current world conditions and develop a comprehensive ideological framework through which the dominant political, economic and intellectual paradigms can be challenged. Typically, anarchists operate as if they were only another faction of the radical left, both politically and culturally. Today, “anarchism” is largely an amalgam of nostalgia for the classical movement (usually in the form of “revolutionary” groups that are by and large just history clubs), carry-over elements from the counter culture and New Left politics of the 1960s, the culture of “political correctness” developed by 1980s and 1990s liberals and social democrats, a type of Gandhi-wannabe “non-violence” rhetoric, the romanticizing of Third World revolutionary figures (including many decidedly non-anarchists), the punk rock subculture, an enthusiasm for critical theory and other hip intellectual trends and a general championing of every left-liberal popular cause yet to be invented.

The statist left is largely a discredited failure. Bourgeois social democracy has largely become the dominant ideology of the left wing of the ruling class and interest in Communist or other forms of far left opposition is largely non-existent outside of the world of academic neo-Marxists. Meanwhile, the resurgence of the libertarian right has become a powerful attraction for those looking for a movement to oppose the state. However penetrating the criticisms of the state advanced by the libertarian right may be, its decidedly bourgeois character ultimately prevents it from developing a comprehensive critique of class relations and the role of corporate power in maintaining modern systems of tyranny.

What is needed then is a new and improved form of anarchism that draws on the insights of the classical movement, corrects for its failings, expands its agenda and simultaneously utilizes the advances in historical study and economic science that have come about in recent decades. This would be an anarchism that rejects with equal fervor the statist left and corporate right and positions itself as diametrically opposed to the dominant “left-right” paradigm of contemporary political thought and discourse. This would involve a number of key changes in both contemporary anarchist ideology and strategy.

The first order of business for any form of serious anarchism must, of course, be opposition to the state itself. Many contemporary anarchists seem to have lost sight of this. Indeed, it is not uncommon for many of today’s anarchists to take positions on the role of the state in society virtually indistinguishable from those of social democrats and even Communists. Even so perceptive an anarchist thinker as Noam Chomsky has fallen into this trap. The apparent enthusiasm of many so-called anarchists for the bourgeois “welfare state”, for example, indicates that they have not developed any critique of the state beyond that advanced by ordinary leftwing theoreticians who see the state merely as an expression of the economic power of the capitalist class. This view ignores the classical Bakuninist position that the state is a social class in and of itself with power and privilege beyond that of even the economic elite. The only serious critics of this aspect of the state these days appear to be the “anarcho-capitalist” theoreticians who have developed a critique of the state and “big business” far more radical and penetrating than that offered by anyone on the contemporary left. That so many of the contemporary urban poor have been enslaved and made wards of the state by the welfare plantation operated by the social democratic left while anarchists look on with utter obliviousness is indeed tragic. This is an issue where anarchists should be taking the ideological lead but has instead been left to black conservatives, the corporate right and minority nationalists like the Nation of Islam.

It is necessary for anarchists to develop a consistent and principled opposition to the state in all its various aspects from the welfare system to “public” schools to the military-industrial complex to the repressive apparatus of so-called “criminal justice”. The most centralized and powerful forms of the state must be the primary targets of the wrath of anarchists. This means that there must be a certain hierarchy of priorities for those with an anti-state agenda. Expressions of global statism must be the first enemy to be dealt with. The current process of “globalization” (conversion to rule by international conglomerates through international agencies) or the New World Order, as the populist right likes to call it, threatens to subjugate both the working classes and traditional nation-states and national cultures under the boot of a global corporate bureaucracy and monoculture. Therefore, all enemies of the globalization process become natural allies in the struggle. This would include nationalists, separatists, traditionalists and religious conservatives from the right and labor unions, environmentalists, socialists and Marxists and other radical “progressives” from the left.

The next order of business is to oppose the most powerful nation-states. Foremost among these would be the current ruling regime of the United States, the most powerful political and military empire in world history. All enemies of U.S. imperialism become allies on this point from the EZLN to the Shining Path to the Taliban to Fidel Castro. This does not mean that we embrace the politics or policies of any of these elements. It simply means that we work for the weakening of our greatest enemy first. The next group of nation-states to be opposed would be those most closely aligned with either globalization or U.S. imperialism. These include the nations of the NATO alliance, the Group of Seven and the racist, theocratic, Zionist regime imposed on Palestinian Arabs, Muslims, Jews and Christians alike by western imperial powers. Next on the international level, we oppose those states with the most widespread or grotesque abuses of “human rights”-Russia, China, Iran and Iraq, Cambodia, Indonesia and others. Lastly, we work for an end to states all together.

Within the domestic United States, we need to apply the same principles. That means that we oppose the federal government first, followed by state and local governments. Any devolution of power from the higher levels of government to the lower is to be supported. Any transfer of government functions from the state to non-government institutions is to be supported. All institutions, organizations and individuals operating in opposition to the state are to be supported whether they are tax resisters, homeschoolers, armed militias, street gangs, squatters, prisoners engaged in revolt, political protestors, and operators of pirate radio or whatever.

The most predatory aspects of the state should be the first to be opposed. Foremost among these are the police, prisons and so-called “criminal justice”. Any measure reducing the number of laws, the powers of the police and courts and the ability of prison administrations to exercise arbitrary authority over inmates is to be supported. Those persons most persecuted by the state should be the first to be defended. In the current situation, this would mean prisoners, victims of drug war repression in all its forms, the homeless, youth, low-income workers, the urban poor, farmers run off their lands, street level entrepreneurs, prostitutes and other outcasts. I am always appalled when anarchists spend more time protesting against circuses and fast food restaurants than narcotics agents and vice cops, zoning inspectors, school authorities and the prison industry.

All control by the state over social life is to be resisted. This means that we should align ourselves with leftwing and rightwing anti-globalists, anti-militarists, anti-imperialists, separatists and secessionists. Along with the left, we should oppose police brutality, racism and sexism, the destruction of the environment, the death penalty, infringements on sexual freedom and abortion rights, the exploitation of workers and censorship. Along with the right, we should oppose state controlled schools, gun laws (unbelievably, many so-called anarchists have gone so far as to endorse control over firearms by the state), taxes, zoning laws that are largely a means of regulating the poor, the welfare system, repression against religious minorities, speech codes and other forms of leftwing censorship and restrictions on freedom of association.

These principles should be applied to the economic realm in a similar way. All state support for corporations should be opposed. Efforts to “democratize” or allow workers greater participation in industrial organizations is to be supported. The development of worker owned and operated enterprises should also be on the agenda along with opposition to harassment by government regulators of small enterprises and the self-employed. As government at various levels owns more than half of all the land in the U.S., a comprehensive land reform agenda is in order. Land reform should emphasize the rights of “use-possession”, squatters, farmers and small entrepreneurs, families, cooperatives and individuals.

Strategically, we need to follow the example of the most successful anarchist forces of all time — the Spanish anarchist revolutionaries. Our revolutionary agenda should be to develop an alliance of community organizations, unions, cooperatives, enterprises, service organizations, youth clubs, study groups and other popular associations backed up by our guerrilla, paramilitary and militia forces armed for the purpose of seizing control on a city-by-city, county-by-county, state-by-state basis and the complete eradication of centralized state-corporate power and the elimination of the control of all our enemies. As America was the first classical liberal nation, it would indeed be an appropriate irony for it to be the first libertarian socialist nation as well.

Anarchism vs. Right-Wing Anti-Statism

Brian Oliver Sheppard’s timely and poignant article “Anarchism vs. Right-Wing ‘Anti-Statism” correctly points out the failure of the anarchist movement to provide an adequate response to and critique of the attacks on so-called “Big Government” that are so widespread in contemporary American political culture. Both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, play at this game, hoping that the use of such rhetoric will serve to marshal popular frustration with ever-widening repression towards hypocritical and demagogic politicians promising to “end big government as we know it”. Sheppard points out the sham behind such rhetoric eloquently. Now more than ever, anarchists need to develop a comprehensive and penetrating critique of the role of the state as a self-imposed monopoly of armed, coercive force that exists for the purpose of protecting and expanding class privilege and exploitation, war and imperialism, racism and tyranny.

Perhaps some of my own past experiences could be helpful here. About a decade ago, I was on a television talk show discussing anarchism with the show’s host, a notorious liberal, and another guest, a Libertarian Party member. The more I attacked government, the more the host would reply, “God, you’re starting to sound a lot like Ronald Reagan”. I was left in the position of having to explain, through sound bite, the difference between the mercantilist, corporatist, fake “anti-statism” of the Republican-oriented Right and the genuinely liberatory class struggle traditions of classical anarchism. I am still having this debate with “conservative” minded relatives and associates who utterly fail to grasp the elitist, classist nature of the “antigovernment” rhetoric of mainstream political figures. I currently co-host a talk show on a public access cable channel and sometimes confused callers and letter writers will ask, “How can you be against government and corporations at the same time?” or “Don’t you know that without government we would all be at the mercy of corporate predators?” Persons who think this way, whether from the left or the right, are showing that they have fallen victim to the false dichotomy between state and corporate power created by established state-capitalist ideology. If anarchists are going to win this debate, it is essential that we develop a system of analysis that consistently and effectively debunks the pseudo-analysis put forth by the apologists for the system.

The American political/economic system might be best described as “state-capitalism” (as Noam Chomsky calls it) or “corporate socialism” (a term Russell Means of AIM preferred to use). The primary purpose of the state is to maintain a monopoly of force over a particular geographical area, suppress internal dissent of any effectiveness and promote American imperial interests in other parts of the world. Economically, the U.S. system is a form of advanced mercantilism or, again quoting Chomsky, a “welfare state for the rich”. Irrespective of rhetoric to the contrary, the U.S. elite class wants neither a genuine “free market” nor a genuine “socialism.” Market discipline is to be used only to keep the “proles” in line. Subsidy and protection are the main orders of business for the state-corporate elite. On these points, I believe most anarchists would agree. Current “anti-state” rhetoric utilized by spokespersons for elite class interests represents a shift in elite class strategy for subjugation of the masses that has been taking place over the last quarter century. It is important that these matters be recognized and effectively addressed and, in the process, a number of flaws in contemporary anarchist thought and rhetoric might be detected. By “flaw”, I am referring to the acquiescence of so many anarchists on the question of the so-called welfare state.

A dozen years ago, I would have argued that a welfare state and its various trappings (social security, “public” housing, “public” schools, state-paid medical care, “civil rights” legislation, etc.) were a necessary and vital part of the transitional phase between capitalism and a worker-controlled, socialized economy. I viewed “progressive” legislation and “big government programs” (as the right likes to call them) as forms of concession gained from elite class interests. I now believe that I was profoundly mistaken due to my own naiveté and ignorance of political and economic history. This is the position that many anarchists, including Chomsky, continue to maintain and Sheppard hints that this is his position as well. However, I feel that a position of this type is woefully inadequate in the formulation of a comprehensive anarchist critique of state and corporate power. Before I explain my position further, I want to digress a bit and mention what, I believe, has been a serious mistake that anarchists have made throughout much of our history. Our reliance on Marxist analysis for our understanding of political economy should be abandoned.

For Marxists, the state is simply an expression of capitalist class power. The state is the capitalists’ political arm, its “executive committee”, as I think old Karl once described it. The solution to the problem of class exploitation is for the workers and their allies to simply seize control of the state and convert it into an instrument of working class power, a “workers’ state”. However, this position, as anarchists from Bakunin onward pointed out, ignores the essentially coercive and authoritarian nature of the state, whether feudal, capitalist, socialist or whatever. As anarchists, we oppose not just capitalist power and authority but power and authority of any kind. This fatal error in the realm of class analysis employed by many anarchists (including myself at one point) has brought us to the point where, I believe, we have often ended up taking contradictory and, to an outside observer, seemingly absurd positions on the role of state intervention in the economy. It is not enough for anarchists to take positions on economics virtually indistinguishable from those of liberals or even Communists (our historical archenemies). A better approach is needed.

The purpose of the welfare states, maintained by state-capitalist regimes, is not to assist the workers and the poor but to co-opt, subjugate, weaken and control them. Historically, as modern welfare states have expanded, genuinely revolutionary workers movements have declined. Ideologically, the earliest proponents of the welfare state were elite class intellectuals such as the utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. These and others like them viewed welfare states as a means of controlling and pacifying the unruly masses. The first modern welfare state was the military dictatorship of Otto von Bismarck, who implemented a social security system as a means of inculcating allegiance to and piety towards the state among the general population. The American version of the welfare state (admittedly pale by world standards) began as a response to the labor upheavals of the twenties and thirties. What purposes of population control do the various features of the welfare state serve?

State-assistance programs condition the people to regard the state as a benefactor, a type of bureaucratic “sugar daddy,” rather than as an instrument of their own exploitation and repression. I once had an elderly relative ask me, “Why would you want to overthrow the government when they do so much good for us like social security, school lunch programs, student loans….” and on and on. The welfare state is used by the elite class to create dependency by the masses on themselves thereby weakening their spirit of resistance. Those who feed you can control you. Of course, this does not mean that we adopt the standard right-wing line of blaming the poor for their own exploitation at the hands of the welfare state created by the elite class. Rather, it means that we work for the empowerment of the people rather than the bureaucracy. What should the stance of the anarchists in regards to the welfare state be?

For starters, we should follow the advice of the late Sam Dolgoff who maintained that workers should demand their entire pay without deductions of any kind (income taxes, social security, corporate insurance programs) and instead create our own health care, old age, disability, etc. programs under our control through our own mutual aid and solidarity organizations (unions, cooperatives, clubs, community groups). We need to organize claimants’ unions for the recipients of “public” assistance and demand direct cash payments to the beneficiaries themselves rather than vouchers, coupons and stamps issued by government agencies. “Public” schools, institutions created for the purpose of indoctrinating children with elite class ideology, should be scrapped in favor of progressive educational services established by our own working class oriented revolutionary organizations (perhaps modeled after Summerhill or the Modern School). Workers organizations should demand the expulsion of both corporate overseers and government sponsored “regulatory” bureaucrats from our workplaces in favor of direct self-management and self-regulation by the workers themselves. “Public” housing authorities should be scrapped, their offices destroyed, and tenants should assume direct management of their own housing facilities. These same principles would, of course, apply to tenants renting from “private” landlords, the self-employed and farmers dealing with state-supervisory agencies, consumers’ interests and so on. The final aim, of course, should be the dismantling of the false dichotomy between the “public” and “private” sectors and the socialization and communalization of state and corporate resources under the direct control of our worker, consumer, tenant and community organizations.

As I mentioned, current “antigovernment” rhetoric employed by elite class mouthpieces represents, I believe, a certain laziness and complacency that the “powers that be” have sunken into. So successful have their efforts of the past thirty years to co-opt and subjugate the people through social democratic welfare state policies that they no longer think it is worth the bother. They no longer see the need to even put on the charade of maternalistic government, which they view as costly and not generating enough profits for corporate interests in the same way that the rapidly expanding prison-industrial complex and other recently emergent forms of repression are doing. Consequently, we see renewed attacks on our class in every area. Gentrification and “urban revitalization” are displacing the traditional urban poor. “Welfare reform” is displacing those enslaved to the state via “public assistance.” Nearly ten million people have been dispossessed of their traditional lands across the farm belt of the American heartland. Three million people, perhaps more, are living in the street and repression against the homeless is rising. One in thirty people, perhaps more, are in the direct clutches of the state by means of the prison-industrial complex and the repressive apparatus of so-called “criminal justice”. The availability, affordability and quality of health care have declined due the centralization of health care services under oligopolistic HMO’s. Now that U.S. warmongering and imperialism can no longer be justified with shallow Cold War rhetoric, the American regime simply undertakes violent assaults on other societies on whatever whim it fancies at the moment or for no apparent reason at all. The elite class is creating a powder keg that will eventually erupt in a rather big way.

Although I agree with Sheppard’s analysis of elite class “antigovernment” propaganda, I disagree with his apparent failure to distinguish between the corporatist, mercantilist, semi fascist Republican oriented right-wing on one hand and the more populist, decentralist, libertarian right on the other. To illustrate this distinction I would refer to a statement issued by Ted Kaczynski regarding his conversations with Tim McVeigh at the federal prison where they were both being held:

McVeigh told me of his idea (which I think may have significant merit) that certain rebellious elements on the American right and left respectively had more in common with one another than is commonly realized, and that the two groups ought to join forces. This led us to discuss, though only briefly, the question of what constitutes the ‘right’. I pointed out that the word ‘right’, in the political sense, was originally associated with authoritarianism, and I raised the question of why certain radically anti-authoritarian groups (such as the Montana Freemen) were lumped together with authoritarian factions as the ‘right’. McVeigh explained that the American far right could be roughly divided into two branches, the fascist/racist branch, and the individualistic or “freedom-loving” branch which generally was not racist. (Ted Kaczynski, quoted in American Terrorist, by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck)

When two individuals who, as much as anyone else, have given their lives and freedom to take up arms against the system, suggest a libertarian-left / libertarian-right collaboration, perhaps we should give them ear.1 I have had rather extensive contact with the militia/patriot movement and other similar elements, so perhaps I could shed some light on these matters for anarchists. The overwhelming majority of militia members and right-libertarian populists are not racists. The racist element in the militia movement is largely confined to small groups, usually consisting of four or five people, who comprise, at best, ten percent of the movement and are steadily disavowed by other militia groups. Most organized hate groups specifically oppose the militias because they are antigovernment rather than anti-Jewish or anti-African. Militias have essentially the same enemies that we do-government, corporations, banks, cops, prisons, schools, the corporate media, the military-industrial complex, etc. The difference is primarily cultural. Anarchists stand for the liberation of all the oppressed regardless of national or cultural identity. Militia/patriot people view themselves as standing for “American values” which they regard as the Jeffersonian/classical liberal idea of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and all that. Now, this might seem quaint and childish to us but it is hardly ominous. Many of these people are also strong cultural conservatives and, predictably, have less than enlightened views on feminism, gay/lesbian issues, religion, et.al but no more so than many ordinary Palestinians, Iraqis or, for that matter, American trade unionists, many African-American and Hispanic-American working class males, many prisoners, traditional Catholic Latin American peasants and plenty of others whose struggles we would otherwise support. I’ve seen more than a few militia people reading Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, William Blum and other similar writers. Most patriot groups I have encountered generally favor a decentralized society, extensive individual freedom, abolition of state-run militaries in favor of a volunteer civilian militia, a common law legal system based on negotiation between contending parties, and other similar ideas that are not quite so far removed from those of many anarchists. They typically oppose the drug war, the prison industry, U.S. imperialism and the corporate-state. I have seen militia publications criticizing the police attack on the MOVE group in Philadelphia in 1985. There is an all-African militia in Detroit and similar groups in other cities. Many militia people express sympathy for the EZLN, IRA, PLO, the Black Panthers and AIM. We do ourselves a disservice by dismissing these people so cavalierly. We need to expand our outreach efforts and find new allies whenever and wherever we can whether they are left-wing, right-wing or no wing at all.

1 Although I am pro-armed struggle, I disagree with the specific actions taken by both McVeigh and Kaczynski. McVeigh killed people who had absolutely nothing to do with any of the issues including office workers, janitors, truck drivers and children. Kaczynski’s targets were mostly small fish only peripherally connected to the problems he perceived.