This is a syndicated post, originally from EYEAM4ANARCHY.
Recently after one of the organizing meetings for Food Not Bombs Las Vegas, Charles "Radgeek" Johnson and I engaged in a conversation with a friend who has attended the A-Cafe several times over the past few months. At one point, the issue of an Anarchist society's ability to defend itself against a statist country was discussed, with the contention that the Anarchists would be unable to defend themselves against an attack by the army of an invading state. More specifically, our friend was of the opinion that Anarchists would be unable to organize themselves in order to fend off such an attack without an hierarchical structure of leadership.
I brought up the Ukrainian Revolutionary Black Army during the Russian Revolution as an example of a force organized along Anarchist, bottom-up principles that was very capable of standing up to statist forces. Another example that was mentioned was the Workers' Committees of the Spanish Civil War, as well as various instances where guerrilla warfare has proven effective against rigidly organized forces.
The perceived flaw with the examples of the Black Army and the Spanish Revolutionaries was that in both cases they were eventually defeated by an alliance of statist forces, due to being vastly outnumbered. In the case of the Black Army there were as many as six separate armies opposing them at any given time, while the Spanish Anarchists were left alone against communists, fascists, and nationalists within Spain, which were supported by the governments of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin from outside Spain. Yet both groups held out for some time and achieved several significant victories during their respective periods.*
So, this is where the Billy Jack reference comes in to play. Anybody that has seen the movie (has anybody not) is aware that Billy Jack was one of the biggest bad asses in movie history, who routinely pummeled anyone that transgressed against his group of outcasts and undesirables (which was just about every scene). However in the end, he meets his match when pretty much every guy in town surrounds him in a park and one of them eventually manages to crack him across the back of the head with a stick.
So the question would be, does the fact that Billy Jack eventually loses to an enemy with far superior numbers somehow invalidate the fact that he was more than able to defend himself, even at times when he was outnumbered to a lesser extent?
The fact that we are surrounded and vastly outnumbered by the State and its supporters is a serious issue that necessitates caution for us outcasts and undesirables within the Anarchist movements. However, it is no reason to conclude that we are incapable of defending ourselves without the State, in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary. Nor is it a reason to throw our hands up in the air and concede defeat without even trying. We can learn from the mistakes of the "Billy Jacks" of the past (try to stay out of the park) without accepting slavery as an inevitable circumstance.
*I realize that this is an extreme simplification of the subjects, but I didn't want to engage in a fifty page history lesson just to make what should be a rather simple point.
It’s been a couple days since I was hepped to the fact that this video has gone online; but I’ve been delayed by travel and other considerations. Anyway, here is a video of Jason Talley’s interview with me in Las Vegas back in April, focusing on anarchism, agorism, and counter-economics. Judging from the closing title card, it looks like the MD3 have decided to break out the material from the interview on anarchism into a separate video, presumably forthcoming. But, in the meantime, this video has the segments of the interview where our discussion focuses on building the counter-economy as an alternative to electoral politics. Enjoy!
The one thing which I regret not having the time to discuss during the interview — which I would have done my best to break down, were I not already taxing Jason’s very generous allowance of time in what are typically very concise interview segments — is how my sympathies for mutualism and wildcat unionism influence my understanding of the agora, and of the sort of counter-economy that we should work to build: why, in short, I think that libertarians should be especially interested in building, so to speak, Black-and-Red markets. (Red as in workers-of-the-world-unite. Not, of course, as in Konkin’s notion of red market mafiosi.) Of course, Konkin’s original-flavor agorism is already very much in favor of the informal sector, and opposed to the state-collaborationist, state-supported corporate economy; but I think that agorists would do well to look at the kinds of counter-institutions that have historically been associated with the anti-statist and anti-authoritarian Left: fighting unions, direct action on the shopfloor, grassroots mutual aid networks, worker and consumer co-ops, neighborhood permaculture projects, community free clinics, participatory indymedia, CopWatch as a means of community self-defense, LETS trading networks, small-scale gift economies based on gleaning and homesteading (Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails, free stores, etc.). And so on, and so forth. To the degree that State privilege and State subsidy have artificially roided-up the rentier-centric, cash-lubricated, centralized, formalized bidniz economy, we can expect the counter-economy (which is the embryonic new society, being built within the shell of the old) to form up in opposite tendencies: egalitarian and decentalized exchange (which Konkin rightly predicted and emphasized), and also significantly more emphasis on informal connections, often based not on contracts or cash-on-the-barrelhead exchanges but rather on practicing solidarity, mutual aid, gleaning, homesteading, and other cashless forms of value-creation and social exchange (which I think Konkin underemphasized and overlooked in various ways). (I hardly expect cash, let alone simple quid-pro-quo exchange, to disappear; I’m certainly not interested in any dogmatic campaign to rub them out. But I do expect the counter-economy, and future fully-freed markets, to emphasize them much less intensely, and much less monomaniacally, than the current state-approved official economy does.) All of which underlines why I think it’s important for radical libertarians to see ourselves as part of the Left; and for that understanding to cash out in serious efforts to work together on countereconomic projects with the folks who ought to be our primary allies — that is, other anarchists — rather than working on the familiar set of conventional-delusional electoral projects together with conservatives and conventionally pro-capitalist minimal-statists, which all too many good radical libertarians have, due to a combination of cultural comfort zones, and statocentric models of political change, wasted their time and resources on in the past.
Anyway, like I said, there may be another interview segment forthcoming focusing on anarchism; if so, I’ll let you know when it drops.
As I mentioned at the time, I made a cheap recording of the talk using the voice-note function on my MP3 player. As previously promised, here is the cheap recording, for your downloading and listening pleasure. I ran long (as I usually do the first time I give a talk), and so didn’t get to cover some of the ground I’d hoped to cover. (Notably, I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked talking about the reasons why the burden of proof is on the statist, not on the anarchist, and I didn’t get to cover in any explicit or detailed way the reasons why Anarchists oppose all forms of authoritarianism, not just statism itself. This is the first time I’ve given this particular talk, but I hope to give introductory talks like it in the future, so I’ll figure out a way to cover it next time; in the meantime, thoughts, questions, suggestions, and so on are all welcome.
