In this section we will examine some modern trends which we regard as being potential openings for anarchists to organise. These trends are of a general nature, partly as a product of social struggle, partly as a response to economic and social crisis, partly involving people's attitudes to big government and big business partly in relation to the communications revolution we are currently living through, and so on. We do this because, as Kropotkin argued, the anarchist "studies human society as it is now and was in the past. . . He [or she] studies society and tries to discover its tendencies, past and present, its growing needs, intellectual and economical, and in his ideal he merely points out in which direction evolution goes." [Anarchism and Anarchist Communism, p. 24] In this section we highlight just a few of the tendencies in modern society which point in an anarchist direction.
Of course, looking at modern society we see multiple influences, changes which have certain positive aspects in some directions but negative ones in others. For example, the business-inspired attempts to decentralise or reduce (certain) functions of governments. In the abstract, such developments should be welcomed by anarchists for they lead to the reduction of government. In practice such a conclusion is deeply suspect simply because these developments are being pursued to increase the power and influence of business and capital and undermine working class power and autonomy. Similarly, increases in self-employment can be seen, in the abstract, as reducing wage slavery. However, if, in practice, this increase is due to corporations encouraging "independent" contractors to cut wages and worsen working conditions, increase job insecurity and undermine paying for health and other employee packages then is hardly a positive sign. Obviously increases in self-employment would be different if such an increase was the result of an increase in the number of co-operatives, for example.
Thus few anarchists celebrate many apparently "libertarian" developments as they are not the product of social movements and activism, but are the product of elite lobbying for private profit and power. Decreasing the power of the state in (certain) areas while leaving (or increasing) the power of capital is a retrograde step in most, if not all, ways. Needless to say, this "rolling back" of the state does not bring into question its role as defender of property and the interests of the capitalist class -- nor could it, as it is the ruling class who introduces and supports these developments.
As an example of these multiple influences, we can point to the economic crisis which has staggered on since 1973 in many Western countries. This crisis, when it initially appeared, lead to calls to reduce taxation (at least for the wealthy, in most countries the tax-burden was shifted even more onto the working class -- as was the case in Thatcher's Britain). In most countries, as a result, government "got off the back" of the wealthy (and got even more comfy on our back!). This (along with slower growth) helped to create declining revenue bases in the advanced capitalist nations has given central governments an excuse to cut social services, leaving a vacuum that regional and local governments have had to fill along with voluntary organisations, thus producing a tendency toward decentralisation that dovetails with anarchist ideals.
As Murray Bookchin points out, a sustainable ecological society must shift emphasis away from nation-states as the basic units of administration and focus instead on municipalities -- towns, villages, and human-scale cities. Interestingly, the ongoing dismantling of the welfare state is producing such a shift by itself. By forcing urban residents to fend for themselves more than ever before in meeting transportation, housing, social welfare, and other needs, the economic crisis is also forcing them to relearn the arts of teamwork, co-operation, and self-reliance (see his Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future, p. 183).
Of course the economic crisis also has a downside for anarchists. As hardships and dislocations continue to swell the ranks and increase the militancy of progressive social movements, the establishment is being provoked to use ever more authoritarian methods to maintain control (see D.9). As the crisis deepens over the next few decades, the reactionary tendencies of the state will be reinforced (particularly as the neo-liberal consensus helps atomise society via the market mechanism and the resulting destruction of community and human relationships). However, this is not inevitable. The future depends on our actions in the here and now. In this section of the FAQ we highlight some developments which do, or could, work to the advantage of anarchists. Many of these examples are from the US, but they apply equally to Britain and many other advanced industrial states.
In this section, we aim to discuss tendencies from below, not above -- tendencies which can truly "roll back" the state rather than reduce its functions purely to that of the armed thug of Capital. The tendencies we discuss here are not the be all nor end all of anarchist activism or tendencies. We discuss many of the more traditionally anarchist "openings" in section J.5 (such as industrial and community unionism, mutual credit, co-operatives, modern schools and so on) and so will not do so here. However, it is important to stress here that such "traditional" openings are not being downplayed -- indeed, much of what we discuss here can only become fully libertarian in combination with these more "traditional" forms of "anarchy in action."
For a lengthy discussion of anarchistic trends in society, we recommend Colin Ward's classic book Anarchy in Action. Ward's excellent book covers many areas in which anarchistic tendencies have been expressed, far more than we can cover here. The libertarian tendencies in society are many. No single work could hope to do them justice.
Simply because it shows that people are unhappy with the existing
society and, more importantly, are trying to change at least some part
of it. It suggests that certain parts of the population have reflected
on their situation and, potentially at least, seen that by their own
actions they can influence and change it for the better.
Given that the ruling minority draws its strength of the acceptance
and acquiescence of the majority, the fact that a part of that
majority no longer accepts and acquiesces is a positive sign.
After all, if the majority did not accept the status quo and
acted to change it, the class and state system could not survive.
Any hierarchical society survives because those at the bottom follow
the orders of those above it. Social struggle suggests that some people
are considering their own interests, thinking for themselves and
saying "no" and this, by its very nature, is an important, indeed,
the most important, tendency towards anarchism. It suggests that
people are rejecting the old ideas which hold the system up,
acting upon this rejection and creating new ways of doing thinks.
"Our social institutions," argues Alexander Berkman, "are founded
on certain ideas; as long as the latter are generally believed,
the institutions built upon them are safe. Government remains
strong because people think political authority and legal
compulsion necessary. Capitalism will continue as long as such
an economic system is considered adequate and just. The
weakening of the ideas which support the evil and oppressive
present-day conditions means the ultimate breakdown of
government and capitalism." [The ABC of Anarchism, p. xv]
Social struggle is the most obvious sign of this change of
perspective, this change in ideas, this progress towards freedom.
Social struggle is expressed by direct action. We have discussed
both social struggle and direct action before (in sections J.1
and J.2 respectively) and some readers may wonder why we are
covering this again here. We do so for two reasons. Firstly,
as we are discussing what trends in society help anarchist
activity, it would be wrong not to highlight social struggle
and direct action here. This is because these factors are key
tendencies towards anarchism as anarchism will be created by
people and social struggle is the means by which people create
the new world in the shell of the old. Secondly, social struggle
and direct action are key aspects of anarchist theory and we
cannot truly present a picture of what anarchism is about
without making clear what these are.
So social struggle is a good sign as it suggests that people are
thinking for themselves, considering their own interests and
working together collectively to change things for the better.
As the French syndicalist Emile Pouget argues:
Social struggle means that people come into opposition with the boss
and other authorities such as the state and the dominant morality. This
challenge to existing authorities generates two related processes: the
tendency of those involved to begin taking over the direction of their
own activities and the development of solidarity with each other. Firstly,
in the course of a struggle, such as a strike, occupation, boycott, and
so on, the ordinary life of people, in which they act under the constant
direction of the bosses or state, ceases, and they have to think, act and
co-ordinate their actions for themselves. This reinforces the expression
towards autonomy that the initial refusal that lead to the struggle
indicates. Thus struggle re-enforces the initial act of refusal and
autonomy by forcing those involves to act for themselves. Secondly, in
the process of struggle those involved learn the importance of solidarity,
of working with others in a similar situation, in order to win. This
means the building of links of support, of common interests, of
organisation. The practical need for solidarity to help win the
struggle is the basis for the solidarity required for a free society
to be viable.
Therefore the real issue in social struggle is that it is an attempt by
people to wrestle at least part of the power over their own lives away
from the managers, state officials and so on who currently have it and
exercise it themselves. This is, by its very nature, anarchistic and
libertarian. Thus we find politicians and, of course, managers and
property owners, often denouncing strikes and other forms of direct
action. This is logical. As direct action challenges the real
power-holders in society and because, if carried to its logical
conclusion, it would have to replace them, social struggle and
direct action can be considered in essence a revolutionary process.
Moreover, the very act of using direct action suggests a transformation
within the people using it. "Direct action's very powers to fertilise,"
argues Pouget, "reside in such exercises in imbuing the individual
with a sense of his own worth and in extolling such worth. It marshals
human resourcefulness, tempers characters and focuses energies. It
teaches self-confidence! And self-reliance! And self-mastery! And
shifting for oneself!" Moreover, "direct action has an unmatched
educational value: It teaches people to reflect, to make decisions
and to act. It is characterised by a culture of autonomy, an
exaltation of individuality and is a fillip to initiative, to
which it is the leaven. And this superabundance of vitality
and burgeoning of 'self' in no way conflicts with the economic
fellowship that binds the workers one with another and far
from being at odds with their common interests, it reconciles
and bolsters these: the individual's independence and activity
can only erupt into splendour and intensity by sending its roots
deep into the fertile soil of common agreement." [Pouget, Op. Cit.]
Emma Goldman also recognised the transforming power of direct
action. Anarchists, she argues, "believe with Stirner that
man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism
therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and
resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social and
moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the
salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity,
self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free
independent spirits. . ." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 61-2]
Social struggle is the beginning of a transformation of the people
involved and their relationships to each other. While its external
expression lies in contesting the power of existing authorities, its
inner expression is the transformation of people from passive and
isolated competitors into empowered, self-directing, self-governing
co-operators. Moreover, this process widens considerable what
people think is "possible." Through struggle, by collective action,
the fact people can change things is driven home, that they have
the power to govern themselves and the society they live in. Thus
struggle can change people's conception of "what is possible" and
encourage them to try and create a better world. As Kropotkin argued:
"Such a struggle, they say, . . . permits the worker to obtain some
temporary improvements. . ., while it opens his [or her] eyes to the
evil that is done by capitalism and the State. . . , and wakes up
his thoughts concerning the possibility of organising consumption,
production, and exchange without the intervention of the capitalist
and the State." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 171]
In other words, social struggle has a radicalising and politicising
effect, an effect which brings into a new light existing society and
the possibilities of a better world ("direct action", in Pouget's words,
"develops the feeling for human personality as well as the spirit
of initiative . . . it shakes people out of their torpor and steers
them to consciousness."). The practical need to unite and resist the
boss also helps break down divisions within the working class. Those
in struggle start to realise that they need each other to give them
the power necessary to get improvements, to change things. Thus
solidarity spreads and overcomes divisions between black and
white, male and female, heterosexual and homosexual, trades,
industries, nationalities and so on. The real need for solidarity
to win the fight helps to undermine artificial divisions and show
that there are only two groups in society, the oppressed and the
oppressors.
Moreover, struggle as well as transforming those involved is also
the basis for transforming society as a whole simply because, as
well as producing transformed individuals, it also produces new
forms of organisation, organisations created to co-ordinate their
struggle and which can, potentially at least, become the framework
of a libertarian socialist society.
Thus anarchists argue that social struggle opens the eyes of those
involved to self-esteem and a sense of their own strength, and the
groupings it forms at its prompting are living, vibrant associations
where libertarian principles usually come to the fore. We find
almost all struggles developing new forms of organisation,
forms which are often based on direct democracy, federalism
and decentralisation. If we look at every major revolution, we
find people creating mass organisations such as workers' councils,
factory committees, neighbourhood assemblies and so on as a
means of taking back the power to govern their own lives,
communities and workplaces. In this way social struggle and
direct action lays the foundations for the future. By actively
taking part in social life, people are drawn into creating new
forms of organisation, new ways of doing things. In this way
they educate themselves in participation, in self-government,
in initiative and in asserting themselves. They begin to realise
that the only alternative to management by others is self-management
and organise to achieve thus.
Given that remaking society has to begin at the bottom, this finds
its expression in direct action, individuals taking the initiative,
building new, more libertarian forms of organisation and using the
power they have just generated by collective action and organisation
to change things by their own efforts. Social struggle is therefore a
two way transformation -- the external transformation of society
by the creation of new organisations and the changing of the power
relations within it and the internal transformation of those who take
part in the struggle. And because of this, social struggle, "[w]hatever
may be the practical results of the struggle for immediate gains, the
greatest value lies in the struggle itself. For thereby workers learn
that the bosses interests are opposed to theirs and that they cannot
improve their conditions, and much less emancipate themselves, except
by uniting and becoming stronger than the bosses. If they succeed in
getting what they demand, they will be better off . . . and immediately
make greater demands and have greater needs. If they do not succeed
they will be led to study the causes of their failure and recognise
the need for closer unity and greater activism and they will in the
end understand that to make their victory secure and definitive, it
is necessary to destroy capitalism. The revolutionary cause, the cause
of the moral elevation and emancipation of the workers must benefit by
the fact that workers unite and struggle for their interests." [Errico
Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 191]
Hence Nestor Makhno's comment that "[i]n fact, it is only through
that struggle for freedom, equality and solidarity that you reach
an understanding of anarchism." [The Struggle Against the State
and other Essays, p. 71] The creation of an anarchist society is
a process and social struggle is the key anarchistic tendency
within society which anarchists look for, encourage and support.
Its radicalising and transforming nature is the key to the growth
of anarchist ideas, the creation of libertarian structures and
alternatives within capitalism (structures which may, one day,
replace capitalism and state) and the creation of anarchists and
those sympathetic to anarchist ideas. Its importance cannot be
underestimated!
It is often argued that social struggle, by resisting the powerful
and the wealthy, will just do more harm than good. Employers often
use this approach in anti-union propaganda, for example, arguing that
creating a union will force the company to close and move to less
"militant" areas.
There is, of course, some truth in this. Yes, social struggle can
lead to bosses moving to more compliant workforces -- but, of course,
this also happens in periods lacking social struggle too! If we look
at the down-sizing mania that gripped the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s,
we see companies down-sizing tens of thousands of people during
a period where unions were weak, workers scared about loosing their
jobs and class struggle basically becoming mostly informal and
"underground." Moreover, this argument actually indicates the
need for anarchism. It is a damning indictment of any social
system that it requires people to kow-tow to their masters
otherwise they will suffer economic hardship. It boils down to
the argument "do what you are told, otherwise you will regret
it." Any system based on that maxim is an affront to human
dignity!
It would, in a similar fashion, be easy to "prove" that slave
rebellions are against the long term interests of the slaves.
After all, by rebelling the slaves will face the anger of their
masters. Only by submitting to their master can they avoid this
fate and, perhaps, be rewarded by better conditions. Of course,
the evil of slavery would continue but by submitting to it they
can ensure their life can become better. Needless to say, any
thinking and feeling person would quickly dismiss this reasoning
as missing the point and being little more than apologetics
for an evil social system that treated human beings as things.
The same can be said for the argument that social struggles within
capitalism do more harm than good. It betrays a slave mentality
unfitting for human beings (although fitting for those who desire
to live of the backs of workers or desire to serve those who do).
Moreover, this kind of argument ignores a few key points. Firstly,
by resistance the conditions of the oppressed can be maintained or
even improved. After all, if the boss knows that their decisions will
be resisted they may be less inclined to impose speed-ups, longer
hours and so on. If they know that their employees will agree to
anything then there is every reason to expect them to impose all
kinds of oppressions, just as a state will impose draconian laws
if it knows that it can get away with it. History is full of examples
of non-resistance producing greater evils in the long term and
of resistance producing numerous important reforms and improvements
(such as higher wages, shorter hours, the right to vote for
working class people and women, freedom of speech, the end of
slavery, trade union rights and so on).
So social struggle has been proven time and time again to gain
successful reforms. For example, before the 8 hour day movement
of 1886 in America, for example, most companies argued they could not
introduce that reform without doing bust. However, after displaying
a militant mood and conducting an extensive strike campaign, hundreds
of thousands of workers discovered that their bosses had been lying
and they got shorter hours. Indeed, the history of the labour movement
shows what bosses say they can afford and the reforms workers can get
via struggle are somewhat at odds. Given the asymmetry of information
between workers and bosses, this is unsurprising. Workers can only
guess at what is available and bosses like to keep their actual
finances hidden. Even the threat of labour struggle can be enough
to gain improvements. For example, Henry Ford's $5 day is often
used as an example of capitalism rewarding good workers. However,
this substantial pay increase was largely motivated by the
unionisation drive by the Industrial Workers of the World among
Ford workers in the summer of 1913 [Harry Braverman, Labour and
Monopoly Capitalism, p. 144]. More recently, it was the mass
non-payment campaign against the poll-tax in Britain during the
late 1980s and early 1990s which helped ensure its defeat (and
the 1990 poll-tax riot in London also helped and ensured that the
New Zealand government did not introduce a similar scheme in their
country too!). In the 1990s, France also saw the usefulness of
direct action. Two successive prime ministers (Edouard Balladur
and Alain Juppe) tried to impose large scale "reform" programmes
that swiftly provoked mass demonstrations and general strikes
amongst students, workers, farmers and others. Confronted by
crippling disruptions, both governments gave in. Compared to
the experience of, say Britain, France's tradition of direct
action politics proved more effective in maintaining existing
conditions or even improving on them.
Secondly, and in some ways more importantly, it ignores that by
resistance those who take part can the social system they live in
can be changed. This radicalising effect of social struggle can
open new doors for those involved, liberate their minds, empower
them and create the potential for deep social change. Without
resistance to existing forms of authority a free society cannot
be created as people adjust themselves to authoritarian structures
and accept what is as the only possibility. By resisting, people
transform and empower themselves, as well as transforming society.
In addition, new possibilities can be seen (possibilities before
dismissed as "utopian") and, via the organisation and action
required to win reforms, the framework for these possibilities
(i.e. of a new, libertarian, society) created. The transforming
and empowering effect of social struggle is expressed well by the
ex-IWW and UAW-CIO shop steward Nick DeGaetano in his experiences
in the 1930s:
Other labour historians note the same radicalising process
elsewhere (modern day activists could give more examples!):
"The contest [over wages and conditions] so pervaded social
life that the ideology of acquisitive individualism, which
explained and justified a society regulated by market
mechanisms and propelled by the accumulation of capital,
was challenged by an ideology of mutualism, rooted in
working-class bondings and struggles. . . Contests over
pennies on or off existing piece rates had ignited
controversies over the nature and purpose of the American
republic itself." [David Montgomery, The Fall of the House
of Labour, p. 171]
This radicalising effect is far more dangerous to authoritarian
structures than better pay, more liberal laws and so on as they
need submissiveness to work. Little wonder that direct action is
usually denounced as pointless or harmful by those in power or
their spokespersons, for direct action will, taken to its
logical conclusion, put them out of a job! Struggle, therefore,
holds the possibility of a free society as well as of improvements
in the here and now. It also changes the perspectives of those
involved, creating new ideas and values to replace the ones of
capitalism.
Thirdly, it ignores the fact that such arguments do not imply
the end of social struggle and working class resistance and
organisation, but rather its extension. If, for example, your
boss argues that they will move to Mexico if you do not "shut
up and put up" then the obvious solution is to make sure the
workers in Mexico are also organised! Bakunin argued this basic
point over one hundred years ago, and it is still true -- "in
the long run the relatively tolerable position of workers in
one country can be maintained only on condition that it be
more or less the same in other countries." If, for example,
workers in Mexico have worse wages and conditions than you do,
these same conditions will be used against you as the "conditions
of labour cannot get worse or better in any particular industry
without immediately affecting the workers in other industries,
and that workers of all trades are inter-linked with real
and indissoluble ties of solidarity," ties which can be ignored
only at your own peril. Ultimately, "in those countries the
workers work longer hours for less pay; and the employers
there can sell their products cheaper, successfully competing
against conditions where workers working less earn more,
and thus force the employers in the latter countries to
cut wages and increase the hours of their workers." Bakunin's
solution was to organise internationally, to stop this
undercutting of conditions by solidarity between workers. As
recent history shows, his argument was correct [The Political
Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 306-7]. Thus it is not social
struggle or militancy which is bad, just isolated militancy,
struggle which ignores the ties of solidarity required to
win, extent and keep reforms and improvements. In other
words, our resistance must be as transnational as capitalism
is.
The idea that social struggle and working class organisation
are harmful was expressed constantly in the 1970s. If we look
at the arguments of the right in the 1970s, we also find evidence
that the "struggle does more harm than good" viewpoint is flawed.
With the post-war Keynesian consensus crumbling, the "New Right"
argued that trade unions (and strikes) hampered growth and that
wealth redistribution (i.e. welfare schemes which returned some
of the surplus value workers produced back into their own hands)
hindered "wealth creation" (i.e. economic growth). Do not struggle
over income, they argued, let the market decide and everyone will
be better off.
This argument was dressed up in populist clothes. Thus we find
the right-wing guru F.A. von Hayek arguing that, in the case of
Britain, the "legalised powers of the unions have become the
biggest obstacle to raising the standards of the working class
as a whole. They are the chief cause of the unnecessarily big
differences between the best- and worse-paid workers." He
maintained that "the elite of the British working class. . .
derive their relative advantages by keeping workers who
are worse off from improving their position." Moreover,
he "predict[ed] that the average worker's income would rise
fastest in a country where relative wages are flexible, and
where the exploitation of workers by monopolistic trade union
organisations of specialised workers are effectively outlawed."
["1980s Unemployment and the Unions" reproduced in The Economic
Decline of Modern Britain, p. 107, p. 108, p. 110]
Now, if von Hayek's claims were true we could expect that in the
aftermath of Thatcher government's trade union reforms we would
have seen: a rise in economic growth (usually considered as the
means to improve living standards for workers by the right); a
decrease in the differences between high and low paid workers;
a reduction in the percentage of low paid workers as they improved
their positions when freed from union "exploitation"; and that
wages rise fastest in countries with the highest wage flexibility.
Unfortunately for von Hayek, the actual trajectory of the
British economy exposes his claims as nonsense.
Looking at each of his claims in turn we discover that rather
than "exploit" other workers, trade unions are an essential
means to shift income from capital to labour (which is way
capital fights labour organisers tooth and nail). And, equally
important, labour militancy aids all workers by providing a
floor under which wages cannot drop (non-unionised/militant
firms in the same industry or area have to offer similar
programs to prevent unionisation and be able to hire workers)
and by maintaining aggregate demand. This positive role of
unions/militancy in aiding all workers can be seen by
comparing Britain before and after Thatcher's von Hayek
inspired trade union and labour market reforms.
As far as economic growth goes, there has been a steady fall since
trade union reforms. In the "bad old days" of the 1970s, with its
strikes and "militant unions" growth was 2.4% in Britain. It fell
to 2% in the 1980s and fell again to 1.2% in the 1990s [Larry Elliot
and Dan Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity, p. 236]. So the rate of
"wealth creation" (economic growth) has steadily fallen as unions
were "reformed" in line with von Hayek's ideology (and falling
growth means that the living standards of the working class as a
whole do not rise as fast as they did under the "exploitation" of
the "monopolistic" trade unions). If we look at the differences
between the highest and lowest paid workers, we find that rather
than decrease, they have in fact shown "a dramatic widening out
of the distribution with the best-workers doing much better"
since Thatcher was elected in 1979 [Andrew Glyn and David
Miliband (eds.), Paying for Inequality, p. 100]
Given that inequality has also increased, the condition of the
average worker must have suffered. For example, Ian Gilmore
states that "[i]n the 1980s, for the first time for fifty
years. . . the poorer half of the population saw its share of
total national income shirk." [Dancing with Dogma, p. 113]
According to Noam Chomsky, "[d]uring the Thatcher decade, the
income share of the bottom half of the population fell from
one-third to one-fourth" and the between 1979 and 1992, the
share of total income of the top 20% grew from 35% to 40% while
that of the bottom 20% fell from 10% to 5%. In addition, the
number of UK employees with weekly pay below the Council of
Europe's "decency threshold" increased from 28.3% in 1979
to 37% in 1994 [World Orders, Old and New, p. 144, p. 145]
Moreover, "[b]ack in the early 1960s, the heaviest concentration
of incomes fell at 80-90 per cent of the mean. . . But by the
early 1990s there had been a dramatic change, with the peak
of the distribution falling at just 40-50 per cent of the mean.
One-quarter of the population had incomes below half the average
by the early 1990s as against 7 per cent in 1977 and 11 per
cent in 1961. . ." [Elliot and Atkinson, Op. Cit., p. 235]
"Overall," notes Takis Fotopoulos, "average incomes increased
by 36 per cent during this period [1979-1991/2], but 70 per
cent of the population had a below average increase in their
income." [Towards an Inclusive Democracy, p. 113]
Looking at the claim that trade union members gained their
"relative advantage by keeping workers who are worse off
from improving their position" it would be fair to ask whether
the percentage of workers in low-paid jobs decreased in Britain
after the trade union reforms. In fact, the percentage of
workers below the Low Pay Unit's definition of low pay (namely
two-thirds of men's median earnings) increased -- from
16.8% in 1984 to 26.2% in 1991 for men, 44.8% to 44.9% for
women. For manual workers it rose by 15% to 38.4%, and for
women by 7.7% to 80.7% (for non-manual workers the figures
were 5.4% rise to 13.7% for men and a 0.5% rise to 36.6%).
If unions were gaining at the expense of the worse off,
you would expect a decrease in the number in low pay,
not an increase. [Paying for Inequality, p.102] An
OECD study concluded that "[t]ypically, countries with
high rates of collective bargaining and trade unionisation
tend to have low incidence of low paid employment." [OECD
Employment Outlook, 1996, p. 94]
Nor did unemployment fall after the trade union reforms.
As Elliot and Atkinson point out, "[b]y the time Blair
came to power [in 1997], unemployment in Britain was
falling, although it still remained higher than it had
been when the [the last Labour Government of] Callaghan
left office in May 1979." [Op. Cit., p. 258] Von Hayek
did argue that falls in unemployment would be "a slow
process" but over 10 years of higher unemployment is
moving at a snail's pace! And we must note that part of
this fall in unemployment towards its 1970s level was
due to Britain's labour force shrinking (and so, as
the July 1997 Budget Statement correctly notes, "the
lower 1990s peak [in unemployment] does not in itself
provide convincing evidence of improved labour
performance." [p. 77]).
As far as von Hayek's prediction on wage flexibility leading
to the "average worker's income" rising fastest in a country
where relative wages are flexible, it has been proved totally
wrong. Between 1967 and 1971, real wages grew (on average)
by 2.95% per year (nominal wages grew by 8.94%) [P. Armstrong,
A. Glyn and John Harrison, Capitalism Since World War II,
p.272]. In comparison, in the 1990s real wages grew by 1.1
per cent, according to a TUC press release entitled
Productivity Record, how the UK compares released
in March 1999.
Needless to say, these are different eras so it would also
be useful to compare the UK (often praised as a flexible
economy after Thatcher's "reforms") to France (considered
far less flexible) in the 1990s. Here we find that the
"flexible" UK is behind the "inflexible" France. Wages
and benefits per worker rose by almost 1.2 per cent per
year compared to 0.7% for the UK. France's GDP grew at a
faster rate than Britain's, averaging 1.4 per cent per year,
compared with 1.2 per cent. Worker productivity is also
behind, since 1979 (Thatcher's arrival) Britain's worker
productivity has been 1.9 per cent per year compared to
France's 2.2 per cent [Seth Ackerman, "The Media Vote for
Austerity", Extra!, September/October 1997]. And as Seth
Ackerman also notes, "[w]hile France's dismal record of job
creation is on permanent exhibit, it is never mentioned that
Britain's is even more dismal." [Ibid.]
Moving further afield, we find von Hayek's prediction falsified
yet again. If we look at the USA, frequently claimed as a
model economy in terms of wage flexibility and union weakness,
we discover that the real wages of the average worker has
decreased since 1973 (the weekly and hourly earnings of
US production and non-supervisory workers, which accounts for
80% of the US workforce, have fallen in real terms by 19.2% and
13.4% respectively [Economic Report of the President 1995,
Table B-45]). If we look at figures from U.S. Bureau of the
Census (Current Population Survey) we can see how increased
flexibility has affected income:
As can be seen, flexible wages and weaker unions have resulted
in the direct opposite of von Hayek's predictions. Within the
US itself, we discover that higher union density is associated
with fewer workers earning around the minimum wage -- "the
percentage of those earning around the minimum wage are both
substantially higher in right-to-work states [i.e. those that
pass anti-union laws] than overall and lower in high union
density states that overall" and "in right-to-work states . . .
wages have traditionally been lower." [Oren M. Levin-Waldman,
The Minimum Wage and Regional Wage Structure] If unions did
harm non-union workers, we would expect the opposite to occur.
It does not. Of course, being utterly wrong has not dented his
reputation with the right nor stopped him being quoted in
arguments in favour of flexibility and free market reforms.
Moreover, the growth of the US economy has also slowed down as
wage flexibility and market reform has increased (it was 4.4%
in the 1960s, 3.2% in the 1970s, 2.8% in the 1980s and 1.9%
in the first half of the 1990s [Larry Elliot and Dan Atkinson,
The Age of Insecurity, p. 236]). In addition, inequality
in the US has dramatically increased since the 1970s, with
income and wealth growth in the 1980s going predominately
to the top 20% (and, in fact, mostly to the top 1% of the
population). The bottom 80% of the population saw their
wealth grow by 1.2% and their income by 23.7% in the 1980s,
while for the top 20% the respective figures were 98.2%
and 66.3% (the figures for the top 1% were 61.6% and 38.9%,
respectively). [Edward N. Wolff, "How the Pie is Sliced",
The American Prospect, no. 22, Summer 1995]
Comparing the claims of von Hayek to what actually happened
after trade union reform and the reduction of class struggle
helps to suggest that the claims that social struggle is
self-defeating are false (and probably self-serving,
considering it is usually bosses and employer supported
parties and economists who make these claims). A lack of
social struggle has been correlated with low economic growth,
stagnant (even declining) wages and the creation of purely
paid service jobs to replace highly paid manufacturing ones.
So while social struggle may make capital flee and other
problems, lack of it is no guarantee of prosperity (quite
the reverse, if the last quarter of the 20th century is anything
to go by!). Indeed, a lack of social struggle will make bosses
be more likely to cut wages, worsen working conditions and so
on -- after all, they feel they can get away with it! Which
brings home the fact that "to make their [the working class']
victory secure and definitive, it is necessary to destroy
capitalism." [Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 191]
Of course, no one can know that struggle will make things
better. It is a guess; no one can predict the future. Not all
struggles are successful and many can be very difficult. If
the "military is a role model for the business world" (in the
words of an ex-CEO of Hill & Knowlton Public Relations [quoted
by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in Toxic Sludge Is Good
For You!, p. 47]), and it is, then any struggle against it
and other concentrations of power may, and often is, difficult
and dangerous at times. But, as Zapata once said, "better to
die on your feet than live on your knees!" All we can say
is that social struggle can and does improve things and, in
terms of its successes and transforming effect on those
involved, well worth the potential difficulties it can create.
Moreover, without struggle there is little chance of creating
a free society, dependent as it is on individuals who refuse
to bow to authority and have the ability and desire to govern
themselves. In addition, social struggle is always essential,
not only to win improvements, but to keep them as well.
In order to fully secure improvements you have to abolish
capitalism and the state. Not to do so means that any reforms
can and will be taken away (and if social struggle does not exist,
they will be taken away sooner rather than later). Ultimately,
most anarchists would argue that social struggle is not an option --
we either do it or we put up with the all the petty (and not so
petty) impositions of authority. If we do not say "no" then the
powers that be will walk all over us.
As the history of the last 20 years shows, a lack of social
struggle is fully compatible with worsening conditions.
Ultimately, if you want to be treated as a human being you
have to stand up for your dignity -- and that means thinking
and rebelling. As Bakunin often argued, human development
is based on thought and rebellion (see God and the State).
Without rebellion, without social struggle, humanity would
stagnant beneath authority forever and never be in a
position to be free. We would agree wholeheartedly with
the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass:
When assessing the revolutionary potential of our own era, we must
note again that modern civilisation is under constant pressure from
the potential catastrophes of social breakdown, ecological destruction,
and proliferating weapons of mass destruction. These crises have drawn
attention as never before to the inherently counter-evolutionary nature
of the authoritarian paradigm, making more and more people aware that
the human race is headed for extinction if it persists in outmoded forms
of thought and behaviour. This awareness produces a favourable climate for
the reception of new ideas, and thus an opening for radical educational
efforts aimed at creating the mass transformation of consciousness which
must take place alongside the creation of new liberatory institutions.
This receptiveness to new ideas has led to a number of new social
movements in recent years. From the point of view of anarchism, the four
most important of these are perhaps the feminist, ecology, peace, and
social justice movements. Each of these movements contain a great deal
of anarchist content, particularly insofar as they imply the need for
decentralisation and direct democracy. Since we have already commented
on the anarchist aspects of the ecology and feminist movements, here
we will limit our remarks to the peace and social justice movements.
It is clear to many members of the peace movement that international
disarmament, like the liberation of women, saving the planet's
ecosystem, and preventing social breakdown, can never be attained
without a shift of mass consciousness involving widespread rejection
of hierarchy, which is based on the authoritarian principles of
domination and exploitation. As C. George Bennello argued, "[s]ince
peace involves the positive process of replacing violence by other
means of settling conflict. . . it can be argued that some sort of
institutional change is necessary. For if insurgency is satisfied
with specific reform goals, and does not seek to transform the
institutional structure of society by getting at its centralised
make-up, the war system will probably not go away. This is really
what we should mean by decentralising: making institutions serve
human ends again by getting humans to be responsible at every
level within them." [From the Ground Up, p. 31]
When pursued along gender, class, racial, ethnic, or national lines,
these two principles are the primary causes of resentment, hatred,
anger, and hostility, which often explode into individual or organised
violence. Therefore, both domestic and international peace depend on
decentralisation, i.e. dismantling hierarchies, thus replacing domination
and exploitation by the anarchist principles of co-operation, sharing,
and mutual aid.
But direct democracy is the other side of decentralisation. In order for
an organisation to spread power horizontally rather than concentrating
it at the apex of hierarchy, all of its members have to have an equal
voice in making the decisions that affect them. Hence decentralisation
implies direct democracy. So the peace movement implies anarchism,
because world peace is impossible without both decentralisation and
direct democracy. Moreover, "[s]o long as profits are tied to defence
production, speaking truth to the elites involved is not likely to
get very far" as "it is only within the boundaries of the profit
system that the corporate elites would have any space to move."
[Op. Cit., p. 34] Thus the peace movement implicitly contains a
libertarian critique of both forms of the power system -- the
political and economical.
In addition, certain of the practical aspects of the peace movement
also suggest anarchistic elements. The use of non-violent direct
action to protest against the war machine can only be viewed as
a positive development by anarchists. Not only does it use effective,
anarchistic methods of struggle it also radicalises those involved,
making them more receptive to anarchist ideas and analysis (after all,
as Benello correctly argues, the "anarchist perspective has an
unparalleled relevance today because prevailing nuclear policies
can be considered as an ultimate stage in the divergence between
the interests of governments and their peoples . . . the implications
when revealed serve to raise fundamental questions regarding the
advisability of entrusting governments with questions of life and
death. . . There is thus a pressing impetus to re-think the role,
scale, and structure of national governments." [Op. Cit., p. 138]).
If we look at the implications of "nuclear free zones" we can detect
anarchistic tendencies within them. A nuclear free zone involves a
town or region declaring an end of its association with the nuclear
military industrial complex. They prohibit the research, production,
transportation and deployment of nuclear weapons as well as renouncing
the right to be defended by nuclear power. This movement was popular
in the 1980s, with many areas in Europe and the Pacific Basin
declaring that they were nuclear free zones. As Benello points out,
"[t]he development of campaigns for nuclear free zones suggests a
strategy which can educate and radicalise local communities. Indeed,
by extending the logic of the nuclear free zone idea, we can
begin to flesh out a libertarian municipalist perspective which can
help move our communities several steps towards autonomy from both
the central government and the existing corporate system." While
the later development of these initiatives did not have the
radicalising effects that Benello hoped for, they did "represent
a local initiative that does not depend on the federal government
for action. Thus it is a step toward local empowerment. . . Steps
that increase local autonomy change the power relations between
the centre and its colonies. . . The nuclear free zone movement
has a thrust which is clearly congruent with anarchist ideas. . .
The same motives which go into the declaration of a nuclear free
zone would dictate that in other areas where the state and the
corporate systems services are dysfunctional and involve
excessive costs, they should be dispensed with." [Op. Cit.,
p. 137, pp. 140-1]
The social justice movement is composed of people seeking fair and
compassionate solutions to problems such as poverty, unemployment,
economic exploitation, discrimination, poor housing, lack of health
insurance, wealth and income inequalities, and the like. Such concerns
have traditionally been associated with the left, especially with
socialism and trade-unionism. Recently, however, many radicals have
begun to perceive the limitations of both Marxist-Leninist and
traditional trade-unionist solutions to social justice problems,
particularly insofar as these solutions involve hierarchical
organisations and authoritarian values.
Following the widespread disillusionment with statism and centrally
planned economies generated by the failure of "Communism" in the
ex-Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, many radicals, while
retaining their commitment to social justice issues, have been searching
for new approaches. And in doing so they've been drawn into alliances
with ecologists, feminists, and members of the peace movement. (This has
occurred particularly among the German Greens, many of whom are former
Marxists. So far, however, few of the latter have declared themselves to
be anarchists, as the logic of the ecology movement requires.)
It is not difficult to show that the major problems concerning the
social justice movement can all be traced back to the hierarchy and
domination. For, given the purpose of hierarchy, the highest priority
of the elites who control the state is necessarily to maintain their
own power and privileges, regardless of the suffering involved for
subordinate classes.
Today, in the aftermath of 12 years of especially single-minded pursuit
of this priority by two Republican administrations, the United States,
for example, is reaping the grim harvest: armies of the homeless
wandering the streets; social welfare budgets slashed to the bone
as poverty, unemployment, and underemployment grow; sweatshops
mushrooming in the large cities; over 43 million Americans without
any health insurance; obscene wealth inequalities; and so on. This
decay promises to accelerate in the US during the coming years, now
that Republicans control both houses of Congress. Britain under the
neo-liberal policies of Thatcher and Major has experienced a social
deterioration similar to that in the US.
In short, social injustice is inherent in the exploitative functions
of the state, which are made possible by the authoritarian form of
state institutions and of the state-complex as a whole. Similarly, the authoritarian form of the corporation (and capitalist companies in
general) gives rise to social injustice as unfair income differentials
and wealth disparity between owners/management and labour.
Hence the success of the social justice movement, like that of the
feminist, ecology, and peace movements, depends on dismantling
hierarchies. This means not only that these movement all imply
anarchism but that they are related in such a way that it's
impossible to conceive one of them achieving its goals in
isolation from any of the others.
To take just one example, let's consider the relationship between
social justice and peace, which can be seen by examining a specific
social justice issue: labour rights.
As Dimitrios Roussopoulos points out, the production of advanced
weapons systems is highly profitable for capitalists, which is why
more technologically complex and precise weapons keep getting
built with government help (with the public paying the tab by way
of rising taxes).
Now, we may reasonably argue that it's a fundamental human right
to be able to choose freely whether or not one will personally
contribute to the production of technologies that could lead to
the extinction of the human race. Yet because of the authoritarian
form of the capitalist corporation, rank-and-file workers have
virtually no say in whether the companies for which they work will
produce such technologies. (To the objection that workers can always
quit if they don't like company policy, the reply is that they may not
be able to find other work and therefore that the choice is not free but
coerced.) Hence the only way that ordinary workers can obtain the right
to be consulted on life-or-death company policies is to control the
production process themselves, through self-management.
But we can't expect real self-management to emerge from the present
labour relations system in which centralised unions bargain with
employers for "concessions" but never for a dissolution of the
authoritarian structure of the corporation. As Roussopoulos puts it,
self-management, by definition, must be struggled for locally by
workers themselves at the grassroots level:
For these reasons, the peace and social justice movements
are fundamentally linked through their shared need for a
worker-controlled economy.
We should also note in this context that the impoverished ghetto
environments in which the worst victims of social injustice are forced
to live tends to desensitise them to human pain and suffering -- a
situation that is advantageous for military recruiters, who are thereby
able to increase the ranks of the armed forces with angry, brutalised,
violence-prone individuals who need little or no extra conditioning to
become the remorseless killers prized by the military command. Moreover,
extreme poverty makes military service one of the few legal economic
options open to such individuals. These considerations illustrate
further links between the peace and social justice movements -- and
between those movements and anarchism, which is the conceptual
"glue" that can potentially unite all the new social movement in a
single anti-authoritarian coalition.
There is an ongoing structural crisis in the global capitalist
economy. Compared to the post-war "Golden Age" of 1950 to 1973,
the period from 1974 has seen a continual worsening in economic
performance in the West and for Japan. For example, growth is
lower, unemployment is far higher, labour productivity lower
as is investment. Average rates of unemployment in the major
industrialised countries have risen sharply since 1973,
especially after 1979. Unemployment "in the advanced capitalist
countries (the 'Group of 7'. . .) increased by 56 per cent
between 1973 and 1980 (from an average 3.4 per cent to 5.3
per cent of the labour force) and by another 50 per cent since
then (from 5.3 per cent of the labour force in 1980 to 8.0 per
cent in 19994)." [Takis Fotopoulos, Towards and Inclusive
Democracy, p. 35] Job insecurity has increased (in the USA,
for example, there is the most job insecurity since the
depression of the 1930s [Op. Cit., p. 141]). In addition,
both national economies and the international economy have
become far less stable.
This crisis is not confined to the economy. It extends into
the ecological and the social. "In recent years," point out
Larry Elliot and Dan Atkinson, "some radical economics have
tried to [create] . . . an all-embracing measure of well-being
called the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare [ISEW] . . .
In the 1950s and 1960s the ISEW rose in tandem with per
capita GDP. It was a time not just of rising incomes, but of
greater social equity, low crime, full employment and expanding
welfare states. But from the mid-1970s onwards the two measures
started to move apart. GDP per head continued its inexorable
rise, but the ISEW start to decline as a result of lengthening
dole queues, social exclusion, the explosion in crime, habitat
loss, environmental degradation and the growth of environment-
and stress-related illness. By the start of the 1990s, the
ISEW was almost back to the levels at which it started in the
early 1990s." [The Age of Insecurity, p. 248] Which indicates
well our comments in section C.10, namely that economic factors
cannot, and do not, indicate human happiness. However, here we
discuss economic factors. This does not imply that the social
and ecological crises are unimportant or are reducible to the
economy. Far from it. We concentrate on the economic factor
simply because this is the factor usually stressed by the
establishment and it is useful to indicate the divergence of
reality and hype we are currently being subjected to.
Ironically enough, as Robert Brenner points out, "as the
neo-classical medicine has been administered in even stronger
doses [since the 1960s], the economy has performed steadily
less well. The 1970s were worse than the 1960s, the 1980s worse
than the 1970s, and the 1990s have been worse than the 1980s."
["The Economics of Global Turbulence", New Left Review,
no. 229, p. 236] This is ironic because during the crisis
of Keynesianism in the 1970s the right argued that too much
equality and democracy harmed the economy, and so us all in the
long run (due to lower growth, sluggish investment and so on).
However, after over a decade of pro-capitalist governments,
rising inequality, increased freedom for capital and its owners
and managers, the weakening of trade unions and so on, economic
performance has become worse!
If we look at the USA in the 1990s (usually presented as an
economy that "got it right") we find that the "cyclical upturn
of the 1990s has, in terms of the main macro-economic indicators
of growth -- output, investment, productivity, and real compensation
-- has been even less dynamic than its relatively weak predecessors
of the 1980s and the 1970s (not to mention those of the 1950s and
1960s)." [Op. Cit., p. 5] Of course, the economy is presented as
a success because inequality is growing, the rich are getting
richer and wealth is concentrating into fewer and fewer hands.
For the rich and finance capital, it can be considered a "Golden
Age" and so is presented as such by the media. Indeed, it is for
this reason that it may be wrong to term this slow rot a "crisis"
as it is hardly one for the ruling elite. Their share in social
wealth, power and income has steadily increased over this period.
For the majority it is undoubtedly a crisis (the term "silent
depression" has been accurately used to describe this) but for
those who run the system it has by no means been a crisis.
Indeed, the only countries which saw substantial and dynamic
growth after 1973 where those which used state intervention to
violate the eternal "laws" of neo-classical economics, namely
the South East Asian countries (in this they followed the
example of Japan which had used state intervention to grow
at massive rates after the war). Of course, before the economic
crisis of 1997, "free market" capitalists argued that these
countries were classic examples of "free market" economies. For
example, right-wing icon F.A von Hayek asserted that "South
Korea and other newcomers" had "discovered the benefits of
free markets" when, in fact, they had done nothing of the kind
["1980s Unemployment and the Unions" reproduced in The Economic
Decline of Modern Britain, p. 113]. More recently, in 1995, the
Heritage Foundation released its index of economic freedom. Four
of the top seven countries were Asian, including Japan and Taiwan.
All the Asian countries struggling just four years latter were
qualified as "free." However, as Takis Fotopoulos argues, "it
was not laissez-faire policies that induced their spectacular
growth. As a number of studies have shown, the expansion of the
Asian Tigers was based on massive state intervention that boosted
their export sectors, by public policies involving not only heavy
protectionism but even deliberate distortion of market prices
to stimulate investment and trade." [Op. Cit., p. 115] After
the crisis, the free-marketeers discovered the statism that
had always been there and danced happily on the grave of what
used to be called "the Asian miracle."
Such hypocrisy is truly sickening and smacks of a
Stalinist/Orwellian desire to re-write history so
as to appear always right. Moreover, such a cynical
analysis actually undermines their own case for the
wonders of the "free market." After all, until the
crisis appeared, the world's investors -- which is to
say "the market" -- saw nothing but blue skies ahead
for these economies. They showed their faith by shoving
billions into Asian equity markets, while foreign banks
contentedly handed out billions in loans. If Asia's problems
are systemic and the result of these countries' statist
policies, then investors' failure to recognise this earlier
is a blow against the market, not for it.
Still more perverse is that, even as the supporters of
"free-market" capitalism conclude that history is
rendering its verdict on the Asian model of capitalism,
they seem to forget that until the recent crisis they
themselves took great pains to deny that such a model
existed. Until Asia fell apart, supporters of "free-market"
capitalism happily held it up as proof that the only
recipe for economic growth was open markets and
non-intervention on the part of the state. Needless
to say, this re-writing of history will be placed
down the memory-hole, along with any other claims
which have subsequently been proved utter nonsense.
So, as can be seen, the global economy has been marked by an
increasing stagnation, the slowing down of growth, in the
western economies (for example, the 1990s business upswing
has been the weakest since the end of the Second World War).
This is despite (or, more likely, because of) the free
market reforms imposed and the deregulation of finance capital
(we say "because of" simply because neo-classical economics
argue that pro-market reforms would increase growth and improve
the economy, but as we argued in section C such economics have
little basis in reality and so their recommendations are hardly
going to produce positive results). Of course as the ruling
class have been doing well in this New World Order this
underlying slowdown has been ignored and obviously
In recent years crisis (particularly financial crisis) has become
increasingly visible, reflecting (finally) the underlying
weakness of the global economy. This underlying weakness has
been hidden by the speculator performance of the world's
stock markets, whose performance, ironically enough, have
helped create that weakness to begin with! As one expert on
Wall Street argues, "Bond markets . . . hate economic strength
. . . Stocks generally behave badly just as the real economy
is at its strongest. . . Stocks thrive on a cool economy, and
wither in a hot one." [Wall Street, p. 124] In other words,
real economic weakness is reflected in financial strength.
Henwood also notes that "[w]hat might be called the rentier
share of the corporate surplus -- dividends plus interest as
a percentage of pre-tax profits and interest -- has risen
sharply, from 20-30% in the 1950s to 60% in the 1990s." [Op.
Cit., p. 73] This helps explain the stagnation which has
afflicted the economies of the west. The rich have been
placing more of their ever-expanding wealth in stocks,
allowing this market to rise in the face of general economic
torpor. Rather than being used for investment, surplus is
being funnelled into the finance markets, markets which
do concentrate wealth very successfully (retained earnings
in the US have decreased as interest and dividend payments
have increased [Brenner, Op. Cit., p. 210]). Given that
"the US financial system performs dismally at its advertised
task, that of efficiently directing society's savings
towards their optimal investment pursuits. The system is
stupefyingly expensive, gives terrible signals for
the allocation of capital, and has surprisingly little
to do with real investment." [Henwood,
Op. Cit., p. 3] As most
investment comes from internal funds, the rise in the
rentiers (those who derive their incomes from returns
on capital) share of the surplus has meant less investment
and so the stagnation of the economy. And the weakening
economy has increased financial strength, which in turn
leads to a weakening in the real economy. A viscous circle,
and one reflected in the slowing of economic growth over
the last 30 years.
In effect, especially since the end of the 1970s, has seen
the increasing dominance of finance capital. This dominance
has, in effect, created a market for government policies as
finance capital has become increasingly global in nature.
Governments must secure, protect and expand the field of
profit-making for financial capital and transnational
corporations, otherwise they will be punished by the global
markets (i.e. finance capital). These policies have been
at the expense of the underlying economy in general, and
of the working class in particular:
Of course, industrial capital also hates labour, so there
is a basis of an alliance between the two sides of capital,
even if they do disagree over the specifics of the economic
policies implemented. Given that a key aspect of the neo-liberal
reforms was the transformation of the labour market from a
post-war sellers' market to a nineteenth century buyers'
market, with its effects on factory discipline, wage claims
and proneness to strike, industrial capital could not but be
happy with its effects. Doug Henwood correctly argues that
"Liberals and populists often search for potential allies
among industrialists, reasoning that even if financial
interests suffer in a boom, firms that trade in real, rather
than fictitious, products would thrive when growth is strong.
In general, industrialists are less sympathetic to these
arguments. Employers in any industry like slack in the labour
market; it makes for a pliant workforce, one unlikely to make
demands or resist speedups." In addition, "many non-financial
corporations have heavy financial interests." [Op. Cit., p. 123,
p. 135]
Thus the general stagnation afflicting much of the world, a
stagnation which has developed into crisis as the needs of
finance have undermined the real economy which, ultimately,
it is dependent upon. The contradiction between short term
profits and long term survival inherent in capitalism strikes
again.
Crisis, as we have noted above, has appeared in areas previously
considered as strong economies and it has been spreading. An
important aspect of this crisis is the tendency for productive
capacity to outstrip effective demand (i.e. the tendency to
over-invest relative to the available demand), which arises in
large part from the imbalance between capitalists' need for a
high rate of profit and their simultaneous need to ensure that
workers have enough wealth and income so that they can keep
buying the products on which those profits depend (see section
C). Inequality has been increasing in the USA, which means that
the economy faces as realisation crisis (see section C.7), a
crisis which has so far been avoided by deepening debt for
working people (debt levels more than doubled between the
1950s to the 1990s, from 25% to over 60%).
Over-investment has been magnified in the East-Asian Tigers
as they were forced to open their economies to global finance.
These economies, due to their intervention in the market
(and repressive regimes against labour) ensured they were
a more profitable place to invest than elsewhere. Capital
flooded into the area, ensuring a relative over-investment
was inevitable. As we argued in section C.7.2, crisis is
possible simply due to the lack of information provided
by the price mechanism -- economic agents can react in
such a way that the collective result of individually
rational decisions is irrational. Thus the desire to
reap profits in the Tiger economies resulted in a squeeze
in profits as the aggregate investment decisions resulted
in over-investment, and so over-production and falling
profits.
In effect, the South East Asian economies suffered from a
problem termed the "fallacy of composition." When you are
the first Asian export-driven economy, you are competing
with high-cost Western producers and so your cheap workers,
low taxes and lax environmental laws allow you to under-cut
your competitors and make profits. However, as more tigers
joined into the market, they end up competing against each
other and so their profit margins would decrease towards
their actual cost price rather than that of Western firms.
With the decrease in profits, the capital that flowed
into the region flowed back out, thus creating a crisis
(and proving, incidentally, that free markets are
destabilising and do not secure the best of all possible
outcomes). Thus, the rentier regime, after weakening the
Western economies, helped destabilise the Eastern ones too.
So, in the short-run, many large corporations and financial
companies solved their profit problems by expanding production
into "underdeveloped" countries so as to take advantage of the
cheap labour there (and the state repression which ensured that
cheapness) along with weaker environmental laws and lower taxes.
Yet gradually they are running out of third-world populations to
exploit. For the very process of "development" stimulated by the
presence of Transnational Corporations in third-world nations
increases competition and so, potentially, over-investment and,
even more importantly, produces resistance in the form of unions,
rebellions and so on, which tend to exert a downward pressure on
the level of exploitation and profits (for example, in South Korea,
labour' share in value-added increased from 23 to 30 per cent,
in stark contrast to the USA, Germany and Japan, simply because
Korean workers had rebelled and won new political freedoms).
This process reflects, in many ways, the rise of finance capital
in the 1970s. In the 1950s and 1960s, existing industrialised
nations experienced increased competition from the ex-Axis powers
(namely Japan and Germany). As these nations re-industrialised,
they placed increased pressure on the USA and other nations,
reducing the global "degree of monopoly" and forcing them to
compete with lower cost producers (which, needless to say,
reduced the existing companies profits). In addition, full
employment produced increasing resistance on the shop floor
and in society as a whole (see
section C.7.1), squeezing
profits even more. Thus a combination of class struggle and
global over-capacity resulted in the 1970s crisis. With the
inability of the real economy, especially the manufacturing
sector, to provide an adequate return, capital shifted into
finance. In effect, it ran away from the success of working
people asserting their rights at the point of production and
elsewhere. This, combined with increased international
competition from Japan and Germany, ensured the rise of
finance capital, which in return ensured the current
stagnationist tendencies in the economy (tendencies made
worse by the rise of the Asian Tiger economies in the 1980s).
From the contradictions between finance capital and the real
economy, between capitalists' need for profit and human needs,
between over-capacity and demand, and others, there has emerged
what appears to be a long-term trend toward permanent stagnation
of the capitalist economy. This trend has been apparent for several
decades, as evidenced by the continuous upward adjustment of the
rate of unemployment officially considered to be "normal" or
"acceptable" during those decades, and by other symptoms as
well such as falling growth, lower rates of profit and so on.
This stagnation has recently become even more obvious by the
development of crisis in many countries and the reactions of
central banks trying to revive the real economies that have
suffered under their rentier inspired policies. Whether this
crisis will become worse is hard to say. The Western powers
may act to protect the real economy by adopting the Keynesian
policies they have tried to discredit over the last thirty
years. However, whether such a bailout will succeed is
difficult to tell and may just ensure continued stagnation
rather than a real up-turn, if it has any effect at all.
Of course, a deep depression may solve the problem of
over-capacity and over-investment in the world and lay
the foundations of an up-turn. Such a strategy is, however,
very dangerous due to working class resistance it could
provoke, the deepness of the slump and the length it
could last for. However, this, perhaps, has been the
case in the USA in 1997-9 where over 20 years of one-sided
class war may have paid off in terms of higher profits
and profit rate. However, this may have more to do with
the problems elsewhere in the world than a real economic
change, in addition to rising consumer debt (there is now
negative personal savings rate in the US), a worsening
trade deficit and a stock market bubble. In addition,
rising productivity has combined with stagnant wages to
increase the return to capital and the profit rate (wages
fell over much of the 1990s recovery and finally regained
their pre-recession 1989 peak in 1999! Despite 8 years
of economic growth, the typical worker is back only where
they started at the peak of the last business cycle). This
drop and slow growth of wages essentially accounts for the
rising US profit rate, with the recent growth in real wages
being hardly enough to make much of an impact (although it
has made the US Federal Reserve increase interest rates to
slow down even this increase, which re-enforces our argument
that capitalist profits require unemployment and insecurity
to maintain capitalist power at the point of production).
Such a situation reflects 1920s America (see
section C.7.3 for details) which was also marked by
rising inequality, a labour surplus and rising profits
and suggests that the new US economy faces the same
potential for a slump. This means that the US economy
must face the danger of over-investment (relative to
demand, of course) sooner or later, perhaps sooner due
to the problems elsewhere in the world as a profits-lead
growth economy is fragile as it is dependent on investment,
luxury spending and working class debt to survive -- all
of which are more unstable and vulnerable to shocks than
workers' consumption.
Given the difficulties in predicting the future (and the
fact that those who try are usually proven totally wrong!),
we will not pretend to know it and leave our discussion at
highlighting a few possibilities. One thing is true, however,
and that is the working class will pay the price of any
"solution" -- unless they organise and get rid of capitalism
and the state. Ultimately, capitalism need profits to survive
and such profits came from the fact that workers do not have
economic liberty. Thus any "solution" within a capitalist
framework means the increased oppression and exploitation
of working people.
Faced with negative balance sheets during recessions, the
upper strata occasionally panic and agree to some reforms,
some distribution of wealth, which temporarily solves
the short-run problem of stagnation by increasing demand
and thus permits renewed expansion. However, this
short-run solution means that the working class gradually
makes economic and political gains, so that exploitation and
oppresion, and hence the rate of profit, tends to fall (as
happened during the post-war Keynesian "Golden Age"). Faced
with the dangers of, on the one hand, economic collapse and,
on the other, increased working class power, the ruling class
may not act until it is too late. So, on the basis that the
current crisis may get worse and stagnation turn into depression,
we will discuss why the "economic structural crisis" we have
lived through for the later quarter of the 20th century (and its
potential crisis) is important to social struggle in the
next
section.
The "economic structural crisis" we out-lined in the
last section
has certain implications for anarchists and social struggle.
Essentially, as C. George Benello argues, "[i]f economic conditions
worsen. . . then we are likely to find an openness to alternatives
which have not been thought of since the depression of the 1930s. . .
It is important to plan for a possible economic crisis, since it
is not only practical, but also can serve as a method of mobilising
a community in creative ways." [From the Ground Up, p. 149]
In the face of economic stagnation and depression, attempts to
improve the rate of exploitation (i.e. increase profits) by
increasing the authority of the boss grow. In addition, more
people find it harder to make ends meet, running up debts
to survive, face homelessness if they are made unemployed, and
so on. Such effects make exploitation ever more visible and tend
to push oppressed strata together in movements that seek to mitigate,
and even remove, their oppression. As the capitalist era has worn
on, these strata have become increasingly able to rebel and gain
substantial political and economic improvements, which have, in
addition, lead to an increasingly willing to do so because of
rising expectations (about what is possible) and frustration
(about what actually is). This is why, since 1945, the world-wide
"family" of progressive movements has grown "ever stronger, ever
bolder, ever more diverse, ever more difficult to contain."
[Immanuel Wallerstein, Geopolitics and Geoculture, p. 110] It
is true that libertarians, the left and labour have suffered a
temporary setback during the past few decades, but with
increasing misery of the working class due to neo-liberal
policies (and the "economic structural crisis" they create),
it is only a matter of time before there is a resurgence of
radicalism.
Anarchists will be in the forefront of this resurgence. For,
with the discrediting of authoritarian state capitalism
("Communism") in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the
anti-authoritarian faction of the left will increasingly be
seen as its only credible one. Thus the ongoing structural
crisis of the global capitalist economy, combined with the
other developments springing from what Takis Fotopoulos calls
(in his book Towards and Inclusive Democracy) a "multidimensional
crisis" (which included economic, political, social, ecological
and ideological aspects), could (potentially) lead over the next
decade or two to a new international anti-authoritarian alliance
linking together the new (and not so new) social movements in
the West (feminism, the Green movement, rank-and-file labour
militancy, etc.) with non-authoritarian liberation movements
in the Third World and new anti-bureaucracy movements in
formerly "communist" countries. However, this is only likely
to happen if anarchists take the lead in promoting alternatives
and working with the mass of the population. Ways in which
anarchist can do this are discussed in some detail in
section J.5.
Thus the "economic structural crisis" can aid social struggle by
placing the contrast of "what is" with what "could be" in a clear
light. Any crisis brings forth the contradictions in capitalism,
between the production of use values (things people need) and of
exchange value (capitalist profits), between capitalism's claims
of being based on liberty and the authoritarianism associated with
wage labour ("[t]he general evidence of repression poses an ancient
contradiction for capitalism: while it claims to promote human
freedom, it profits concretely from the denial of freedom, most
especially freedom for the workers employed by capitalist
enterprise" [William Greider, One World, Ready or Not, p. 388])
and so on. It shakes to the bone popular faith in capitalism's
ability to "deliver the goods" and gets more and more people
thinking about alternatives to a system that places profit
above and before people and planet. The crisis also, by its
very nature, encourages workers and other oppressed sections
of the population to resist and fight back, which in turn
generates collective organisation (such as unions or
workplace-based assemblies and councils), solidarity
and direct action -- in other words, collective self-help
and the awareness that the problems of working class people
can only be solved by themselves, by their own actions
and organisations. The 1930s in the USA is a classic example
of this process, with very militant struggles taking place
in very difficult situations (see Howard Zinn's A People's
History of the United States or Jeremy Brecher's Strike!
for details).
In other words, the "economic structural crisis" gives
radicals a lot potential to get their message across,
even if the overall environment may make success seem
difficult in the extreme at times!
As well as encouraging workplace organisation due to the
intensification of exploitation and authority provoked by
the economic stagnant/depression, the "economic structural
crisis" can encourage other forms of libertarian alternatives.
For example, "the practical effect of finance capital's
hegemony was to lock the advanced economies and their
governments in a malignant spiral, restricting them to bad
choices. Like bondholders in general, the new governing
consensus explicitly assumed that faster economic growth was
dangerous -- threatening to the stable financial order --
so nations were effectively blocked from measures that might
reduce permanent unemployment or ameliorate the decline in
wages. . . The reality of slow growth, in turn, drove the
governments into their deepening indebtedness, since the
disappointing growth inevitably undermined tax revenues
while it expanded the public welfare costs. The rentier
regime repeatedly instructed governments to reform their
spending priorities -- that is, withdraw benefits from
dependent citizens. . . " [Op. Cit., pp. 297-8]
Thus the "economic structural crisis" has resulted in the
erosion of the welfare state (at least for the working class,
for the elite, state aid is never far away). This development
as potential libertarian possibilities. "The decline of the
state," argues L. Gambone, "makes necessary a revitalisation
of the notions of direct action and mutual aid. Without
Mama State to do it for us, we must create our own social
services through mutual aid societies." [Syndicalism in Myth
and Reality, p. 12] As we argue in more depth in
section J.5.16,
such a movement of mutual aid has a long history in the working
class and, as it is under our control, it cannot be withdrawn
from us to enrich and empower the ruling class as state run
systems have been. Thus the decline of state run social services
could, potentially, see the rise of a network of self-managed,
working class alternatives (equally, of course, it could see the
end of all services to the most weak sections of our society -- which
possibility comes about depends on what we do in the here and now.
see section J.5.15 for an anarchist analysis of the welfare state).
Food Not Bombs! is an excellent example of practical libertarian
alternatives being generated by the economic crisis we are facing.
Food Not Bombs helps the homeless through the direct action of its
members. It also involves the homeless in helping themselves. It
is a community-based group which helps other people in the community
who are needy by providing free food to those in need. FNB! also
helps other Anarchist political projects and activities.
Food Not Bombs! serves free food in public places to dramatise
the plight of the homeless, the callousness of the system and
our capacity to solve social problems through our own actions
without government or capitalism. The constant harassment of
FNB! by the cops, middle classes and the government illustrates
their callousness to the plight of the poor and the failure of
their institutions to build a society which cares for people
more than money and property (and arms, cops and prisons to
protect them). The fact is that in the US many working and
unemployed people have no feeling that they are entitled
to basic human needs such as medicine, clothes, shelter,
and food. Food Not Bombs! does encourage poor people to make
these demands, does provide a space in which these demands can
be voiced, and does help to breakdown the wall between hungry
and not-hungry. The repression directed towards FNB! by local
police forces and governments also demonstrates the effectiveness
of their activity and the possibility that it may radicalise
those who get involved with the organisation. Charity is
obviously one thing, mutual aid is something else. FNB! as
it is a politicised movement from below, based on solidarity,
is not charity, because, in Kropotkin's words, charity "bears
a character of inspiration from above, and, accordingly,
implies a certain superiority of the giver upon the receiver"
and hardly libertarian [Mutual Aid, p. 222].
The last example of how economic stagnation can generate
libertarian tendencies can be seen from the fact that,
"[h]istorically, at times of severe inflation or capital
shortages, communities have been forced to rely on their own
resources. During the Great Depression, many cities printed
their own currency; this works to the extent that a community
is able to maintain a viable internal economy which provides
the necessities of life, independent of transactions with
the outside." [C. George Benello, Op. Cit., p. 150]
These local currencies and economies can be used as the basis
of a libertarian socialist economy. The currencies would be
the basis of a mutual bank (see sections J.5.5 and J.5.6),
providing interest-free loans to workers to form co-operatives
and so build libertarian alternatives to capitalist firms. In
addition, these local currencies could be labour-time based,
eliminating the profits of capitalists by allowing workers to
exchange the product of their labour with other workers.
Moreover, "local exchange systems strength local communities by
increasing their self-reliance, empowering community members,
and helping to protect them from the excesses of the global
market." [Frank Lindenfield, "Economics for Anarchists,"
Social Anarchism, no. 23, p. 24] In this way local
self-managing communes could be created, communes that
replace hierarchical, top-down, government with collective
decision making of community affairs based on directly democratic
community assemblies (see section J.5.1). These self-governing
communities and economies could federate together to co-operate
on a wider scale and so create a counter-power to that of
state and capitalism.
This confederal system of self-managing communities could also
protect jobs as the "globalisation of capital threatens local
industries. A way has to be found to keep capital at home and
so preserve the jobs and the communities that depend upon
them. Protectionism is both undesirable and unworkable. But
worker-ownership or workers' co-operatives are alternatives."
[L. Gambone, Syndicalism in Myth and Reality, pp.12-13] Local
communities could provide the necessary support structures
which could protect co-operatives from the corrupting effects
of working in the capitalist market (see
section J.5.11). In
this way, economic liberty (self-management) could replace
capitalism (wage slavery) and show that anarchism is a practical
alternative to the chaos and authoritarianism of capitalism,
even if these examples are fragmentally and limited in nature.
However, these developments should not be taken in isolation
of collective struggle in the workplace or community. It is in
the class struggle that the real potential for anarchy is
created. The work of such organisations as Food Not Bombs!
and the creation of local currencies and co-operatives are
supplementary to the important task of creating workplace
and community organisations that can create effective resistance
to both state and capitalists, resistance that can overthrow
both (see sections J.5.2
and J.5.1 respectively). "Volunteer
and service credit systems and alternative currencies by
themselves may not be enough to replace the corporate capitalist
system. Nevertheless, they can help build the economic strength
of local currencies, empower local residents, and mitigate some
of the consequences of poverty and unemployment. . . By the
time a majority [of a community are involved it] will be well
on its way to becoming a living embodiment of many anarchist
ideals." [Frank Lindenfield, Op. Cit., p. 28] And such a community
would be a great aid in any strike or other social struggle
which is going on!
Therefore, the general economic crisis which we are facing
has implications for social struggle and anarchist activism.
It could be the basic of libertarian alternatives in our
workplaces and communities, alternatives based on direct
action, solidarity and self-management. These alternatives
could include workplace and community unionism, co-operatives,
mutual banks and other forms of anarchistic resistance to
capitalism and the state. We discuss such alternatives in
more detail in section J.5, and so do not do so here.
Before moving on to the next section, we must stress that
we are not arguing that working class people need an
economic crisis to force them into struggle. Such
"objectivism" (i.e. the placing of tendencies towards
socialism in the development of capitalism, of objective
factors, rather than in the class struggle, i.e. subjective
factors) is best left to orthodox Marxists and Leninists
as it has authoritarian underpinnings (see
section H).
Rather we are aware that the class struggle, the
subjective pressure on capitalism, is not independent
of the conditions within which it takes place (and
helped to create, we must add). Subjective revolt is
always present under capitalism and, in the case of
the 1970s crisis, played a role in creating it.
Faced with an economic crisis we are indicating what
we can do in response to it and how it could,
potentially, generate libertarian tendencies within
society. Economic crisis could, in other words, provoke
social struggle, collective action and generate anarchic
tendencies in society. Equally, it could cause apathy,
rejection of collective struggle and, perhaps, the
embracing of false "solutions" such as right-wing
populism, Leninism, Fascism or right-wing "libertarianism."
We cannot predict how the future will develop, but it is
true that if we do nothing then, obviously, libertarian
tendencies will not grow and develope.
According to a report in Newsweek ("The Good Life and its Discontents"
Jan. 8, 1996), feelings of disappointment have devastated faith in
government and big business. Here are the results of a survey in which
which people were asked whether they had a "great deal of confidence" in
various institutions:
As can be seen, the public's faith in major companies plunged 36% over a
28-year period in the survey, an even worse vote of "no confidence" than
that given to Congress (34%).
Some of the feelings of disappointment with government can be blamed
on the anti-big-government rhetoric of conservatives and right-wing
populists. But such rhetoric is of potential benefit to anarchists as
well. Of course the Right would never dream of really dismantling the
state, as is evident from the fact that government grew more bureaucratic
and expensive under "conservative" administrations than ever before.
Needless to say, this "decentralist" element of right-wing rhetoric
is a con. When a politician, economist or business "leader" argues that
the government is too big, he is rarely thinking of the same government
functions you are. You may be thinking of subsidies for tobacco farmers
or defence firms and they are thinking about pollution controls. You may
be thinking of reforming welfare for the better, while their idea is to
dismantle the welfare state totally. Moreover, with their support for
"family values", "wholesome" television, bans on abortion, and so on
their victory would see an increased level of government intrusion in
many personal spheres (as well as increased state support for the power
of the boss over the worker, the landlord over the tenant and so on).
If you look at what the Right has done and is doing, rather than what
it is saying, you quickly see the ridiculous of claims of right-wing
"libertarianism" (as well as who is really in charge). Obstructing pollution
and health regulations; defunding product safety laws; opening national
parks to logging and mining, or closing them entirely; reducing taxes for
the rich; eliminating the capital gains tax; allowing companies to fire
striking workers; making it easier for big telecommunications companies
to make money; limiting companies' liability for unsafe products-- the
program here is obviously to help big business do what it wants without
government interference, and to help the rich get richer. In other
words, increased "freedom" for private power combined with a state
whose role is to protect that "liberty."
Yet along with the pro-business, pro-private tyranny, racist,
anti-feminist, and homophobic hogwash disseminated by right-wing
radio propagandists and the business-backed media, important
decentralist and anti-statist ideas are also being implanted
in mass consciousness. These ideas, if consistently pursued
and applied in all areas of life (the home, the community, the
workplace), could lead to a revival of anarchism in the US -- but
only if radicals take advantage of this opportunity to spread the
message that capitalism is not genuinely anti-authoritarian (nor
could it ever be), as a social system based on liberty must entail.
This does not mean that right-wing tendencies have anarchistic
elements. Of course not. Nor does it mean that anarchist fortunes
are somehow linked to the success of the right. Far from it (the
reverse is actually the case). Similarly, the anti-big government
propaganda of big business is hardly anarchistic. But it does
have the advantage of placing certain ideas on the agenda, such
as decentralisation. What anarchists try to do is point out the
totally contradictory nature of such right-wing rhetoric. After
all, the arguments against big government are equally applicable
to big business and wage slavery. If people are capable of
making their own decisions, then why should this capability
be denied in the workplace? As Noam Chomsky points out, while
there is a "leave it alone" and "do your own thing" current
within society, it in fact "tells you that the propaganda system
is working full-time, because there is no such ideology in the
U.S. Business, for example, doesn't believe it. It has always
insisted upon a powerful interventionist state to support its
interests -- still does and always has -- back to the origins
of American society. There's nothing individualistic about
corporations. Those are big conglomerate institutions,
essentially totalitarian in character, but hardly individualistic.
Within them you're a cog in a big machine. There are few
institutions in human society that have such strict hierarchy
and top-down control as a business organisation. Nothing there
about 'Don't tread on me.' You're being tread on all the time.
The point of the ideology is to try to get other people,
outside of the sectors of co-ordinated power, to fail to
associate and enter into decision-making in the political
arena themselves. The point is to atomise everyone else
while leaving powerful sectors integrated and highly
organised and of course dominating resources." He goes
on to note that:
As the opinion polls above show, must people direct their dislike
and distrust of institutions equally to Big Business, which shows
that people are not stupid. However, the slight decrease in distrust
for big business even after a period of massive business-lead class
war, down-sizing and so on, is somewhat worrying. Unfortunately, as
Gobbels was well aware, tell a lie often enough and people start
to believe it. And given the funds available to big business, its
influence in the media, its backing of "think-tanks," the use of
Public Relations companies, the support of economic "science," its
extensive advertising and so on, it says a lot for the common sense
of people that so many people see big business for what it is. You
simply cannot fool all the people all of the time!
However, these feelings can easily be turned into cynicism and a
hopelessness that things can change for the better and than the
individual can help change society. Or, even worse, they can be
twisted into support for the right, authoritarian, populist or
(so-called) "Libertarian"-Right. The job for anarchists is to
combat this and help point the healthy distrust people have
for government and business towards a real solution to societies
problems, namely a decentralised, self-managed anarchist society.
Another important factor working in favour of anarchists is the
existence of a sophisticated global communications network and a
high degree of education and literacy among the populations of
the core industrialised nations. Together these two developments
make possible nearly instantaneous sharing and public dissemination
of information by members of various progressive and radical
movements all over the globe -- a phenomenon that tends to reduce
the effectiveness of repression by central authorities. The
electronic-media and personal-computer revolutions also make
it more difficult for elitist groups to maintain their previous
monopolies of knowledge. In short, the advent of the Information
Age is potentially one of the most subversive variables in the
modern equation.
Indeed the very existence of the Internet provides anarchists with a
powerful argument that decentralised structures can function effectively
in today's highly complex world. For the net has no centralised
headquarters and is not subject to regulation by any centralised
regulatory agency, yet it still manages to function quite effectively.
Moreover, the net is also an effective way of anarchists and other
radicals to communicate their ideas to others, share knowledge and
work on common projects (such as this FAQ, for example) and co-ordinate
activities and social struggle. By using the Internet, radicals can
make their ideas accessible to people who otherwise would not come
across anarchist ideas (obviously we are aware that the vast majority
of people in the world do not have access to telephones, never mind
computers, but computer access is increasing in many countries, making
it available, via work, libraries, schools, universities, and so on
to more and more working people). In addition, and far more important
than anarchists putting their ideas across, the fact is that the net
allows everyone with access to express themselves freely, to communicate
with others and get access (by visiting webpages and joining mailing
lists and newsgroups) and give access (by creating webpages and joining
in with on-line arguments) to new ideas and viewpoints. This is
very anarchistic as it allows people to express themselves and start
to consider new ideas, ideas which may change how they think and act.
Of course most people on the planet do not have a telephone, let alone
a computer, but that does not undermine the fact that the internet is a
medium in which people can communicate freely (at least until it is
totally privatised, then it may prove to be more difficult as the net
could become a giant shopping centre).
Of course there is no denying that the implications of improved
communications and information technology are ambiguous, implying
Big Brother as well the ability of progressive and radical movements to
organise. However, the point is only that the information revolution in
combination with the other new social developments we are considering
could (but will not necessarily) contribute to a social paradigm
shift. Obviously such a shift will not happen automatically. Indeed, it
will not happen at all unless there is strong resistance to governmental
attempts to limit public access to information technology (e.g. encryption
programs) and censor citizens' communications.
How anarchists are very effectively using the Internet to co-ordinate
struggles and spread information is discussed in section J.4.9.
This use of the Internet and computers to spread the anarchist message
is ironic. The rapid improvement in price-performance ratios of
computers, software, and other technology today seems to validate
the faith in free markets. But to say that the information revolution
proves the inevitable superiority of markets requires a monumental
failure of short-term historical memory. After all, not just the
Internet, but the computer sciences and computer industry represent
a spectacular success of public investment. As late as the 1970s
and early 1980s, according to Kenneth Flamm's 1988 book Creating the
Computer, the federal government was paying for 40 percent of all
computer-related research and probably 60 to 75 percent of basic research.
Even such modern-seeming gadgets as video terminals, the light pen, the
drawing tablet, and the mouse evolved from Pentagon-sponsored research
in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Even software was not without state
influence, with database software having its roots in US Air Force
and Atomic Energy Commission projects, artificial intelligence in
military contracts back in the 1950s and airline reservation systems
in 1950s air-defence systems. More than half of IBM's Research and
Development budget came from government contracts in the 1950s and
1960s.
The motivation was national security, but the result has been the creation
of comparative advantage in information technology for the United States
that private firms have happily exploited and extended. When the returns
were uncertain and difficult to capture, private firms were unwilling to
invest, and government played the decisive role. And not for want of
trying, for key players in the military first tried to convince businesses
and investment bankers that a new and potentially profitable business
opportunity was presenting itself, but they did not succeed and it was
only when the market expanded and the returns were more definite that
the government receded. While the risks and development costs were
socialised, the gains were privatised. All of which make claims that
the market would have done it anyway highly unlikely.
Looking beyond state aid to the computer industry we discover a
"do-it-yourself" (and so self-managed) culture which was essential
to its development. The first personal computer, for example, was
invented by amateurs who wanted to build their own cheap machines.
The existence of a "gift" economy among these amateurs and hobbyists
was a necessary precondition for the development of PCs. Without this
free sharing of information and knowledge, the development of computers
would have been hindered. In other words, socialistic relations between developers and within the working environment created the necessary
conditions for the computer revolution. If this community had been
marked by commercial relations, the chances are the necessary
breakthroughs and knowledge would have remained monopolised by a
few companies or individuals, so hindering the industry as a whole.
The first 20 years of the Internet's development was almost completely
dependent on state aid -- such as the US military or the universities --
plus an anti-capitalist "gift economy" between hobbyists. Thus a
combination of public funding and community based sharing helped create
the framework of the Internet, a framework which is now being claimed
as one of capitalism's greatest successes!
Encouragingly, this socialistic "gift economy" is still at the heart
of computer/software development and the Internet. For example, the
Free Software Foundation has developed the General Public Licence
(GPL). GPL, also know as "copyleft", uses copyright to ensure that
software remains free. Copyleft ensures that a piece of software is
made available to everyone to use and modify as they desire. The only
restriction is that any used or modified copyleft material must remain
under copyleft, ensuring that others have the same rights as you did when
you used the original code. It creates a commons which anyone may add
to, but no one may subtract from. Placing software under GPL means that
every contributor is assured that she, and all other uses, will be able
to run, modify and redistribute the code indefinitely. Unlike commercial
software, copyleft code ensures an increasing knowledge base from which
individuals can draw from and, equally as important, contribute to. In
this way everyone benefits as code can be improved by everyone, unlike
commercial code.
Many will think that this essentially anarchistic system would be a
failure. In fact, code developed in this way is far more reliable and
sturdy than commercial software. Linux, for example, is a far superior
operating system than DOS, for example, precisely because it draws
on the collective experience, skill and knowledge of thousands of
developers. Apache, the most popular web-server, is another freeware
product and is acknowledged as the best available. While non-anarchists
may be surprised, anarchists are not. Mutual aid and co-operation are
beneficial in evolution of life, why not in the evolution of software?
For anarchists, this "gift economy" at the heart of the communications
revolution is an important development. It shows the superiority of
common development and the walls to innovation and decent products
generated by property systems. We hope that such an economy will
spread increasingly into the "real" world.
J.4.1 Why is social struggle a good sign?
"Direct action . . . means that the working class, forever
bridling at the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from
outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own
conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its methodology . . .
Direct Action thus implies that the working class subscribes to
notions of freedom and autonomy instead of genuflecting before
the principle of authority. Now, it is thanks to this authority
principle, the pivot of the modern world - democracy being its
latest incarnation - that the human being, tied down by a
thousand ropes, moral as well as material, is bereft of
any opportunity to display will and initiative."
[Direct Action]
"since the times of the [first] International Working Men's Association,
the anarchists have always advised taking an active part in those workers'
organisations which carry on the direct struggle of labour against
capital and its protector -- the State.
J.4.2 Won't social struggle do more harm than good?
"the workers of my generation from the early days up to now had
what you might call a labour insurrection in changing from a
plain, humble, submissive creature into a man. The union made
a man out of him. . . I am not talking about benefits . . . I am
talking about the working conditions and how they affected the
man in plant. . . Before they were submissive. Today they are
men." [quoted in Industrial Democracy in America, Nelson
Lichtenstein and Holwell John Harris (eds.), p. 204]
Quintile 1950-1978 1979-1993
Lowest 20% 138% -15%
2nd 20% 98 -7
3rd 20% 106 -3
4th 20% 111 5
Highest 20% 99 18
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who
profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are
people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They
want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle might
be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both
moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without a demand. It never did and never will. People
might not get all that they work for in this world, but they
must certainly work for all they get."
J.4.3 Are the new social movements a positive development for anarchists?
"Production for need and use will not come from the employer. The
owners of production in a capitalist society will never begin to
take social priorities into account in the production process.
The pursuit of ever greater profits is not compatible with social
justice and responsibility." [Dissidence]
J.4.4 What is the "economic structural crisis"?
"Rentier power was directed at labour, both organised and
unorganised ranks of wage earners, because it regarded rising
wages as a principal threat to the stable order. For obvious
reasons, this goal was never stated very clearly, but financial
markets understood the centrality of the struggle: protecting
the value of their capital required the suppression of labour
incomes." [William Greider, One World, Ready or Not, p. 302]
J.4.5 Why is this "economic structural crisis" important to social struggle?
J.4.6 What are implications of anti-government and anti-big business feelings?
1966 1975 1985 1994
Congress 42% 13% 16% 8%
Executive Branch 41% 13% 15% 12%
The press 29% 26% 16% 13%
Major Companies 55% 19% 17% 19%
"There is a streak of independence and individuality in
American culture which I think is a very good thing. This
'Don't tread on me' feeling is in many respects a healthy
one. It's healthy up to the point where it atomises and keeps
you from working together with other people. So it's got
its healthy side and its negative side. It's the negative
side that's emphasised naturally in the propaganda and
indoctrination." [Keeping the Rabble in Line, pp. 279-80]
J.4.7 What about the communications revolution?