Anarchism and anticipation

[penguinfoot]

I've been thinking recently about some of the theoretical and philosophical bases of anarchism, and I've been drawn back to Ward's Anarchy in Action, which I read several years ago, and enjoyed very much. From what I remember, one of the arguments that underpins Ward's entire book is that the anarchist project is not about creating an entirely new society through the overthrow of the existing one, in the sense that the society that emerges after the revolution (so to speak) will be one without any precedents, but is rather about recognizing those parts of human behavior and activity within the current society which embody the principles - mutual aid, the absence of fixed hierarchies, and so on - that anarchists believe should be the basis of all human interactions and social arrangements. In this sense, Ward argues, anarchism is about expanding and giving full expression to modes of activity that are already implicit or existent within existing society, even if they exist only in a distorted or fragmented form. Wards points out, for example, that in developed if not underdeveloped societies, many individuals already spend large parts of their lives outside of traditional familial arrangements and in households that might be seen to embody anarchist principles even when their inhabitants are not conscious anarchists to any degree - I remember him arguing that in student households, for example, which are obvious cases of adults coming together of their own volition and living as a household for some time without there being the expectation that the arrangement will be permanent, the principles of mutual aid and the absence of hierarchy are implicit to the extent that the members of the household just accept that there are certain tasks that need to be done and that there is no need for there to be a formal allocation of tasks and penalties, because it is expected that those tasks will be completed by someone sooner or later, which is generally the case, such that there is a kind of spontaneous order.

This got me thinking about anarchism more generally and particularly about the bases that might be seen to comprise the "core" of anarchism, and it seems to me that one of the bases that does unite such a diverse tradition of anarchism and also distinguish class-struggle anarchism from other kinds of class-struggle politics such as Marxism is the idea of anticipation - specifically the idea that it is desirable and possible to create arrangements within capitalist/hierarchical society in order not only to create effective means of resisting the existing society but also in order to anticipate the future society in which anarchist principles will be embodied on an expansive basis and explicitly recognized. This seems to be the idea that underpinned, at the very beginning of the modern anarchist tradition, Proudhon's cooperative and banking schemes, for example, and it also seems to be the idea that underpins much of syndicalist thinking, in that the general union is seen by many syndicalists to represent the economic structure of the future society in embryo. It's also an idea, you might argue, that is more explicitly recognized in the concept of the autonomous zone, as well as in the squatting movement.

What do you think? Is it right to see "anticipation" as one of the core ideas of anarchism?

[Zanthorus]

Perhaps, although this is not necessarily exclusive to anarchism. Jacques Camatte, in his early days as a militant of the International Communist Party (Programma Comunista), advanced the idea that the Party is a prefiguration in the present of the society of the future (See: Origins and Function of the Party Form (http://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/origin.htm)). He does quote Marx, Engels and Lenin to support himself as well, although it's been a while since I've read it, and I can't actually remember anything like that explicitly in Marx, Engels or Lenin. In fact I do remember Marx and Engels explicitly chastising Bakunin for wanting the First International organised as a federation along the lines of a future anarchist society, although Marx and Engels were not federalists so I suppose that's not a particularly good example.

[syndicat]

Ward was one of a number of post-World War 2 anarchists who abandoned class struggle and revolution in favor of a form of reformism. Paul Goodman and Murray Bookchin also followed this route. Given the bureaucratization and greater conservatism of the labor movements in the industrial countries after World War 2 and the smashing of the revolution in Spain in the '30s, this is sort of undertstandable, I suppose.

but earlier prefigurative concepts in the libertarian Left arose mainly through the ideas of mass worker organization that arises in the class struggle, such as the IWW's idea that in building their union they were "building the new society in the shell of the old."

[Zanthorus]

It also seems that Camatte isn't unique. These kind of ideas seem to be floating around some of the fringe Bordigist currents. For example, n+1's 'Who we are':


According to Marx, communism is the whole material process of becoming. Therefore communism is not an imaginary model to be applied in the distant future, but a reality which produces its effects right now. It is not an utopia, or a philosophy among others: it is the material movement towards a superior social organization.

Communists are not those who ‘want’ communism, but those who see it already working (as an unceasing process, which makes obsolete the present socio-economical organization) and who behave accordingly.http://www.quinterna.org/lingue/english/who_we_are.htm

Their homepage also quotes the following from Marx's Grundrisse:


But within bourgeois society, the society that rests on exchange value, there arise relations of circulation as well as of production which are so many mines to explode it. (A mass of antithetical forms of the social unity, whose antithetical character can never be abolished through quiet metamorphosis. On the other hand, if we did not find concealed in society as it is the material conditions of production and the corresponding relations of exchange prerequisite for a classless society, then all attempts to explode it would be quixotic.http://www.quinterna.org/lingue/english/0_english.htm

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a poorly facilitated meeting - forever.

At least someone will bring hummous.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I'm building a model of the world I'd like to live in.
Out of toothpicks and modeling clay.
There's a little guillotine, and a little clay Zizek is the executioner.

Seriously though, after capitalism, everyone is going to live on stale pita in decrepit houses with no less than fifteen roommates.

Prefiguration and lifestylism go hand in hand like the cute hetro-looking hipsters on that stoopid "Anarchy is for lovers," t-shirt.

I have a good analysis of the shirt, but I still have yet to meet anyone wearing it that I haven't hoped would be into fucking.

[Summerspeaker]

I just finished making a snack of discarded pita bread and some horrible (yet tasty) strawberry jelly full of high-fructose corn syrup. I figure if I keep this up for a few more weeks capitalism is sure to fall.