We so rarely think about utilizing our resources correctly. For instance, many are still stuck in the classic ‘national’ view of anarchist organizing- this means that in every city, there is supposed to be a ‘branch’ to which people can join, and the various branches then add up to a national movement, and so on. Those of us from Protestant countries can recognize just how unrelated to contemporary reality this model is.

Why don’t we propose a model completely different from this blank abstraction- instead of isolated units joining just anywhere, let’s seek places and regions where traditions and opportunities for struggle exist. This necessarily means a finer analysis is called for, instead of just saying everyone is a capitalist or proletarian, and other such superficial sloganeering. Often this kind of strategic thinking has devolved to Marxists, because Anarchists have been so marginal for quite some time. But this more Maoist concept of strategic implantation is truly a valuable one. You can see it at work with the Zapatistas, who initially had their project informed by this thinking-to find a region with a history of revolt, difficult of access to the state (deep forests or mountains), and to begin sustained political work in such a spot. From the struggles ongoing at the time of their origin, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, FMLN in El Salvador and Shining Path in Peru, it is clear that this basic strategic thinking influenced their method of operating. It is also at work with the Kurds in Rojava.

Maybe I can be a bit clearer in reference to what I mean, by thinking about some past and contemporary trends. Would it not make the most sense for radical places with traditions of struggle to become a larger center of attention? Often there is an effect of multiplication and a certain critical mass- if we are all groups of five people spread out everywhere, we have a negligible effect. But if many of us get together in a certain neighborhood, city, region or what have you, we multiply our effectiveness. But this is just the basic axiom of concentrating forces in strategic locations. And maybe this thinking is not so necessary for places with long histories of struggle and popular traditions (e.g. the Mediterranean South), but in countries where radicals are a super-minority and the modern Metropolis has fully established itself, it might be worth a serious try. Given the dual options of deepening a radical space or extending influence, with weak movements should be definitely prioritized the former before moving to the latter.

Often these things happen quite randomly- for instance, the Protestants set out to conquer the whole of Christendom, and yet their real successes were only in Northern Europe (where converts from abroad flocked to), and often were maritime cities or isolated and mountainous regions. What if we radicals are not taking over the world tomorrow, and indeed, if in many places we will be perceived as a hated minority by an increasingly totalitarian and decomposing post-modern society? What if we will look less like the inheritors of the Jacobins and Bolsheviks with their world-conquering revolutions, and much more like small rebels on the fringes of larger Empires (the Protestants from the Holy Roman, or the Greeks of the Persian). In this way, I find it worth remarking that Val de Susa today, such a headache for the Italian state, not only had its Resistance in the past, but long before these villages on the fringes of mountains adhered to the semi-Protestant heresy of the Vaudois, just as previously North Italy in general was quite receptive to Cathars and other heretics, and difficult for the Holy Roman Emperors to control. This might attest to a certain difficulty of the terrain itself that lends easily to independent ways of acting. So too, Greece in modern times has always had its klephts, and there is something difficult and fragmented about the mountainous and wild Greek landscape.

The main change would really be, instead of thinking we are going to cut off the head of the beast in one fell swoop, thinking that the detachment of pieces and decline of the modern state, will probably be as partial and prolonged as was its emergence in the centuries of ‘Early Modern Europe’. Then the point would be to establish territory and influence for ourselves and indeed, it would perhaps look something like a ‘protracted war’, although with serious ethical differences that would necessarily impact the course of such a conflict (for instance what does a protracted war imply, if there is no desire to take over the whole territory of a state, or to make a smaller state? If the goal is not statist control but pluralistic hegemony and influence- if there is not such desire to use murderous violence and to wipe out an enemy conceived as ultimate evil? etc.). The goal would immediately shift from an increasingly unreal univeralism and ‘mono’ desires (which leads to disappointment), to a pluralistic and polymorphic human geography of territories in resistance.

The goal would also have to deal with not re-creating the state and its ‘constituent’ logic. It would be much closer (as with Agamben’s ‘destitution’) to increasingly denying (obviously in increments) the operation of statist control networks in a certain territory (crucially those of police/justice/ surveillance), to rediverting or asserting control over other potentially beneficial flows (flows of transport, money and goods), and creating our own positive circuits (solidarity/green economic cooperatives and products). This method could open up the ways to connect beyond national borders, while remaining locally rooted, thus bypassing the local/global polarity that is a puzzle for much of radical thinking today.

In practical terms, it’s always worth thinking about Spain and its revolution. The famous decision the anarchists took in the summer of July 1936 (to defer to reformist politicians, not to assert their preponderant influence in Catalonia) was, in effect, in favor of the unitary national state. The anarchists were supposed to be in favor of destroying it, but in pressures of civil war and revolution, opted to preserve it. But maybe also their thinking, even among the anarchists, was not ready for a type of revolution that would totally destroy the territorial integrity of the state, and necessitate a completely new way of politics, one that thrives on lack of central control-if the colony of Morocco had been freed, but also the Basque and Catalan countries, as well as the small islands? “Spain” at that time would have been split into the sections in which it was roughly before the celebrated marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (it would have become, as it was in the Middle Ages, “the Spains”). Yet all this requires is actors willing to abandon the unitary concepts of the state and its territorial integrity, and so to accept political plurality, not controlling all of the territory of the nation-state. The final curtain call for the Leftist Republic was the disastrous 1938 offensive on the Ebro- but if they had conserved their forces in an active guerrilla defense, and made their goal a dismembered or fragmented Spain?

Now the example here is ethnic, so it is not so perfect nor indeed so applicable to West Europe, but the efforts of Kurds in Rojava, proposing a federal association for Syria, show that they have accepted they will never control all of Syria, nor for that matter, all of Turkey or Iraq. But this will put them at a strategic advantage, since all the other groups are determined to expand and control or to keep up the fiction of Syrian or Turkish unified state, whereas Rojava can be content to detach a portion from it. This too is a bit like the situation in Chiapas, even though it is not as immediately dramatic any longer.

I am saying then, what if Anarchy and radical movements in the nearterm foreseeable future, at most are only going to influence some portions of territory from modern states? Are we ready for this- and indeed, is our political imagination ready for this down-to-earth objective, instead of the abstract slogan of immediate global revolution, total luxury communism, etc.? If modern revolt will look more like the ‘splitting off’ federalism of Protestantism, or the Resistance in WW2, than the grand revolutionary pageantry of Paris and St. Petersburg? For instance, if the Greek state breaks down further would older territorial formations begin to assert themselves – the Pelopponesus, an Attic world linked to various islands and Chalkidike, with Crete and Rhodes and larger islands on their own? It is worth thinking about. So too, the regions that make up most modern states are from prior conquests or acquisitions (occasionally denoted by ‘natural’ things- rivers, mountains, and so forth). They rarely ‘naturally’ go together in any sort of coherent order. However, it should be noted that one cannot simply parachute in somewhere (however wild or isolated) and expect revolution to arrive- this was the error of Guevara in Bolivia. There also has to be some spiritual adherence of a population to a project of resistance, otherwise no amount of terrain will make up for that primary defect.

This also necessitates a re-thinking of the unitary and “mono” conceptions inherited from the Left. What if we radicals ourselves are not a single coherent entity, but a federated plurality? What if we are not in fact, the poorest of the poor, but generally middle class, and have an ethical view that does not want to control or manage the world of today? If we give up majoritarian visions, and simply want autonomy for our own life? It might mean that the Christian, and basically dualistic imagination of a paradisical ‘City of God’ to be implemented on our ‘sinful’ Earth, would be rejected in favor of many federations of the polis freeing themselves on the margin of a gigantic Empire. Would we also not find many different expressions of freedom, not just a flat and universal abstraction?

There might indeed be a sort of silver lining in this toning down of goals. For instance, is one way to avoid “Thermidor” or internal reaction in a revolution simply to have small and manageable goals? Why is it that the Protestants, if they survived a military onslaught (unlike in the Czech lands), never suffered something like the ‘capitalist restoration’ of 1989? I mean that Catholicism never returned to Holland, Prussia, or Scandinaviawhereas ‘capitalism’ or Liberalism definitely returned to the USSR, just as the Bourbon monarchy returned to France. Is it maybe that the modern concept of revolution, that involves a minority taking over a state that represents and manages a much larger group, always leads to changing goals or burn-out of that revolutionary minority, then leading to forced internal repression or its own destruction? What if indeed, the secret to avoiding infighting and Thermidor- this unsolved riddle of all the revolutions thus far- would be either to relinquish and disperse power as soon as taken, or indeed, more logically, to never have the idea to take control of the totality of the nation-state in the first place? Is not the clever way to make changes so fundamental that any restoration, even a partial one, will be forced to include them? And is not the new principle of Anarchy going to be to destroy the territorial unity of the state, and will this not be a change no restoration will ever be capable of undoing? *

One inflection point in thinking about social change lies in the English Revolution. There, this Protestant minority made a revolution and took over the state, going so far as the Civil War and to behead the King. But inevitably they had to repress their radical wing of Levellers and Diggers, damaging the common cause, and set up the talented Cromwell as their Protector. So too, when Cromwell died, the entire elaborate revolutionary system completely collapsed, and the Stuart King was welcomed back. Only the misguided policies of this dynasty, and its openly Catholic sympathies and projects, allowed William of Orange to invade the country and be welcomed with open arms. England’s revolutionary era was then closed: a moderate and tolerant Protestantism, with a constitutional monarch, became the settled system of governance.

Maybe this revolution, so different from other Protestant experiences, serves to show the problems of a minority trying to impose its ethical views on others through the state, and inevitably foreshadows later developments. There is one difference though, between the later victory of the Protestant cause in 1688, and results of 1789 and 1917. The focus on religion has meant that even though momentarily defeated, the beliefs are still cherished. The one interesting result might be in France- where the experience of 1789, has never really been forgotten and continues in a folkloric but still real way. Yet the ‘political form’ for encapsulating this modern spiritual belief has not yet been durably found. That is to say, revolution in its essence cannot really be satisfied with a constitutional monarchy, unlike Protestantism, nor can it really be content with the glaring contradictions of the dictatorship of the proletariat advocated by Marx.

Moreover, if we get rid of the unitary state, this also means we get rid of its unitary means of control-besides forces of repression, the most significant being the currency. The debate nowadays is always around false alternatives- euro or drachma- eu or exit? That is to say it is still the same modern secularized ‘mono’ viewpoint, of the one magic solution, the one final determining cause, the one true god to worship. Let’s start to oppose to the “one” of today, a total plurality. Not euro or drachma, but the euro, and drachma, and local currencies, barter and gifts, e-currency, expropriation, counterfeit money and other foreign currencies- the chaotic monetary world of a collapsed state. “Sovereign is he who controls the currency”, in my view would be quite an important adage. But if the one currency is consciously destroyed, there is no statist sovereignty, and we go back before the formation of the modern state, where there were many currencies, none of which inspired much faith. If people lose their faith in the one currency then the state will lose its dividend of faith that it currently enjoys- in truth it is just one mafia among others. Then the state loses its levers of compulsion that it currently has – planned inflation that eats away at normal incomes and purchasing power, false economic statistics, and so forth. People lose their faith in money, and business comes once more into disrepute: great! Capitalist behavior, along with the state, is dealt a lingering death blow. *

Anarchists famously focus both on God and the State. So let’s also touch on religion, another practical thing, especially as most refugees nowadays are Muslim. If anarchists don’t understand that their victory is about unleashing pluralism, not about imposing one way of life (even if theirs is the most philosophically grounded, being secular), then I don’t think we will get very far. We will just seem like leftists with an inferiority complex, wanting to take the power over a whole society, but unable or unwilling to do so. Whereas the really exciting thing would be to have no desire to take power over an entire society, but to be determined to fragment it, to allow all kinds of liberties to express themselves (even, and it has to be understood, liberties for some things we do not agree with). A portion of the society would side with us, and many portions would side with other political groupings. The task would immediately switch from a revolutionary war to assert control (which always has meant the formation of the Terror and always doomed revolutions) to revolutionary political strategies in a pluralistic (not Manichean) setting: uniting with our friends, keeping many forces neutral, finding allies and dividing our enemies.

In 1917, the Bolshevik religious policy was a continuation of the Jacobin one. The Jacobins banned the Catholic state religion, and gave civil liberty to Protestants and Jews (with these latter reforms still being kept by Bonaparte). So too the Bolsheviks, in their early phase, hit at the Orthodox Church, protected various sectarians and synagogues, and in portions of Russia also tolerated Islam. I believe Anarchy take a cue from this, but also can be a bit different and softer, especially as the situation has changed in our times. The goal is not to wipe out any religion, but to control and neutralize them all, underneath a ‘secular’ political life. In this sense the enemy is Christianity as previously (since this is still the dominant religion in Western societies), but the goal is to put it in a smaller box (in the European South, it will lose most of its ill-gotten property, its unjust privileges, have to contribute much more financially to the community, etc.), not to wipe it out, which is the task of education, propaganda and a successful society. After all, Europe has become notably less Christian since 1789, but this is far less due to ‘Red’ persecution than to the gradual course of education and critique in the past two centuries, and also the world being filled with more optimistic thinking about the value of life.

Rojava shows us a good example of pluralistic religious policy, because the political life is officially secular, even though religion is permitted. Moreover, a large campaign of the militias recently was to defend the Yazidis from ISIS. But who are the Yazidis- depending on the scholarship we consult, they seem to be either Gnostic dualists or polytheists. But basically they are not very orthodox Muslims, at any rate, and this is why ISIS was after them. But here is in action a good program of revolution, where religious minorities are protected from persecution.

Another correlate is that if the past era was one of total conflict along the lines of Manichean ‘political theology’, it now seems that everyone has agreed on the basic questions of statist dogma. This might be because the only real ethical difference today lies in a completely different stance as regards the state. But this can never take on the universalist, ‘mono’ virulence of the past, because Anarchy is splitting apart the state, not fighting to control and impose its will on everyone. The only real expressions of politics today are in conflict with the state- but such a politics, restored to its older meanings, inevitably carries with it the idea of a pluralism that is against any sort of unitary vision. *

The way to wipe out the state is to promote pluralistic territorial disintegration into many regions. The way to wipe out the Church is to promote pluralistic disintegration of monotheistic claims, with multiple religions. This would be done out of the belief of the Young Hegelians, that the Church and the State are intertwined. If you knock out the State but leave the Church strong, or vice versa, they will work to resurrect the one the other. Anarchist revolution shares its heritage with all the prior ones, even if it will be something truly new, and indeed, almost unimaginable. This means in a certain sense completing the bourgeois revolution, which in Greece (and in a general way, everywhere) never completely secularized political life, and completing the proletarian one, whose true goal is the destruction of the state. These brought into a higher synthesis is the lofty horizon before us. *

I suppose in practical terms, there could be proposed to everyone a bit of a thought exercise:

-Is a long-term (10+ years) plan of social resistance in your local Metropolis really practical and effective? If so, in what neighborhoods? Is there any university asylum or no-go area for the police? Is radical life even affordable or possible? How can gentrification be neutralized or minimized- are there economic cooperatives to keep the money flowing in for non-speculative purposes, are luxury cars getting burned, cameras being smashed, squats and struggles being made in the streets? Can you mount a popular social campaign over a long period of time, like “Free Transportation for All” in Athens?

-What regions in any particular state have histories of resistance, separatism, labor struggles, alternative lifestyle communes of the New Left or other past Utopian experiments, ethnic, religious or cultural differences and is it worthwhile and possible trying to ‘implant’ anywhere there? Is anything going on already that could be joined and influenced or reinforced- are there any environmental struggles or potentially problematic infrastructural projects?

-If you do go to a region outside the Metropolis, will you be in a really small village, a larger town, or a provincial capital? How will you keep from being isolated, or swallowed by normality? What positive things will you bring to the local community, or how in general will you fit in? Would the local community support squatting? And if not, will you buy or rent separate houses, or live all together? Will you establish a cooperative, or a political/autonomous space, and if so, how will it relate to the local community?

-What are the economic sectors of a particular state, and how do they relate to these regions where you live or might live- do they exploit some place as an agricultural hinterland, or for tourism, or landfills; is it completely underdeveloped, or is it rather quite developed? Is an area urban or rural, suburban or wilderness- and what is its role in larger economic flows? Could any product, idea or service be easily introduced, or conversely, current ones neutralized, captured or reconverted, that would give you a solid economic base?

This is not a comprehensive list, just some basic starting suggestions, since everything will have to be tailored to local conditions. But if individuals, affinity groups, and even organized or informal federations, start to think more broadly and systematically along these lines, I am confident they will see its worth and potential for organizing efforts at collective resistance given the darker and darker times we are entering.

 

p20-29, March 2017

 

The Anarcho-Tourist Review, issue 2