Invitation to discuss what Anarchist in the OWS Movement are wanting to happen.

[1776Forever]

Anarchy in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_in_the_United_States

Anarchy in the United States is a phenomenon that existed mostly in colonial times. The historical records of it are sketchy, since historians tend to display scant interest in stateless societies.<1> Nonetheless, Murray Rothbard and other historians have identified instances of it. Among them, the coastal region of North Carolina north of the Albemarle Sound in what was then Virginia was a congregating point for those who wished to escape the control of England or the Anglican Church or even wealthier residents of Virginia until 1663. Other major regions of anarchy were located in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and the American West.

...........

I don't know if anyone wants to discuss this but I really would love to hear from people on their thoughts about Anarchist in the OWS movement. There seem to be a lot of young people who are interested in this and I don't know much about it and I must admit that I am very curious on how it would work. I prefer to think that it would be able to be a chance to form a 3rd Party. That may be too optimistic right now but one never knows where it might go. Thoughts?

:hi:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Several people have expressed that Black Blocs will show up

Sort of surprised we have not seen more of them at the encampments yet

[1776Forever]

3. Thanks for the reply - I had never heard of Black Blocs - Found out .......

http://www.infoshop.org/page/Black-Blocs-for-Dummies

Black Blocs for Dummies.....

Black blocs have been in the news often in recent years as militant protests grow against capitalism, the state, and war. This series of web pages attempts to explain what black blocs are, who does them, their history, and how to do organize one. There are also many misconceptions out there about black blocs, which we will try to address.

A black bloc is a collection of anarchists and anarchist affinity groups that organize together for a particular protest action.The flavor of the blackbloc changes from action to action, but the main goals are to provide solidarity in the face of a repressive police state and to convey an anarchist critique of whatever is being protested that day.

[stuckinarut]

2. In theory, it sounds great.

Traditional anarchism to my understanding maintains that property can only be owned if a person actively uses, maintains and defends it themselves. Such as for personal use. In traditional anarchism, there would be no hierarchy in any social structures including in the workplace or more importantly landlord-ism. This is important because a state must exist to protect the land of the landlord since he is not in physical possession of it. Again, you can't benefit from what you don't actively use/manipulate yourself. With no courts or legal system, there would be no evictions, no police to evict...

Anarcho-Syndicalism, maintains that within this system, the means of production would be controlled by those individuals with their hands on the lever of production, democratically. Basically a consensus process for everything. Direct democracy.

If you want to know more about these things, Chomsky is a great place to start, but more notably "God and the State" by Mikhail Bakunin is an essential read if you can get your hands on a copy. (prob. available online)

Sorry, your post piqued my interest.

3..2..1..Till it's locked for being too radical.

[1776Forever]

5. Thanks for the reply - I do know a lot of people seem to favor Chomsky - I will read more on it.

I didn't mean to be radical - Just wanting to learn more. I have learned a lot from DU members. They is a wealth of information here.

[white_wolf]

12. Zinn is also good and an anarchist.

If you want to read the "classical" anarchists I'd suggest Proudhorn,Baulkin. Granted Proudhorn's specific type of anarchism, Mutualism has fallen out of favor with most anarchist today, but he is still influential. I also must recommend Marx, if you haven't read some of his works.

[1776Forever]

14. You knowledge is appreciated. I am always eager to learn more. Thank you:) n/t

[MedleyMisty]

4. Wow, my state has an anarchist bit of history? Freaking awesome!

I'm not into ideology, so I don't believe in any particular form of anarchism. I do like the general idea though. However!

I think it requires a certain level of consciousness from people, and much of the species has not reached that level. A lot of humans still need leaders and rules and punishments and external structure.

And I'm really tired, so I'm going to stop there but I will be back to the thread tomorrow to elaborate, and to consider the possibilities of somehow incorporating the needs of people who function at a ego level where they need external authorities into an anarchist society.

Which one could argue that once you get one going for long enough, that shouldn't be a problem as it would be the external structure that people were born into and raised in.

I don't know. I'm so sleep-deprived that I know I'm not making any sense to anyone outside my head. Back later.

[1776Forever]

6. Oh I like your thoughts - Yes I can see that there is a certain level of acceptance in this that I

agree most don't have at this time. I also agree with you that environment and culture certainly would be a major factor. Please come back and give us more of your thoughts!

[Danse]

7. Anarchists

The Iroquois Confederacy was the largest anarchist experiment in "American" history.

OWS is actually based on anarchist principles. Non-hierarchy, consensus/direct democracy, cooperation, direct action, egalitarianism.

One of the movement's founders is an anarchist anthropologist named David Graeber. Business week recently published an article entitled "David Graeber, the Anti-Leader of Occupy Wall Street"

"While there were weeks of planning yet to go, the important battle had been won. The show would be run by horizontals, and the choices that would follow—the decision not to have leaders or even designated police liaisons, the daily GAs and myriad working-group meetings that still form the heart of the protests in Zuccotti Park—all flowed from that."

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/david-graeber-the-antileader-of-occupy-wall-street-10262011.html

Anarchists are a diverse lot, so it's difficult to lay out exactly what "anarchists want." One thing I can say is that, despite their reputation, many anarchists are highly practical. Thus, while it is recognized that the state is a violent, coercive institution, it is also recognized that the state is more democratic than private power aka corporations. Chomsky advocates a practice of "expanding the floor of the cage" -- protecting state institutions that lead to greater freedom, yet with the ultimate goal of radically changing the structure of government itself.

Anarchism is more a tendency than a fixed ideology. The goal is to dismantle unjust and unnecessary systems of hierarchy and domination. To quote Noam again, "Anarchism is the closest you can get to real democracy".

The Black Bloc kids are just misguided youth and provocateurs.

If you're interested in learning more, the best online resource is The Anarchist FAQ.

[1776Forever]

8. Wow your post was enlightening for sure. This is what I was looking for! It is a base that I can

build from. I like the analysis of the diversity and now I can wrap my brain around it as being something that isn't "scary" but just different. As the previous poster had said it is not something that can be grasped easily due to cultural/environmental conditioning. Thanks!

Found this - Can't wait to read it:

Modern History Sourcebook:
The Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/iroquois.asp

[Danse]

9. My pleasure

One thing I disagree with is the 100% consensus model. It is causing problems in New York (drummers) and LA (pot smokers). All it takes is one informant to derail the process. Occupiers should be pushing for 80 or 90% consensus. There is too much diversity here for the 100% consensus model to work. If an impasse is reached, dissenters should start a new occupation elsewhere rather than bringing down the whole camp.

[coalition_unwilling]

11. Graeber wrote a wonderful article, first published in Naked Capitalism,

then republished in Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/20/1028539/-On-Playing-by-the-Rules:-The-Strange-Success-of-#OccupyWallStreet

That article and an article by Chris Hedges were highly influential in causing me to take a good, hard look at Occupy Wall Street and to come out strongly supportive of it.

[1776Forever]

13. Very good read! I really got a lot out of that - this is what I feel encapsulates the definition of

what Graeber defines as his definition of what Anarchy means to him in the OWS Movement structure:

"...I like to describe myself precisely as a “small-a anarchist.” That is, I believe in anarchist principles—mutual aid, direct action, the idea building the new, free society in the shell of the old—but I’ve never felt a need to declare allegiance to any particular anarchist school (Syndicalists, Platformists, etc). Above all, I am happy to work with anyone, whatever they call themselves, willing to work on anarchist principles—which in America today, has largely come to mean, a refusal to work with or through the government or other institutions which ultimately rely on the threat of force, and a dedication to horizontal democracy, to treating each other as we believe free men and women in a genuinely free society would treat each other. Even the commitment to direct action, so often confused with breaking windows or the like, really refers to the refusal of any politics of protest, that merely appeals to the authorities to behave differently, and the determination instead to act for oneself, and to do what one thinks is right, regardless of law and authority. Gandhi’s salt march, for example, is a classic example of direct action. So was squatting Zuccotti Park. It’s a public space; we were the public; the public shouldn’t have to ask permission to engage in peaceful political assembly in its own park; so we didn’t. By doing so we not only acted in the way we felt was right, we aimed to set an example to others: to begin to reclaim communal resources that have been appropriated for purposes of private profit to once again serve for communal use—as in a truly free society, they would be—and to set an example of what genuine communal use might actually be like. For those who desire to create a society based on the principle of human freedom, direct action is simply the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free."

[white_wolf]

10. K&R. Not an anarchist, but a Marxist, but we are all comrades.

I'll be interested to see where this thread goes. I'm a big fan of the I.W.W., by the way, which have anarchist tendencies

[Tuesday Afternoon]

15. bkmrking to read more later --

interesting stuff in here. thanks for starting the thread.

[malthaussen]

16. Can we call 18th century anarchists

... "anarchists" at all, since anarchism as political theory emerged later?

Couple of thoughts:

The Republicans in the Spanish Civil War were largely composed of anarchists, but the Communists eventually dominated the government because they were better organized. My knowledge of this subject is not vast, but I believe that Spain was the only government that actually tried to incorporate anarchists. Paradoxical as that may seem.

Anarchism didn't have a lot of play in the US, although in the early years of the 20th century, before the emergence of the Russian Revolution, anarchists were treated by the PTB with the same amount of fear and loathing later awarded the Commies. There is an interesting sidebar about anarchists in a baseball book, Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy, which is about much more than baseball and very entertaining if you like social history.

Robert Heinlein was something of an anarchist, although he has been co-opted by the libertarians, which probably has him spinning in his grave. You might want to read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress if you like that sort of thing, Heinlein has some interesting takes on anarchism in it.

Reds and Blacks are frequently considered to be necessary enemies, depending upon how ideologically "pure" the individual is. Their disputes can get very messy -- again, look to the history of Spain in the 1930s.

-- Mal

[Danse]

17. Spain

"The Republicans in the Spanish Civil War were largely composed of anarchists, but the Communists eventually dominated the government because they were better organized. My knowledge of this subject is not vast, but I believe that Spain was the only government that actually tried to incorporate anarchists. Paradoxical as that may seem."

The Communists were not better organized, but they were certainly better armed. Widespread massacres of anarchists occurred after Stalin supplied the communists with extensive arms. Meanwhile, Roosevelt defied his own non-intervention policy by allowing American oil companies to supply Franco, whom he referred to as a "sincere friend". All of the major power blocks opposed the Spanish anarchists, for obvious reasons. They didn't stand a chance.

My personal opinion is that anarchist experiments will invariably be crushed unless they became federated on a large, even international scale. Not an easy task, to say the least.

[white_wolf]

18. Heinlein? Are you sure? His government in Starship Troopers seemed very fascist.

Was he really an anarchist?

[malthaussen]

19. Heinlein is a fun topic

In fact, there is a website devoted to dissecting him retroactively, populated by some seriously heavyweight intellectuals. Frankly, I took one sniff and bailed, particularly since I don't much see the point of trying to figure out what a dead man "really thought."

His attitudes changed a bit over time, and he also was perfectly comfortable with taking up more than one side of an issue. As far as Starship Troopers goes, he was floating the idea of the franchise being exercised only by those who served their country, in one of many capacities. Since he was writing an adventure story, the protagonist was in military service, but it could have been in another form. (Been a long time since I've read it) I never saw the movie, but I'm told it is quite fascistic (is that a word?) in nature. However, RAH wrote the book as a direct response to call for suspension of nuclear testing, and thus was probably being a bit over-the-top for purposes of effect.

You can find evidence for Heinlein being just about anything, including a Randite. But in most of his books, there is a definite strain of anarchy (not anarchism, although Prof de la Paz in Mistress identifies himself as a "rational anarchist."). Many people see great differences between Mistress and the earlier Stranger in a Strange Land, but I think they actually express a pretty consistent outlook on ethics and participation in society. What makes the former interesting in the context of anarchism is how he creates the society of Luna, and the efforts made by Prof de la Paz (who is usually seen as RAH's personal mouthpiece) to form a government that was more anarchistic than anything else.

Heinlein had a rather glorified image of frontier and pioneer life, and in many of his books he creates frontier societies that are quite egalitarian and anarchistic in nature. He also has one of his characters observe that "Any time a planet gets so big it needs ID cards, it's time to leave." The one strain I find running consistently throughout much of his work (and I've read most of his opera) is the idea of basically family/clan-oriented cooperative societies with as little restriction imposed from above as possible. Which is why the Libertarians love him. But what RAH has that the Libertarians do not is a fundamental belief in the obligations of the individual to others which serves as a governor on the excesses of the individual. This deep sense of duty is one of the things he put into Starship Troopers, and by all accounts he really believed it and lived it, rather than paying lip service to it.

And all of this is probably TMI, but I hope it answers your question.

-- Mal

[Ichingcarpenter]

20. Tolstoy was an anarchist

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi< and Martin Luther King, [br />

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy




Christian anarchists are pacifists and oppose the use of violence, such as war. The foundation of Christian anarchism is a rejection of violence, with Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You regarded as a key text. Christian anarchists denounce the state as they claim it is violent, deceitful and, when glorified, a form of idolatry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_anarchism


I think that you need to be consciously aware to understand anarchist.s philosophy
I like many parts of the philosophy.

[1776Forever]

21. Thank you for the information - This shows there are many facets of anarchy that I had no idea of.

I am anxious now to learn more. I agree that there are parts of it that appeal to me also.

:hi: