> Sometimes I wonder. For what a lot of anarchists and autonomists would
> call an Old Leftist, I've been pretty sympathetic to anarchism. It's a
> great antidote to the sclerotic tendencies in left thinking and
> organization. But the aversion to power and to formal organizations of
> any size really makes me wonder how anarchism can actually change the
> world in any significant way. As appealing as Hallowell's formula of
> changing the world without taking power is, I think it's a delusion. You
> can't opt out of power, though you can try to make it democratically
> accountable. You can't stay pure either. Nor can you organize a complex,
> technologically advanced economy on anarchist principles. I'm willing to
> listen to arguments to the contrary, but I'm really skeptical.
Well, the complex, technologically advanced economy known as the USA--or however broadly you want to define it these days--is unsustainable. All anarchists maintain that it is possible to organize a complex society based on anarchist ideas. I won't rehash all of those arguments here, but I will return to Brian's principled questions from several days ago. He asked me some tough questions about how research would be organized without the government. I gave him a partial answer, recommending the current interest in open sourcing scientific research. But after thinking about it, I realized that an obvious answer to Brian's questions existed right before our noses: Tsunami relief.
While governments play a significant role in the current tsunami relief efforts, it cannot be denied that there have been significant campaigns to raise money and resources for the effort by people who aren't part of any government. This is how funding is raised for research into specific diseases, such as breast cancer and muscular dystrophy research. This is one effective, working example of how people fund research by going around governments. I suspect that people might feel more compelled to donate money and resources to open research if they saw that it wasn't coupled to some government. There is plenty of suspicion out there that government research benefits bureaucrats and doesn't lead to breakthroughs. More concretely, most of us are aware of how corporations benefit and use government research with the idea that they can patent discoveries. I got into an argument one time, when I was a guest on a Seattle radio station, with a woman associated with the pharmaceutical industry, who called in and challenged my factual claims that pharmaceutical companies were profiting by privatizing government research.
Power is a much broader problem. Anarchists are opposed to seizing government or state power, which is one of the primary differences between us and the rest of the left. Anarchists want to devolve power to the local level. We understand that too much power in the hands of anybody is dangerous. We saw what happened in China and Russia when so-called "well-intentioned" communists took control of power.
But that is ancient history. Right now most of us live within the "homeland" of one of the most powerful empires in history. Taking over that power isn't an option, even via the means of electoral politics, as we were reminded of yesterday. How do we devolve that immense power? I don't have an answer to that, but I have ideas about how to proceed.
Anarchists are pretty critical of organizations, but we still create organizations all of the time. I'm busy every day trying to run one anarchist nonprofit, an "anti-government organization" (AGO), and I'm trying to get two others set up. This week I've been busy coordinating volunteers, drafting a budget, looking at finances, and worrying about stuff I don't have time to get to. This week I also was involved in the start-up of another anarchist nonprofit, which is in the embryonic stage right now, but will hopefully put a roof over the head over a bunch of people later this year. I'm also involved, like most anarchists, with a variety of informal groups and formal organizations.
Doug, if you think that anarchists don't like organizations, you are welcome to come to one of our meetings. ;-)
Chuck