Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 12:19:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Shawn P. Wilbur" <swilbur-AT-wcnet.org>
Subject: Re: reply to Shawn


A bit more response to Andrew. I'm tackling this stuff more or
less topically. This time around, it's mostly the debates over
definitions.

On Sun, 5 Sep 2004, andrew robinson wrote:
>
> Two, i'm going to say once again that i don't find it useful to
> call any structure with legislative and/or enforcement powers a
> "state." A definition that can't cope with differences of scale,
> of permanance, of active mandate, or of intent is probably a
> hindrance in determining what real-world anarchist organization
> might look like” (Shawn)
>
> I might take this more seriously if you’d tell me how you WOULD
> define a "state".  And therefore what it is, as an anarchist,
> that you are against.
>
I've said it already, i think, but i don't define my anarchism in
terms of opposition to "the state." States are certainly one thing
worth opposing, but there are plenty of other things - capitalism,
patriarchy, unfortunate ideas about the relationship between human
beings and the rest of the natural world, etc - that are not simply
reducible to "the state" and which i oppose as well. I'm more
attached to the positive principles of mutual aid and voluntary
association than i am to any of these oppositions.

In any event, "states," like the anarchisms which oppose it
(among other things) are products of history, which it makes more
sense to attempt to describe than "define." They have been relatively
large-scale political bodies, hierarchical in character (often
despite ideological commitments or real efforts in other directions),
and historically almost always attached to a fixed territory or
territories. States attain a "life" of their own through an alienation
of the power of their citizens.
>
> Calling two otherwise different entities states and opposing both to
> one degree or another is not a definition which "cannot cope with" the
> differences.  It simply concentrates on certain characteristics as the
> relevant ones in determining the application of this particular
> concept.

It actually doesn't take much expansion of the concept of the
state to, for example, make it possible - necessary, under the
new definition - to speak of a playground game of "four square"
as a "state." We have codified rules, competition, winners and
losers, penalties for failing to perform to standards or obey
rules, etc. If you have made this possible by expanding the
definition of "state," then you have created a situation where,
say, the USA and the four-square game as precisely and unambiguously
"the same" in regards to their state-ness. And, "as an anarchist,"
presumably i am as bound to oppose organized playground fun as i
am other forms of statism.
>
> As for your claim about "real-world anarchist organisation", well,
> excuse me for insisting on precise language!  If it involves statist
> forms, it isn't anarchist by definition, whatever other positive
> characteristics it might have.

Even this is not unambiguously true. You obviously believe that at
all times it is possible to avoid broadly-defined "statist" practices.
This may or may not be true. But "anarchism," as it has been defined
by its early theorists, and in practice, has not always and
everywhere been characterized by this sort of practical purity.

> And I have no wish to excuse the
> “imperfections” of “real world” organisations by giving up precise
> language and attaching myself uncritically to others’ ideologies and
> commitments which are distinct from my own.  Rather, it is absolutely
> crucial to retain a critical sense towards even the best movements and
> not to throw oneself into adulation by blunting words and confusing
> categories.
>
At some point, however, if your "anarchism" is about anything other
than some interesting passages in "Anti-Oedipus," it is necessary to
deal with a "real world" that isn't so easily scare-quotable, and this
question of whether the tools we bring are "blunt" or "precise" is
going to need to answer that question you so blithely pose to me:
"...for what?" I'll just put it out there that perhaps the concept
of "state" that *can* distinguish between the USA and foursquare is
less "blunt" than the one that can't.
>
> Of course, your
> goals, which do not challenge normalism at its deepest levels and
> which don’t challenge what I would call “states” if these happen to be
> local, democratic and relatively impermanent, may well be more
> “achievable” than mine, because they break less decisively with the
> ideological coordinates of the present system and because they are
> more easily conceded by the system and are thus easier to “realise”.
>  with the real world, nor does it make my commitments a “hindrance”.
> If anything, it shows your views to be a submission to dominant
> “realities” instead of a challenge to them.
>
OK, champ. It's easy to scare-quote "reality" and talk about how "deep"
and "critical" you are. But what happens when your deep insights touch
the ground? Can you propose anything more interesting than "we'll have
to let these desires collide and work themselves out"?

I'm a mutualist of sorts - hardly a "normal" position within the movement.
For me, that means holding *fewer* hard-and-fast rules about what it
means to be an anarchist. My experience of commerce and understanding of
the problem of "property" lead me to different conclusions from my
collectivist and communist comrades when it comes to issues like wages
and markets. Like the 19th century mutualists, i recognize a critical
difference between capitalism and commerce. Unlike them, i don't think
there is any market-magic that can guarantee freedom of exchange, and
so i recognize that "freedom" is also a problem and a project that we'll
have to keep working at.

(As an aside, it seems to me that the "let the flows flow" model of the
libidinal wing of poststructuralism comes very close to a naive form of
"laissez faire" - but perhaps without pushing all the way through to
confront the complex question of the relationship between freedom and
determination. It appears that Bakunin rejected "free will" in the sense
that there is any "self" apart from the flux of determined, causal
relationships that is the universe. That didn't stop him from celebrating
the kind of relative autonomy that us critters with long nerve-webs
certainly do have, and working towards the greatest extension of that
sort of freedom. I mention this for two reasons: because there is a
danger of making libidinal poststructuralism into a kind of vitalism,
and probably the wrong kind, a kind of idealism; and because these
questions of freedom-in-constraint are very much a part of the
anarchist tradition.)

Anyway, we can cut some more of the word games. Perhaps, by sneering
about "submission to dominant 'realities'," you really mean to show
you don't believe in any "real world," where cause and effect do their
thing, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. If so, then there
probably isn't much point in talking to you. That sort of anti-realism
not only fails to deal with very basic constraints - gravity, the need
of living things for sustenance, etc - but it tends to efface most of
the things that anarchism might pit itself against. Subjective idealism
is a rotten base for radical politics - and, so far, you seem to be
leaning in that direction.

I can happily talk more about what anarchism means to mean and what
might be achieved, but perhaps before i do, *you* could give us some
clue what your non-normalist version looks like in actual practice.

> “> Then by all means, give it a non-oppressive meaning and I’ll stop
> > criticising it.” (Andy)
>
> “I've already given you plenty of references for the kinds of thinking
> on "community" which appeals to me.” (Shawn)
>
> Yes, with vague ideas such as coercion – oh sorry, “enforcement” –
> which is simultaneously “voluntary”, so that somebody can at once be
> part of a group enforcing a norm and at the same time be the one on
> the receiving end of its violent implementation.  Maybe clear to you,
> but not to me.
>
Don't say you're sorry when you're just being a smart-mouthed prick. OK?
Honestly, if you don't understand that folks can exert power against
themselves and their own interests, then you haven't really looked very
closely at those books you cite so often. Foucault or Reich might be a
fine place to start rereading. Deleuze's "Societies of Control" essay
is, of course, another.

These, of course, are talking about something different than the sort
of self-restraint i've been describing in these replies, but you are
apparently having some broader conceptual difficulties, given your
comments above.
>
> Besides which, my challenge was not to give references, but to give a
> definition (since the boundaries of your concept are ill-defined).

Community is nothing more than the state of holding something in-common.
There is nothing inherently oppressive in community as such.
>
> Your claim that “community has a variety of meanings”, while true, is
> also irrelevant to my argument if all the meanings fall within a
> broadly oppressive range, differing only by degree.
>
However, it does not seem to be the case than in-commonness is in any
way necessarily connected to oppression.

The references that you dismiss all refer to the "inoperative community"
model that has been kicking around poststructuralist and related circles
for some time now. The basic notion there is that, to think "community"
in general - and to think it in a non-oppressive way - it is probably
most useful to think of what we all hold in common as something a bit
"unavowable" or at least untranslatable. We're all in this together, but
we don't know what exactly it is that forms the glue. There's more to it
than that, of course, but it should at least be obvious from that much
that it's not the sort of togetherness that makes in-group formation
very easy.

Josiah Warren's communities of "cooperation without combination"
might be an old school anarchist analogue.
>
> “Anarchism attempts to deal with the need to choose and
> differentiate by emphasizing voluntary association alongside mutual
> aid (and recognition of some basic "equity"). It doesn't pretend
> we'll just all get along, or all agree, or all hang out together in
> one big happy family.”
>
> This in fact involves two distinct claims which you confuse.  The
> second sentence seems to be the claim:
> There is no guarantee that social conflict will not happen.
>
> The first sentence involves the claim:
> There is a need for social conflict to be regulated in the form of a
> decision, or a social form, which suppresses conflict.
>
Nope. I'm not sure i'm even suggesting that social conflict needs to
be suppressed. I'm a big fan of certain kinds of social conflict. What
i am suggesting is that the anarchist tradition has had tools for
working through conflict: principles of mutual aid, voluntary association
(and disassociation), and the recognition of basic equity between people.

Looks like i still need to tackle the stuff about poststructuralism, and
some odds and ends, and then back to the EZLN and drugs.

-shawn