Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 01:02:17 -0800 (PST)
From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] Moore: "Maximalist Anarchism / Anarchist Maximalism"


Despite the strange assertion by Booth in the previous
post that Zerzan is a crypto-postmodernist, it looks
like his English equivalent John Moore actually is
somewhat sympathetic to poststructuralist critique...


***

John Moore: Maximalist Anarchism/Anarchist Maximalism

http://www.tao.ca/~lemming/johnmoore/maximalist.htm

In pre-revolutionary Russia, the Socialist
Revolutionaries divided into two factions, the
radicals and the moderates. The former were known as
the Maximalists, the latter as the Minimalists. I want
to appropriate this terminology in order to identify
two general tendencies within contemporary anarchism.
My intention is not to add to the 57 varieties of
existing anarchism. Anarchism already encompasses a
broad spectrum of positions: individualist, communist,
mutualist, collectivist, primitivist and so on. The
focus of this essay is not on the variations and
shifts in emphasis which result in the differentiation
of these positions. Rather, the aim remains to aid
clarity, to provide an interpretive grid, a map which
will allow individuals to make sense of the field of
anarchism and situate themselves within it.

Maximalist anarchism encompasses those forms of
anarchism which aim at the exponential exposure,
challenging and abolition of power. Such a project
involves a comprehensive questioning of the totality -
the totality of power relations and the ensemble of
control structures which embody those relations - or
what, for shorthand purposes, I call the control
complex. Power is not seen as located in any single
institution such as patriarchy or the state, but as
pervasive in everyday life. The focus of maximalism
thus remains the dismantlement of the control complex,
of the totality, of life structured by governance and
coercion, of power itself in all its multiple forms.

Given power's pervasiveness and its capacity to
insinuate itself into all manner of relations and
situations (even the most intimate and apparently
depoliticised), the maximalist stance involves a
relentless interrogation of every aspect of daily
life. Everything is open to question and challenge.
Nothing is off limits for investigation and revision.
Power, in all its overt and subtle forms, must be
rooted out if life is to become free. Maximalism
remains ruthlessly iconoclastic, not least when coming
into contact with those icons that are vestiges of
classical anarchism or earlier modes of radicalism
(e.g., work, workerism, history) or those icons
characteristic of contemporary anarchism (e.g., the
primitive, community, desire and - above all -
nature). Nothing is sacred, least of all the
fetishised, reified shibboleths of anarchism.
Maximalism entails a renewal and extension of the
Nietzschean project of a transvaluation of all values
in order to open possibilities for new ways of
thought, perception, behaviour, action and ways of
life, in short anarchist epistemologies and
ontologies.

In contrast, minimalist anarchism encompasses those
forms of anarchism which have not made the
post-Situationist quantum leap toward the maximalist
positions outlined above. From the revolutionary
perspective of maximalism, minimalist anarchism
appears reformist, unable or unwilling to make the
break with the control complex in its entirety, or
inadequate to the project of freely creating life
through the eradication of all forms of power, and
thus doomed to failure. Maximalism remains radical in
the etymological sense of getting to the root of
problems, while minimalism remains prepared to
accommodate itself to those forms of power it finds
convenient or unwilling to confront. Minimalism
remains stalled in the nostalgic politics of 'if
only...', whereas maximalism proceeds to the
anti-politics of the very science fictional question
of 'What if ...?'

The urgent priority of maximalism constitutes the
development and implementation of an anarchist
psychology. Other dimensions of the anarchist project
remain subsidiary to this aim. Abandoning the baggage
of Enlightenment rationality, maximalism needs to
recognise that human beings are first and foremost
creatures of passion and irrationality, and only
secondarily reasonable beings. Central to the
emancipation of life from governance and control
remains the exploration of desire and the free, joyful
pursuit of individual lines of interest. But in the
world defined and determined by the control complex,
desire and interest are deformed, limited and
channelled into forms which maximise profit and social
control.

In order to combat this process, maximalists need to
be able to answer Perlman's fundamental question: Why
do people desire their own oppression? This is
essentially a psychological question, concerned with
the issue of deciphering hidden (or unconscious)
motivations -- motives hidden by, for and from oneself
and others by power. The flipside of this question is
equally significant: What makes some individuals into
anarchists or radical anti-authoritarians? Anarchism
will not proceed in any substantial fashion until
these issues are addressed. And as these issues are
psychological in nature, the project of developing a
distinctively anarchist psychology remains primary.
Maximalism needs to foster psychological understanding
of the mechanisms of oppression and liberation in
order that the process of human (and concomitantly
ecological) regeneration can gather pace. There are
precedents for this project in the
anarcho-psychological critique of Stirner, Nietzsche
and Dostoevsky sketched by John Carroll in Break-Out
from the Crystal Palace, and continued - not as
Carroll thinks, by Freud - but by the anarchist
psychoanalyst Otto Gross. This tradition needs to be
renewed and reformulated to address the intensified
and integrated forms of control that have emerged in
contemporary techno-managerialist mass society.
Suggestive as the ideas of Freudian Marxists might be
in this context, it would be well to remember that
both Freudianism and Marxism are managerialist
ideologies and thus completely at odds with the
anti-ideological struggles of maximalist anarchism.

Maximalism can only make progress if it recognises the
inutility of political and political philosophy
discourses as a way of articulating and communicating
anarchist concerns. Politics, 'the science and art of
government,' has little or nothing to do with the
anti-politics of liberating life from the control
complex. Political discourse has at best a very
limited role to play in this project. In light of the
above discussion of psychological issues, it becomes
apparent that maximalism needs to make use of the
discourses and practices of the arts if it is to reach
out and communicate with people. In the process, art
itself will be transformed - realised and superseded,
in Situationist terms - into something completely
different than its current alienated, commodified
condition. The rationalist discourse of Enlightenment
political philosophy can only hope to address the
rational faculties. For many people, these remain
undeveloped, blocked or coded as off-limits, and thus
communication at this level remains stymied and
ineffectual. Anyway, as indicated earlier, such
faculties remain of superficial or limited interest in
the process of creating free life. If anarchism is to
touch people then it must reach into their
unconscious, and activate their repressed desires for
freedom. This is not at all the same process as the
psychological manipulation of unconscious desires,
fears and anxieties as in fascism, but an opening up
of avenues of authentic communication and a prompting
of individuals to recognise and acknowledge their own
desires through the Nietzschean process of
self-overcoming. In other words, it involves a
life-affirmative existential assertion of one's self
and desires over and against social programming which
inculcates obedience to the codes and routines of the
control complex. The arts, due to their capacity to
bypass inhibitions and connect with or even liberate
unconscious concerns and desires, thus remain far more
appropriate than political discourse as a means of
promoting and expressing the development of autonomy
and anti-authoritarian rebellion.

A key focus of anti-totality struggle remains
forthright analysis of and combat directed against
micro-fascism. Rolando Perez's On An(archy) and
Schizoanalysis is an excellent and accessible
introduction to this crucial area of struggle. Fascist
and other totalitarian systems - including the liberal
totalitarianism of democratic capitalism - are based
on the micro-fascisms which structure, shape and
inform everyday life in the control complex. Given
that maximalism entails an exponential eradication of
all mechanisms and forms of power from the largest
through to the most intimate and mundane, the focus on
micro-fascism remains far more fundamental than those
relatively superficial anti-fascist struggles where
fascism is merely understood as an organised political
movement. Maximalist anarchism remains resolutely
anti-political, anti-ideological, anti-systemic and
anti-authoritarian. In its struggle against
micro-fascism, it remains anti-capitalist,
anti-communist, anti-socialist (in both its twin forms
of national and international socialism), and
anti-fascist, but above all revolutionary.

On the constructive, life-affirmative side, maximalism
remains committed to direct action, the insurrectional
project, and hence - given its rejection of all forms
of power, authority and order - illegalism. Nothing
less than an all-out assault on every front of the
control complex remains necessary. Maximalism means a
renewal and extension of the individualist anarchist
project of war on society to encompass the entirety of
the control complex. Everyday life remains the site of
conflict, but every aspect of daily life needs
re-evaluating from an anarchist perspective (which
does not mean that every aspect of daily life and
interactions will necessarily be changed, but it does
mean that every aspect needs to come under scrutiny).
But maximalism also involves the posing of
alternatives. Maximalism might be defined as
imagination and desire unleashed. Moving beyond
politics, maximalism means conducting experiments,
freely chosen in line with desire, imagination and
interest, in all areas of everyday life, including
language, modes of thought, perception, behaviour,
relationships, action and interaction. Anarchist
maximalism is the optimal means to create our own
lives free of the controls exercised by power,
authority and order.


Published in Social Anarchism #25, 1998




===="“It does not matter how many people chose moral duty over the rationality of self-preservation - what does matter is that some did. Evil is not all-powerful. It can be resisted. The testimony of the few who did resist shatters the authority of the logic of self-preservation. It shows it for what it is in the end - a choice." 

- Zygmunt Bauman, 'Modernity and the Holocaust'

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