2022-03-03
Systems Anarchist?
Jewels one finds unpacking book boxes after a move: a lovely collection edited Joe Peacott "Against Separatism." I could be an anarchist, a "systems anarchist," but I know that to be a contradiction in terms, with its implicit organizing principles of collective behavior and evolution---essential for resilience in the face of great challenges like pandemics and climate change. But it is hard to ignore that nationalism, and all associated identitary "isms", pit us all against one another as class representatives. At the same time, pure or radical anarchic individualism easily destroys liberal society and the robust shelter it brings to individual freedom.
Liberal society, as an ideal, is anarchist in the nonradical sense that it aims to maximize individual freedom without special privilege or rules given to any class/group, but it also has to be organized around society and its collective survival. So it cannot escape the establishment of at least one class defining membership in the society: that of citizen. The challenge is how global and humane can such a class become for a given society not to disintegrate? I don't know the answer, obviously. I also know that liberal society has been very far from its ideal in curbing privilege---though still much better than any other alternative (illiberal) society we have seen. But the last century has shown that all nationalism and indeed identity politics only take liberal society further away from that nonradical anarchist ideal.
Anyway, some interesting quotes from the little book:
"The primary problem with most leftist positions is that they promote group interests over individual interests and further isolate people from each other." From Anarchists and the left, Joe Peacott
"Nationalism, like feminism, is based on the primacy of groups over individuals. Nationalists believe that 'nations' oppress other 'nations.' Anarchists, on the other hand, contend that some people oppress other people". From Anarchists and the left, Joe Peacott
"The ideal political categories of marxism prevent us from seeing the concrete individuals in our lives; instead we see the classes of which each individual is but a representative. As a consequence, we often treat the people we first encounter in everyday life, not as themselves as morally autonomous individuals with their own particular histories but as abstract class tokens with one collective history." From The Politics of Identity and Difference:
Gynocentrist vs. Polyandrogynist Visions by Peter Cariani.
"Perhaps the worst danger of nationalist strategies is that they do not eradicate the oppressive distinction on which the oppression is built. In the process of organizing along nationalist lines, it is necessary to create a strong group identity ("class consciousness"), and a strong sense of the Other." From The Politics of Identity and Difference: Gynocentrist vs. Polyandrogynist Visions by Peter Cariani.
Labels: #Anarchism, #politics, #Society
