Anarchism

Anarchism, which was once thought to have passed with the 19th century, has made a resurgence in recent years. Particularly since the fall of the Berlin Wall, progressive activists have turned increasingly toward anarchism for a framework within which to understand and orient their work. From Seattle to Genoa, anarchism has once again found support among organizers. Nineteenth-century anarchists are being read anew, and recently the theoretical tradition of anarchism is being expanded by writers and thinkers who see themselves either as anarchists or inspired by anarchism.

There is good reason to return to anarchism, particularly in the wake of the experience of the 20th century. The main theoretical alternative to anarchism as a framework for progressive thought, Marxism, was derailed during the last century, giving rise to social and political systems that were a betrayal of progressive hopes. Whether or not the totalitarianism associated with Marxist states was or was not in keeping with Karl Marx's writings is a vexing theoretical question. In any case, anarchists of the 19th century, criticizing Marx, predicted with uncanny accuracy the problems that beset Marxist states in the 20th century.

What distinguishes anarchism from Marxism, a distinction that both drives the mutual suspicion between them and that makes anarchism relevant for us today, is anarchism's embrace of radical equality and its consequent rejection of an avant-garde party. For anarchism, all social change must happen on the basis of recognition of the equality of participants in that change. There is no distinction to be drawn between those who lead and those who follow, between those who have knowledge and those who trust them, or between party members and nonmembers. To believe in these distinctions is to fail to grasp the fundamental problem besetting almost all previous existing social orders, that of hierarchy. Whereas for Marx the issue to be overcome in capitalism is exploitation, for anarchists it is domination.

There is more to this difference than the substitution of one term for another. For Marx, exploitation occurs in a specific sector of society; exploitation is an economic phenomenon. Recall Marx's concept of exploitation: It is the extraction of surplus value from the workers. Surplus value, in turn, represents the amount of labor performed by the workers that is not returned to them by the capitalist. Other areas of society may well foster or reinforce exploitation, but it is [Page 103]exploitation itself that is the lynchpin of Marx's analysis of capitalism.

This has two consequences. First, all social change, if it is to be effective, must focus on the economic relations between the capitalist and the worker. Marx was the first thinker to claim, in effect, that “it's the economy, stupid.” Second, if the economy is to be the central focus of social change, then it is best for those who know how the economy works and how to change it to lead the struggle, hence the emergence of the avant-garde party in Marxist political tradition.

The anarchist concept of domination is different from that of exploitation, and not because it points elsewhere than the economy. It is, in fact, a different kind of concept. Whereas exploitation points to a specific social sector, domination does not. Domination occurs wherever there is hierarchy, wherever one person or group holds sway over another in a way that forces the latter to do the bidding of the former. There is domination in gender relationships, in racial relationships, around the issue of sexual orientation, in political movements, and elsewhere. Although some hierarchies may be more deleterious or have wider ramifications than others, domination in all its forms is to be resisted. There is no privileged point of focus, as there is with the concept of exploitation.

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