Social anarchism

international | anarchist movement | opinion / analysis Sunday February 15, 2009 11:56 by George

Tradition of theory and practice

This text is translated from Greek, the original can be viewed at: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/12000

(translation in English is imperfect sorry)

Only if the people develop customs and values based on mutual help on the level of small teams and communities it is possible to realise - thru their connection - this practice in any other level of organisation of movements of resistance and social life. This is the essence of social anarchism.

Anarchism is a tradition of theory and practice which developed as a historical movement. Even though its development was in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, it still even today survives in a situation that is different across the place and time in which at a large scale the specific social-historical reality exists.

Of course there are many kinds of thinking and action that are named anarchist, it would be difficult though to not accept (albeit this acceptance is at the same time a choice of political meaning) that the anarchist movement had and has as guiding principles the realisation of human symbiotic and social organisation forms based on the voluntary cooperation, the individual and social autonomy and the respect of the individual and of the nature. In practice, there principles made anarchists to suggest and process politics such as:

* the replacement of national states from federations of communities and working councils,

* the replacement of capitalist - entrepreneurial capitalism and of the state property with the guidance of production and distribution of the product from its producers,

* the replacement of the patriarchical family with a liberal family and a different organisation of the household,

* the replacement of the large city and the centralised population with decentralised, ecological and balanced population and housing plans and

* the replacement of the centralised high technology with alternative technologies focused on the human and our needs, which are in conformance with direct democratic and decentralised decision making and do not destroy the social and natural environment.

These principles were developed significantly from the anarchist theory and practice, starting with the work of Bakunin and Kropotkin. They were continued from the historial anarchist movement in its dominant forms, anarchosyndicalism and anachocommunism. They are still spoken and today are found in theoretical and practical level.

Based therefore on the principles, our political identity as anarchists, and our everyday practice, has as a basic start and guiding principle the vision of a society without exploitation and dominance, the struggle for the realisation of a life less controlled (from the state apparatus) and commercialised (from the market economy). It is visible that the aims of the act are within the level of the social reality aiming for its radical metamorphosis. This fact guides the forms of action, which cannot be other than social, to get real within society, to show the social diastasis of their vehicle (anarchists), to be related to the realisations of social reality and to aim clearly on the real enemy (state and capital).

For us, therefore, the anarchist action is not limited in the frames of isolated battles of individuals every time some comrade is arrested, neither it is the same as isolated manifestations of insurrectionary action one time every few time, when social events which are created from others give this opportunity. For us anarchism must stop being simply a phase of the personal life of some "angry" adolescends, a fantasy for their middleaged teachers or a way for the "self-realisation" and the pseudoradical equivalent of group psychotherapy. Anarchism is not the happiness of destruction, is not the tsampouka, is not the magia, is not a way of life in accordance with criteria of ideological clarity. On the other way, it is an understanding for the organisation of life and the building of world who seeks - in continual changing - the practice of application.

In these frames, the central question is the spread of anarchist action in the places of social reality, there where life happens, there where real humans walk and act with their problems and their antiphases in their understandings and their behaviour. Our first aim is the creation of antagonistic against the existing custom/community where realised is the face to face communication, the direct relations and the everyday politics - in their true meaning of the word - struggle. The bulding of the communal web emerges as the best answer of resistance against the wants of capitalism. Concurrently, it is the most appropriate beginning for the toppling in the level that counters its essence (destruction of community) with the directly opposite aggressive movement (destruction of individualism - emergence of community).

Criterion of the act of anarchists cannot be, as it is in the most cases today, the trying to reassure the difference and ideological clarity, a tryin that drives to self-closing in closed practices, to the continuing omphaloscopisis and the never ending baucalism with the platonic idea of anarchy. At the other way, the practice and dynamism of these has to go towards the social action, which means the creation of movements of resistance in the places of residence (neighbourhoods, suburbs, small towns) and work-education. This local action cannot be erected on the basis of a dogmatic ideopolitical platform since at the local level the pimary role plays the social parameter, by which it means the from the things inclusion of the individual in the places of social realisation. The absence of clarity however does not have to do with the liberal understanding of the harmonious coexistence of differents. At the other hand, it serves the aim of the building and of communication of those who resist.

On a different level the enlarging ideological - political agreements, if they are about to drive towards a coherent and persuading antitalk, should be built on the basis of common understandings about issues of politics and tactics. And not, as it happens today, about individual cases and ad hoc campaigns which most times are about the support of jailed comrades. The central meeting and organisation of anarchists is necessary. It is not possible however to aim the base of solidarity towards the imprisoned and to stop there. As it is not possible to drive towards the stop of local action, with characteristics already discussed.

We return therefore to this primary idea-key. The campaign of this specific form of tactics is not due to ideological dogmatisms or the necessity of differentiation and of cutting relations. On the other, it comes from the suggestions of the anarchists for the selforganisation of movements of resistance and the autodirection of social life. For us, the revolution is a thing that either ecists HERE and NOW, either it stops being. The revolution is a word without meaning, when it gives nothing in the HERE and NOW. For us it has gave, of course, not an empty dream, but the trying of the humans that everyday get step by step their life in their hands. The trying to create groups, places and events that are based and promote clearly the autonomy, opposite the dominant customs a living polemic that is being developed from within an anasynthesis of a destroyed social web and the landing on it.

In essence, it is about a trying for the creation of a different civilisation, the trying for the recreation of a society not on the basis of power between humans, but on a basis on an opposite against, that of anarchy.

The want of autonomy, from the part of specific social groups, and the continuing battle with commercialised economy is an issue of every day. This everyday struggle - on the level of battle with the dominant, also on the level of the creation of autonomous social customs - is that it wanted to express Errico Malatesta, writing the known phrase: "in anarchy we will never go neither today nor tomorrow nor never. In anarchy we go today, tomorrow, and forever".

Only if the people develop customs and values based on mutual help on the level of small teams and communities it is possible to realise - thru their connection - this practice in any other level of organisation of movements of resistance and social life. This is the essence of social anarchism

* Published as a separate chapter in the brochure with title "selfdetermination in the city", which was pubished in Athens (Greece) in October 2000, from comrades who today are moving about the magazine "Eutopia" and the freedom centre "Pikrodafni".