Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory URI GORDON Pluto P Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI GGordonordon 0000 pprere iiiiii 225/9/075/9/07 113:04:293:04:29 First published 2008 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Uri Gordon 2008 The right of Uri Gordon to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Hardback ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2684 9 ISBN-10 0 7453 2684 6 Paperback ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2683 2 ISBN-10 0 7453 2683 8 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England GGordonordon 0000 pprere iivv 225/9/075/9/07 113:04:293:04:29 Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1 What Moves the Movement? Anarchism as a Political Culture 11 2 Anarchism Reloaded Network Convergence and Political Content 28 3 Power and Anarchy In/equality + In/visibility in Autonomous Politics 47 4 Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs Anarchism and Violence Revisited 78 5 Luddites, Hackers and Gardeners Anarchism and the Politics of Technology 109 6 HomeLand Anarchy and Joint Struggle in Palestine/Israel 139 7 Conclusion 163 Bibliography 165 Index 180 GGordonordon 0000 pprere v 225/9/075/9/07 113:04:293:04:29 Acknowledgements This book began its unlikely life as my doctoral project at Oxford University. My foremost gratitude is to my supervisor, Michael Freeden, who in his patient and insightful way provided invaluable perspective and a great deal of useful criticism. David Miller and Elizabeth Frazer read drafts of four of the chapters that eventually made their way into this book, and offered important suggestions. Katherine Morris, my advisor at Mansfi eld College, was also a great source of support during the diffi cult and anxious process of writing. In developing the material into this book I am grateful to have had the benefi t of comments and support from Ronald Craigh, Laurence Davis, Marianne Enckel, Benjamin Franks, Sharif Gemie, David Graeber, Andrej Grubacic, Ruth Kinna, Cindy Milstein, Alex Plows, Stephen Shukaitis, Starhawk and Stuart White. So many other friends, comrades and colleagues have contributed to the ideas expressed in this book without reading my written work that I could never mention some without doing injustice to others. If you, reader, have ever exchanged ideas with me in conversation then something of the following pages is yours, as are my heartfelt thanks and solidarity. During my research I have also enjoyed the hospitality of several autonomous spaces, whose living example of ‘anarchy in action’ will always be remembered: Can Masdeu (Barcelona), Centre Autonome (Lausanne), Cecco Rivolta (Firenze), CIA (Amsterdam), Dragonfl y (Oxford), Equinox (Manchester) Eurodusnie (Leiden), Forte Prenestino (Roma), Les Naus (Barcelona), Les Tanneries (Dijon), La Tour (Genève), Ragman’s Lane (Wye Valley), Salon Mazal (Tel Aviv) and Talamh (Lanarkshire). Earlier versions of Chapters 2 and 6 have appeared as academic articles in the Journal of Political Ideologies and in Anarchist Studies, respectively. I thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers who contributed useful comments on these versions. The editors and staff at Pluto Press have been of invaluable assistance in bringing this book to print, and my thanks goes to David Castle, Helen Griffi ths, Melanie Patrick, Stuart Tolley and Robert Webb. During work on this book I was supported by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel-Aviv University. vi GGordonordon 0000 pprere vvii 225/9/075/9/07 113:04:293:04:29 Acknowledgements vii Finally, my parents Ze’ev and Shifra, my sisters Noa and If’at, and my partner, Lucy Michaels, have been there for me throughout to offer their unconditional love and support. It is to them that I am ultimately indebted. GGordonordon 0000 pprere vviiii 225/9/075/9/07 113:04:293:04:29 In memory of my grandfathers Hayim Schneider (1918–2007) Yosef Gordon (1920–2005) GGordonordon 0000 pprere vviiiiii 225/9/075/9/07 113:04:293:04:29 Introduction Stirling, Scotland – 6 July 2005: 2 a.m. From the ‘Hori-Zone’ eco- village and protest camp, where fi ve thousand anti-G8 activists have been staying in tents for the past week, a mass exodus is in progress. The rain pours down steadily as they trek in small groups through fi elds and hills, heading for the A9. The plan: to prevent delegates and staff from arriving at the prestigious Gleneagles hotel, where the heads of the world’s eight most powerful countries meet this morning. It is still dark when police vans make their appearance at the camp’s one exit, but by now most of the activists are long gone. Minutes later, a remaining thousand or so rush out the gate, many of them in black clothes and with covered faces. In the front is a small group with a few thick pieces of wood around seven feet long. Others wear bicycle helmets, have foam padding taped on their limbs, or carry trash-can lids as shields. Two more groups have mobile walls made of infl ated tyre-liners, four in a line fastened with Gaffa tape. These are used to push back the police line, while the bloc swarms out and starts moving down the road. Passing through the nearby industrial estate, some people build a barricade on the retreat line, others collect rocks in trollies, and another group breaks off for a moment to deface a bank and a Burger King. Pushing towards the M9 motorway as the day breaks, the march evades or fi ghts its way through four more police lines, this time with more than infl ated tyres. On the way, someone sprays graffi ti on a wall: Anarchists=2 : Police=0. Back on the A9, hundreds of people are obstructing the road along a few miles, using branches and concrete slabs or staging mass sit- downs. The cops are vastly outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, dragging one group off the tarmac only to have another block the road a few hundred metres down. Then, miles away, six affi nity groups simultaneously blockade carefully-selected junctions and bridges in a ring surrounding Gleneagles, throwing the entire region into a gridlock. There is no exit from Perth and Crieff. In Muthill people lie on the ground with limbs connected through metal tubes. In Yetts o’ Muckhart they use bicycle D-locks to fasten themselves by the neck to an obstructing vehicle. At Kinkell Bridge there is a mass 1 GGordonordon 0011 iintrontro 1 225/9/075/9/07 112:18:002:18:00 2 Anarchy Alive! sit-down. The railway approach to Gleneagles has also been disabled – tracks raised off the ground with a compressor, tyres set afl ame as a warning. Two decades of accumulated experience in non-violent direct action – only a few hours to turn Perthshire into one big traffi c jam. In it, hundreds of secretaries, translators, businessmen and spin doctors are beginning one very long morning. Earlier that week, at the ‘Make Poverty History’ march in Edinburgh, a leafl et was distributed where the blockaders made plain of their cause: Make History; Shut Down the G8 The G8 have shown time and time again that they are unable to do anything but further the destruction of this world we all share. Can we really believe that the G8 will ‘Make Poverty History’ when their only response is to continue their colonial pillage of Africa through corporate privatisation? Can we expect them to tackle climate change when whether or not it is a serious problem is up for debate, as their own leaked documents show? Marching is only the fi rst step. More is needed as marches are often ignored: think back to the mega-marches against the Iraq war. The G8 need to be given a message they can’t ignore. They can’t ignore us blocking the roads to their golf course, disrupting their meeting and saying with our bodies what we believe in – a better world. However, we don’t need to ask the G8 to create a better world. We can start right now, for example, with thousands of people converging together to demonstrate practical solutions to global problems in an eco-village off the road to Gleneagles – based on co-operation and respect for the planet. Starting today we can take responsibility for our actions and the world we will inherit tomorrow. We can all make history. In case someone hasn’t noticed, anarchism is alive and kicking. The past decade or so has seen the full revival of a global anarchist movement on a scale and on levels of unity and diversity unseen since the 1930s. From anti-capitalist social centres and eco-feminist farms to community organising, blockades of international summits, daily direct actions and a mass of publications and websites – anarchy lives at the heart of the global movement that declares: ‘another world is possible’.