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Reinventing the Rose of Fire: Anarchism and the Movements Against Corporate Globalization in Barcelona

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Reinventing the Rose of Fire: Anarchism and the Movements Against Corporate Globalization in Barcelona HAOL, Núm. 21 (Invierno, 2010), 143-155 ISSN 1696-2060 REINVENTING THE ROSE OF FIRE: ANARCHISM AND THE MOVEMENTS AGAINST CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION IN BARCELONA Jeffrey Juris Northeastern University, United States of America. E-mail: [email protected] Recibido: 21 Julio 2009 / Revisado: 15 Septiembre 2009 / Aceptado: 2 Octubre 2009 / Publicación Online: 15 Febrero 2010 Abstract: This article explores the intersections movement-related activities, including meetings, between classic anarchist praxis and political forums and debates, as well as parties contemporary anti-corporate globalization and concerts. As we talked, Pascual pointed out activism in Barcelona. It engages in a that beyond the recent upsurge in squatting, sympathetic debate with two key literatures, Barcelona has a long history of anarchist pushing my argument in contrasting, yet ateneos populares, community spaces during the ultimately related directions. I differ with early 1900s that housed debates and forums accounts that emphasize an identity, arguing around issues such as women’s rights, instead that anti-corporate globalization vegetarianism, and free love, as well as a variety movements involve a confluence between of cultural events.2 Pascual viewed such anarchist principles and emerging networking anarchist projects as a model for present-day logics associated with late capitalism. Given this organizing. When I asked him why, he affinity, anarchism is one among several related resolutely exclaimed, “I’m an anarchist! We positions radicals adopt in particular contexts. have to create our own institutions. If the anti- Indeed, radical identities reflect a growing globalization movement can do that we’ll be emphasis on multiplicity, openness, and unstoppable!” flexibility. Attention to such specificities is important for analytical and strategic reasons. As many observers have noted, anti-corporate Keywords: Anarchism, Barcelona, corporate globalization movements, particularly in Europe globalization, late capitalism. and North America, have been characterized by ______________________ a resurgence of anarchist thought and practice.3 Since the first Peoples Global Action (PGA) ate one evening toward the end of inspired Global Days of Action, including the September 2001, I was sharing drinks Carnival against Capitalism on June 18, 1999 or Land tapas with Pascual, a friend from the the protests against the World Trade (ex-) Movement for Global Resistance (MRG) Organization (WTO) in Seattle that November, in Barcelona.1 We had just finished an intense radical movement sectors have emphasized summer of anti-capitalist protest, including anarchist principles such as decentralized increasingly confrontational mobilizations coordination, non-hierarchical organization, against the European Union (EU) in Gothenburg consensus decision-making, and direct action. (May), World Bank in Barcelona (June), and G8 This has been particularly evident in Barcelona, in Genoa (July). Radicals were now beginning a city with a strong culture of opposition forged to discuss how to translate this counter-summit through decades of nationalist and anti-Franco activism into sustained movement building, struggle and a powerful anarchist legacy. while reinforcing their struggles at the local Indeed, anti-corporate globalization activists in level. One strategy was to build new self- Barcelona, dubbed the “Rose of Fire” during the managed social centers, squatted or otherwise, anarchist bombings in the 1890s, often point to in neighborhoods throughout the city. This the city’s anarchist past as a major influence. would expand the critical spaces housing However, unlike Pascual, many do not identify © Historia Actual Online 2010 143 Reinventing the Rose of Fire Jeffrey Juris as anarchist in the strict sense. Rather, conceiving freedom: liberal individualist and anarchism forms part of a wider movement socialist communitarian.6 The first stresses culture shaped by the interaction between personal liberty and self-expression, the latter traditional patterns of opposition and an collective self-management in the spheres of emerging cultural logic of networking. economics, politics, and society. The individualist branch is evident in the writing of This article explores the intersections between Max Stirner, who did not identify as an classic anarchist praxis and contemporary anti- anarchist, yet has been widely influential within corporate globalization activism in Barcelona. It the libertarian tradition given his defense of the engages in a sympathetic debate with two key self in the face of oppressive institutions such as literatures, pushing my argument in contrasting, religion and the state. The second branch is yet ultimately related directions. First, in often associated Peter Kropotkin, who believed conversation with José Alvarez-Junco’s work on that people have a natural proclivity toward the “two anarchisms” in Spain,4 I suggest that collective self-management in the absence of anti-corporate globalization movements in hierarchical institutions. Although figures such Catalonia not only reflect traditional anarchist as Bakunin attempted to reconcile these principles, these are distinctly communitarian. tendencies, particular anarchist traditions tend to Second, I also contribute to recent discussions emphasize one or the other. regarding the links between anarchism and anti- corporate globalization among politically Alvarez-Junco associates communalist engaged scholars. Here I differ with accounts anarchism with an older “Spanish” model, and that emphasize an identity, arguing instead that the individualist tradition with a more recent anti-corporate globalization movements involve “European” artistic-intellectual trend, Anglo- a confluence between anarchist principles and Saxon in origin and brought into France and emerging networking logics associated with late Spain with the student movements of the 1960s. capitalism. Given this affinity, anarchism is one Whereas the former was mass based, morally among several related positions radicals adopt in austere, and characterized by a modernist faith particular contexts. Indeed, radical identities in science and the liberatory potential of the reflect a growing emphasis on multiplicity, working class, the latter tended toward elitism, openness, and flexibility. Attention to such hedonist ethics, the critique of reason, and specificities is important for analytical and individualist action. Mirroring Bookchin’s strategic reasons. critique of “lifestyle anarchism,”7 Alvarez-Junco thus contends, “The problem with this ethical This article is primarily based on fourteen and aesthetic critique of bourgeois life is that months of ethnographic research among MRG- revolutionary action, struggle, and rebellion are based activists in Barcelona from June 2001 to completely disconnected from the doctrine or September 2002.5 I begin with a discussion of objective being fought for, becoming important classic anarchism and traditional cultures of and attractive in themselves.”8 Contemporary opposition in Catalonia, and then explore the individualist anarchism represents a complete links between anarchism and emerging break with the communalist anarchism of the networking logics in the contemporary period. past, as Alvarez-Junco points out with respect to Next, I consider how anarchist principles are the reemergence of the National Labor expressed within concrete organizational and Confederation (CNT) after the death of Franco: technological practice among anti-corporate In 1976, the anarchists held a couple of massive, activists in Barcelona. I then move on to an fervid assemblies and there were those who analysis of emerging political identities and thought that anarchist Spain was indeed eternal. visions, including the rise of a new anti- What those fleeting explosions demonstrated capitalism influenced by anarchism, yet was not the continuity but rather the distance emphasizing ideological openness, diversity, separating 1936 from 1976. The old CNT trade and flexibility. In the conclusion, I consider unionists found themselves face to face with some of the broader implications of this young, irreverent ácratas (libertarians), who analysis. were less interested in trade unionism than in “happenings,” personal freedom, and 1. THE TWO ANARCHISMS transgressing social taboos- whether by free love, drugs, or outlandish aesthetic According to José Alvarez-Junco, anarchism has provocations. The elders replied in puritanical traditionally been characterized by two ways of tones, unable to comprehend this new 144 © Historia Actual Online 2010 Jeffrey Juris Reinventing the Rose of Fire phenomenon.9 Of course, Alvarez-Junco is critique of hierarchy, decentralization, and describing the Spanish context three decades grassroots participation, helped forge, along ago. It is not my intention here to quarrel over with the unifying force of Catalan nationalism, a his characterization of the resurgent anarchist unique culture of opposition in Catalonia, movement in Spain during the 1970s, although providing fertile terrain for the emergence of one detects a tone of hostile exaggeration. Nor contemporary networking logics.12 am I arguing for a complete continuity between classic anarchism prior to the Civil War and the In this sense, although the Communist CCOO anarchist currents that emerged following the was at the forefront of the opposition to Franco, transition. Indeed, in Catalonia the CNT was it promoted open, loose-knit, and participatory crushed during the
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