A David Graeber What is Anarchism? { excerpt from Direct Action } David Graeber What is Anarchism? { Excerpt from Direct Action p 211-222 } reason I started the chapter product of those anarchist organizations, much larger movements that eventually came to be producers railing against the bigger ones. ONE as I did was because I also less were their actions planned or sponsored inspired by those ideas, and then document They had nothing to teach revolutionaries. wanted to convey something of the flavor by them; rather they almost invariably turned the political struggles, wars, revolutions, and Only the industrial proletariat, who had of anarchist debate, which has always tended out to be isolated individuals with no more projects of social reform which ensued. But absolutely no stake in the existing system, to differ from the more familiar, Marxist style ongoing ties to anarchist life than the if one looks at what those supposed found- could be a genuinely revolutionary class. in focusing more on these kind of concrete Unabomber, and usually about a roughly ing figures actually said, one finds most of Some would no doubt object that this view of questions of practice. Many have complained equivalent hold on sanity. It was rather as them did not really see themselves as creat- Marx’s thought is a bit crude and unnuanced that anarchism lacks high theory. Even those if the existence of anarchist gave lone gun- ing some great new theory. They were more and probably they’d be right. But it represents who are considered its founding figures— men something to call themselves. But the likely to see themselves as giving a name and 6 the view that soon became canonical among Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin— situation created endless moral dilemmas voice to a certain kind of insurgent common those who claimed to speak in the name of often seem more pamphleteers and moralists for anarchist writers and lecturers like Peter sense, one they assumed to be as old as history. Marxism. My purpose here is not to argue the than true philosophers, and the best-known Kropotkin or Emma Goldman. By what right While anarchism, as a movement, tended to merits of the case but to emphasize the degree anarchists of more recent times have been could an anarchist denounce an individual who be very strongly rooted in mass organizing of to which we have been viewing the entire more likely to produce witty slogans, wild kills a tyrant, no matter how disastrous the the industrial proletariat, anarchists (including anarchist project, essentially, through the eyes poetic rants, or science fiction novels than results for the larger movement? The whole those who were themselves industrial workers) of its rivals. Even more, that anarchism tends sophisticated political economy or dialectical issue was the subject of endless intense moral also tended to draw inspiration from exist- to involve a different relation of theory and analysis.5 There are thousands of Marxists debate: not only about whether such acts ing modes of practice, notably on the part practice than what came to be called ‘Marxism’. academics but very few Anarchist ones. This were (or could ever be) legitimate, but about of peasants, skilled artisans, or even, to some The latter is—for all materialist pretensions— is not because anarchism is anti-intellectual whether it was legitimate for anarchist who did degree, outlaws, hobos, vagabonds, and profoundly idealist. The history of Marxism is so much as because it does not see itself as not feel such acts were wise or even legitimate others who lived by their wits—in other words, presented to us as a history of great thinkers— fundamentally project of analysis. It is more a to publicly condemn them. It has always been those who were to some degree in control of there are Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyites, moral project. these kinds of practical, moral questions that their own lives and conditions of work, who Gramscians, Althusserians—even brutal have tended to stir anarchist passions: What is might be considered, at least to some degree, As I’ve written elsewhere (Graeber 2002, dictators like Stalin or Enver Hoxha had to direct action? What kind of tactics are beyond autonomous elements. One might say, in 2004), Marxism has tended to be a theoreti- pretend to be great philosophers, because the the pale and what sort of solidarity do we owe Marxist terms, that they were people with cal or analytical discourse about revolutionary idea was always that one starts with one man’s to those who employ them? Or: what is the some experience of non-alienated production. strategy: anarchism, an ethical discourse about profound theoretical insight and the political most democratic way to conduct a meeting? Such people had experience of life outside the revolutionary practice. The basic principles tendency follows from that. Anarchist tenden- At what point does organization stop being state or capitalist bureaucracies, salaries and of anarchism—self-organization, voluntary cies, in contrast, never trace back to a single empowering and become stifling and wage labor; they were aware such relations association, mutual aid, the opposition to all theorist’s insights—we don’t have Proudhoni- bureaucratic? For analyses of the nature of were not inevitable; quite often, they viewed forms of coercive authority—are essentially ans and Kropotkinites—but Associationalists, the commodity form or the mechanics of them as intrinsically immoral. They were moral and organizational. Individualists, Syndicalists, and Platformists. alienation, most have been content to draw often themselves more drawn to anarchism In just about every case, divisions are based on Admittedly, this flies in the face of the popular on the written work of Marxist intellectuals as an explicit political philosophy, and at least a difference of organizational philosophy and image of anarchist as bomb-throwing crazies (which are usually, themselves, drawn from in some times and places (Spanish peasants, revolutionary practice. opposed to all forms of organization—but, ideas that originally percolated through Swiss watchmakers) formed en mass base— if one examines how this reputation came a broader worker’s movement in which what’s more, those elements of the industrial How, then, do we think about a political about, it tends to reinforce my point. The anarchists were very much involved). Which proletariat that tended to find the most affinity movement in which the practice comes first period of roughly 1875 to 1925 marked the also means that, for all the bitter and often with anarchism were those who were the least and theory is essentially, secondary? peak of a certain phase of anarchist organiz- violent disagreements anarchists have had removed from other modes of life. Marx It strikes me that it might be helpful, rather ing: there were hundreds of anarchist unions, with Marxists about how to go about making himself tended to dismiss the anarchist base than starting from the word “anarchism,” to confederations, revolutionary leagues, and so a revolution, there has always been a kind of as a particularly inauspicious combination of start from the word “anarchist.” What sorts on. There was a spurt, towards the beginning, complementarily here, at least in potentia.7 “petty bourgeoisie” and “lumpen proletariat,” of people, or ideas or institutions, can this of calls for the assassination of heads of and considered the notion that they could in This is why I think it’s deceptive to write the word refer to? Generally speaking, one finds state (Anderson, 2006), it was quite brief and any way stand outside capitalism ridiculous. history of anarchism in the same way one three different ways the term can be employed. anarchist spokesmen and organized groups Capitalism, for Marx, was a totalizing system. would write the history of an intellectual First, one can refer to people who endorse quickly withdrew support from this strategy It shaped the consciousness of all those who tradition like Marxism. It is not that one can- an explicit doctrine known as “anarchism” as counterproductive. Nonetheless, following lived under it in the most intimate fashion. not tell the story of this way if one wants to. (or sometimes “anarchy”)—or perhaps more decades saw a continual stream of dramatic The kind of critiques of capitalism one saw Most books on anarchism do. They start with precisely, a certain vision of human possi- assassinations by people calling themselves an- in authors like Proudhon or Bakunin, Marx certain founding intellectual figures (Godwin, bilities. This is more or less the conventional archists. I am not aware of any actual assassin argued, were simply the voice of a petit bour- Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin), explain the radi- definition. Anarchists become the bearers of during this particular period who actually was a geois morality, the small-scale merchants and cal ideas they developed, tell the story of the an intellectual tradition: one whose history can indeed be traced back to the founding figures their best to find ways to live without it. Still, some things that would otherwise be extremely ideology anything like the traditional sense in the nineteenth century, that spread quite in the first case, an egalitarian ethos may well puzzling. For example: why what passes as of the term. Let me take one example— rapidly by the turn of the century to the remain largely inchoate. In theory, at least, anarchist theory often bears so little relation Primitivism— perhaps the most obvious outré. point where anarchist literature was being one living in an anarchistic society might be to what the majority of anarchists say and In America, Primitivist ideas first began to take avidly read in places like China and India well entirely unaware that there is any other way to do? If one were to try and understand North form in circles surrounding a journal called before Marxism or other strains of Western live; anyway, such a person will probably only American anarchism simply by reading the Fifth Estate, in Detroit, in the 1970s and revolutionary thought had made much of develop explicit anti-authoritarian attitudes theoretical or ideological statements in the 1980s.