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The Rebirth of Anarchism in North America, 1957-2007 HAOL, Núm. 21 (Invierno, 2010), 123-131 ISSN 1696-2060 THE REBIRTH OF ANARCHISM IN NORTH AMERICA, 1957-2007 David Graeber University of London, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected] Recibido: 1 Julio 2009 / Revisado: 29 Julio 2009 / Aceptado: 5 Septiembre 2009 / Publicación Online: 15 Febrero 2010 Abstract: Anarchism has undergone a broad organization, voluntary association, direct renewal in the US and Canada in recent action, and mutual aid. The centrality of decades, flowering most spectacularly in the anarchism in this sense only really became alter-globalization movement in the years after fully apparent to those on the radical Left in the protests against the WTO ministerial in North America in the early days of the global Seattle in November 1999. At the time, the justice movement from 1999-2001, but by movement seemed to outsiders to have spring now—as increasingly in other parts of the out of nowhere. In fact, it was the product of a world as well—it has become impossible to long development of transformation where deny. movements of the ‘60s confronted internal dilemmas highlighted in the rise of feminism, Impossible, at least, for activists or anyone and experiments with new organizational actively engaged with social movements or models drawn from many different global radical campaigns... For activists, “anarchist contexts. A brief glance at debates concerning process” has become synonymous with the consensus decision-making and decentralized basic principles of how one facilitates a organization during the ‘50s and ‘60s civil meeting or organizes street actions. For most rights movement and ‘70s anti-nuclear of those outside—intellectuals, for example, or movement highlights how this came about. even readers of the Left press—all this is much Keywords: Anarchism, North America, less apparent. There are various reasons for antinuclear movement, civil Rights movement, this. One is the way the mainstream media, and feminism. to some degree, the Left press itself, tend to ______________________ speak of “anarchists” only when discussing militant street tactics, particularly, property hat I’d like to do in these brief pages destruction. When anarchists in Black Bloc is to outline some of the broad broke windows in Seattle during the WTO Whistorical context for the rise of protests in November, 1999, they were referred anarchism, in the United States, to the position to as “anarchists”; when other (far more it now holds as the effective center of the numerous) anarchists organized pirate radio revolutionary Left. By “anarchism” here I am collectives, facilitated meetings, made puppets, speaking less about anarchism as a political or locked down in non-violent street identity, about explicitly “anarchist” blockades, the fact that they were anarchists organizations, individuals who refer to went entirely unremarked. This has been a themselves as “anarchists” of one variety or consistent pattern. Nonetheless, the fault another—though these have, certainly, cannot be laid completely at the feet of the increased dramatically in number in recent media. Another persistent problem has been decades—so much as anarchism as a form of the anarchist press itself, which remains practice, an ethical system that rejects the dominated by Primitivists, Platformists, seizure of state power, and, to the extent sectarians, and hyper-individualists— possible, any appeal to or entanglement in proponents of strains of anarchism that are institutions of state power, and that relies almost completely unrepresentative of the instead on classical anarchist principles of self- movement as a whole. Someone casually © Historia Actual Online 2010 123 The rebirth of anarchism in North America, 1957-2007 David Graeber perusing a shelf of anarchist magazines at an principles of direct action. Many of those who infoshop, would be left with the impression thus contributed to the rise of anarchism in that the overwhelmingly majority of American America did not, in fact, consider themselves anarchists were either proponents of positions anarchists. But they were, one might say, and forms of organization that had barely anarchists in practice, and as in so many areas, changed since the ‘20s and ‘30s (as for theory has followed practice here rather than example with the Northeast Confederation of the other way around. Anarchist Communists, or NEFAC) or, alternately, opposed to all forms of 1. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH organization and looking forward to a collapse of civilization and return to a world of tiny The ‘60s New Left kicked off with a call for bands of hunters and foragers. The impression “participatory democracy” in the famous Port would be completely inaccurate. According to Huron Statement of 1962, the founding Chuck Munson, who as manager of document of Students for a Democratic www.infoshop.com, has conducted the most Society. Its principle author, Tom Hayden, was comprehensive surveys of the North American inspired ultimately by John Dewey and C. anarchist community, roughly 90% of Wright Mills1 and the document was notable American anarchists do not identify with any for calling for a broad democratization of all particular sect or tendency at all. They are aspects of American society, to create a what I have elsewhere referred to as “small-a” situation where people are making for anarchists, non-sectarian or even anti-sectarian, themselves the “decisions that affect their tending to operate outside of anarchist-only lives”. One might see this as a very anarchistic groups, and whose ideological practice largely vision, but SDS, as its inception, certainly did consists of teaching by example. If such people not. Actually, their original political program are little represented in official anarchist was to radicalize the Democratic Party (they literature, it is largely for this reason. only abandoned it when placed in an Another reason, I think, that the rise of impossible position by the Democrats’ pursuit anarchism might seem invisible to some is of the Vietnam War). Even more crucially, that—in part because of its growing small-a those who framed the statement seemed to orientation—it has become so entangled with have only the sketchiest ideas of what other political traditions outside observers are “participatory democracy” might mean in never quite sure what they’re looking at. practice. This is most evident in the “Anarchist process” can also be referred to as contradictory character of SDS’s own “feminist process”, it’s entirely unclear where structure. one begins and the other ends or if indeed there is a difference. Even more confusing for those As Francesca Polletta has pointed out,2 SDS used to earlier anarchism’s hostility to was on paper a quite formal, top-down anything associated with God, churches, and organization, with a central steering committee religion, the history of anarchist practice in and meetings run according to Roberts Rules North America has become entangled with of Order. In practice, it was made up of largely alternative spiritual traditions, from autonomous cells that operated by a kind of Quakerism, to Paganism. crude, de facto consensus process. The emphasis on consensus, in turn, appears to What I am going to do in the following pages, have been inspired by the example of SNCC, then, is to provide a brief history of the rise of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating what I’ve been calling small-a anarchism in Committee, the student wing of the civil rights America, beginning with the civil rights movement. SNCC had originally been created movement in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. It is, on the initiative of Anita Baker and a number of necessity, a brief and partial narrative. No of other activists who had previous been doubt it could be told very differently. Since I involved in the South Christian Leadership am not primarily interested in anarchism as Conference (SCLC), and were hoping to create identity, I am also not interested in tracing the an alternative to SCLC’s top-down structure history of specific anarchist organizations. and charismatic leadership (embodied, of Rather, I am interested in the origins of course, in the figure of Dr. Martin Luther anarchist process, and particularly, the King.) Famous for organizing lunch table sit- convergence between concerns to develop new ins, freedom rides, and other direct actions, forms of direct democracy and dedication to SNCC was organized on a thoroughly 124 © Historia Actual Online 2010 David Graeber The rebirth of anarchism in North America, 1957-2007 decentralized basis. Ideas for new projects did, as Mattick emphasizes, like their were expected to emerge from individual equivalents in the Global South, ultimately see chapters, all of which operated by a kind of themselves as a kind of breakaway fragment of rough-and-ready consensus process. the administrative elite. This was, he suggests, crucial to understanding the limits of the New This emphasis on consensus is a bit surprising, Left. Activists invariably saw themselves as since at the time there was very little model for “organizers”, social workers5: What united all it. In both SNCC and SDS, it appears to have factions of the left was the conception of their emerged from a feeling that, since no one relationship to actual or fantasized should be expected to do anything against their communities as organizers—after the example will, decisions really had to be unanimous. of trade unionists and social workers—rather However, there doesn’t seem to have been than as “fellow students” or workers with a anything like what’s now called “consensus particular understanding of a situation shared process” in the formal sense of the term. The with others, and ideas of what to do about it. problem was there was no obvious model for Despite the disagreement over the primary one. The only communities in North America target for organizing—unemployed, blue-collar with a living tradition of consensus decision- workers, white-collar workers, dropout making (the Quakers, and various Native youth—in each case the “community” was American groups) were either unknown, seen as a potential “constituency” (or, in PL’s unavailable, or uninterested in proselytizing.
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