Third in a Four Part Series: Anarchy as Alternative
by Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel / May 21st, 2015
In Parts
One and
Two
of this series, we argued that to prevent oligarchic rule, democratic
and economic institutions need to be salvaged, ironically, through
anarchist political activism and Marxist capital analysis, specifically
Marx’s labor theory of value, which identifies the systemic and
structural nature of exploitation. The point is that workers are
“entitled” to the surplus value they create. We also argued that
globalization as manifested in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP),
amounts to imperialism. In this particular case, we utilize the economic
analysis provided by British economist John Hobson. In his great work
Imperialism, Hobson,
an anti-imperialist capitalist, argues something far more insightful
than Marx ever did. The worst that Marx had ever claimed about
capitalism was that the system would literally destroy itself. What
Hobson argues is that, not only will the system destroy itself, but that
taken to a global level the capitalist system will destroy the world.
Imagine that, coming from a capitalist. Contrary to popular scholarship,
many Marxists claim this same conclusion, such as Lenin, Magdoff, and
Sweezy. But it was Hobson who originally argued that capitalism would
have to extend beyond its own borders to maintain its competitive edge
and control markets outside of its own country. This is compounded by
the fact that other countries are forced to do the same, and in so
doing, set the stage for a form of economic competition known as “trade
wars.” Consequently unbridled, international, globalized capitalism will
undermine the dynamic nature of markets, which on the other hand, given
rational boundaries, can be an effective and efficient mechanism for
allocating scarce economic goods, services, and resources. Take a look
at any of the works by World Systems Theorists such as Immanuel
Wallerstein and Andre Gunder Frank.
Now to the point: The Trans-Pacific Partnership follows along these
same lines. Though our information is based on a leak, from WikiLeaks,
we have no reason to doubt the veracity of this leak since to-date,
WikiLeaks has never been wrong.
So we proceed.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership can be broken down accordingly.
(1) The Partnership basically is a secret plan for international
elites to capture and exploit underdeveloped markets. This means that
underdeveloped markets, in least-developed countries can be exploited,
meaning their labor force extorted and environmental restrictions
obliterated. This extends to Australia and New Zealand as well, though
they are not “developing” countries. Nevertheless, the point of
“fast-track” legislation is to conceal this economic and environmental
disaster arrangement.
(2) TPP will harm the global environment. In this arrangement, the
environment will no longer be protected, and already weakened domestic
and international environmental regulations will further harm the
environment, which has a direct effect on the health of the populations
of these countries, including the people of the United States. In fact,
the fracking industry will have no regulations placed on it at all.
There will be no limit on increased carbon emissions, which invariably
contaminates the earth, water, air, and ozone. Liquid natural gas
exports to TPP countries will have no environmental regulations either,
and in the United States, no environmental clearance at all from the
Department of Energy.
(3) Labor in TPP countries will be subject to increased pressure to
provide concessions, along with health benefits, job security, etc. This
includes the United States. And with the export of capital, jobs in the
United States become at-risk, if not, lost completely. The potential
for leveraging international labor for increased profits and
productivity becomes paramount in their business plan. In other words,
pay labor a subsistence wage and maximize profits and productivity at
all costs for the shareholders. Can you imagine trying to unionize?
Under this agreement, it is unknown what rights organized labor has in
TPP countries, specifically Australia, New Zealand, and the United
States. We know what the situation is for labor in non-democratic
countries such as Vietnam and Brunai. Zip!
(4) As in authoritarian and totalitarian countries, the TPP intends
to criminalize Internet access and expression. Criticizing and
protesting this trade agreement will be met with legal action based on
TPP surveillance. The policing and surveillance will take place within
TPP countries, making dissent on the economic and environmental impacts
due to the TPP, punishable by law. Sovereignty and due process are
absent. Thus the goal of intimidation of dissident groups is effectively
quelled from the outset. Moreover, the rights of corporations involved
in the TPP give them the ability to sue those groups or individuals who
seek economic or environmental damages from those countries
participating in the TPP. In other words, foreign and international
firms are elevated to the level of sovereign status within the United
States and can then sue for damages.
(5) Democratic governance under TPP has been subordinated to market
rationale. This is not the way that democratic societies and
international institutions should be run. Nor is the TPP something that a
democratic government should espouse, even though Barak Obama, Chris
Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Hayes, Jonathan Altar, Charles
Krauthammer, Fox News,
et al, argue has always been the way
trade agreements have been carried out. We say fuck no! Occupy said bull
shit to this. And if it weren’t for the labor unions, Elizabeth Warren,
Bernie Sanders, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Shultz speaking out against this,
TPP would be a done deal right now. And the pro TPP people keep saying
the anti TPP are just wrong. Well, there is one way to resolve this
pissing match … open up the deal to the light of day and let’s have at
it. But you know they won’t because this deal is meant to bone American
and TPP participant countries’ labor and environment. Of course, they
will use the same line going back to the Reagan era where if the elites
get rich, then it will trickle down to everyone.
(6) All of this is possible because the corporate and power elite in
this country, and outside of this country, for all intents and purposes,
control
our government. The following is our continued analysis
of why oligarchic arrangements in the United States have led to the
Occupy movement of Wall Street. This also pertains to the clandestine
TPP operation and its economic quest for domination. And this same
oligarchic dimension also applies to the Department of Justice and the
recent exoneration by the new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, of the
corporate chiefs found guilty of fraud re: Citicorp (C), JPMorgan Chase
(JPM), London-based Barclays (BCS) and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
They get fined 2 billion dollars but they get to keep the 62 billion
remaining. This shit is getting outrageous!
Next week we will conclude with our fourth and final entry. We will
elaborate on an explanation of how we can break this newest sinister arm
of the oligarchic arrangement. It will go beyond political anarchy,
Marx’s labor theory of value, and anti-imperialist capitalism. We want
markets to work and so we are going to argue that markets optimize when
they are responsive to the general will of the people and thus promote
the common good. Here’s a clue: liberal notions of labor entitlements
from capitalist gurus and a free market freak, fair enterprise Nobel
economist, influenced by the Austrian school of economics. What the
hell! We’re using a former socialist gone fascist to explain the
phenomena of oligarchies in democratic political and economic
institutions. Why not use liberal thought? Maybe the answer was there
all along…
Anarchism and Oligarchic State
The tendency of organizations (democratic governments, political
parties, unions, etc.) is to become oligarchic and therefore obfuscate
and undermine democratic rule. Thus it is plausible that the very
legitimacy of “democratic” government is in question, especially because
oligarchic rule does not serve the general will of the people and the
purposes of self-governance. Rather, it serves an elite cadre within
organizations in which individuals position themselves for control of
the organizations. Liberal democratic self-governance is in question,
specifically as it relates to contemporary liberal theorists such as
John Rawls in
A Theory of Justice, and Robert Nozick in
Anarchy, State and Utopia.
Both liberal theories – Rawls’ in prioritizing legal rights for those
least advantaged in society (welfare rights), and Nozick’s in
prioritizing maximum individual liberty (libertarianism) – are
challenged by oligarchic tendencies, that is, if Michels’ position is
correct. This oligarchic tendency is also present in radical and Marxist
democratic organizations that argue for democratic rights as the
foundation of economic social justice in a democratic society. Reinhold
Niebuhr, Edward Banfield, Amartya Sen, and Rodney Peffer all espouse
this tradition.
The problem associated with the inherent nature of democratic
organizations to emerge as non-democratic oligarchies is exactly what
anarchism seeks to confront. Anarchist critiques of the oligarchic and
authoritarian tendencies of Enlightenment liberalism and capitalist
development according to its chief spokespersons, such as, Gerrard
Winstanley, William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Henry David Thoreau,
Benjamin Tucker, and Emma Goldman and contemporary critiques of modern
liberalism, liberal democracies and neoliberal capitalism by
philosophical anarchists such as Charles Frankel, Noam Chomsky, Michael
Albert, Murray Bookchin, Robert Paul Wolff and A. John Simmons, demand
serious attention. Here the understanding is that government, law, and
public policy, is hardly justification for moral guidance in the lives
of people. In fact, government coercion for anarchists is the very basis
of tyranny because it violates the very nature of autonomous and free
individuals and communities. Nonviolent civil disobedience, therefore,
becomes the
modus operandi of anarchists and government dissenters in this tradition.
Early seventeenth century British anarchist, Gerrard Winstanley,
argued that the capitalist accumulation of wealth and property resulted
in greater social inequality and that land should be understood as a
“common treasury,” and that the promotion of federalism within nations
and internationalism promoted throughout the world represented the
earliest developments in anarchist theory. Winstanley argued that
peasants possessed the fundamental human right to the wealth they create
and to the land that they worked. Known as the “Diggers,” Winstanley
urged peasants to “squat” on stretches of unused common land in Southern
England in order to provide themselves with both a domicile and a
living. Moreover, for Winstanley, the individual person is marginalized
by both monarchical and parliamentary (democratic) rule. For anarchists,
both authoritarian and democratic rule resulted in plutocratic elite
domination. Much like today’s libertarian movement, anarchists believed
that the individual person should be given the utmost possible freedom
and that voluntary institutions best represent the human person’s
natural social tendencies. Yet, the voluntary association of unionized
workers, pitted against the elite control and possession of capital,
clearly differentiates anarchists from libertarians. Marxists, on the
other hand, differ from anarchists for the most part precisely over the
role of the state, since the state has a role to play in the
revolutionary class struggle. Anarchists would not deny that class
warfare results from capitalist exploitation; however, they tend to view
any role of the state in resolving this conflict as lacking any
political legitimacy.
Later eighteenth century British anarchists, such as William Godwin,
argued that violent revolutionary action was a legitimate course of
action in the event that the new “capitalist state” became increasingly
tyrannical, especially in light of the gross inequities of the
burgeoning industrial revolution. Godwin argued for a “fixed and
immutable” universal natural law as fundamental to justice. Here, Godwin
argued that justice itself was based on fundamental human rights, but
that human laws could potentially be fallible and that reason and
conscience dictates obedience or disobedience to human law. Godwin,
furthermore, rejected all established institutions and all social
relations that suggested inequality or the power of one person over
another, including marriage. Influenced by the anarchist tendencies in
the social and political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William
Godwin argued that while government might be considered necessary for
the short term, in the long run it would eventually become obsolete when
others with their very freedom and autonomy would be secured through
the non-interference in others’ lives. Godwin further argued that
individuals should act in accordance with their own judgments and that
in return others should be allowed the same liberty.
Nineteenth-century European anarchism developed independently from
the earlier British version. It grew out of French socialist thought and
German Neo-Hegelianism, as fused by Pierre Proudhon who in turn
profoundly influenced Marx and his development of anarchist thought, and
later theorists such as Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and Georges
Sorel. This form of anarchism sought to eliminate the role of the state
and simultaneously uphold the greatest amount of freedom based on three
main areas: (1) the use of violence as a means to overthrow
authoritarian rule; (2) the establishment and respect for individual
liberty and human rights; and (3) the promotion of economic and social
institutions that foster individual freedom and the common good. With
the exception of anarchists such as Pierre Proudhon, Henry David
Thureau, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Tucker, and Mohandas Ghandi, who rejected
violence as a form of revolutionary action, most anarchists in the
nineteenth century have sought to abolish injustice and establish a
socially just society based on the above three categories. Thoreau,
Tolstoy, Tucker, and Ghandi urged peaceful nonviolent civil disobedience
as an alternative to violent revolutionary action.
Philosophical anarchists argue, within the same basic anarchist
tradition (e.g., mutualism, anarcho-syndicalism, collectivism,
individualism, pacifism, Wobblies, trade unionism, Marxist Anarchism,
left libertarianism) that authoritarian systems are not the only form of
state oppression but that the modern democratic state itself has
become, fundamentally, an instrument by which elites and special
interests in a liberal democracy coerce and even use their power to
oppress others. Therefore the state, by virtue of its liberal nature:
(1) lacks legitimacy because the state serves elite interests at the
expense of individual and collective self-governance; and (2) impedes
individual autonomy and self-determination by compelling individuals to
obey the state through coercion (rules, regulations, and laws), and even
force (police and military action).
Philosophical anarchists thus argue that individuals, according to
their conscience, have the moral right not to comply with the state and
even the moral obligation to disobey the state in the event that the
policies and laws of a particular government violate the conscience of
individual citizens. Godwin argued for a radical egalitarian society
where each person should take part in the production of necessities and
should share their part in the production of necessities with all in
need. Here conceived, a society of free land workers and artisans, was
the first outline of an anarchist society. This is the “socialist” roots
of anarchism trump those of any libertarian element.
In the past other more militant schools of anarchist thought,
including those of nineteenth century figures such as Bakunin,
Kropotkin, and Marx, argued that it was necessary for the exploited
working class to overthrow the state and its controlling capitalist
class, violently if necessary. Philosophical anarchists argue that,
rather than taking up arms to bring down the state, the optimal
situation is to work for gradual change to free individuals from what
they perceive to be oppressive laws and social constraints of the modern
state and allow all individuals to become self-determining autonomous
actors in the world.
While philosophical anarchists oppose the immediate elimination of
the state by violent means, they adhere to this primarily out of concern
that what might remain in place after a given revolution could very
well become the establishment of a more harmful and oppressive state.
This is especially true among those anarchists who consider violence and
the state as synonymous, or who consider it counterproductive, and
where public reaction to violence could result in increased “law
enforcement” or the reinforcement of the “police state.” Subsequently,
philosophical anarchists reject, for the most part, the urge to violence
as a means for eliminating the “illegitimate” state, while at the same
time they accept the existence of a minimal state as an unfortunate, but
“necessary evil.”
A. John Simmons claims that “philosophical anarchists hold that there
are good reasons not to oppose or disrupt at least some kinds of
illegitimate states, reasons that outweigh any right or obligation of
opposition. The practical stance with respect to the state, the
philosophical anarchist maintains, should be one of careful
consideration and thoughtful weighing of all the reasons that bear on
action in a particular set of circumstances.” And Robert Paul Wolff
further states that while philosophical anarchists may not wish to
disrupt a particular state, they do not necessarily think anyone has an
obligation to obey the state. There can be no such thing as a government
that “has a right to command and whose subjects have a binding
obligation to obey.”
Postmodern Anarchism
Other forms of anarchism, such as postmodern anarchism, have been
developed by theorists such as May, Newman, and Call, who assert that
the anarchist writings of Nietzsche, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Freud,
Durkheim, Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Baudrillard, and Chomsky, intersect
with postmodern critiques of modernism, rationalism, and scientism.
Specifically, this theoretical construct, where anarchism and
postmodernism meet, moves beyond anarchism’s conventional attacks on
capital and the state to criticize those forms of rationality,
consciousness, and language that implicitly condition all economic and
political power. May, Newman, and Call, argue that postmodernism
contemporizes anarchism, making it relevant to the current political
culture of the twenty-first century.
The postmodern anarchists draw on the works of several theorists in
an attempt to connect anarchism with postmodernism. May, Newman, and
Call, use anarchism to critique liberal notions of language,
consciousness, and rationality, which are inherent within capitalist
state organizations, and use postmodern methods to deconstruct
hegemonies of all sorts, predominantly those dominant ideas and beliefs
at the heart of capitalist and Marxist ideology. Yet, their sharpest
postmodern attack is leveled against bourgeois liberalism and its
manifestation in “late capitalism,” or as Veblen describes it,
“conspicuous consumption.” Here the postmodern anarchists nevertheless
identify classical anarchism as being fundamentally opposed to
hierarchical (paternalistic) social relations inherent in capitalist
modes of production and state socialist regimes.
It therefore rejects
state capitalist of state socialist uses of force and the “coercive
politics implicit in all state systems. Such anarchism envisions
strictly voluntary (and typically small-scale) forms of organization,”
devoid of any reliance on modernism’s devotion to rationality as an
organizing principle typified by Western culture. In this sense,
postmodern anarchists argue that liberal democracies can become, and
often do become, oppressive hegemonies controlled by a power-elite
precisely “to prevent radical change.” Postmodern anarchists such as
Call, argue that although “liberalism represents an impressive and
historically important body of work … [it] imposes a disturbing silence
upon radical thinking.” In rejecting Rorty’s liberal principles (and
those of other great liberals such as Holms, Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin,
etc.), of avoiding harm and cruelty to others, liberalism as applied to a
democratic society “functions to defend existing institutions and to
prevent radical change.”
Edward Martin is Professor of Public Policy and
Administration, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration at
California State University, Long Beach, and co-author of Savage State:
Welfare Capitalism and Inequality;
Mateo Pimentel lives on the Mexican-US border, writing for many
alternative political newsletters and Web sites. He can be reached at:
mateo.pimentel@gmail.com.
Read other articles by Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel.
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