BroadSnark

A couple weeks ago, I went to a forum at Cato called Are Liberty and Equality Compatible?.  (Cato, meh.  Free lunch, score!)  The short story is that James P. Sterba was trying to find a way to squeeze a liberal philosophy into a libertarian mold.  What he came up with was this:

1.  Libertarians believe in negative liberty.  Nobody should be aggressed against/interfered with.

2.  If the rich should have the liberty to enjoy their excess without being interfered with, then the poor should have the liberty to take what they need from the rich without being interfered with.

And presto chango, a positive liberty becomes a negative liberty.

Clearly, nobody at Cato was buying this, not even the leftists in the room. But if anyone had been buying it, Sterba would then have tried to convince them that what we are really talking about is a conflict between different equal liberty principles.

The rebuttal was from Jan Narveson.  I’m not going to go into the whole back and forth.  You can watch it on Cato’s site if you are interested.  I just want to talk about one of the core elements of Narveson’s (common) argument.  He believes that we need to look for principles that all people can agree to, based on their rational self interest.  And he thinks the non-aggression principle is the bees knees.

But can everyone really agree to that principle?

In the context of our argument of rich v. poor, non-aggression only goes so far.  At some point, non-aggression no longer serves the rational self interest of the poor.  Non-aggression against United Fruit Company was an absurd prospect for a land-starved Guatemalan.  Sterba could have made a stronger case that a certain amount of equality (or at least basic needs being met) is a prerequisite to widespread adoption of the non-aggression principle.

More importantly for this discussion, define aggression.  There are some people who think it is aggression to break a bank window (even though the only consequence is a few hundred dollars from the bank’s coffers).  But some of those same people don’t think it is aggression to pay off corrupt officials in order to buy huge swaths of productive farmland in Africa and then ship the products to Dubai while the Africans in that country starve.

And there are people who think the exact opposite.

Of course, the six hundred pound elephant in the room during that discussion was property.  One of the reasons we can’t agree on a definition of aggression is that we can’t agree on who gets to use what resources.  Land is one of the most contentious issues in the world, as is what lies below it.  Those conflicts are not going away any time soon.  Maybe never.

I like principles.  I spend a lot of time trying to root out what principles people are operating from.  But I’m not sure we are going to get very far if the plan is to convince 7 billion people to define aggression the same way and agree not to do it.  And while I pick on the core libertarian principle here, I could write this post about universal human rights and come up with an equally skeptical conclusion about universality.

Universal may not be possible.  And if it is true that universal is not possible, then what?

I generally stay away from economics, as I’m still doing my 101.  But I’ve been pondering some things and hope you might share your wisdom with me.

If you read my post on How I Became an Anarchist, you know that it was facing the corrupting influence of organizational hierarchies that finally pushed me to anarchism.  Naturally, when I read people who talk about an anarchist future that includes employment, I go a little googly eyed.  I know a lot of anarchists.  And while most of us suck it up and take the paycheck, I can’t think of a person who would do that if they had any other option.

That isn’t to say that anarchists are lazy.  Many are working full time, volunteering, writing, protesting, and spending pretty much every waking hour trying to make the world better.  “Work” is not the problem.  Employment is.  Being an employee means being under the control of someone else.  That’s not my definition.  It comes straight from the IRS.

As someone who works in HR, I have to determine whether or not we can legitimately hire someone as a contractor or if we need them to be an employee.  The question that I must ask when making that determination is, whether or not we will have control over their work.  If we have control, they are an employee.  If we give them a project and let them do it however they want, they might be a contractor.

Contractors work the hours they want, not the hours an employer tells them.  They take however much vacation they want.  They often own the means of production (ie. a carpenter who owns her tools or a programmer who owns her computer).  They are free to contract with other organizations.  They don’t get told how to dress or what they can say on twitter.  They are free.  Employees are not free.

So when someone claims that there will be an anarchist future and it will include employer/employee relationships, I wonder what the hell kind of anarchist would agree to submit to the control of an employer.  And I think back to the central conflict that made me an anarchist in the first place and wonder what kind of anarchy can exist with that kind of power imbalance.  The answer, to my mind, is none.

Sometimes, when reading the arguments of anarcho-capitalists or market anarchists, I get the impression that they are just deluding themselves into thinking that there will always be someone willing to change grandma’s diapers for $7 an hour.  I don’t see any need to argue.  Once all those caregivers become anarchists, they’ll figure out that won’t be the case.  But more often I get the impression that they are really describing a relationship that is a lot more like a contractor.

It would be a gross exaggeration to say that disagreements about labor come down to semantics.  There are central issues of property and currency, for example, which can’t really be separated out from employment.  But I do sometimes think that what a “market anarchist” envisions for his future is more of a contractor/artisan life than that of a captain of industry.

For me, the ideal would be to live in a gift economy.  That said, I am skeptical that we will ever again see a world where most communities operate on that basis.  And even if most of the world lived within gift economy communities, the likelihood of that gift economy extending between communities seems slim.  I don’t think it’s impossible, we have open source and couchsurfing, which you could argue is a gift economy between communities.  Then again, you could also argue that the internet creates new communities of people who gift to one another.  Those communities just aren’t based on geography.

So I guess what I’m wondering is:  Do you market anarchist types envision a world full of artisans trading labor with one another or actual employment relationships?  Do the majority of anarchists, who don’t subscribe to capitalist or market ideologies, envision a world based entirely on a gift economy?  (A New Yorker goes to Hong Kong and has immediate access to what she needs to meet her needs?)  Do you object to any sort of trading of labor for stuff?

Feel free to point me in the direction of further reading on the subject.

I’ve been thinking about the Americans with Disabilities Act and about a conversation I recently had about social security.  You would think that, as an anarchist who wants a stateless society, I would be against both.  That would be the ideologically pure position, no?  To be honest, I’ve had a bit of cognitive dissonance on this issue.

The need for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and for social security is real.  My aunt grew up with cerebral palsy (CP) in a time when people hid their relatives with disabilities.  She lives in a private home.  The home was started by a woman whose child had CP.  She started the home knowing that, when she died, there would be nobody to take care of her kid.  This valiant effort by one individual has provided a home for many people.  But it would not survive if the people living there, many whose parents are no longer alive and who have no children, did not receive social security.

The kids I helped at Camp Challenge were sometimes trapped in their houses most of the year.  The profit driven market has no interest in starting an accessible transportation company for one kid in rural Tennessee.  There is no profit in that.  The market does see profit in at-home care, but only for those people who have an extra $2,000 a week to pay for it.  And eventually those kids’ parents will be gone and they will need a place to go and a means of support that they can count on.

Saying the market will take care of them, in our present circumstances, is absurd.  It is true that there is coercion involved when people have money taken against their will and redistributed to others.  But it is also true that we live in, and help to create, a society where differently abled people have virtually no freedom at all – that the freedom to not help them can be directly in contradiction to their freedom to leave their house, get around, have a job, communicate with people…Doesn’t their freedom count?

I pointed out in my previous post how Rachel Maddow gave the government credit for integrating Woolworths, rather than giving credit to the everyday people that actually did it.  And that is true.  But it is also true that my aunt could not march over to Woolworths and insist that they lower the counter to accommodate her.  She needs someone to dress her and feed her.   She needs a wheelchair.  She needs ramps to get out of her building and into Woolworths.  She needs people who have the patience to listen to her as she struggles to get out the words.  She needs people who can see past her chair and drool and speech impediment and who will listen to the brilliance of her thoughts.

We all need to take responsibility for ourselves and the people around us.  But we also need to acknowledge that some of us face obstacles to taking responsibility that others don’t.

So I see a need, in our present circumstances, for the the ADA and for social security.  But I also see how these things are part of the problem. It isn’t just about some idea of freedom or the free market.  It isn’t just about some principle against coercion.  The home that my aunt lives in is run by grossly underpaid, African American women.  Having an anonymous government bureaucracy deal with the details makes it so much easier to keep those women (and the people they take care of) out of site and out of mind.  I can just file that tax return and never have to think about the whole lousy system – until I end up in it, of course.

The worst part about supporting government programs is knowing that I am helping to feed the machine that causes so much destruction.  The machine that is supporting my aunt is murdering people in Afghanistan and incarcerating millions of people who have done nothing wrong.  That machine uses a few token programs to bolster its legitimacy so that it can continue to exploit and oppress at will.  Every small bit of good it does comes at someone else’s expense.

So where does that leave me?  It leaves me with a moral dilemma.

My instinct is to try and resolve that dilemma with some neat philosophical jujitsu.  But every practical bone in my body fights against it.  And, if I’m being honest here, every selfish bone in my body fights against it too.  If I were going to be ideologically consistent, I wouldn’t rely on the state at all, right? I would tell my mother and aunt to stop collecting social security.  I would give up my job and my life.  And I would try to find some way of supporting them and taking care of them myself.  (No idea how I would have a job and provide 24 hour care for my Aunt.)  But should I really be expected to give up any freedom I have?

The truth is that sometimes there are no good choices.  And I am going to have to live with some moral ambiguity.  That bothers me.  But not so much as it bothers me when people pretend that everything can be wrapped up in a nice package and that these issues don’t pose any moral dilemmas.

Our world was designed by and for a very limited number of people during a very limited portion of their lives.  An anarchist world would be a very different place.  A world designed by all people – all ages, all abilities, all backgrounds, where everyone has a seat at the table, where all can express their own needs and desires – would not have these contradictions.  But we don’t live in that world.

I know that the system can never be the solution to a problem it helped to create.  But I also know that I cannot snap my fingers and have magically appear an all voluntary non-coercive method of dealing with the problems of real people.  In the time between now and then, real people have real needs that need to be met.  Too often, we anarchists get so caught up in philosophical discussions that we forget that.

It is, I believe, a real weakness to pretend these moral dilemmas don’t exist.  It delegitimizes our arguments in the eyes of people who experience the obstacles we too often ignore.  And it constrains our strategies in trying to imagine a new world and how we might get there.

In short, what I am trying to say is that I think we should embrace the doubts, ambiguities, and moral dilemmas that are inevitable with the world as it is being so far off from the world as it should be.  Rather than having litmus tests for authenticity or trying to pretend that we are all ideologically consistent, we should admit that it is impossible and give each other room to breathe.  By allowing for the ambiguity, I suspect we will find ourselves better able to reach out to people who find our beliefs somewhat alien.  And I suspect that we might find ourselves better able to come up with creative strategies for getting from here to there.

I keep an eye out for mentions of anarchy or anarchists in the news.  More often than not, when we are mentioned, it relates to some act of destruction that is being condemned.  Anarchist responses to these reports, if there are any responses at all, are usually confined to internal discussions on anarchist blogs.

I realize that many times we do not respond because we aren’t convinced it was really anarchists that are to blame.  When the newspapers blamed anarchists for turning a snowball fight into a political protest it was completely fabricated.   Other incidents were later discovered to be at the instigation of police provocateurs. I think that makes us hesitate.  I mean why defend ourselves when we didn’t do anything?

And then there is the issue of private property.  Many anarchists are against private property.  Even anarchists who see property destruction (the usual form of violence blamed on us) as counter-productive, hesitate to take a strong stance against it because of their basic feelings about property.  And they rightly point out with frustration that many of the individuals who get very upset about property destruction don’t get as outraged about mass incarceration or war or other state violence.

But regardless of whether or not we are blamed fairly, regardless of our individual feelings on property, regardless of any hypocrisy, I think we make a huge mistake when we don’t respond to these incidents.  We can’t just allow the police and media to represent us.  Those of us who disagree with the actions that we are blamed for should condemn them publicly.  We should also be shouting from the rooftops when we are wrongly accused.

Right now, almost all the news reports about anarchists are negative ones.  They are images that we have to overcome when we speak to people about our ideas.  But it might be possible to turn those incidents into opportunities.  If we could coordinate rapid responses – letters to the editor, ads in weeklies, clean up crews – we might be able to turn things around.  We might be able to educate the public on what we are really about.

There were at least two May day incidents in the U.S. that are being blamed on anarchists – one in Asheville and one in Santa Cruz.  Since I’ve lived in Santa Cruz, I’d like to tackle that one.  I think a good start would be a short letter, signed by as many of us as possible.  It could be something along the lines of:

An Open Letter to the People of Santa Cruz

This past Saturday night, several people went through downtown Santa Cruz vandalizing businesses.  We do not know who those people were or whether or not they call themselves anarchists.  What we do know is that we, as anarchists, strongly condemn their actions.

Anarchy is not about destruction or violence.  To the contrary, it is the belief that a world without rulers will be a more just and more peaceful world.  The signors to this letter have a wide range of views on how to bring about an anarchist future and what that future would look like, but none of us believe that smashing windows is going to help people understand our ideas.

I would try to get it in as a letter to the editor.  If that doesn’t work, I’m willing to fork over some cash to get an advertisement in the local weekly.

If you have thoughts, suggestions on wording, or want to sign on, please say so in the comments or send me an email (mel@broadsnark.com).  Be sure to give me a way to contact you so that, if there are any changes to the text, I can run them by you.  I hope to have this wrapped up by the weekend, so please share this widely with people who might be interested.

Thanks. Mel

Picture an anarchist in your head.  What do you see?

For most people the image is of a black clad, pubescent boy throwing rocks through a store window or spray painting an anarchist symbol.  People with a better sense of history might picture a slightly older, wild-bearded man making assassination plans.

And it is true that those images have some reality behind them.

There have been anarchists who have participated in violence.  Anarchists fought in the Spanish civil war.  Anarchists have claimed responsibility for political assassinations and other “propaganda of the deed.”  And there are certainly anarchists who have participated in symbolic acts of property destruction.

But does that make anarchists especially violent?

How many philosophies have not been used as an excuse for violence?  We fight wars in the name of democracy.  Assassinations are committed in the name of democracy.  Entire cities have been leveled in the name of democracy.  And yet few supporters of democracy believe their philosophy is particularly violent.

It makes little sense that a few violent acts and some (arguably) violent property destruction warrant anarchists getting such a bad rap.

Then, of course, there are the many anarchists who are/were also pacifists.  Some, like Tolstoy, derived their pacifist anarchism from Christianity.  Gandhi, who was inspired by Tolstoy, meshed his philosophical anarchism with Hinduism.  Anarchists from Howard Zinn to Alex Comfort were pacifists.  Even Emma Goldman, who once supported “propaganda of the deed,” changed her mind after seeing the effects of violence.

Clearly, we have a case of selective, collective memory.  How did that happen? Why are people only associating anarchists with violence?

Perhaps it has something to do with the way media selectively covers anarchism.  The coverage of Howard Zinn’s death is instructive.  An Associated Press story picked up by the New York Times and Washington Post says that Howard Zinn wrote about anarchist Emma Goldman, but doesn’t describe Howard Zinn as an anarchist.  Bob Herbert’s New York Times op-ed doesn’t mention “anarchist” once.  In article after article he is referred to as “left” or “radical,” but not as an anarchist.

Lest you get the idea that the media are loathe to use the word anarchist or anarchy, just try to search news coverage with those words.  The New York Times is happy to associate anarchists with al-Qaida or with Lenin.  Even if no anarchist claims responsibility for a bombing, they are almost certain to get credit for it.   And that doesn’t even begin to cover the times that newspapers try to scare the crap out of their readers by labeling catastrophes as scary anarchy.

Newspapers like the Times and Post are staunch defenders of the establishment.  And the establishment has every reason to try and make anarchists look bad.  As Howard Zinn said,

No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them, yes.

That doesn’t mean that every lowly reporter is consciously trying to to vilify us.  As a former media person told me, “they have a script” and they are playing it out.  They are writing the narrative that they have been brought up to write, the narrative that will get them promoted, even if that means conjuring up imaginary conflicts while ignoring real ones.

So the question is, what can we do to make it more difficult for the media to vilify us?

I feel very lucky that I had the opportunity to see Howard Zinn at Busboys and Poets last year.  I wish I had a recording of his talk.  The gist of it was that no politician is going to bring us the change we need.  We have to make the change happen.  Here is an amazing interview (and critique of voting) with Walter Mosley (who I also love).

You may have heard about a conference coming up in San Francisco called Libertopia.

Its purpose is to create a worldwide movement of individuals who choose their own form of governance – a voluntary society based on mutual respect for each individual’s dignity and ownership of his/her own body and property.

Sadly, it appears from looking at the list of speakers, that this voluntary society is going to be made up exclusively of men (men who can afford the cost of the conference registration, hotel, and cruise).

I tweeted a few complaints about the all-too-typical invisibility of women at anything remotely libertarian and ended up in a convo with @solidadrocks about these kinds of conferences in general.

Long story short, there are tons of women out there who aren’t just sitting around talking theory.  They are doing amazing things to “create the new world in the shell of the old.”  But we never hear about them.  And women rarely take the time to step back and talk to each other about what we are doing.

So, I thought, why don’t we have a conference/gathering/meeting/whatever focused on anarchist/libertarian/anti-statist/whatever women who are doing amazing things?  We could learn from each other and find potential collaborators.  I’m thinking it would be:

• Women focused – I don’t think that means men should be banned, just that women, and what they are doing, would be the focus of the sessions.
• Activity focused – That doesn’t mean that we can’t talk theory at all, but I want to hear about actions.  I want to attend sessions on organizing, cooperatives, alternative currencies, radical art…And I’d like to walk away with all sorts of ideas and plans.
• Inclusive and diverse – Transgender, intersexed, straight, gay, bisexual, young, old, differently abled, black, white, Latina, Asian, Native American…And massive effort would be made to make sure everyone would be included (outreach, accessibility, childcare…).
• Cheap – As close to free as humanly possible.

As far as location goes, I am in Washington, DC.  I’d be willing/able to travel pretty much anywhere in North America.  I’m thinking we can see who is interested and then decide which location makes the most sense based on that.  (If there is a lot of interest, maybe we can plan on doing more than one for different areas.  But now I’m getting ahead of myself.)

Step one is gaging interest, so what do you all think?  Share your thoughts in the comment section.  And, if you are interested, send an email to mel@broadsnark.com and let me know:

1. Where you are (city,state, country)
2. If you would want to be on a listserve for general info.  And, if so, what email address to use.  (Clearly, your email would not be sold, published, shared…)

Let’s see where this goes.

With all the stigma attached to the word anarchism, why call yourself an anarchist?

Anarchists are bound to ask themselves that question at some point.  Perhaps you run across another news report where anarchists are blamed for some random violence.  Maybe some pundit compares anarchists to terrorists.  Maybe it’s the constant use of the word anarchy as a synonym for violent chaos.  Or maybe you’re just tired of explaining it to people.  I understand.

But you do lose something when you lose the word anarchism.

For decades, brilliant minds have been writing about anarchism and what it means.  When someone wants to understand anarchism, I can point to stacks of writing.  If I refuse to call myself an anarchist, where do I point to?  Are we going to rewrite all that theory under a new name?  What a waste.

And what about the history of anarchism.  The most difficult thing to convince people is that anarchism can actually work.  Specific, successful anarchist examples exist.  And being able to point people to those is one of the best tools we have.  Yes, there have also been many failures.  But those may be even more important.  If we don’t study and learn from the mistakes of the past, we will repeat them.

Why let other people define the word for us?  The root of the word anarchy simply means “without leaders.”  Some people cannot imagine a world without leaders being anything but violent and chaotic.  Some people benefit too much from hierarchy to embrace a theory that takes that power from them.  Why should we allow those people to define the terms?

Would it really matter what we called our beliefs?  Does anyone think that if we believed the same things but called them a different name that people will be less suspicious of our ideas?  Liberals in the U.S. recently re-branded themselves.  Now they are called “progressives.”  And now conservatives vilify “progressive” just the same way they used to vilify liberal.

Most importantly, we need you.  If you are an anarchist who hesitates to embrace the term, then it is probably because you don’t want to be associated with chaos, violence, instability, or terrorism.  That makes you the ideal ambassador for anarchism.  If only those people who want to be associated with violence call themselves anarchists, then the cycle perpetuates and people who could learn from anarchist thought won’t go there.

You might be surprised how incredibly easy negative stereotypes can be to overcome.  When who you are doesn’t match up with the propaganda, people who meet you will start to question the propaganda.  The more anarchists a person comes in contact with, the less that person will be able to hold on to the negative stereotypes.

The agro cop that pulled out his gun at the snowball fight might actually be in a tiny bit of trouble here.

Yesterday, when I wrote about this, there were only a few articles around.  Now there are so many that I can’t even begin to give you all the links.  It’s being covered everywhere from the Huffington Post to the BBC to the Sydney Morning Herald to the South African News Blog.

That guy is known worldwide for being afraid of snowballs.  I almost feel sorry for him.  (O.k., not really.)

Washington City Paper reports that Detective Mike Baylor (that would be agro-cop’s name) is now on desk duty.  The Associated Press reports that Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier called his actions “totally inappropriate.” (Duh!)  And the Washington Post has a pretty good overview in today’s paper.  I’m not going to hold my breath that anything major will happen, but the fact that this went worldwide made it impossible for them to ignore it.

That horrible article from the local news that I linked to yesterday is still up.  Some German based news site has made it even more sensationalistic with their headline, Wild D.C. Snowball Fight Was Fun Until The Anarchist Show Up. DCist reports that CNN picked up the phony protest story. And the Scottrossblog has coverage of Faux News picking up the protester angle also.  It looks like Faux subsequently dropped that part of the story and the rest of the coverage I have seen left it out.  Good thing there were so many cameras around.

Some of the comments on the articles and blogs were hilarious.

“Stupid environmentalist wacko liberals… bringing snowballs to a gun fight.” LevonTostig at USA Today

“Isn’t a Hummer built to withstand the impact of a snowball?” MillardFil at TPM

There were a lot of other, more annoying and more troubling, comments on different blogs and articles.  But I don’t have time to be thoughtful about them right now, so I’m going to leave them for another day.

I’m having a really hard time deciding who are worse – police or media.

As you may have already heard.  There was a giant snowball fight at the corner of U and 14th in Washington, DC.  I was there from about 2:30 to 3:00 and it was fun as hell.  Maybe 100 or 150 people were gathered, split between the east and west sides of 14th.  Whenever the lights would change, everyone would yell “Charge!!” and start pelting the other side with snow.

Not long after I got there, some hilarious anarchists showed up with a sign that said “No War but Snowball War.”  Everyone loved it.  They joined the snowball war on the west side.  Occasionally, the west side would chant “Whose Snow?  Our Snow!”  Here are some pics I took.

Well, apparently some DC cop thought it was scary because, after I left, he pulled a gun at the snowball fight.  You can read about it on Gawker and in the City Paper.  There is also a good account of what happened over at DCist.

The only thing I will dispute about the DCist account is that I saw lots of snowballs tossed at cars as they rolled through the intersection.  I’m sure some cars found it annoying, but it wasn’t dangerous.  It was a blizzard.  I was walking faster than cars were driving.  What was dangerous was driving on roads not cleared of snow.  Without a snowplow, you really had no damned business being in a car yesterday. (I included some street pics in the images above to give you an idea of how desolate the streets were.)

As incredulous as I am about that cop pulling a gun, the thing that is pissing me off even more is how Channel 7 news decided to cover the story.

A lively snowball fight on D.C. streets took a dark turn Saturday when anti-war protesters dressed in anarchist garb showed up, and a D.C. police officer pulled his weapon out of his holster.

Channel 7 also claims that the anarchists started pelting cars.  That is a lie.  That started before they got there.  And I saw many snowballs coming from the east side of the street (the opposite side from where they were).  More importantly, who cares!  They were f’ing snowballs!

So a vile, power drunk cop uses his gun to stop a snowball fight and the papers blame some good natured anarchists with a sense of humor.  This is so typical.  This is why people aren’t out in the streets about all the BS that happens every day.  News media isn’t in the business of watching police and government any more.  They just serve as their lying, sensationalist, propaganda arm.

Some of the comments I have seen on the reports are just killing me.  I think my favorite was the person who said the cop was protecting his property.  WTF!  From snowballs?!  And why the hell is a cop driving a hummer?

Ugh!