First off, I have posted a write up of a talk I gave in Glasgow in 2018 entitled Now and After: What would Anarchy be like and how we create the new world by fighting the current one. It summarises anarchist ideas of what a free society would be like and how we get there. As with my previous write-ups, this reflects more what I intended to say rather than what was said. Hopefully it will be close enough.
First off, I have posted a write up of a talk I gave in Glasgow in 2018 entitled Now and After: What would Anarchy be like and how we create the new world by fighting the current one. It summarises anarchist ideas of what a free society would be like and how we get there. As with my previous write-ups, this reflects more what I intended to say rather than what was said. Hopefully it will be close enough. For more details of the ideas raised here, see Section I of An Anarchist FAQ.
Obviously, the title of the talk is a nod to Alexander Berkman’s classic introduction to anarchism, which was published as Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism (pdf) and reprinted many times since (often under different titles including What Is Communist Anarchism? and What Is Anarchism?). I first came across it as the Freedom Press edition entitled The ABC of Anarchism which, sadly, misses out the first part (namely the critique of capitalism, socialism and communism). It was amongst the first anarchist book I bought and set me up nicely. Even in the truncated form, it was a great read and still remains one of my favourites – it is considered a classic for a reason. If you have read it, do yourself a favour and do so. Needless to say, I’ve included a chapter in volume 2 of A Libertarian Reader.
Before going into Covid-19, a couple of interesting links from the Guardian.
The first is on mutual aid and the coronavirus crisis and mentions Kropotkin – although he is described as “an anarchist philosopher” rather than as a world-renown scientist (as I’ve suggested in my introduction and evaluation to Mutual Aid, it is not “an anarchist classic” but rather a classic of popular science written by an anarchist who happened to be a scientist). Sadly slightly spoils it by stating it “seems likely that conservatives will argue for brutal austerity and libertarian abandonment of the most desperate” and so ignores the awkward fact that Kropotkin called himself a libertarian decades before the right decided to steal the word from us anarchists.
The second is entitled The real Lord of the Flies and described what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months on an island. Unlike the book, they worked together and survived – sadly, some will believe the fiction rather than reality! Needless to say, as Kropotkin said long ago, those who consider “human nature” to be bad also seem to argue for “strong” government and authority – yet never wonder why giving power to a few people they think are inherently bad is a good idea… presumably our rulers are exceptions to “human nature”.
Now, back to the coronavirus crisis. As may be expected from a governed headed by a lazy, incompetent, narcissistic, opportunistic serial liar, the British response to the crisis has been very poor. True, at least Johnson has Trump to make him look better… but that is not saying very much. It feels a long time since Johnson smugly proclaimed “there will be many people looking now at our apparent success” – soon placed into context by the highest death rate in Europe and second-highest in the world. Needless to say, the Tories quickly acted – and stopped presenting the international figures at the daily update meetings (which Johnson seems to be avoiding like, well, the plague – just as well, given that even his pre-recorded speeches are incoherent shambles). Apparently international comparisons are unhelpful and misleading – which makes you wonder why they did them for over six weeks…
It seems that the scientists are being put into place as the scapegoats – along with the general population (if you die then you don’t have “British common sense” and it’s your own fault). They are “following the science”, so they say – although how can you “follow the science” if you don’t bother to turn up to relevant Cobra meetings is left unexplained – nor why those providing “the science” did not look at events in, say, Italy and draw obvious conclusions… instead we get this:
“We’re learning lessons every day – but I do think that, broadly speaking, we did the right thing at the right time”
Nonsense of course – as I’ve mentioned before, my local café closed its doors long before Johnson finally decided upon a lockdown. Presumably they were following a different science? Perhaps the science the Irish Republic was following? It locked down long before the UK and its death rate is far, far lower… Likewise, if only there had been a widescale dry-run of a pandemic to learn from… apparently the only people in the UK who have not heard of Operation Cygnet is the Tory cabinet. And best not ponder the impact of nine years of austerity on the PPE stockpile – but, of course, the party of individual responsibility which has been in power for over 9 years… sought to blame the Brown government of 2009!
Johnson’s claims of “apparent success” were a joke – but this statement, like many others, is about controlling the narrative. As for those who seem to believe him, well, look at the deaths statistics, the PPE debacle, the dithering, and his long, well-proven, history of lying:
“But an EU-backed project monitoring all excess deaths during the pandemic reported that England had seen the highest rise in deaths over the five-year average compared with Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.” (Guardian)
I’ve mentioned before on the need to listen to the experts – while common sense as its place, so does science – indeed, calls to follow “common sense” from someone who boasted of shaving hands with everyone at a hospital with Covid-19 patients the day scientists recommended not to do so – and continued to shake hands for days afterwards! – should be laughed at, not put on the front page of a newspaper (but what can you expect from the Daily Mail?). As Johnson shows in this quote, he really does not have a clue:
“Don’t forget, it’s a very very demanding thing to ask a population to do – very tough – and so I think it was completely right to make our period of lockdown coincide as far as possible with the peak of the epidemic.”
Ignoring the Trumpism (“very tough”) what is striking is the lack of sense and logic – it is obviously the other way round, namely that the timing of the lock down determined the peak of the epidemic. The whole point of the lock down was to reduce the peak of the epidemic – it would not nor could not determine when it was. And the lying and hiding of facts hardly helps.
(But then the right has a long history of science denial on pretty much everything. Economics may be an exception, you may protest, but economics is not a science in the main and when it does move towards being a science the right denounce it. Indeed, economics – when all is said and done – has always been an ideology seeking to deny the facts of capitalism.)
So during a pandemic I listen to the scientists know have studied the issue and know what they are talking about rather than idiots like Trump and Johnson. Those seeking to reopen their economies in the name of “liberty” really don’t understand or care about the science – as long as they keep to their own circles, stay home when sick and refuse to call upon the health services when ill that would be fine, but I doubt it. They will inflict the virus on anyone they meet and the unfortunate medical staff who end up treating them.
The evidence is clear on the pandemic – and those denying it are idiots, gullible or have a deference to authority which is truly self-negating to the point of death. Well, the approved of authorities – I wonder what would happen if Trump turned around and started to work with the experts rather proclaiming the comments “not acceptable”? I doubt he will – unless he realises that his followers look likely to be most affected by the virus and, well, dead people can’t vote… (and Republican gerrymandered is not 100% complete and sure yet).
And I best stress that when I say follow the science I of course meant with a critical perspective. Sometimes you take things for granted and into that space distortion and misunderstanding can creep but my comments before were based on Bakunin’s comments in God and the State:
“If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed upon me by no one, neither by men nor by God. Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.
“I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give-such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.”
So “the science” is subject to evaluation and revision which makes the British government’s repeated comment that they are “following the science” not only annoying but untrue – it is clearly pushing the blame for its many mistakes onto the scientists. The decision to change “stay at home” to “stay alert” (about an invisible virus!) is hardly science driven and has far more to do with the protecting the capitalist class whose incomes are at threat just now.
Indeed, many on the right – here and in America – are now trying to reopen the economy. In short, save the economy… by killing people. The obvious point is to ask how can the economy do well with many in the workforce sick or dead? With the Health Service overwhelmed? Yes, many people are in difficult circumstances but there are many forms of direct action (such as rent strikes) and alternative policies which could be pursued – but the ones being picked are all driven by the need to keep the working class in its subordinate role as wage workers. And it is of course unsurprising to see those who dismissed mass unemployment as “a price worth paying” during the 1980s under Thatcher now show deep concern over its social and personal impact now in order to get people back to the daily grind in order to make profits for capital and, hopefully, avoid Coronavirus at the same time.
Which shows how fundamentally anti-human capitalism is.
Which raises an obvious question – why is there an economic crisis at all? Why do we need people to go back to work? After all, the right keep informing us that the “wealth creators” are the elite few, the wealthy, the capitalists, the entrepreneurs, the landlords. They all remain. Their property and its “contribution” to production remain. And yet the economy is tanking… why? could it be because labour is the real wealth creator? that only it makes a contribution? that the so-called “wealth creators” are surplus monopolisers? a surplus which is only created by labour? In other words, that the so-called “wealth-creators” are no such thing? That while we could manage fine without bosses, landlords, shareholders and the rest that they could not manage without us workers? The coronavirus shows that this is the case – that capitalism is rooted in exploitation.
So while there are still landlords, stockholders, capitalists, etc., for some strange reason the economies of the world are plunging as labour is in lock-down. Their “contributions” to production accounts to zero when no worker actually works. With the lockdown, only essential workers are allowed out – and strangely enough, these are not CEOs, stock market WizKids, and other elements of the 1%, but us:
“We now have two categories of work: essential and nonessential. Who have the essential workers turned out to be? Mostly people in low-paying jobs that require their physical presence and put their health directly at risk: warehouse workers, shelf-stockers, Instacart shoppers, delivery drivers, municipal employees, hospital staffers, home health aides, long-haul truckers. Doctors and nurses are the pandemic’s combat heroes, but the supermarket cashier with her bottle of sanitizer and the UPS driver with his latex gloves are the supply and logistics troops who keep the frontline forces intact.”
All in all, shades of Bob the Angry Flower’s Classic Literature sequels: Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later. Well, until such time as the politicians commute and the likes of Elon Musk work on the production lines, when the testing and PPE available in the White House is available for everyone, well, those calling for a re-opening of the economy can piss off – and, yes, I still think an Anarchy would have done have better than the shambles we see across so much of the world.
Which brings me to the abolition of work. It would appear that a great many jobs are not really needed after all – they are often driven by the needs of profit-grinding and while a source of needed income under capitalism do not actually make sense or are needed for satisfying human needs. David Graeber has discussed this in On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant which he later expended upon in a book on the same subject. This, in turn, suggests that a sensible social system could eliminate most jobs and cut the working week for what remains. As Alexander Berkman noted in 1927:
“Furthermore it must be considered that the task of increased production would be enormously facilitated by the addition to the ranks of labor of vast numbers whom the altered economic conditions will liberate for work.
“Recent statistics show that in 1920 there were in the United States over 41 million persons of both sexes engaged in gainful occupations out of a total population of over 105 millions. Out of chose 41 millions only 26 millions were actually employed in the industries, including transportation and agriculture, the balance of 15 millions consisting mostly of persons engaged in trade, of commercial travellers, advertisers, and various other middlemen of the present system In other words, 15 million 2 persons would be released for useful work by a revolution in the United States. A similar situation, proportionate to population, would develop in other countries.
“The greater production necessitated by the social revolution would therefore have an additional army of many million persons at its disposal. The systematic incorporation of chose millions into industry and agriculture, aided by modern scientific methods of organization and production, will go a long way coward helping to solve the problems of supply.
“Capitalist production is for profit; more labor is used today to sell things than to produce them. The social revolution reorganizes the industries on the basis of the needs of the populace. Essential needs come first, naturally. Food, clothing, shelter – these are the primal requirements of man. The first step in this direction is the ascertaining of the available supply of provisions and other commodities. The labor associations in every city and community take this work in hand for the purpose of equitable distribution. Workers’ committees in every street and district assume charge, cooperating with similar committees in the city and State, and federating their efforts throughout the country by means of general councils of producers and consumers.”
Liberate for work? Or, more correctly, liberate from work? After all, one of the reasons for the change in work priorities is to reduce the working week down from over eight hours a day to under four – perhaps even more.
I remember reading in Black Flag a letter from an ultra-leftist arguing that syndicalism had it wrong about workers’ control – most workers hate their jobs and that would not inspire a revolution. The magazine responded by stating the obvious – workers’ control, like expropriation, is the start of the process and not the end. Some workplaces will be closed as the work it does is no longer needed – or turned to more useful tasks – but the first stages is expropriation and workers’ management. This is the first steps in transforming – abolishing – work and the technology as well as the structure of industry we inherit from capitalism. We need to start where we are and we need to recognise it will take time.
However, the current crisis has exposed that essential work actually only involves part of the working population. Much of the non-essential work relates to the requirements generated by capitalism, the State machine, etc. and could be ended in a sane society. Many of the non-essential “jobs” which provide a service people like (even if not essential to providing the basic necessities we need) could be run by user and interest groups – a gym, for example, could be run by its members in their leisure hours after their few hours in necessary productive activity.
The crisis has also shown the limitation – undesirability! – in modern capitalism’s extended supply chains, not least for food. The Guardian raised the issue of the future of farming and I was struck that Kropotkin was discussing these issues in Fields, Factories and Workshops. The problems were clear enough before the crisis and papered over by technological fixes which did not address the underlying issues (but, of course, profitable to the bosses).
Of course, all the pious comments in article in the likes of Guardian on how “we” can use the crisis of rethink our priorities, put the neo-liberalism which has hollowed out our social infrastructure and weakened our ability to respond to this crisis and create a better world will not come to anything. Capital has never responded to nice words, logic, evidence or some such – it only changes when it feels that the alternative is worse. Due to lock-down, a social movement which can place pressure from below onto it and its minion the State is much harder to create but until that is done we can expect the crisis to be exploited to try and bolster private power and wealth as well as that of the State machine. Hard to create, yes, but still necessary – for we cannot go back to “business as usual”.
Finally, a few words on my various projects. My edition of Words of a Rebel is nearly ready to send off to the publishers for proof-editing. I’ve decided to drop Kropotkin’s “The Great French Revolution and its Lesson” from the supplementary material and my initial version of the introduction was far too long, but that is now been cut and just needs one more read through. In terms of A Libertarian Reader, I’ve selected the texts for volume 3 and just have the biographical sketches to do for that. I’m getting a good list of possible texts for volume 4 and need to work on its Afterword, so that is coming along nicely. I have also thought a Camillo Berneri reader would be a good thing – particularly as I’ve discovered that the English translation of Peter Kropotkin: His Federalist Ideas is abridged – but that is in its planning stages.
I hope everyone is well and safe, and until I blog again… be seeing you!