Anarchists Vs. Liberals: What's That About?

Continued from previous page

Graeber doesn’t reflect on the fact that much of the emotional energy inherent in the liberal/anarchist divide boils down to tribalism and the narcissism of small differences. For various cultural and generational reasons, many people in these groups just don’t like each other very much, but they have more in common than many in either camp would like to admit. And they both have much they could teach each other, if they would listen.

For example, progressives are often smug and insular in a way that excludes exactly the kinds of activists who injected so much energy and fresh thinking into Occupy Wall Street encampments all over the world. At least briefly, OWS had a culture of inclusiveness that empowered thousands of people who had no previous way to plug into established progressive organizations, other than passively making financial donations or signing internet petitions. On the other hand, the massive publicity about OWS exacerbated a kind of anarchist exceptionalism. Graeber grandly proclaims that OWS represented the “first time since the civil rights movement in the 1950s, a success for Ghandian tactics in America.” This would certainly come as a surprise to anti-war activists like the Berrigans and anti-nuclear power activists like Sam Lovejoy, as well as many others. And of course, there is no “accomplishment” to date that OWS can point to that is remotely equivalent to those of the civil rights movement.

Graeber writes as if he believes that anarchists—and anarchists alone—had unlocked the door to democratic transformation and that all progressive efforts were permanently obsolete. But that is a delusion. Anarchists, like liberals, do some things that work and some that don’t; they both win some and lose some.

Many liberals were equally unfair in their assessment of OWS. There were hand-wringing pieces about the risk of radicals sabotaging President Obama’s re-election and comparing the protests to a cartoon version of the anti-war movement of the ‘60s. In fact, despite a profound disappointment with many of the Obama administration’s policies, there was no disruption of the Democratic convention, nor any incidents that gave fodder to the right wing. Meanwhile the “1 Percent” meme clearly damaged Mitt Romney.

There was also overblown progressive anxiety about a supposed tendency toward violence in what was clearly a non-violent movement. The anarchists support for a “diversity of tactics” allegedly gave those who engaged in “black block” tactics license to disrupt non-violent demonstrations.  Chris Hedges wrote a widely read essay referring to this alleged violence as a “cancer” that could destroy the occupy movement.

But Graeber persuasively points out that the actual practices of the movement should mitigate such concerns. “There are always boundaries, acknowledged or otherwise...Just as ‘diversity of tactics’ is based on the tacit assumption that no one would ever show up at a demo with a car bomb or rocket propelled grenade, so assertions that no activist should be expelled from a meeting do assume certain parameters.” With very few anomalous exceptions, the occupations were free of violence except for the unconscionably rough treatment some cops gave to non-violent protesters.
 

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At the core of much of Graeber’s book is a dubious belief that process itself is more important than any particular issue. Graeber, a member of the OWS facilitation group, rhapsodizes about the general assembly, which operated by consensus with “at least two facilitators, one male, one female, one to keep the meeting running, the other to ‘take stack’...We discussed hand signals and non-binding straw polls or ‘temperature checks.’”

For many who were attracted by slogans like banks got bailed out, we got sold out, the fetishization of process seemed like bait and switch. Horizontal decision making at general assemblies and small groups could go on for hours. Far from being democratic, the time-consuming process discriminated against people with jobs, those who had to take care of children or sick people, those with health problems of their own and those unfamiliar with anarchist culture and jargon, among others. Just as is the case with liberal structures, horizontalism encourages democracy in some contexts and dampens it in others.