J.4 What trends in society aid anarchist activity?

Simply because it shows that people are unhappy with the existing society and, more importantly, are trying to change at least some part of it. It suggests that certain parts of the population have reflected on their situation and, potentially at least, seen that by their own actions they can influence and change it for the better.

Given that the ruling minority draws its strength of the acceptance and acquiescence of the majority, the fact that a part of that majority no longer accepts and acquiesces is a positive sign. After all, if the majority did not accept the status quo and acted to change it, the class and state system could not survive. Any hierarchical society survives because those at the bottom follow the orders of those above it. Social struggle suggests that some people are considering their own interests, thinking for themselves and saying "no" and this, by its very nature, is an important, indeed, the most important, tendency towards anarchism. It suggests that people are rejecting the old ideas which hold the system up, acting upon this rejection and creating new ways of doing thinks.

"Our social institutions," argues Alexander Berkman, "are founded on certain ideas; as long as the latter are generally believed, the institutions built upon them are safe. Government remains strong because people think political authority and legal compulsion necessary. Capitalism will continue as long as such an economic system is considered adequate and just. The weakening of the ideas which support the evil and oppressive present-day conditions means the ultimate breakdown of government and capitalism." [The ABC of Anarchism, p. xv]

Social struggle is the most obvious sign of this change of perspective, this change in ideas, this progress towards freedom.

It is often argued that social struggle, by resisting the powerful and the wealthy, will just do more harm than good. Employers often use this approach in anti-union propaganda, for example, arguing that creating a union will force the company to close and move to less "militant" areas.

There is, of course, some truth in this. Yes, social struggle can lead to bosses moving to more compliant workforces -- but, of course, this also happens in periods lacking social struggle too! If we look at the down-sizing mania that gripped the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, we see companies down-sizing tens of thousands of people during a period where unions were weak, workers scared about loosing their jobs and class struggle basically becoming mostly informal and "underground." Moreover, this argument actually indicates the need for anarchism. It is a damning indictment of any social system that it requires people to kow-tow to their masters otherwise they will suffer economic hardship. It boils down to the argument "do what you are told, otherwise you will regret it." Any system based on that maxim is an affront to human dignity!

It would, in a similar fashion, be easy to "prove" that slave rebellions are against the long term interests of the slaves. After all, by rebelling the slaves will face the anger of their masters. Only by submitting to their master can they avoid this fate and, perhaps, be rewarded by better conditions. Of course, the evil of slavery would continue but by submitting to it they can ensure their life can become better. Needless to say, any thinking and feeling person would quickly dismiss this reasoning as missing the point and being little more than apologetics for an evil social system that treated human beings as things. The same can be said for the argument that social struggles within capitalism do more harm than good. It betrays a slave mentality unfitting for human beings (although fitting for those who desire to live of the backs of workers or desire to serve those who do).

Moreover, this kind of argument ignores a few key points. Firstly, by resistance the conditions of the oppressed can be maintained or even improved. After all, if the boss knows that their decisions will be resisted they may be less inclined to impose speed-ups, longer hours and so on. If they know that their employees will agree to anything then there is every reason to expect them to impose all kinds of oppressions, just as a state will impose draconian laws if it knows that it can get away with it. History is full of examples of non-resistance producing greater evils in the long term and of resistance producing numerous important reforms and improvements (such as higher wages, shorter hours, the right to vote for working class people and women, freedom of speech, the end of slavery, trade union rights and so on).

So social struggle has been proven time and time again to gain successful reforms. For example, before the 8 hour day movement of 1886 in America, for example, most companies argued they could not introduce that reform without doing bust. However, after displaying a militant mood and conducting an extensive strike campaign, hundreds of thousands of workers discovered that their bosses had been lying and they got shorter hours. Indeed, the history of the labour movement shows what bosses say they can afford and the reforms workers can get via struggle are somewhat at odds. Given the asymmetry of information between workers and bosses, this is unsurprising. Workers can only guess at what is available and bosses like to keep their actual finances hidden. Even the threat of labour struggle can be enough to gain improvements. For example, Henry Ford's $5 day is often used as an example of capitalism rewarding good workers. However, this substantial pay increase was largely motivated by the unionisation drive by the Industrial Workers of the World among Ford workers in the summer of 1913 [Harry Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capitalism, p. 144]. More recently, it was the mass non-payment campaign against the poll-tax in Britain during the late 1980s and early 1990s which helped ensure its defeat (and the 1990 poll-tax riot in London also helped and ensured that the New Zealand government did not introduce a similar scheme in their country too!). In the 1990s, France also saw the usefulness of direct action. Two successive prime ministers (Edouard Balladur and Alain Juppe) tried to impose large scale "reform" programmes that swiftly provoked mass demonstrations and general strikes amongst students, workers, farmers and others. Confronted by crippling disruptions, both governments gave in. Compared to the experience of, say Britain, France's tradition of direct action politics proved more effective in maintaining existing conditions or even improving on them.

Secondly, and in some ways more importantly, it ignores that by resistance those who take part can the social system they live in can be changed. This radicalising effect of social struggle can open new doors for those involved, liberate their minds, empower them and create the potential for deep social change. Without resistance to existing forms of authority a free society cannot be created as people adjust themselves to authoritarian structures and accept what is as the only possibility. By resisting, people transform and empower themselves, as well as transforming society. In addition, new possibilities can be seen (possibilities before dismissed as "utopian") and, via the organisation and action required to win reforms, the framework for these possibilities (i.e. of a new, libertarian, society) created. The transforming and empowering effect of social struggle is expressed well by the ex-IWW and UAW-CIO shop steward Nick DeGaetano in his experiences in the 1930s:

"the workers of my generation from the early days up to now had what you might call a labour insurrection in changing from a plain, humble, submissive creature into a man. The union made a man out of him. . . I am not talking about benefits . . . I am talking about the working conditions and how they affected the man in plant. . . Before they were submissive. Today they are men." [quoted in Industrial Democracy in America, Nelson Lichtenstein and Holwell John Harris (eds.), p. 204]

Other labour historians note the same radicalising process elsewhere (modern day activists could give more examples!):

"The contest [over wages and conditions] so pervaded social life that the ideology of acquisitive individualism, which explained and justified a society regulated by market mechanisms and propelled by the accumulation of capital, was challenged by an ideology of mutualism, rooted in working-class bondings and struggles. . . Contests over pennies on or off existing piece rates had ignited controversies over the nature and purpose of the American republic itself." [David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labour, p. 171]

This radicalising effect is far more dangerous to authoritarian structures than better pay, more liberal laws and so on as they need submissiveness to work. Little wonder that direct action is usually denounced as pointless or harmful by those in power or their spokespersons, for direct action will, taken to its logical conclusion, put them out of a job! Struggle, therefore, holds the possibility of a free society as well as of improvements in the here and now. It also changes the perspectives of those involved, creating new ideas and values to replace the ones of capitalism.

Thirdly, it ignores the fact that such arguments do not imply the end of social struggle and working class resistance and organisation, but rather its extension. If, for example, your boss argues that they will move to Mexico if you do not "shut up and put up" then the obvious solution is to make sure the workers in Mexico are also organised! Bakunin argued this basic point over one hundred years ago, and it is still true -- "in the long run the relatively tolerable position of workers in one country can be maintained only on condition that it be more or less the same in other countries." If, for example, workers in Mexico have worse wages and conditions than you do, these same conditions will be used against you as the "conditions of labour cannot get worse or better in any particular industry without immediately affecting the workers in other industries, and that workers of all trades are inter-linked with real and indissoluble ties of solidarity," ties which can be ignored only at your own peril. Ultimately, "in those countries the workers work longer hours for less pay; and the employers there can sell their products cheaper, successfully competing against conditions where workers working less earn more, and thus force the employers in the latter countries to cut wages and increase the hours of their workers." Bakunin's solution was to organise internationally, to stop this undercutting of conditions by solidarity between workers. As recent history shows, his argument was correct [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 306-7]. Thus it is not social struggle or militancy which is bad, just isolated militancy, struggle which ignores the ties of solidarity required to win, extent and keep reforms and improvements. In other words, our resistance must be as transnational as capitalism is.

The idea that social struggle and working class organisation are harmful was expressed constantly in the 1970s. If we look at the arguments of the right in the 1970s, we also find evidence that the "struggle does more harm than good" viewpoint is flawed. With the post-war Keynesian consensus crumbling, the "New Right" argued that trade unions (and strikes) hampered growth and that wealth redistribution (i.e. welfare schemes which returned some of the surplus value workers produced back into their own hands) hindered "wealth creation" (i.e. economic growth). Do not struggle over income, they argued, let the market decide and everyone will be better off.

This argument was dressed up in populist clothes. Thus we find the right-wing guru F.A. von Hayek arguing that, in the case of Britain, the "legalised powers of the unions have become the biggest obstacle to raising the standards of the working class as a whole. They are the chief cause of the unnecessarily big differences between the best- and worse-paid workers." He maintained that "the elite of the British working class. . . derive their relative advantages by keeping workers who are worse off from improving their position." Moreover, he "predict[ed] that the average worker's income would rise fastest in a country where relative wages are flexible, and where the exploitation of workers by monopolistic trade union organisations of specialised workers are effectively outlawed." ["1980s Unemployment and the Unions" reproduced in The Economic Decline of Modern Britain, p. 107, p. 108, p. 110]

Now, if von Hayek's claims were true we could expect that in the aftermath of Thatcher government's trade union reforms we would have seen: a rise in economic growth (usually considered as the means to improve living standards for workers by the right); a decrease in the differences between high and low paid workers; a reduction in the percentage of low paid workers as they improved their positions when freed from union "exploitation"; and that wages rise fastest in countries with the highest wage flexibility. Unfortunately for von Hayek, the actual trajectory of the British economy exposes his claims as nonsense.

Looking at each of his claims in turn we discover that rather than "exploit" other workers, trade unions are an essential means to shift income from capital to labour (which is way capital fights labour organisers tooth and nail). And, equally important, labour militancy aids all workers by providing a floor under which wages cannot drop (non-unionised/militant firms in the same industry or area have to offer similar programs to prevent unionisation and be able to hire workers) and by maintaining aggregate demand. This positive role of unions/militancy in aiding all workers can be seen by comparing Britain before and after Thatcher's von Hayek inspired trade union and labour market reforms.

As far as economic growth goes, there has been a steady fall since trade union reforms. In the "bad old days" of the 1970s, with its strikes and "militant unions" growth was 2.4% in Britain. It fell to 2% in the 1980s and fell again to 1.2% in the 1990s [Larry Elliot and Dan Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity, p. 236]. So the rate of "wealth creation" (economic growth) has steadily fallen as unions were "reformed" in line with von Hayek's ideology (and falling growth means that the living standards of the working class as a whole do not rise as fast as they did under the "exploitation" of the "monopolistic" trade unions). If we look at the differences between the highest and lowest paid workers, we find that rather than decrease, they have in fact shown "a dramatic widening out of the distribution with the best-workers doing much better" since Thatcher was elected in 1979 [Andrew Glyn and David Miliband (eds.), Paying for Inequality, p. 100]

Given that inequality has also increased, the condition of the average worker must have suffered. For example, Ian Gilmore states that "[i]n the 1980s, for the first time for fifty years. . . the poorer half of the population saw its share of total national income shirk." [Dancing with Dogma, p. 113] According to Noam Chomsky, "[d]uring the Thatcher decade, the income share of the bottom half of the population fell from one-third to one-fourth" and the between 1979 and 1992, the share of total income of the top 20% grew from 35% to 40% while that of the bottom 20% fell from 10% to 5%. In addition, the number of UK employees with weekly pay below the Council of Europe's "decency threshold" increased from 28.3% in 1979 to 37% in 1994 [World Orders, Old and New, p. 144, p. 145] Moreover, "[b]ack in the early 1960s, the heaviest concentration of incomes fell at 80-90 per cent of the mean. . . But by the early 1990s there had been a dramatic change, with the peak of the distribution falling at just 40-50 per cent of the mean. One-quarter of the population had incomes below half the average by the early 1990s as against 7 per cent in 1977 and 11 per cent in 1961. . ." [Elliot and Atkinson, Op. Cit., p. 235] "Overall," notes Takis Fotopoulos, "average incomes increased by 36 per cent during this period [1979-1991/2], but 70 per cent of the population had a below average increase in their income." [Towards an Inclusive Democracy, p. 113]

Looking at the claim that trade union members gained their "relative advantage by keeping workers who are worse off from improving their position" it would be fair to ask whether the percentage of workers in low-paid jobs decreased in Britain after the trade union reforms. In fact, the percentage of workers below the Low Pay Unit's definition of low pay (namely two-thirds of men's median earnings) increased -- from 16.8% in 1984 to 26.2% in 1991 for men, 44.8% to 44.9% for women. For manual workers it rose by 15% to 38.4%, and for women by 7.7% to 80.7% (for non-manual workers the figures were 5.4% rise to 13.7% for men and a 0.5% rise to 36.6%). If unions were gaining at the expense of the worse off, you would expect a decrease in the number in low pay, not an increase. [Paying for Inequality, p.102] An OECD study concluded that "[t]ypically, countries with high rates of collective bargaining and trade unionisation tend to have low incidence of low paid employment." [OECD Employment Outlook, 1996, p. 94]

Nor did unemployment fall after the trade union reforms. As Elliot and Atkinson point out, "[b]y the time Blair came to power [in 1997], unemployment in Britain was falling, although it still remained higher than it had been when the [the last Labour Government of] Callaghan left office in May 1979." [Op. Cit., p. 258] Von Hayek did argue that falls in unemployment would be "a slow process" but over 10 years of higher unemployment is moving at a snail's pace! And we must note that part of this fall in unemployment towards its 1970s level was due to Britain's labour force shrinking (and so, as the July 1997 Budget Statement correctly notes, "the lower 1990s peak [in unemployment] does not in itself provide convincing evidence of improved labour performance." [p. 77]).

As far as von Hayek's prediction on wage flexibility leading to the "average worker's income" rising fastest in a country where relative wages are flexible, it has been proved totally wrong. Between 1967 and 1971, real wages grew (on average) by 2.95% per year (nominal wages grew by 8.94%) [P. Armstrong, A. Glyn and John Harrison, Capitalism Since World War II, p.272]. In comparison, in the 1990s real wages grew by 1.1 per cent, according to a TUC press release entitled Productivity Record, how the UK compares released in March 1999.

Needless to say, these are different eras so it would also be useful to compare the UK (often praised as a flexible economy after Thatcher's "reforms") to France (considered far less flexible) in the 1990s. Here we find that the "flexible" UK is behind the "inflexible" France. Wages and benefits per worker rose by almost 1.2 per cent per year compared to 0.7% for the UK. France's GDP grew at a faster rate than Britain's, averaging 1.4 per cent per year, compared with 1.2 per cent. Worker productivity is also behind, since 1979 (Thatcher's arrival) Britain's worker productivity has been 1.9 per cent per year compared to France's 2.2 per cent [Seth Ackerman, "The Media Vote for Austerity", Extra!, September/October 1997]. And as Seth Ackerman also notes, "[w]hile France's dismal record of job creation is on permanent exhibit, it is never mentioned that Britain's is even more dismal." [Ibid.]

Moving further afield, we find von Hayek's prediction falsified yet again. If we look at the USA, frequently claimed as a model economy in terms of wage flexibility and union weakness, we discover that the real wages of the average worker has decreased since 1973 (the weekly and hourly earnings of US production and non-supervisory workers, which accounts for 80% of the US workforce, have fallen in real terms by 19.2% and 13.4% respectively [Economic Report of the President 1995, Table B-45]). If we look at figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census (Current Population Survey) we can see how increased flexibility has affected income:

As can be seen, flexible wages and weaker unions have resulted in the direct opposite of von Hayek's predictions. Within the US itself, we discover that higher union density is associated with fewer workers earning around the minimum wage -- "the percentage of those earning around the minimum wage are both substantially higher in right-to-work states [i.e. those that pass anti-union laws] than overall and lower in high union density states that overall" and "in right-to-work states . . . wages have traditionally been lower." [Oren M. Levin-Waldman, The Minimum Wage and Regional Wage Structure] If unions did harm non-union workers, we would expect the opposite to occur. It does not. Of course, being utterly wrong has not dented his reputation with the right nor stopped him being quoted in arguments in favour of flexibility and free market reforms.

Moreover, the growth of the US economy has also slowed down as wage flexibility and market reform has increased (it was 4.4% in the 1960s, 3.2% in the 1970s, 2.8% in the 1980s and 1.9% in the first half of the 1990s [Larry Elliot and Dan Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity, p. 236]). In addition, inequality in the US has dramatically increased since the 1970s, with income and wealth growth in the 1980s going predominately to the top 20% (and, in fact, mostly to the top 1% of the population). The bottom 80% of the population saw their wealth grow by 1.2% and their income by 23.7% in the 1980s, while for the top 20% the respective figures were 98.2% and 66.3% (the figures for the top 1% were 61.6% and 38.9%, respectively). [Edward N. Wolff, "How the Pie is Sliced", The American Prospect, no. 22, Summer 1995]

Comparing the claims of von Hayek to what actually happened after trade union reform and the reduction of class struggle helps to suggest that the claims that social struggle is self-defeating are false (and probably self-serving, considering it is usually bosses and employer supported parties and economists who make these claims). A lack of social struggle has been correlated with low economic growth, stagnant (even declining) wages and the creation of purely paid service jobs to replace highly paid manufacturing ones. So while social struggle may make capital flee and other problems, lack of it is no guarantee of prosperity (quite the reverse, if the last quarter of the 20th century is anything to go by!). Indeed, a lack of social struggle will make bosses be more likely to cut wages, worsen working conditions and so on -- after all, they feel they can get away with it! Which brings home the fact that "to make their [the working class'] victory secure and definitive, it is necessary to destroy capitalism." [Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 191]

Of course, no one can know that struggle will make things better. It is a guess; no one can predict the future. Not all struggles are successful and many can be very difficult. If the "military is a role model for the business world" (in the words of an ex-CEO of Hill & Knowlton Public Relations [quoted by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!, p. 47]), and it is, then any struggle against it and other concentrations of power may, and often is, difficult and dangerous at times. But, as Zapata once said, "better to die on your feet than live on your knees!" All we can say is that social struggle can and does improve things and, in terms of its successes and transforming effect on those involved, well worth the potential difficulties it can create. Moreover, without struggle there is little chance of creating a free society, dependent as it is on individuals who refuse to bow to authority and have the ability and desire to govern themselves. In addition, social struggle is always essential, not only to win improvements, but to keep them as well. In order to fully secure improvements you have to abolish capitalism and the state. Not to do so means that any reforms can and will be taken away (and if social struggle does not exist, they will be taken away sooner rather than later). Ultimately, most anarchists would argue that social struggle is not an option -- we either do it or we put up with the all the petty (and not so petty) impositions of authority. If we do not say "no" then the powers that be will walk all over us.

As the history of the last 20 years shows, a lack of social struggle is fully compatible with worsening conditions. Ultimately, if you want to be treated as a human being you have to stand up for your dignity -- and that means thinking and rebelling. As Bakunin often argued, human development is based on thought and rebellion (see God and the State). Without rebellion, without social struggle, humanity would stagnant beneath authority forever and never be in a position to be free. We would agree wholeheartedly with the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass:

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will. People might not get all that they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."

When assessing the revolutionary potential of our own era, we must note again that modern civilisation is under constant pressure from the potential catastrophes of social breakdown, ecological destruction, and proliferating weapons of mass destruction. These crises have drawn attention as never before to the inherently counter-evolutionary nature of the authoritarian paradigm, making more and more people aware that the human race is headed for extinction if it persists in outmoded forms of thought and behaviour. This awareness produces a favourable climate for the reception of new ideas, and thus an opening for radical educational efforts aimed at creating the mass transformation of consciousness which must take place alongside the creation of new liberatory institutions.

This receptiveness to new ideas has led to a number of new social movements in recent years. From the point of view of anarchism, the four most important of these are perhaps the feminist, ecology, peace, and social justice movements. Each of these movements contain a great deal of anarchist content, particularly insofar as they imply the need for decentralisation and direct democracy. Since we have already commented on the anarchist aspects of the ecology and feminist movements, here we will limit our remarks to the peace and social justice movements.

It is clear to many members of the peace movement that international disarmament, like the liberation of women, saving the planet's ecosystem, and preventing social breakdown, can never be attained without a shift of mass consciousness involving widespread rejection of hierarchy, which is based on the authoritarian principles of domination and exploitation. As C. George Bennello argued, "[s]ince peace involves the positive process of replacing violence by other means of settling conflict. . . it can be argued that some sort of institutional change is necessary. For if insurgency is satisfied with specific reform goals, and does not seek to transform the institutional structure of society by getting at its centralised make-up, the war system will probably not go away. This is really what we should mean by decentralising: making institutions serve human ends again by getting humans to be responsible at every level within them." [From the Ground Up, p. 31]

When pursued along gender, class, racial, ethnic, or national lines, these two principles are the primary causes of resentment, hatred, anger, and hostility, which often explode into individual or organised violence. Therefore, both domestic and international peace depend on decentralisation, i.e. dismantling hierarchies, thus replacing domination and exploitation by the anarchist principles of co-operation, sharing, and mutual aid.

But direct democracy is the other side of decentralisation. In order for an organisation to spread power horizontally rather than concentrating it at the apex of hierarchy, all of its members have to have an equal voice in making the decisions that affect them. Hence decentralisation implies direct democracy. So the peace movement implies anarchism, because world peace is impossible without both decentralisation and direct democracy. Moreover, "[s]o long as profits are tied to defence production, speaking truth to the elites involved is not likely to get very far" as "it is only within the boundaries of the profit system that the corporate elites would have any space to move." [Op. Cit., p. 34] Thus the peace movement implicitly contains a libertarian critique of both forms of the power system -- the political and economical.

In addition, certain of the practical aspects of the peace movement also suggest anarchistic elements. The use of non-violent direct action to protest against the war machine can only be viewed as a positive development by anarchists. Not only does it use effective, anarchistic methods of struggle it also radicalises those involved, making them more receptive to anarchist ideas and analysis (after all, as Benello correctly argues, the "anarchist perspective has an unparalleled relevance today because prevailing nuclear policies can be considered as an ultimate stage in the divergence between the interests of governments and their peoples . . . the implications when revealed serve to raise fundamental questions regarding the advisability of entrusting governments with questions of life and death. . . There is thus a pressing impetus to re-think the role, scale, and structure of national governments." [Op. Cit., p. 138]).

If we look at the implications of "nuclear free zones" we can detect anarchistic tendencies within them. A nuclear free zone involves a town or region declaring an end of its association with the nuclear military industrial complex. They prohibit the research, production, transportation and deployment of nuclear weapons as well as renouncing the right to be defended by nuclear power. This movement was popular in the 1980s, with many areas in Europe and the Pacific Basin declaring that they were nuclear free zones. As Benello points out, "[t]he development of campaigns for nuclear free zones suggests a strategy which can educate and radicalise local communities. Indeed, by extending the logic of the nuclear free zone idea, we can begin to flesh out a libertarian municipalist perspective which can help move our communities several steps towards autonomy from both the central government and the existing corporate system." While the later development of these initiatives did not have the radicalising effects that Benello hoped for, they did "represent a local initiative that does not depend on the federal government for action. Thus it is a step toward local empowerment. . . Steps that increase local autonomy change the power relations between the centre and its colonies. . . The nuclear free zone movement has a thrust which is clearly congruent with anarchist ideas. . . The same motives which go into the declaration of a nuclear free zone would dictate that in other areas where the state and the corporate systems services are dysfunctional and involve excessive costs, they should be dispensed with." [Op. Cit., p. 137, pp. 140-1]

The social justice movement is composed of people seeking fair and compassionate solutions to problems such as poverty, unemployment, economic exploitation, discrimination, poor housing, lack of health insurance, wealth and income inequalities, and the like. Such concerns have traditionally been associated with the left, especially with socialism and trade-unionism. Recently, however, many radicals have begun to perceive the limitations of both Marxist-Leninist and traditional trade-unionist solutions to social justice problems, particularly insofar as these solutions involve hierarchical organisations and authoritarian values.

Following the widespread disillusionment with statism and centrally planned economies generated by the failure of "Communism" in the ex-Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, many radicals, while retaining their commitment to social justice issues, have been searching for new approaches. And in doing so they've been drawn into alliances with ecologists, feminists, and members of the peace movement. (This has occurred particularly among the German Greens, many of whom are former Marxists. So far, however, few of the latter have declared themselves to be anarchists, as the logic of the ecology movement requires.)

It is not difficult to show that the major problems concerning the social justice movement can all be traced back to the hierarchy and domination. For, given the purpose of hierarchy, the highest priority of the elites who control the state is necessarily to maintain their own power and privileges, regardless of the suffering involved for subordinate classes.

Today, in the aftermath of 12 years of especially single-minded pursuit of this priority by two Republican administrations, the United States, for example, is reaping the grim harvest: armies of the homeless wandering the streets; social welfare budgets slashed to the bone as poverty, unemployment, and underemployment grow; sweatshops mushrooming in the large cities; over 43 million Americans without any health insurance; obscene wealth inequalities; and so on. This decay promises to accelerate in the US during the coming years, now that Republicans control both houses of Congress. Britain under the neo-liberal policies of Thatcher and Major has experienced a social deterioration similar to that in the US.

In short, social injustice is inherent in the exploitative functions of the state, which are made possible by the authoritarian form of state institutions and of the state-complex as a whole. Similarly, the authoritarian form of the corporation (and capitalist companies in general) gives rise to social injustice as unfair income differentials and wealth disparity between owners/management and labour.

Hence the success of the social justice movement, like that of the feminist, ecology, and peace movements, depends on dismantling hierarchies. This means not only that these movement all imply anarchism but that they are related in such a way that it's impossible to conceive one of them achieving its goals in isolation from any of the others.

To take just one example, let's consider the relationship between social justice and peace, which can be seen by examining a specific social justice issue: labour rights.

As Dimitrios Roussopoulos points out, the production of advanced weapons systems is highly profitable for capitalists, which is why more technologically complex and precise weapons keep getting built with government help (with the public paying the tab by way of rising taxes).

Now, we may reasonably argue that it's a fundamental human right to be able to choose freely whether or not one will personally contribute to the production of technologies that could lead to the extinction of the human race. Yet because of the authoritarian form of the capitalist corporation, rank-and-file workers have virtually no say in whether the companies for which they work will produce such technologies. (To the objection that workers can always quit if they don't like company policy, the reply is that they may not be able to find other work and therefore that the choice is not free but coerced.) Hence the only way that ordinary workers can obtain the right to be consulted on life-or-death company policies is to control the production process themselves, through self-management.

But we can't expect real self-management to emerge from the present labour relations system in which centralised unions bargain with employers for "concessions" but never for a dissolution of the authoritarian structure of the corporation. As Roussopoulos puts it, self-management, by definition, must be struggled for locally by workers themselves at the grassroots level:

"Production for need and use will not come from the employer. The owners of production in a capitalist society will never begin to take social priorities into account in the production process. The pursuit of ever greater profits is not compatible with social justice and responsibility." [Dissidence]

For these reasons, the peace and social justice movements are fundamentally linked through their shared need for a worker-controlled economy.

We should also note in this context that the impoverished ghetto environments in which the worst victims of social injustice are forced to live tends to desensitise them to human pain and suffering -- a situation that is advantageous for military recruiters, who are thereby able to increase the ranks of the armed forces with angry, brutalised, violence-prone individuals who need little or no extra conditioning to become the remorseless killers prized by the military command. Moreover, extreme poverty makes military service one of the few legal economic options open to such individuals. These considerations illustrate further links between the peace and social justice movements -- and between those movements and anarchism, which is the conceptual "glue" that can potentially unite all the new social movement in a single anti-authoritarian coalition.

Il y a actuellement une crise structurelle dans l'économie capitaliste mondiale. Par rapport à l'"Age d'Or" d'après-guerre de 1950 à 1973, la période allant de 1974 a vu une aggravation continue de la performance économique de l'Ouest et du Japon. Par exemple, la croissance est plus faible, le taux de chômage est beaucoup plus élevé, la productivité du travail est plus faible que l'investissement. La Moyenne des taux de chômage dans les grands pays industrialisés ont fortement augmentés depuis 1973, surtout après 1979. Le taux de chômage "dans les pays capitalistes avancés (le « Groupe des 7 Â»...) a augmenté de 56 pour cent entre 1973 et 1980 (passant d'une moyenne de 3,4 pour cent à 5,3 pour cent de la force de travail) et depuis lors par un autre de 50 pour cent (à partir de 5,3 pour cent de la population active en 1980 à 8,0 pour cent en 1994)" [Takis Fotopoulos, Towards and Inclusive Democracy, p. 35]. L'insécurité de l'emploi a augmenté (aux États-Unis, par exemple, il y a plus d'insécurité d'emploi que depuis la dépression des années 1930 [op. Cit., P. 141]). En outre, les économies nationales et l'économie internationale sont devenues beaucoup moins stable.

Cette crise ne se limite pas qu'à l'économie. Elle s'étend à l'écologique et le social. "Au cours des dernières années", souligne Larry Elliot et Dan Atkinson, "certains radicaux de l'économie ont tentés de [créer]... une mesure globale de bien-être appelé l'indice de bien-être économique durable [ISEW]... Dans les années 1950 et 1960 l'ISEW a augmenté en tandem avec le PIB par habitant. Il fut un temps non seulement de hausse des revenus, mais d'une plus grande équité sociale, de faible criminalité, de plein emploi et d'expansion de l'Etat-providence. Mais depuis le milieu des années 1970's les deux mesures ont commencés à passer outre. Le PIB par habitant a poursuivi son irrésistible ascension, mais les ISEW ont commencés à diminuer à la suite de l'allongement des files d'attente du chômage, de l'exclusion sociale, de l'explosion de la criminalité, du manque d'habitation, de la dégradation de l'environnement et de l'accroissement des maladies -et le stress- liées à cet environnement. Au début des années 1990, l' ISEW était presque revenu à des niveaux en cours qui avaient commencé au début des années 1990" [The Age of Insecurity, p. 248]. Cela montre bien, comme nos commentaires dans la section C.10, à savoir que les facteurs économiques ne peuvent pas, et ne le font pas, indiquer le bonheur de l'homme. Toutefois, ici nous discutons de facteurs économiques. Cela ne signifie pas que la situation sociale et les crises écologiques ne sont pas importantes ou sont réductible à l'économie. Loin de là. Nous nous concentrons sur le facteur économique simplement parce que c'est généralement le facteur souligné par l'establishment et il est utile d'indiquer l'écart entre la réalité et le battage dont nous sommes actuellement soumis.

Ironiquement, comme le souligne Robert Brenner, "tandis que le médicament néo-classique a été administré à des doses encore plus forte [depuis les années 1960], l'économie a réalisé des performances moins bonnes. Les années 1970's ont été pire que les années 1960's, les années 1980's pire que les années 1970's, et les années 1990's ont été pire que les années 1980's" [ "The Economics of Global Turbulence", New Left Review, no. 229, p. 236]. C'est ironique parce que pendant la crise du keynésianisme dans les années 1970, la droite a fait valoir que trop d'égalité et de démocratie nuisait à l'économie, et ainsi à nous tous à long terme (dûe à une plus faible croissance, la faiblesse de l'investissement et ainsi de suite). Toutefois, après plus d'une décennie de gouvernements pro-capitaliste, l'augmentation des inégalités, l'augmentation de la liberté pour le capital et de ses propriétaires et gestionnaires, l'affaiblissement des syndicats et ainsi de suite, la performance économique s'est empiré !

Si nous regardons les Etats-Unis dans les années 1990's (le plus souvent présenté comme une économie qui "a vu juste"), nous constatons que la "reprise conjoncturelle des années 1990's, en termes des principaux indicateurs macro-économiques de croissance - production, investissement, productivité et compensation réelle - a été encore moins dynamique que ses relativement faibles prédécesseurs des années 1980's et des années 1970's (sans parler de ceux des années 1950's et 1960's)" [Op. Cit., P. 5]. Bien sûr, l'économie est présentée comme un succès parce que l'inégalité est grandissante, les riches deviennent plus riches et la richesse se concentre dans de moins en moins de mains. Pour les riches et le capital financier, ça peut être considéré comme un «âge d'or» et c'est présenté comme tel par les médias. En effet, c'est pour cette raison qu'il peut être faux de définir cette lente pourriture comme une "crise", c'en est à peine une pour l'élite au pouvoir. Leur part de richesse sociale, de pouvoir et de revenu ayant augmenté régulièrement au cours de cette période. Pour la majorité, c'est sans aucun doute une crise (le terme de "dépression silencieuse" a été correctement utilisé pour décrire cela), mais pour ceux qui gèrent le système, ça n'a pas du tout été une crise.

En effet, les seuls pays qui ont vus une importante et dynamique croissance après 1973 où ceux qui ont utilisé l'intervention de l'État pour violer les «lois» éternelles de l'économie néo-classique, à savoir les pays de l'Asie du Sud-Est (en ceci qu'ils suivent l'exemple du Japon qui a utilisé l'intervention de l'État pour croître à des taux massives après la guerre). Bien sûr, avant la crise économique de 1997, les capitalistes de "libre marché" ont fait valoir que ces pays sont des exemples classiques d'économies de "libre marché". Par exemple, l'icône de l'aile droite F.A von Hayek a affirmé que "la Corée du Sud et d'autres nouveaux arrivants" ont "découvert les avantages de la libéralisation des marchés", alors qu'en fait, ils n'ont rien fait de tel ["1980s Unemployment and the Unions" reproduced in The Economic Decline of Modern Britain, p. 113]. Plus récemment, en 1995, l'"Heritage Foundation" a publié son indice de liberté économique. Quatre des sept pays étaient d'Asie, y compris le Japon et Taiwan. Tous les pays d'Asie en lutte pour seulement les quatre dernieres années ont été qualifiés de "libre". Toutefois, comme Takis Fotopoulos le fait valoir, "ce n'est pas les politiques de laissez-faire qui ont induits leur croissance spectaculaire. Comme un certain nombre d'études l'ont montré, l'expansion des tigres asiatique reposait sur l'intervention massive de l'État qui renforcaient leurs secteurs d'exportation, par des politiques publiques impliquant non seulement un lourd protectionnisme mais même en déformant délibérément les prix du marché pour stimuler l'investissement et le commerce" [Op. Cit., P. 115]. Après la crise, les partisans du libre-marché ont découvert que l'étatisme était toujours là et ils ont dansé joyeusement sur la tombe de ce que l'on appelait "le miracle asiatique".

Cette hypocrisie est vraiment dégoûtante et des relents d'une volonté stalinienne / orwellienne de ré-écrire l'histoire de manière à apparaître comme ayant toujours raison. En outre, une telle analyse cynique sape réellement leur propre cause pour les merveilles du «libre marché». Après tout, jusqu'à ce que la crise apparaisse, les investisseurs du monde - c'est-à-dire "le marché" - n'ont rien vu si ce n'est un ciel bleu pour l'économie de ces pays. Ils ont montré leur foi en injectant des milliards dans les marchés asiatiques, tandis que les banques étrangères avec contentement remettent des milliards en prêts. Si les problèmes d'Asie sont de nature systémique et le résultat des politiques étatistes de ces pays, le deni des investisseurs à le reconnaître plus tôt est un coup porté contre le marché, pas pour lui.

Encore plus pervers est, qu'alors même que les partisans du capitalisme de "libre-marché" concluent que l'histoire rend son verdict sur le modèle asiatique du capitalisme, ils semblent oublier que, jusqu'à la récente crise qu'ils ont eus eux-mêmes beaucoup de mal à nier, un tel modèle existe. Jusqu'à ce que l'Asie ait capoté, les partisans du capitalisme de "libre-marché" ont heureusement tenus comme une preuve que la seule recette pour la croissance économique a été l'ouverture des marchés et la non-intervention de la part de l'État. Inutile de dire que cette ré-écriture de l'histoire sera mise aux oubliettes, avec toutes les autres allégations, qui ont ensuite été prouvées comme un non-sens absolu.

Alors, comme on peut le voir, l'économie mondiale a été marquée par de plus en plus de stagnation, un ralentissement de la croissance, dans les économies occidentales (par exemple, la reprise d'entreprise dans les années 1990 a été le maillon le plus faible depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale). Ceci en dépit des (ou, plus probablement, en raison des) réformes imposées dans l'économie de marché et de la déréglementation du capital financier (on dit "en raison de" tout simplement parce que l'économie néo-classique fait valoir que les réformes pour le marché permettraient d'accroître la croissance et améliorer l'économie, mais comme nous l'avons fait valoir dans la section C une telle économie a peu de fondement dans la réalité et leurs recommandations ne sont guère à produire des résultats positifs). Bien sûr que la classe dirigeante a été bien dans ce nouvel ordre mondial, ce ralentissement a été ignorée et en toute évidence.

Au cours des dernières années la crise (en particulier la crise financière) est devenue de plus en plus visible (enfin) par la faiblesse sous-jacente de l'économie globale. Cette faiblesse sous-jacente a été caché par la performance des spéculateurs des marchés boursiers mondiaux, dont les performances, ironiquement, ont contribués à la création de cette faiblesse pour commencer ! Comme un expert sur Wall Street l'a fait valoir, "Les marchés à caution... Haïssent la solidité économique... Les actions se comportent généralement mal tout comme quand l'économie réelle est à son plus fort... Les actions prospérent sur une économie fraiche, et se fanent sur une chaude" [Wall Street, p. 124]. En d'autres termes, la véritable faiblesse économique se reflète dans la solidité financière.

Henwood note également que "ce qu'on pourrait appeler la part du rentier de par l'excédent de l'entreprise - dividendes, en plus des intérêts en pourcentage des bénéfices avant impôts et intérêts - a augmenté, passant de 20-30% dans les années 1950's à 60 % Dans les années 1990's" [Op. Cit., P. 73]. Cela contribue à expliquer la stagnation qui a frappé l'économie de l'Ouest. Les riches ont placés leur toujours plus croissante richesse dans les Actions, permettant à ce marché de croître face à la torpeur économique général. Plutôt que d'être utilisés dans l'investissement, l'excédent est acheminé dans les marchés financiers, les marchés qui concentrent la richesse avec beaucoup de succès (les bénéfices non répartis aux États-Unis ont diminués, autant que les intérêts et les paiements de dividendes ont augmenté [Brenner, op. Cit., P. 210] ). Etant donné que "le système financier américain effectue lamentablement sa tâche de publicité, que la société dirige efficacement l'épargne vers l'investissement optimal de leurs activités. Le système est incroyablement coûteux, donne de terrible signaux pour l'allocation des capitaux, et a étonnamment peu à voir avec le véritable investissement" [Henwood, op. Cit., P. 3]. Comme la plupart des investissements proviennent de fonds internes, la hausse de la part des rentiers (ceux qui tirent leurs revenus du rendement sur le capital) de l'excédent a permis de diminuer l'investissement et donc la stagnation de l'économie. Et le ralentissement de l'économie a augmenté la solidité financière, qui conduit à un affaiblissement de l'économie réelle. Un cercle vicieux, et qui se refléte dans le ralentissement de la croissance économique au cours des 30 dernières années.

En effet, en particulier depuis la fin des années 1970's, on a vu la domination croissante du capital financier. Cette domination a, en effet, créé un marché pour les politiques gouvernementales en tant que le capital financier est devenu de plus en plus de nature mondiale. Les gouvernements doivent garantir, protéger et élargir le domaine à visée lucrative pour le capital financier et les sociétés transnationales, sinon ils seront punis par les marchés mondiaux (c'est-à-dire le capital financier). Ces politiques ont été à la charge de l'économie sous-tendue, en général, et de la classe ouvrière en particulier :

"le pouvoir des Rentiers a été réalisé au niveau du travail, à la fois organisés et non organisés dans les rangs des salariés, car il considère la hausse des salaires en tant que principale menace contre l'ordre stable. Pour des raisons évidentes, cet objectif n'a jamais été dit très clairement, mais les marchés financiers ont compris le rôle central de la lutte : la protection de la valeur de leur capital nécessaire à la répression des revenus du travail." [William Greider, One World, Ready or Not, p. 302]

Bien sûr, le capital industriel déteste aussi le travail, il y a donc une base d'une alliance entre les deux parties du capital, même si elles ne sont pas d'accord sur les détails des politiques économiques mises en œuvre. Étant donné que l'un des principaux aspects des réformes néo-libérales ont étés la transformation du marché du travail d'un marché de vendeurs de l'après-guerre à un marché d'acheteurs du dix-neuvième siècle, avec ses effets sur la discipline d'usine, les créances salariales et la prédisposition à la grève, le capital industriel ne pouvait pas être heureux avec ses effets. Doug Henwood a correctement fait valoir que "les libéraux et les populistes ont souvent recherchés des alliés parmi les industriels, le raisonnement que, même si les intérêts financiers souffrent dans un boom, les entreprises qui échangent réellement, plutôt que fictivement, les produits prospérent lorsque la croissance est forte. En général, les industriels sont moins sensibles à ces arguments. les employeurs dans toute l'industrie comme du mou dans le marché du travail, ça permet une main-d'œuvre docile, avec peu de chances de faire des exigences ou de la résistance". En outre, "beaucoup de sociétés non financières ont de lourds intérêts financiers." [Op. Cit., p. 123, p. 135]

Ainsi, la stagnation générale qui frappe une grande partie du monde, une stagnation qui s'est développé dans la crise autant que les besoins de financement ont sapé l'économie réelle, qui, en fin de compte, en dépend. La contradiction entre les bénéfices à court terme et à long terme inhérents à la survie du capitalisme a encore frappé.

La crise, comme nous l'avons indiqué ci-dessus, est apparu dans des domaines auparavant considérés comme des économies fortes, et ça s'est propagé. Un aspect important de cette crise est la tendance de la capacité de production à dépasser la demande effective (c'est-à-dire la tendance à sur-investir par rapport à la demande disponible), qui découle en grande partie du déséquilibre entre les besoins des capitalistes d'un haut taux de profit et de simultanée nécessité de veiller à ce que les travailleurs aient suffisamment de richesses et de revenus afin qu'ils puissent venir acheter les produits sur lesquels ces bénéfices dépendent (voir la section C). L'inégalité a augmenté aux États-Unis, ce qui signifie que l'économie doit faire face à la réalisation de la crise (voir la section C.7), une crise qui a jusqu'ici été évitée par l'approfondissement de la dette pour les travailleurs (le niveau de la dette a plus que doublé entre les années 1950's et les années 1990's, de 25% à plus de 60%).

Un sur-investissement a été amplifié dans les tigres de l'Est asiatique comme ils ont été forcés d'ouvrir leurs économies à la finance mondiale. Ces économies, en raison de leur intervention sur le marché (et des régimes répressifs contre le travail) veillaient à ce qu'ils soient un lieu plus rentable que d'investir ailleurs. Le Capital inondé dans la zone, assurant un relatif sur-investissement a été inévitable. Comme nous l'avons fait valoir à la section C.7.2, la crise est possible simplement en raison de l'insuffisance des informations fournies par le mécanisme des prix - les agents économiques peuvent réagir d'une telle manière que par le résultat collectif de décisions rationnelles prises individuellement est irrationnelle. Ainsi, le désir de tirer les bénéfices dans les économies des Tigres a abouti à un effet de ciseau dans les bénéfices que l'ensemble des décisions d'investissement ont fait du sur-investissement, et ainsi de sur-production et faisant baisser les profits.

En effet, les économies de l'Asie du Sud-Est ont souffert d'un problème appelé l'«erreur de composition». Lorsque vous êtes la premiere économie exportatrice d'Asie, vous êtes en concurrence avec un coût élevé avec des producteurs de l'Ouest et donc avec des travailleurs bon marché, des impôts faibles et des lois environnementales laxistes vous permettant de couper court à vos concurrents et faire des profits. Toutefois, comme plus de tigres ont rejoint le marché, ils sont de fait en compétition les uns contre les autres et donc leurs marges de profit va vers une diminution de leur coût réel des prix plutôt que ceux des firmes occidentales. Avec la diminution des bénéfices, le capital qui se jettait dans la région en est reparti, créant ainsi une situation de crise (et la preuve, d'ailleurs, que les marchés libres sont déstabilisateurs et ne garantissent pas le meilleur de tous les résultats possibles). Ainsi, le régime des rentiers, après l'affaiblissement des économies occidentales, a contribué à déstabiliser aussi celles de l'Est.

Ainsi, dans le court terme, de nombreuses grandes entreprises et sociétés financières résolvent leurs problèmes de profit par un accroissement de la production dans les pays "sous-développés", afin de tirer profit de la main-d'œuvre bon marché présente (et de l'état de répression qui veille à ce bon marché), ainsi que de plus faibles lois sur l'environnement et des impôts moins élevés. Pourtant, peu à peu ils sont arrivés à court de populations du tiers-monde à exploiter. Pour le processus même de "développement" stimulé par la présence de corporations transnationales dans les nations du tiers-monde accroissant la concurrence et donc, potentiellement, le sur-investissement et, plus important encore, la production de la résistance sous la forme de syndicats, de rébellions et ainsi de suite, qui ont tendance à exercer une pression à la baisse sur le niveau de l'exploitation et des bénéfices (par exemple, en Corée du Sud, la part de travail en valeur ajoutée est passée de 23 à 30 pour cent, en contraste frappant avec les États-Unis, l'Allemagne et le Japon, tout simplement parce les travailleurs coréens se sont rebellés et ont gagné de nouvelles libertés politiques).

Ce processus reflète, à bien des égards, l'essor du capital financier dans les années 1970's. Dans les années 1950's et 1960's, les pays industrialisés ont connus une concurrence accrue de l'ex-pouvoir de l'Axe (à savoir le Japon et l'Allemagne). Comme ces nations re-industrialisés, ils ont placés une pression accrue sur les États-Unis et d'autres nations, réduisant les "degrés de monopole" mondiaux et les forcant à entrer en concurrence avec les producteurs de moindre coût (qui, inutile de le dire, ont réduit les bénéfices des compagnies). En outre, le plein emploi produit une résistance accrue dans l'usine et dans la société dans son ensemble (voir la section C.7.1), pressant encore plus les profits. Ainsi, une combinaison de la lutte des classes et d'une sur-capacité mondiale a entraîné la crise des années 1970's. À l'incapacité de l'économie réelle, en particulier le secteur manufacturier, de fournir un rendement adéquat, le capital s'est transféré dans la finance. En effet, c'est parti en courant de par le succés des travailleurs à faire valoir leurs droits sur le lieu de production et ailleurs. Ce fait, combiné à une concurrence internationale accrue du Japon et de l'Allemagne, a assuré la montée du capital financier, qui en retour a assuré les tendances stagnationistes actuelles de l'économie (tendances aggravées par la montée des économies des tigres Asiatique dans les années 1980's).

De la contradiction entre capital financier et l'économie réelle, entre les besoins de bénéfices pour les capitalistes et les besoins humains, entre la surcapacité et la demande, et d'autres, il est apparu ce qui semble être une tendance à long terme vers une stagnation permanente de l'économie capitaliste. Cette tendance a été manifeste depuis plusieurs décennies, comme en témoigne l'ajustement continu à la hausse du taux de chômage officiellement considéré comme "normal" ou "acceptable" au cours de ces décennies, et par d'autres symptômes, ainsi telles que la baisse de la croissance, la baisse du taux de profit et ainsi de suite.

Cette stagnation est récemment devenue encore plus évidente par le développement de la crise dans de nombreux pays et les réactions des banques centrales tentant de relancer les économies réelles qui ont souffert des politiques inspirés par leur rentier. La question de savoir si cette crise va devenir pire, c'est difficile à dire. Les puissances occidentales peuvent agir pour protéger l'économie réelle en adoptant les politiques keynésiennes qu'ils ont essayé de discréditer au cours des trente dernières années. Toutefois, si une telle volonté de sauvetage de réussite est difficile à raconter et peut seulement assurer la poursuite de la stagnation plutôt que d'une véritable mise en marche, si ça n'a aucun effet du tout.

Bien sûr, une profonde dépression peut résoudre le problème de la surcapacité et du sur-investissement dans le monde et jeter les bases d'une remise en marche. Une telle stratégie est cependant très dangereuse en raison de la résistance de la classe ouvrière que cela pourrait provoquer, la profondeur de la crise et de la durée, ça pourrait durer. Toutefois, cela, peut-être, a été le cas aux Etats-Unis en 1997-9 où plus de 20 ans d'un côté la lutte des classes peut avoir porté leurs fruits en termes de bénéfices et taux de bénéfice. Toutefois, cette possibilité a plus à voir avec les problèmes ailleurs dans le monde qu'un véritable changement économique, en plus de la hausse de la dette des consommateurs (il existe maintenant des taux d'épargne personnels négatifs aux Etats-Unis), une aggravation du déficit commercial et une bulle boursière. En outre, une augmentation de la productivité s'est combiné avec la stagnation des salaires pour augmenter le rendement du capital et le taux de bénéfice (les salaires ont diminués au cours de la plus grande partie de la récupération des années 1990's et s'est finalement retrouvé en 1999 à leur pic de pré-récession de 1989 ! En dépit de 8 ans de croissance économique, le travailleur typique est de retour seulement où ils ont commencé à la pointe du dernier cycle économique). Cette baisse et la lenteur de la croissance des salaires représente essentiellement l'augmentation du taux de profit des États-Unis, avec la récente croissance des salaires réels étant à peine suffisant pour faire suffisamment d'impact (même si la Réserve fédérale américaine fait une hausse des taux d'intérêt pour ralentir cette augmentation, même, ce qui vient renforcer notre argument selon lequel les bénéfices capitalistes exigent le chômage et l'insécurité pour maintenir le pouvoir capitaliste sur le lieu de production).

Cette situation reflète l'Amérique des années 1920's (voir la section C.7.3 pour plus de détails), qui a également été marquée par une augmentation des inégalités, une main-d'oeuvre excédentaire et la hausse des profits et suggère que la nouvelle économie américaine est confrontée à la même possibilité d'une récession. Cela signifie que l'économie américaine doit faire face au danger de sur-investissement (par rapport à la demande, bien sûr), tôt ou tard, peut-être plus tôt que prévu en raison des problèmes ailleurs dans le monde en tant que les bénéfices de la croissance économique est fragile car elle dépend de l'investissement, les dépenses de luxe et les dettes de la classe ouvrière pour survivre - qui sont tous plus instable et vulnérable aux chocs que la consommation des travailleurs.

Étant donné les difficultés à prédire l'avenir (et le fait que ceux qui essaient cela se sont généralement avérée totalement dans le faux!), Nous ne pourrons pas prétendre le connaître et nous laisserons le débat mettre en lumière quelques possibilités. Une chose est vrai, cependant, et c'est que la classe ouvrière va payer le prix d'une "solution" - à moins qu'elle ne s'organise et se débarrasse du capitalisme et de l'État. En fin de compte, le capitalisme a besoin de profits pour survivre et ces bénéfices viennent du fait que les travailleurs n'ont pas la liberté économique. Ainsi, toute "solution" dans un cadre capitaliste, signifie l'accroissement de l'oppression et de l'exploitation des travailleurs.

Face à des bilans négatifs en période de récession, les couches supérieures de temps en temps paniquent et acceptent certaines réformes, certaines répartitions de la richesse, qui permettent de résoudre temporairement le problème à court terme de la stagnation de la demande croissante et permet ainsi de renouveler l'expansion. Toutefois, cette solution à court-terme signifie que la classe ouvrière va progressivement faire des gains économiques et politiques, de sorte que l'exploitation et l'oppresion et, par conséquent, le taux de profit, tende à baisser (comme cela s'est produit au cours de l'"age d'or" keynésien de l'après-guerre). Face aux dangers, d'une part, de l'effondrement économique et, d'autre part, de l'augmentation de la puissance de la classe ouvrière, la classe dirigeante peut ne pas agir avant qu'il ne soit trop tard. Ainsi, sur la base que la crise actuelle peut s'aggraver et la stagnation se transformer en dépression, nous allons examiner pourquoi la "crise économique structurelle" que nous avons vécu de par le dernier quart du 20ème siècle (et de son potentiel de crise) est important pour la lutte sociale dans la section suivante.

La "crise économique structurelle" que nous avons souligné dans la dernière section a certaines implications pour les anarchistes et les luttes sociales. Essentiellement, comme George C. Benello l'a fait valoir, "si la situation économique s'aggrave... Il est probable de trouver une ouverture pour des alternatives qui n'ont pas été pensé depuis la dépression des années 1930... Il est important de planifier en vue d'une éventuelle crise économique, car elle n'est pas seulement pratique, mais peut aussi servir de méthode pour mobiliser une communauté de façon créative" [From the Ground Up, p. 149].

Face à la stagnation et à la dépression économique, les tentatives visant à améliorer le taux d'exploitation (c'est-à-dire accroître les profits) en augmentant l'autorité du patron croissante. En outre, plus de gens trouvent difficile de joindre les deux bouts, rendant nécessaire des dettes pour survivre, le visage des sans-abri quand ils sont au chômage, et ainsi de suite. Ces effets rendent l'exploitation de plus en plus visible et ont tendance à pousser les couches opprimées ensemble dans les mouvements qui cherchent à atténuer, voire supprimer leur oppression. Comme l'ère capitaliste a porté sur elles, ces couches sont de plus en plus en mesure de se rebeller et de prendre des engagements pour des améliorations politiques et économiques, qui ont, en outre, conduits à de plus en plus de volontés à le faire en raison de la hausse des attentes (ce qui est possible) et de la frustration (ce qui l'est en réalité). C'est pourquoi, depuis 1945, la "famille" du monde entier des mouvements progressistes a augmenté "encore plus fort, toujours plus audacieuse, toujours plus diverse, de plus en plus difficile à contenir" [Immanuel Wallerstein, Géopolitique et Geoculture, p. 110]. Il est vrai que les libertaires, la gauche et le monde du travail ont subi un revers temporaire au cours des dernières décennies, mais avec l'augmentation de la misère de la classe ouvrière en raison des politiques néo-libérales (et la "crise économique structurelle" qu'ils créent), il n'est qu'une question de temps avant qu'il y ait une résurgence du radicalisme.

Les anarchistes seront aux premiers rangs de cette résurgence. Car, avec le discrédit du capitalisme d'État autoritaire ("communisme") dans l'Union soviétique et l'Europe de l'Est, la faction anti-autoritaire de la gauche sera de plus en plus considérée comme la seule crédible. Ainsi, la crise structurelle en cours dans l'économie capitaliste mondiale, combiné avec les autres ressorts de l'évolution de ce que Takis Fotopoulos appelle (dans son livre "Towards and Inclusive Democracy") une "crise multidimensionnelle" (qui comprend les aspects économiques, politiques, sociaux, écologiques et les aspects idéologiques), pourrait (éventuellement) amener pour la prochaine décennie ou la deuxiéme à une nouvelle alliance internationale anti-autoritaire entre le nouvel ensemble (et pas si nouveau) des mouvements sociaux dans l'Ouest (féminisme, le mouvement vert, la masse de militants du travail, etc) avec des mouvements de libération non-autoritaire dans le tiers monde et des nouveaux mouvements anti-bureaucratique dans les anciens pays "communiste". Toutefois, ce n'est susceptible de se produire que si les anarchistes prennent l'initiative de la promotion de solutions de remplacement et de travail avec la masse de la population. Les façons dont les anarchistes peuvent le faire sont discutés en détail dans la section J.5.

Ainsi, la "crise économique structurelle" peut aider la lutte sociale en plaçant un contraste de "ce qui est" à ce qui "pourrait être" dans une lumière claire. Toute crise crée des contradictions dans le capitalisme, entre la production de la valeur d'usage (les choses que les gens ont besoin) et de la valeur d'échange (capitaliste de profit), entre la proclamation du capitalisme à se fonder sur la liberté et l'autoritarisme associé au travail salarié ("les évidences générales de la répression que pose une ancienne contradiction du capitalisme : alors qu'il prétend promouvoir la liberté de l'homme, il fait concrètement les bénéfices de la négation de la liberté, plus particulierement de la liberté des travailleurs employés dans l'entreprise capitaliste" [William Greider, One World, Ready or Not, p. 388]) et ainsi de suite. ça tremble au peu de foi populaire dans la capacité du capitalisme à "livrer la marchandise" et met de plus en plus de gens à penser à des alternatives à ce système qui place le profit au-dessus et avant les gens et la planète. La crise a également, par sa nature même, encouragé les travailleurs et les opprimés d'autres sections de la population à résister et à combattre, ce qui génère à son tour organisation collective (comme les syndicats ou le lieu de travail fondée sur les assemblées et conseils), de la solidarité et de l'action directe - en d'autres termes, un collectif d'entre-aide et la conscience que les problèmes des personnes de la classe ouvrière ne peuvent être résolus que par elles-mêmes, par leurs propres actions et organisations. Les années 1930's aux États-Unis est un exemple classique de ce processus, avec des luttes très militantes qui ont lieu dans des situations très difficiles (voir Howard Zinn "Une histoire populaire des États-Unis" ou de Jeremy Brecher "Strike"! Pour plus de détails).

En d'autres termes, la "crise économique structurelle" donne aux radicaux beaucoup de potentiel pour diffuser leur message, même si l'environnement global peut faire des succès semble difficile à l'extrême par moments !

Ainsi qu'encourager l'organisation du lieu de travail en raison de l'intensification de l'exploitation et de l'autorité provoquée par la stagnation économique / dépression, la "crise économique structurelle" peut encourager d'autres formes d'alternatives libertaires. Par exemple, "l'effet pratique de l'hégémonie du capital de la finance a été de verrouiller les économies avancées et leurs gouvernements dans une spirale maligne, les limitant à de mauvais choix. Comme Obligataires en général, le nouveau consensus qui régit explicitement l'hypothèse que la croissance économique plus rapide était dangereuse -- menaçant la stabilité financière - les nations ont effectivement été bloqué à partir de mesures susceptibles de réduire le chômage permanent ou d'ameliorer la baisse des salaires... La réalité de la lenteur de la croissance, à son tour, a poussé les gouvernements à approfondir leur endettement, étant donné que la croissance décevante a inévitablement compromis les recettes fiscales, tandis qu'il a élargi le coût du bien-être public. Le régime rentier a chargé à plusieurs reprises les gouvernements à réformer leurs priorités en matière de dépenses - qui est, de retirer des prestations à charge de citoyens..." [op. Cit., Pp. 297-8].

Ainsi, la "crise économique structurelle" a abouti à l'érosion de l'État-providence (au moins pour la classe ouvrière, pour les élites, les aides de l'Etat ne sont jamais très loin). Ce développement est un potentiel de possibilités libertaire. "Le déclin de l'État", affirme L. Gambone "rend nécessaire une revitalisation de la notion d'action directe et d'aide mutuelle. Sans Maman État le faisant pour nous, nous devons créer nos propres services sociaux par le biais de sociétés d'aide mutuelle" [Syndicalism in Myth and Reality, p. 12]. Comme nous l'affirmons de façon plus approfondie dans la section J.5.16, un tel mouvement d'aide mutuelle a une longue histoire dans la classe ouvrière et, comme c'est sous notre contrôle, ça ne peut pas nous être retiré pour enrichir et donner du pouvoir à la classe dirigeante comme l'État a géré les systèmes. Ainsi, le déclin des services sociaux gérés par l'Etat pourrait, éventuellement, voir la naissance d'un réseau auto-géré, des alternatives de la classe ouvrière (de même, bien sûr, on pouvait voir la fin de tous les services les plus faibles de notre société -- qui vient à dépendre sur la possibilité de ce que nous faisons dans l'ici et maintenant. voir la section J.5.15 pour une analyse anarchiste de l'État-providence).

Food Not Bombs! est un excellent exemple de pratiques alternatives libertaire étant généré par la crise économique, à laquelle nous sommes confrontés. Food Not Bombs aide les sans-abri à travers l'action directe de ses membres. Il s'agit également d'aider les sans-abri eux-mêmes. Il s'agit d'un groupe communautaire qui aide les autres personnes de la collectivité qui sont dans le besoin de fournir gratuitement des vivres à ceux qui en ont besoin. FNB! contribue également à d'autres projets politiques et activités anarchistes.

Food Not Bombs! sert de la nourriture gratuite dans les lieux publics pour dramatiser la situation difficile des sans-abri, l'insensibilité du système et de notre capacité à résoudre les problèmes sociaux par le biais de nos propres actions sans le gouvernement ou le capitalisme. Le harcèlement constant de la FNB! par les flics, les classes moyennes et le gouvernement illustre leur insensibilité à la détresse des pauvres et de l'échec de leurs institutions à construire une société qui s'occupe plus des personnes que d'argent et de propriété (et les armes, les flics et les prisons pour la protéger). Le fait est qu'aux États-Unis, de nombreux travailleurs et chômeurs n'ont pas le sentiment qu'ils ont le droit à des besoins humains de base tels que la médecine, des vêtements, des abris et de la nourriture. Food Not Bombs! encourage les pauvres à faire ces demandes, fournissant un espace où ces demandes peuvent être exprimées, et ne contribuent à casser le mur entre la faim et la non-faim. La répression visant le FNB! par les forces de police locales et les gouvernements démontre également l'efficacité de leur activité et de la possibilité qu'ils peuvent radicaliser ceux qui s'impliquent dans l'organisation. La charité est une chose, de toute évidence, l'aide mutuelle, c'est autre chose. FNB! car il s'agit d'un mouvement politisé d'en bas, basée sur la solidarité, n'est pas de la charité, parce que, dans les paroles de Kropotkine, la charité "porte un caractère d'inspiration d'en haut, et, en conséquence, implique une certaine supériorité du donneur sur le récepteur" et donc difficilment libertaire [Mutual Aid, p. 222].

Le dernier exemple dans la façon dont la stagnation économique peut générer des tendances libertaires peuvent être par le fait que, "historiquement, dans des temps d'inflation graves ou de pénuries de capitaux, les communautés ont été contraintes de compter sur leurs propres ressources. Au cours de la Grande Dépression, de nombreuses villes imprimaient leur propre monnaie, ce qui fonctionne dans la mesure où une communauté est en mesure de maintenir une économie viable interne qui fournit les nécessités de la vie, indépendante des transactions avec l'extérieur" [C. George Benello, op. Cit., P. 150].

Ces monnaies et économies locales peuvent être utilisés comme base d'une économie socialiste libertaire. Les devises doivent être la base d'une mutuelle de banque (voir les sections J.5.5 et J.5.6), offrant des prêts sans intérêt pour les travailleurs à former des coopératives et ainsi construire des alternatives libertaire aux entreprises capitalistes. En outre, ces monnaies locales pourraient être basées sur le temps de travail, en éliminant les profits des capitalistes, en permettant aux travailleurs d'échanger le produit de leur travail avec les autres travailleurs. En outre, "les systèmes d'échange locaux forcent les communautés locales par le renforcement de leur auto-suffisance, l'autonomisation des membres de la communauté, et aidant à les protéger contre les excès du marché mondial" [Frank Lindenfield, "Economics for Anarchists," Social Anarchism, no. 23, p. 24]. De cette façon, l'autonomie locale dans la gestion des communes pourrait être créé, les communes qui remplacent la hiérarchie, de haut en bas, le gouvernement avec la prise de décision collective des affaires de la communauté fondée sur la démocratie directe des assemblées communautaires (voir la section J.5.1). Ces communautés et ces économies autonomes pourraient se fédérer ensemble pour coopérer à une plus grande échelle et ainsi créer un contre-pouvoir à celui de l'État et du capitalisme.

Ce système confédéral de communautés auto-gérées pourrait aussi protéger les emplois comme la "mondialisation du capital menace les industries locales. Un moyen doit être trouvé pour maintenir le capital à la maison et ainsi préserver les emplois et les communautés qui en dépendent. Le protectionnisme est à la fois indésirable et impraticable. Mais la propriété des travailleurs ou les coopératives de travailleurs sont des solutions alternatives" [L. Gambone, syndicalism in Myth and Reality, pp.12-13]. Les communautés locales pourraient fournir l'appui nécessaire aux structures qui pourraient protéger les coopératives des effets de corromption du travail dans le marché capitaliste (voir la section J.5.11). De cette manière, la liberté économique (l'auto-gestion) pourrait remplacer le capitalisme (l'esclavage salarié) et montrer que l'anarchisme est une alternative au chaos et à l'autoritarisme du capitalisme, même si ces exemples sont fragmentaires et limités par nature.

Cependant, ces évolutions ne devraient pas être prises isolément des luttes collective sur le lieu de travail ou de la communauté. C'est dans la lutte des classes que le potentiel réel de l'anarchie est créé. Le travail de ces organisations comme Food Not Bombs! et la création de monnaies locales et les coopératives sont complémentaires à la tâche importante de la création des organisations des lieux de travail et communautaires qui peuvent créer une résistance efficace à la fois à l'État et aux capitalistes, la résistance qui peut renverser les deux (voir les sections J.5.2 et J.5.1 respectivement). "des volontaires et des systèmes de crédit de service et des monnaies alternatives par eux-mêmes peut ne pas suffire à remplacer le système d'entreprise capitaliste. Néanmoins, elles peuvent aider à bâtir la force économique de la monnaie locale, l'autonomisation des résidents locaux, et d'atténuer certaines des conséquences de la pauvreté et de chômage... Au moment où une majorité [de la communauté sont impliqués il] sera en bonne voie pour devenir une incarnation vivante de nombreux idéaux anarchistes" [Frank Lindenfield, op. Cit., P. 28]. Et cette communauté serait une grande aide dans une grève ou d'autres luttes sociales qui se passent !

Par conséquent, la crise économique générale à laquelle nous sommes confrontés a des implications pour la lutte sociale et l'activisme anarchiste. Ce pourrait être la base d'alternatives libertaire dans nos lieux de travail et communautés, les alternatives basées sur l'action directe, la solidarité et l'auto-gestion. Ces solutions pourraient inclure le syndicalisme du lieu de travail et de communauté, les coopératives, les banques mutuelles et les autres formes de résistance anarchiste au capitalisme et à l'Etat. Nous discutons de ces solutions de remplacement plus en détail dans la section J.5, et ainsi ne le faisons pas ici.

Avant de passer à la section suivante, nous devons souligner que nous ne sommes pas à faire valoir que la classe ouvrière a besoin d'une crise économique pour le forcer à la lutte. Un tel «objectivisme» (c'est-à-dire le placement des tendances vers le socialisme dans le développement du capitalisme, de facteurs objectifs, plutôt que dans la lutte des classes, c'est-à-dire des facteurs subjectifs), il vaut mieux laisser aux marxistes orthodoxes et léninistes comme ça a des sous-jacents autoritaires (voir la section H ). Au contraire, nous sommes conscients que la lutte des classes, la pression subjective sur le capitalisme, n'est pas indépendante des conditions dans lesquelles elle a lieu (et contribue à créer, il faut ajouter). La révolte Subjective est toujours présente sous le capitalisme et, dans le cas de la crise des années 1970, elle a joué un rôle dans sa création. Face à une crise économique, nous indiquons ce que nous pouvons faire pour y répondre et comment il pourrait, potentiellement, se créer les tendances libertaires au sein de la société. La crise économique pourrait, en d'autres termes, provoquer des luttes sociales, des action collective et des tendances anarchiques dans la société. De même, il peut provoquer l'apathie, le rejet de la lutte collective, et peut-être, l'embrassant de fausses "solutions", telles que le populisme de droite, le léninisme, le fascisme ou le "libéralisme" d'extrême-droite. Nous ne pouvons pas prédire la manière dont l'avenir se développera, mais il est vrai que si nous ne faisons rien, alors, évidemment, les tendances libertaires ne grandiront et ne se développeront pas.

According to a report in Newsweek ("The Good Life and its Discontents" Jan. 8, 1996), feelings of disappointment have devastated faith in government and big business. Here are the results of a survey in which which people were asked whether they had a "great deal of confidence" in various institutions:

As can be seen, the public's faith in major companies plunged 36% over a 28-year period in the survey, an even worse vote of "no confidence" than that given to Congress (34%).

Some of the feelings of disappointment with government can be blamed on the anti-big-government rhetoric of conservatives and right-wing populists. But such rhetoric is of potential benefit to anarchists as well. Of course the Right would never dream of really dismantling the state, as is evident from the fact that government grew more bureaucratic and expensive under "conservative" administrations than ever before.

Needless to say, this "decentralist" element of right-wing rhetoric is a con. When a politician, economist or business "leader" argues that the government is too big, he is rarely thinking of the same government functions you are. You may be thinking of subsidies for tobacco farmers or defence firms and they are thinking about pollution controls. You may be thinking of reforming welfare for the better, while their idea is to dismantle the welfare state totally. Moreover, with their support for "family values", "wholesome" television, bans on abortion, and so on their victory would see an increased level of government intrusion in many personal spheres (as well as increased state support for the power of the boss over the worker, the landlord over the tenant and so on).

If you look at what the Right has done and is doing, rather than what it is saying, you quickly see the ridiculous of claims of right-wing "libertarianism" (as well as who is really in charge). Obstructing pollution and health regulations; defunding product safety laws; opening national parks to logging and mining, or closing them entirely; reducing taxes for the rich; eliminating the capital gains tax; allowing companies to fire striking workers; making it easier for big telecommunications companies to make money; limiting companies' liability for unsafe products-- the program here is obviously to help big business do what it wants without government interference, and to help the rich get richer. In other words, increased "freedom" for private power combined with a state whose role is to protect that "liberty."

Yet along with the pro-business, pro-private tyranny, racist, anti-feminist, and homophobic hogwash disseminated by right-wing radio propagandists and the business-backed media, important decentralist and anti-statist ideas are also being implanted in mass consciousness. These ideas, if consistently pursued and applied in all areas of life (the home, the community, the workplace), could lead to a revival of anarchism in the US -- but only if radicals take advantage of this opportunity to spread the message that capitalism is not genuinely anti-authoritarian (nor could it ever be), as a social system based on liberty must entail.

This does not mean that right-wing tendencies have anarchistic elements. Of course not. Nor does it mean that anarchist fortunes are somehow linked to the success of the right. Far from it (the reverse is actually the case). Similarly, the anti-big government propaganda of big business is hardly anarchistic. But it does have the advantage of placing certain ideas on the agenda, such as decentralisation. What anarchists try to do is point out the totally contradictory nature of such right-wing rhetoric. After all, the arguments against big government are equally applicable to big business and wage slavery. If people are capable of making their own decisions, then why should this capability be denied in the workplace? As Noam Chomsky points out, while there is a "leave it alone" and "do your own thing" current within society, it in fact "tells you that the propaganda system is working full-time, because there is no such ideology in the U.S. Business, for example, doesn't believe it. It has always insisted upon a powerful interventionist state to support its interests -- still does and always has -- back to the origins of American society. There's nothing individualistic about corporations. Those are big conglomerate institutions, essentially totalitarian in character, but hardly individualistic. Within them you're a cog in a big machine. There are few institutions in human society that have such strict hierarchy and top-down control as a business organisation. Nothing there about 'Don't tread on me.' You're being tread on all the time. The point of the ideology is to try to get other people, outside of the sectors of co-ordinated power, to fail to associate and enter into decision-making in the political arena themselves. The point is to atomise everyone else while leaving powerful sectors integrated and highly organised and of course dominating resources." He goes on to note that:

"There is a streak of independence and individuality in American culture which I think is a very good thing. This 'Don't tread on me' feeling is in many respects a healthy one. It's healthy up to the point where it atomises and keeps you from working together with other people. So it's got its healthy side and its negative side. It's the negative side that's emphasised naturally in the propaganda and indoctrination." [Keeping the Rabble in Line, pp. 279-80]

As the opinion polls above show, must people direct their dislike and distrust of institutions equally to Big Business, which shows that people are not stupid. However, the slight decrease in distrust for big business even after a period of massive business-lead class war, down-sizing and so on, is somewhat worrying. Unfortunately, as Gobbels was well aware, tell a lie often enough and people start to believe it. And given the funds available to big business, its influence in the media, its backing of "think-tanks," the use of Public Relations companies, the support of economic "science," its extensive advertising and so on, it says a lot for the common sense of people that so many people see big business for what it is. You simply cannot fool all the people all of the time!

However, these feelings can easily be turned into cynicism and a hopelessness that things can change for the better and than the individual can help change society. Or, even worse, they can be twisted into support for the right, authoritarian, populist or (so-called) "Libertarian"-Right. The job for anarchists is to combat this and help point the healthy distrust people have for government and business towards a real solution to societies problems, namely a decentralised, self-managed anarchist society.

Another important factor working in favour of anarchists is the existence of a sophisticated global communications network and a high degree of education and literacy among the populations of the core industrialised nations. Together these two developments make possible nearly instantaneous sharing and public dissemination of information by members of various progressive and radical movements all over the globe -- a phenomenon that tends to reduce the effectiveness of repression by central authorities. The electronic-media and personal-computer revolutions also make it more difficult for elitist groups to maintain their previous monopolies of knowledge. In short, the advent of the Information Age is potentially one of the most subversive variables in the modern equation.

Indeed the very existence of the Internet provides anarchists with a powerful argument that decentralised structures can function effectively in today's highly complex world. For the net has no centralised headquarters and is not subject to regulation by any centralised regulatory agency, yet it still manages to function quite effectively. Moreover, the net is also an effective way of anarchists and other radicals to communicate their ideas to others, share knowledge and work on common projects (such as this FAQ, for example) and co-ordinate activities and social struggle. By using the Internet, radicals can make their ideas accessible to people who otherwise would not come across anarchist ideas (obviously we are aware that the vast majority of people in the world do not have access to telephones, never mind computers, but computer access is increasing in many countries, making it available, via work, libraries, schools, universities, and so on to more and more working people). In addition, and far more important than anarchists putting their ideas across, the fact is that the net allows everyone with access to express themselves freely, to communicate with others and get access (by visiting webpages and joining mailing lists and newsgroups) and give access (by creating webpages and joining in with on-line arguments) to new ideas and viewpoints. This is very anarchistic as it allows people to express themselves and start to consider new ideas, ideas which may change how they think and act. Of course most people on the planet do not have a telephone, let alone a computer, but that does not undermine the fact that the internet is a medium in which people can communicate freely (at least until it is totally privatised, then it may prove to be more difficult as the net could become a giant shopping centre).

Of course there is no denying that the implications of improved communications and information technology are ambiguous, implying Big Brother as well the ability of progressive and radical movements to organise. However, the point is only that the information revolution in combination with the other new social developments we are considering could (but will not necessarily) contribute to a social paradigm shift. Obviously such a shift will not happen automatically. Indeed, it will not happen at all unless there is strong resistance to governmental attempts to limit public access to information technology (e.g. encryption programs) and censor citizens' communications.

As Philip Slater points out in A Dream Deferred, the cumbersomeness of authoritarian structures becomes more and more glaring as the rate of change speeds up. This is because all relevant information in authoritarian systems must be relayed to a central command before any decisions can be made, in contrast to decentralised systems where important decisions can be made by individuals and small autonomous groups responding immediately to new information. This means that decision making is slower in authoritarian structures, putting them at a disadvantage relative to more decentralised and democratic structures.

The failure of centrally planned state-capitalist ("Communist") economies due to overwhelming bureaucratic inertia provides an excellent illustration of the problem in question. Similarly, under private-property capitalism, small and relatively decentralised companies are generally more innovative and productive than large corporations with massive bureaucracies, which tend to be nearly as inflexible and inefficient as their "Communist" counterparts. In a world where the proliferation of information is accelerating at the same time that crucial economic and political decisions must be made ever more quickly, authoritarian structures are becoming increasingly maladaptive. As Slater notes, authoritarian systems simply cannot cope effectively with the information explosion, and for this reason more and more nations are realising they must either "democratise" or fall behind. He cites the epidemic of "democratisation" in Eastern Europe as well as popular pressure for democracy in Communist China as symptomatic of this phenomenon.

Unfortunately, Slater fails to note that the type of "democracy" to which he refers is ultimately a fraud (though better than state-capitalist totalitarianism), since the representative type of government at which it aims is a disguised form of political domination by the corporate rich. Nevertheless, the cumbersomeness of authoritarian structures on which he bases his argument is real enough, and it will continue to lend credibility to the anarchist argument that "representative" political structures embedded in a corporate-state complex of authoritarian institutions is very far from being either true democracy or an efficient way of organising society. Moreover, the critique of authoritarian structures is equally applicable to the workplace as capitalist companies are organised as mini-centrally planned states, with (official) power concentrated in the hands of bosses and managers. Any struggle for increased participation will inevitably take place in the workplace as well (as it has continually done so as long as wage slavery has existed).

Netwars refers to the use of the Internet by autonomous groups and social movements to co-ordinate action to influence and change society and fight government or business policy. This use of the Internet has steadily grown over the years, with a Rand corporation researcher, David Ronfeldt, arguing that this has become an important and powerful force (Rand is, and has been since it's creation in 1948, a private appendage of the military industrial complex). In other words, activism and activists power and influence has been fuelled by the advent of the information revolution. Through computer and communication networks, especially via the world-wide Internet, grassroots campaigns have flourished, and the most importantly, government elites have taken notice.

Ronfeldt specialises in issues of national security, especially in the areas of Latin American and the impact of new informational technologies. Ronfeldt and another colleague coined the term "netwar" a couple years ago in a Rand document entitled "Cyberwar is Coming!". "Netwars" are actions by autonomous groups -- especially advocacy groups and social movements -- that use informational networks to co-ordinate action to influence, change or fight government policy.

Ronfeldt's work became a flurry of discussion on the Internet in mid-March 1995 when Pacific News Service corespondent Joel Simon wrote an article about Ronfeldt's opinions on the influence of netwars on the political situation in Mexico after the Zapatista uprising. According to Simon, Ronfeldt holds that the work of social activists on the Internet has had a large influence -- helping to co-ordinate the large demonstrations in Mexico City in support of the Zapatistas and the proliferation of EZLN communiques across the world via computer networks. These actions, Ronfeldt argues, have allowed a network of groups that oppose the Mexican Government to muster an international response, often within hours of actions by it. In effect, this has forced the Mexican government to maintain the facade of nnegotiations with the EZLN and has on many occasions, actually stopped the army from just going in to Chiapas and brutally massacring the Zapatistas.

Given that Ronfeldt is an employee of the Rand Corporation (described by Paul Dickson, author of the book "Think Tanks", as the "first military think tank. . . undoubtedly the most powerful research organisation associated with the American military") his comments indicate that the U.S. government and it's military and intelligence wings are very interested in what the Left and anarchists are doing on the Internet. Given that they would not be interested in this if it was not effective, we can say that this use of the "Information Super-Highway" is a positive example of the use of technology in ways un-planned of by those who initially developed it (let us not forget that the Internet was originally funded by the U.S. government and military). While the internet is being hyped as the next big marketplace, it is being subverted by activists -- an example of anarchistic trends within society worrying the powers that be.

Ronfeldt argues that "the information revolution. . . disrupts and erodes the hierarchies around which institutions are normally designed. It diffuses and redistributes power, often to the benefit of what may be considered weaker, smaller actors." He continues, "multi-organisational networks consist of (often small) organisations or parts of institutions that have linked together to act jointly... making it possible for diverse, dispersed actors to communicate, consult, co-ordinate, and operate together across greater distances, and on the basis of more and better information than ever." He emphasises that "some of the heaviest users of the new communications networks and technologies are progressive, centre-left, and social activists... [who work on] human rights, peace, environmental, consumer, labour, immigration, racial and gender-based issues." In other words, social activists are on the cutting edge of the new and powerful "network" system of organising.

All governments, especially the U.S. government, have been extremely antagonistic to this idea of effective use of information, especially by the political Left and anarchists. The use of the Internet may facilitate another "crisis in democracy" (i.e. the development of real democracy rather than the phoney elite kind favoured by capitalism). To fight this possible use of the internet to combat the elite, Ronfeldt maintains that the lesson is clear: "institutions can be defeated by networks, and it may take networks to counter networks." He argues that if the U.S. government and/or military is to fight this ideological war properly with the intend of winning -- and he does specifically mention ideology -- it must completely reorganise itself, scrapping hierarchical organisation for a more autonomous and decentralised system: a network. In this way, he states, "we expect that. . . netwar may be uniquely suited to fighting non-state actors".

Ronfeldt's research and opinion should be flattering for the political Left. He is basically arguing that the efforts of activists on computers not only has been very effective or at least has the potential, but more importantly, argues that the only way to counter this work is to follow the lead of social activists. Ronfeldt emphasised in a personal correspondence that the "information revolution is also strengthening civil-society actors in many positive ways, and moreover that netwar is not necessarily a 'bad' thing that necessarily is a 'threat' to U.S. or other interests. It depends." At the same time, anarchists and other activists should understand the important implications of Ronfeldt's work: government elites are not only watching these actions (big surprise), but are also attempting to work against them.

This can be seen in many countries. For example, in 1995 a number of computer networks, so far confined to Europe, have been attacked or completely shut down. In Italy, members of the Carabinieri Anti-Crime Special Operations Group raided the homes of a number of activists -- many active in the anarchist movement. They confiscated journals, magazines, pamphlets, diaries, and video tapes. They also took their personal computers, one of which hosted "BITS Against the Empire", a node of Cybernet and Fidonet networks. The warrant ridiculously charged them for "association with intent to subvert the democratic order", carrying a penalty of 7 to 15 years imprisonment for a conviction.

In Britain, Terminal Boredom bulletin board system (BBS) in Scotland was shutdown by police in 1995 after the arrest of a hacker who was affiliated with the BBS. In the same year Spunk Press, the largest anarchist archive of published material catalogued on computer networks faced a media barrage in the UK press which has falsely accused them of working with known terrorists like the Red Army Faction of Germany, of providing recipes for making bombs and of co-ordinating the "disruption of schools, looting of shops and attacks on multinational firms." Articles by the computer trade magazine, Computing, and the Sunday Times, entitled "Anarchism Runs Riot on the Superhighway" and "Anarchists Use Computer Highway For Subversion" respectively, nearly lead one of the organisers of Spunk Press loosing his job after the firm he works for received bad publicity. According to the book Turning up the Heat: MI5 after that cold war by Lara O'Hara, one of the journalists who wrote the Sunday Times article has contacts with MI5 (the British equivalent of the FBI).

It is not coincidence that this attack has started first against anarchists and libertarian-socialists. They are currently one of the most organised political grouping on the Internet. Even Simon Hill, editor of Computing magazine, admits that "we have been amazed at the level of organisation of these... groups who have appeared on the Internet in a short amount of time". According to Ronfeldt's thesis, this makes perfect sense. Who best can exploit a system that "erodes hierarchy" and requires the co-ordination of decentralised, autonomous groups in co-operative actions than anarchists and libertarian-socialists?

These attacks may not be confined to anarchists for long. Indeed, many countries have attempted to control the internet, using a number of issues as a means to do so (such as "terrorism", pornography and so on). Government is not the only institution to notice the power of the Internet in the hands of activists. In America, the Washington Post ("Mexican Rebels Using a High-Tech Weapon; Internet Helps Rally Support", by Tod Robberson), Newsweek ("When Words are the Best Weapon: How the Rebels Use the Internet and Satellite TV", by Russell Watson) and even CNN have done stories about the importance of the Internet and network communication organisation with respect to the Zapatistas.

It is important to point out that the mainstream media is not interested in the information that circulates across the Internet. No, they are interested in sensationalising the activity, even demonising it. They correctly see that the "rebels" possess an incredibly powerful tool, but the media does not report on what they either are missing or omitting.

A good example of this powerful tool is the incredible speed and range at which information travels the Internet about events concerning Mexico and the Zapatistas. When Alexander Cockburn wrote an article exposing a Chase Manhattan Bank memo about Chiapas and the Zapatistas in Counterpunch, only a small number of people read it because it is only a newsletter with a limited readership. The memo, written by Riordan Roett, was very important because it argued that "the [Mexican] government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy". In other words, if the Mexican government wants investment from Chase, it will have to crush the Zapatistas. This information was relatively ineffective when just confined to print. But when it was uploaded to the Internet (via a large number of List-servers and the USENET), it suddenly reached a very large number of people. These people in turn co-ordinated protests against the U.S and Mexican governments and especially Chase Manhattan. Chase was eventually forced to attempt to distance itself from the Roett memo that it commissioned.

Anarchists and the Zapatistas is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Currently there are a myriad of social activist campaigns on the Internet. From local issues like the anti-Proposition 187 movement in California to a progressive college network campaign against the Republican "Contract [on] America," the network system of activism is not only working -- and working well as Ronfeldt admits -- but is growing. It is growing rapidly in numbers of people involved and growing in political and social effectiveness. There are many parallels between the current situation in Chiapas and the drawn out civil war in Guatemala, yet the Guatemalan military has been able to nearly kill without impunity while the Mexican military received a co-ordinated, international attack literally hours after they mobilise their troops. The reason is netwars are effective as Ronfeldt concedes, and when they are used they have been very influential.

It is clear than Rand, and possibly other wings of the establishment, are not only interested in what activists are doing on the Internet, but they think it is working. It is also clear that they are studying our activities and analysing our potential power. We should do the same, but obviously not from the perspective of inhibiting our work, but the opposite: how to further facilitate it. Also, we should turn the tables as it were. They are studying our behaviour and actions -- we should study theirs. As was outlined above, we should analyse their movements and attempt to anticipate attacks as much as possible.

As Ronfeldt argues repeatedly, the potential is there for us to be more effective. Information is getting out as is abundantly clear. But we can do better than just a co-ordination of raw information, which has been the majority of the "networking" so far on the Internet. To improve on the work that is being done, we should attempt to provide more -- especially in the area of in-depth analysis. Not just what we are doing and what the establishment is doing, but more to the point, we should attempt to co-ordinate the dissemination of solid analysis of important events. In this way members of the activist network will not only have the advantage of up-to-date information of events, but also a good background analysis of what each event means, politically, socially and/or economically as the case may be.

Thus Netwars are a good example of anarchistic trends within society, the use of communications technology (developed for the state and used by capitalism as a means to aid the selling process) has become a means of co-ordinating activity across the world in a libertarian fashion.

(This section of the FAQ is based on an article by Jason Wehling called "'NetWars' and Activists' Power on the Internet" which has appeared in issue 2 of Scottish Anarchist magazine as well as Z Magazine)