Anarchism and the Black Revolution

1 2 ... 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Anarchism, Violence and Authority

One of the biggest lies about Anarchists is that they are mindless bomb throwers, cutthroats, and assassins. People spread these lies for their own reasons : governments, because they are afraid of being overthrown by Social revolution ; Marxist-Leninists, because it is a competing ideology with a totally different concept of social organisation and revolutionary struggle ; and the Church, because Anarchism does not believe in deities and its rationalism might sway workers away from superstition. It is true that these lies and propaganda are able to sway many people primarily because they never hear the other side. Anarchists receive bad press and suffer a scapegoat of every politician, right or left wing.

Because a Social revolution is an Anarchist revolution, which not only abolishes one exploiting class for another, but all exploiters and the instrument of exploitation, the State. Because it is a revolution for people’s power, instead of political power ; because it abolishes both money and wage slavery ; because Anarchists aim for total democracy and freedom instead of politicians to represent the masses in Parliament, Congress, or the Communist Party ; because Anarchists are for workers’ self-management of industry, instead of government regulation ; because Anarchists are for full sexual, racial, cultural and intellectual diversity, instead of sexual chauvinism, cultural repression, censorship, and racial oppression ; lies have had to be told that the Anarchists are killers, rapists, robbers, mad bombers, unsavoury elements, the worst of the worst.

But let’s look at the real world and see who is causing all this violence and repression of human rights. The wholesale murder by standing armies in World Wars I and II, the pillage and rape of former colonial counties, military invasions or so-called "police operations" in Korea and Vietnam - all of these have been done by governments. It is government and state/class rule, which is the source of all violence. This includes all governments. The so-called "Communist" world is not communist and the "Free" world is not free. East and West, Capitalism, private or state remains an inhuman type of society where the vast majority is bossed at work, at home, and in the community. Propaganda (news and literary), policemen and soldiers, prisons and schools, traditional values and morality all serve to reinforce the power of the few and to convince or correct the many into passive acceptance of a brutal degrading and irrational system. This is what Anarchists mean by authority being oppression, and it is just such authoritarian rule which is at work in the United States of America, as well as the ’Communist" governments of China or Cuba.

"What is the thing we call government ? Is it anything but organised violence ? The law orders you to obey, and if yon don’t obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.

– Alexander Berkman, in ABC of Anarchism

There are revolutionaries, including many Anarchists, who advocate armed overthrow of the capitalist State. They do not advocate or practice mass murder, like the governments of the modern world with their stockpiles of nuclear bombs, poison gas and chemical weapons, huge air forces, navies and armies and who are hostile to one another. It was not the Anarchists who provoked two World Wars where over 100 million persons were slaughtered ; nor was it the Anarchists who invaded and butchered the peoples of Korea, Panama, Somalia, Iraq, Indonesia, and other countries who have sustained imperialist military attack. It was not the Anarchists who sent armies of spies all over the world to murder, corrupt, subvert, overthrow and meddle into the internal affairs of other countries like the CIA, KGB, MI6 or other national spy agencies, nor use them as secret police to uphold the home governments in various countries, no matter how repressive and unpopular the regime. Further, if your government makes you a policeman or soldier, you kill and repress people in the name of "freedom" or "law and order".

"You don’t question the right of the government to kill, to confiscate and imprison. If a private person should be guilty of the things that the government is doing all the time, you’d brand him a murderer, thief and scoundrel. Bur or long as the violence committed is ’lawful’ you approve of it and submit to it. So it is not real violence that you object to, bur people using violence unlawfully."

– Alexander Berkman, in ABC of Anarchism.

If we speak honestly we must admit that everyone believes in violence and practices it, however they may condemn it in others. Either they do it themselves or they have the police or army to do it on their behalf as agents of the state. In fact, all of the governmental institutions we presently support and the entire life of present society are based on violence. In fact America is the most violent country on earth, or as one SNCC comrade, H. Rap Brown, was quoted as saying : "violence is as American as apple pie (!)". The United States goes all over the world committing violence, it assassinates heads of State, overthrows governments, slaughters civilians in the hundreds of thousands, and makes a prison out of captive nations, such as it is doing in Iraq and Somalia, at the present time . We are expected to passively submit to these crimes of conquest, that is the hallmark of a good citizen.

So Anarchists have no monopoly and violence, and when it was used in so-called "propaganda of the deed" attacks, it was against tyrants and dictators, rather than against the common people. These individual reprisals - bombings, assassinations, sabotage - have been efforts at making those in power personally responsible for their unjust acts and repressive authority. But in fact, Anarchists, Socialists, Communists and other revolutionaries, as well as patriots and nationalists, and even reactionaries and racists like the Ku Klux Klan or Nazis have all used violence for a variety of reasons. Who would not have rejoiced if a dictator like Hitler had been slain by assassins, and thus spared the world racial genocide and the Second World War ? Further, all revolutions are violent because the oppressing class will not give up power and privileges without a bloody fight. So we have no choice anyway.

Basically, we would all choose to be pacifists. And like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. counselled, we would rather resolve our differences with understanding, love and moral reasoning. We will attempt these solutions first, whenever possible. In the insanity that reigns, however, out movement acknowledge the utility of preparedness. It is too dangerous a world to be ignorant of the ways to defend ourselves so that we can continue our revolutionary work. Bring acquainted with a weapon and its uses does not mean that you must immediately go out and use that weapon, but that if you need to use it, you can use it well. We are forced to acknowledge that the American progressive and radical movements have been too pacifist to be truly effective. We also realise that open groups that proposed cooperative change and were basically non-violent like the IWW, were crushed violently by the government and finally we have unfortunate example of Dr. King, Jr. himself, who was assassinated in 1968 by a conspiracy of agents of the State, most likely the FBI.

Understand that the more we succeed at our work, the more dangerous will our situation become, because we will then be recognised as a threat to the State. And - make no mistake - the insurrection is coming. An American Intifada that will destabilise the state. So we are talking about a spontaneous, prolonged, rising of the vast majority of the people, and the necessity to defend our Social revolution. Although we recognise the importance of defensive paramilitary violence, and even urban guerrilla attacks, we do not depend upon war to achieve our liberation, for our struggle cannot be won by the force of arms alone. No, the people must be armed beforehand with understanding and agreement of our objectives, as well as trust and love of the revolution, and our military weapons are only an expression of our organic spirit and solidarity. Perfect love for the people, perfect hate for the enemy. As the Cuban revolutionary, Che Guevara, said : "When one falls, another must take (their) place, and the rage of each death renews the reason for the fight".

The governments of the world commit much of their violence in repressing any attempt to overthrow the State. Crimes of repression against the people have usually benefited those in power, especially if the government is powerful Look what happened in the United States when the Black revolution of the 1960s was repressed. Many protesting injustice were jailed, murdered, injured, or blacklisted - all of which was setup by the State’s secret police agencies. The movement was beaten down for decades as a result. So we cannot just depend on mass mobilisations alone, or just engage in underground offensives, if we want to defeat the state and its repression : some mid-place between the two must be found. For the future, our work will include development of collective techniques of self-defence, as well as underground work while we work towards social revolution.

1 2 ... 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25