Real Anarchy is Real Pacifism

I think many posters here are going to disagree with what you take to be the core of the anarchist critique of the state (i.e. it's use of coercion). Most people here oppose the state first and foremost on the grounds that it is an instrument of minority class rule; coercion is taken to be a particular feature of the state, not it's core, or it's fundamental problem. Also, most people here would not advocate a totally non-coercive vision for post-revolutionary society. We'd be happy to coerce people into not re-establishing capitalist relations of production, or not burning store houses, or into not raping people, or whatever.

Globefront, you're wasting your time posting here. I sugest you take your ideas somewhere else.

I don't think battlescarred would ever referred to himself as a "liberal". And "idea police"? Don't be ridiculous.

Basically the majority of us here on this site don't have any time for pacifism which is clearly a liberal ideology from the perspective of those with privilege. It is an unfortunate fact that no meaningful social change has been achieved without violence, because those who hold power and money always resort to violence to protect it when it is threatened.

Stephen, I would quibble just a bit with your description of how/when the ruling class uses violence to protect itself. Saying that they "always resort" to violence makes it seem like that option is not at the top of their list of possible strategies for maintaining class rule. I would say that they constantly rely on it, regardless of whatever level of threat objectively exists. Class rule is predicated on the periodic use and constant threat of physical violence against any individual or identifiable group that steps outside of the imposed social peace represented by the various mechanisms and institutions of the state.

Most pacifists have an incomplete understanding of the function of class in the exercise of institutional violence, and their fixation on "coercion" as the core problem makes it seem like the state (rather than actual people) is just a big bully who can be shamed into relinquishing his strangle-hold over the lives of others. The state is more like a mob boss: an a(nti)moral and ruthless entity that is only interested in maintaining economic and social dominance regardless of how many people get hurt. If I may be so bold as to speak for others, the core problem for anarchists and other revolutionaries regarding the state is institutionalized domination rather than coercion.

Rather than just a semantic distinction, what I'm trying to get at is that "coercion" (this is what I think RedEd was trying to point to) is the capacity to compel or prevent somebody from engaging is a particular action. "Coercion" doesn't have to have to have a specific or vague threat behind it to be effective; "domination" on the other hand, has a clear set of negative consequences behind it for the person who dares to refuse.

The state isn't an instrument of class coercion; it's an instrument of class domination. Pacifism is a moral response to a set of institutions that exist outside morality. To quote my current favorite author: It's not a case of "you say po-tay-to and I say po-tah-to," but "you say potato, and I don't even acknowledge that we are discussing an edible tuber." Pacifists are not interested in abolishing class domination (whether exercised through the state or not) because they don't see class domination as a source of what they call coercion; the analytical parameters of pacifism and anarchism may overlap in certain areas, but are largely dissimilar in terms of strategies and tactics.

This is an interesting claim. Perhaps you would care to explain how the two comments that replied to your post before you made it in some way resembled the actions of police? If not, you might lay yourself open to the charge that you were simply throwing meaningless epithets at people who advised you that most people who post here would disagree with you. Which would, in my opinion, be slightly precious thing to do, to put it kindly. But no doubt you will be able to show that that was not what you were doing.

The nicest way of saying 'up against the wall motherfucker' ever.

Is self-defense considered the same thing as coercive violence to pacifists? What is the proper reaction when, during a peaceful demonstration, a very large group of armed riot police start their baton charges?

Benjamin Franks said that pacisfism was rejected by class anarchism along the lines of Brechts "Food first, then morality", which I guess is a materialist basis for wanting to settle structural questions over abstract moral questions which usually happen in a social and political vacuum.

While I can see pacifism as a tactic and how it can be employed for quite dramatic impact, its a luxury of very few in the wider scheme of things. Gandhi's call that "Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife" in response to the Third Reich is pretty shocking in its level of naivety even considering his moralistic antics partly played into one of the worse tragedies of the last century (albeit aided and abetted by British imperialism). And before you hold Gandhi up as an example be aware that he fucked over the dalits and untouchables just so he could keep the high cast brahmins happy and enlisted people into the army.

There's a saying I heard once on a song, and it went, "Dissent without Resistance is Consent." This is especially true when the government or power your going up against, uses hostile violent force to get rid of you ie gas, riot police, death squads etc. As far as I know, Anarcho-Pacifism falls right under that quote, because the government or power will just paint those rising against them as troublesome citizens, terrorists, etc. unless you're willing to show that those who are oppressing and standing against the people, are themselves weak and able to be hurt.

If those for example, who took part in the Maquis (armed force of the French Resistance), had just sat around like others had while the Germans rolled in, then France would have never had a chance to free itself, and show the people who were suppressed, that there were still those willing to fight with guns and bombs, for them. To drive Fascism and Nazism out of France going the Anarcho-Pacifist way would have just made things much worse for us, than those who stood ready to fight with rifles and bombs.

It's pretty impressive that war-mongering discourses and mentalities can find so much place inside libertarian* circles. Surely socialism and anarchism have a rich history of confrontation, direct resistance against repressive forces and armed uprisings, but there are also important contributions to antimilitarism in society. And by antimilitarism I mean not just the concrete opposition to military organizations such as the police and the army, but the refusal to all forms of militarization of life and society. Which means a refusal to sustain the military-industrial complex, the military hierarchy, military discipline and also military's violence-mongering discourses, including the 'us x them' mentality.

Unfortunately, it's very common the repetition of militaristic and combatant views inside libertarian circles. Which is very comprehensible, given the radical way the frequent experience of violence shape our world's view. In the most extreme forms, that's how different societal or ethnical groups victimized by a civil war tend to see the world - in terms of 'us x them'. But that's not productive. That's not libertarian - although it might inspire revolutionary feelings and initiatives, if we understand revolution as a struggle to change the power dynamics which can be conquered throuugh violent means. In fact, many revolutions in history went that way. But it isn't a guarantee of a libertarian sociability. In fact, armed takeovers frequently turns up into tyrannies. And armed struggles - although with libertarian motives - tend to stigmatize an 'enemy', reinforce military hierarchy and discipline, lead to abuses of force, stimulate disputes of power and leadership and reinforce male and militaristic cultures. Although armed takeovers have possibilitated structural and economic reforms to achieve social justice, it also reproduces important aspects of the dominant culture.

The happy will to coerce people who would think or act in a labeled 'counter-revolutionary' way is one example of jacobinism and authoritarism wich is derived from a violent revolution mentality. And it is usually justified in terms of a greater good or of a concrete or unavoiable necessity. Surely, to justify violence, people don't present it as a choice coming from the heart and mind, but as something that had to be done. We kill because the dead was a menace, and obliged us to do so. Ironically, this mechanism of rhetoric to justify an aggression is hugely employed by those who concentrate power. The 'there's no alternative' discourse is what sustain war enterprises. Or the austerity packages. Or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Or the execution of 'counter-revolutionaries'. And Brecht's 'food first, then morality' is interesting only on an artistic scenario or philosophical inquiry, as a way to visibilize the thoughts and feelings of the dominated classes. It can by no way be a justification of the removal of the ethical inquiry and the freedom of choice rationale from the political arena. Otherwise, it would just be a self-justification of aggression.

And violence is and instrument of domination, just as the whole State apparatus is. As media power is. As the psychiatric power is. It is important to have and understanding of power and dominance that approaches the complexity and malleability of the distribution of power, instead of thinking of power as a monolithic object in the hands of the dominant class. There are much more dimensions of the dominaton phenomena than just the dominant class construct. There can be oppression through violence of a proletarian father against his son, or through slut bashing of a girl non-conformed to gender stereotypes, or through institutional racism on a daily basis, or through the prejudice of the worker class against the lumpen, or through 'manicomial' a and segregative practices over the mentally ill. Oppression has to do with discourses, social practices and culture, and they are too complex to adress through a violent approach. No armed uprising will free the mentally ill, or the abandoned and marginalized drug-addicts, or the maltreated children. Or will take down male chauvisim or structural gender bias. It can only be achived through peaceful processes.

To understand violence and power we must understand class. The Peace and Conflict Studies conceptual framework defines three categories of violence: direct, structural and cultural. Direct violence is the obvious aggresion felt in the bodies. Structural violence is the violence suffered by the individuals through social and ecnomic processes that harms people preenting them to meet basic needs. Institutionalized elitism, ethnocentrism, classism, racism, sexism, adultism, nationalism, heterosexism and ageism are some examples of structural violence as proposed by Johan Galtung. Cultural violence are the discourses, ideology and hate speeches that legitimize the other types of violence. Therefore, a class analysis is an important dimension of a critic of violence, together with a critic of institutionalized violences such as the prison system.

The pacifist framework has the interesting characteristc of approaching something very concrete - violence - although on an abstract way. Ironically, some people seem to use to use the 'class' category the other way round - treating a purely abstract phenomena in a heavily concrete way, as if 'social class' is something permanently imprinted on each individual. We must approach logics, institutions, discourses and practices of domination and oppression. And it needs in-depth analysis. The social injustices aren't incarnated on some individuals or groups, it is operated through culture.

Thinking on culture and promoting libertarian ethics through peaceful processes isn't a privilege of spoiled liberal brats. That's how women - historically underprivileged under the rule of men - have changed things. Recreating a libertarian sociability on a daily basis. The radical cultural changes promoted by the feminist struggles is a great example of how radical changes are achieved through culture. And culture and sociability are free resources available to anyone - lathough nonviolent resistance do need a special discipline. The same can not be said on the violent uprising approach - historically, it is an exclusivity of the privileged fearless able-bodied males with weaponry resources and steel nerves. Not democratic.

I understand the theoretical justifications of the 'diversity of tactics. I understand that, at the heat of the moment, sometimes we seem 'forced' to act in a certain way. I understand that it seems that the government and the police simply doesn't care with the human beings. But it takes much more thought and sociability to create a libertarian community. And anarchopacifism is a successful approach to that.

*I use 'libertarian' not in the meaning of the absolute free-market ideology of libertarianism, but as a synonym of struggles for social freedom, such as anarchism, feminism or 'antimanicomial' struggle, 'cause that is the usual meaning here in Brazil.

Self defense is not warmongering. If we can achieve the communist revolution peacefully I'm all for it, but it seems pretty unlikely to me. As many have said, "no justice, no peace."

Also, many women have used revolutionary violence.

Anti-militarism isn't the same thing as pacifism.

Bruno, that was one hell of a post. Well done, very well written. I dont agree with it though. The logic of violence being the only option may be the same used by the state but I do sincerely believe we are "right" when we use it.

@Globefront - The thing you said about ends and the means, I would understand to essentially mean anarcho pacifists think they are already winning the battle by being able to say "we dont use violence to advance our aims and force our ideology on you" alone. You cant be anarchists in any respect if you are not willing to get to the ends (stateless classless society) because it would involve violence.

This

There are so many problems with this.

1. Pacifism in face of violence is the most counterproductive thing you can do: Most of the people can't bare pain, confinement and humiliation, and most importantly, people in general don't want to die, so if you don't protect yourself effectively (and sitting and doing nothing while the police who throws tear gas, rubber/live rounds, baton charges at you is just simply exposing yourself to more violence with no gains but enormous losses), most of your fellow pacifist will get enough and will do whatever the aggressor wants.

2. Pacifism is the mainstream domestic discourse of the power for long time now. "Don't be violent, or we send the anti-terrorist unit." So essentially, what pacifism means in the current context is to comply. Martyrdom is exercised by only a few and I can't see the moral high ground to get killed for doing nothing. Dead martyrs won't change the world, and that's a well-established fact. Actively propagating subjugation to the power isn't revolutionary. It isn't changing the world. It is propaganda of the power.

3. The tyranny of nonviolence is a truly frightening one. Any movement to this date that identified itself as nonviolent would not tolerate any physical action, not against individuals, nor against property. All advocated mild or non-resistance against the police orders, and was keen to inform the police about participant who engaged in such actions. In short, these movements are actively functioning as a police force by themselves, relying on the police violence and provide intelligence for them.

4. Missing the aims: It is not violence we are up against. It is a completely false presentation of the facts to draw such conclusions: the state using violence -> state = violence -> true anarchism = anti-violence. Or rather it means that the word it self looses its content, and become a meaningless, abstract thing, a blanket wickedness that the interpretation of violence must be an entirely ideological act.

You realise that libcom stands for libertarian communism and not libertarian community, right?
With that said, maybe you can point to some examples of these successful approaches to libertarian communism? By your confidence of expressing your opinion as fact, I guess there must be a lot.
I'm pretty sure it's easy enough to set up a libertarian commune by pacifist methods but that's not what is concerned here.

Also, I think it's strange that you point out three forms of violence; direct, structural and cultural, but then decide to focus solely on the cultural as a means of countering it. The ability of "culture" to combat capitalism is severely limited today under "cultural capitalism" and the culturalisation of politics.

For your example of the feminist movement, I would counter with Nina Power's book 'One Dimensional Woman' which argues that the move away from a structural critique to a cultural one has left feminism in a position where 'feminism' is wholly compatible with consumer capitalism.

Also, I have to ask, are you a sociologist or sociology student? There's just something about the use of the word 'classism' listed amongst other oppressions that sets off alarm bells for me.

Well...it seems my input isn't needed here.

This is called nonresistance, which is the core of some forms of 'principled pacifism', which is a form of demonstration of peace in a 'turn the other cheek' way. This is the school of thought of the Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy, and, until certain point, Gandhi's approach too. But this form of anarchism is very dependent on religious values and commitment, and the majority of pacifists or nonviolent resisters today are aligned with 'pragmatic pacifism', which involves deeper analysis of politics and economics and doesn't require that kind of sacrifice and martyrdom - and has a less moralizing approach to self-defense.

You touches in a very important point there, which is the appropriation of the 'peace discourse' by the dominant forces. Which is a real thing. And it's and old phenomena. Here in Brazil we have some pretty interesting examples. The most recent of them is the new special police force responsible for the military occupation on the Rio de Janeiro favelas ('slums'), which is sweetly called "Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (Pacificatory Police Unit)". This police is responsible for a lot of abuses of force and for a combatant approach over the young black men living in the slums and associated with drug dealing, which were immediatly exterminated by the police approach, and for inciting fear over the favela citizens. Other interesting example is the major land-owner lobby organization which is called 'Paz no Campo' (Peace in Land, or Field Peace, something like that), and is totally dedicated to the midiatic and judicial criminalization of peasant movements, like the Movimento Sem-Terra (Landless Workers Movement), and indigenous and slave-descendants quilombolas. And also preaches the great landowners to form private militias to 'protect their property' (and also kill some subversive leaders 'by accident'). And the leader of this organization is the powerless prince of Brazil, Prince Bertrand of Orléans-Braganza.

But this process of appropriation isn't new. Beautiful and meaningful words like peace, justice or freedom are used for very dirty propaganda. And can serve a military agenda. Latin America's military dictatorships were all justified for their intent to save democracy. Late XIX and early XX centuries' arms race were justified by the 'peace throught strenght' rhethoric.

You are totally right of the appropriation of the 'peace discourse' to justify a 'law and order stance'. To criminalize uprisings. To sustain colonialism. To subjugate people to a powerful state. That's real and must be fought. And that isn't pacifism.

Pacifism is derived from civil disobedience. And it is historically deeply associated with an anti-state and anti-authoritarian stance. And, nowadays, with an anti-criminalization and penal abolition stance*.

It isn't only the state which uses violence to opress. And we shouldn't say that things like the aggression of women by working class men isn't oppressive, even if it comes from a revolutionary brother. The error of hierarchizing struggles and prioritizing the struggle against Capital over all other struggles was a pretty authoritarian phenomena inside revolutionary groups. Ironically, the prejudice suffered by women even among revolutionary colleagues was one of the triggers of feminism second wave. And, on the other way, the response for that kind of aggression among the feminsit movement wasn't 'eye for an eye', but the subversion of the relationship logic.

Other interesting brazilian example: the feminist movement, on these last decades, has gone into a 'punishment fetishism' - reinforcing the penal system with the harsh criminalization and frenetic incarceration of women' spankers. And it has less than ten years when both these libertarian approaches started a real dialogue and started to think of other approaches to fight against the violecne over women, in ways that doesn't contribute to the criminalization and mass incarceration of poor working class and lumpen black men, which are the major victim of the prison-industrial complex.

*Maybe that school of thought isn't clear. The majority of data on this subject is produced in Latin America, with a kind of anarchist abolitionist approach heavily relied on foucaltian ideals. And it will be hard to translate on an efficient way. But it's about a school of thought wich seek for a total aboliton of the punishment logic (the terms are not exactly that, but it's the nearest), on three different dimension: the most concrete, the prison system; the judicial dimension, the Penal Code and the notion of 'crime', and the sociability dimension, which means the constant creation of ways to relate to others that doesn't rely on punishments or criminalization. The nearest thing that we can find in English is the studies of Loic Wacquant, I guess. Sorry.

...By the way... Sorry for my bad English. And for the untranslatable portuguese words. I guess this is making our communication a little difficult.

I said to use culture over daily oppressions and cultural violence - although culture is also responsible for mobilizing structural changes and for dimishing of direct violence. Pacifism doesn't have strong methodologies to overcome capitalism, with exception of the formation of intentional communities - speacially beacause it is majorly concerned with other kidns of violence and oppression, and has only in recent years assumed a more materialistic and pragmatic approach.

But you made me curious. What is the great approach to overcome structural violence? Or direct violence?
-> Please don't say 'revolution', because the history doesn't have great examples of classless perfectly just and anticapitalist post-revolutionary societies, the same way that there are not great examples of societies where everyone abandoned weapons and started loving each other like in a Bob Marley vision. And our question here is about concrete tactics, not promises, utopias, visions or stereotypes of these schools of thought.

Actually, the cultural and structural feminist critiques were born together, under feminism second wave. First wave feminism was concerned of institutional and legal inequalities, like voting or the right not to marry. And it is called the 'liberal feminism'. Second wave was boern under marxist discourse, and deals with both structural and cultural issues, like freedom of sexuality, labor struggles and the "girl's don't" discourses. Feminism third-wave, associated with post-modernism, and easily labeled 'cultural feminism', is responsibile for the introduction of matters of race and class on women's issues, criticing the 'white universitarian middle class feminism' of the second wave. Then, actually, there is a better appropriation of class issues among the feminist movement nowadays. And what is presented as that sort of capitalist subjugation of women's issues is not as much about feminism as it is about women in the labor market - and doesn't adress neither cultural aspects nor structural ones.

By the way, that kind of capitalist appropriation of women's issues is also happening with the GLBT movement. And, simultaneously, the GLBT movement is raising more awareness about class and structural issues. Kinda of class GBLT struggles were born together with the mercantilization of GLBT issues, in a way to counterpart it.

Okay then, lets try this again, if there is a "materialistic and pragmatic approach" then point to some examples. I'm afraid the onus is on you. And again, I don't think you're going to find much sympathy on here for intentional communities, which I already conceded can be formed by and embody pacifism but is not what is concerned or under discussion.

Well, it would seem to me its you who is the utopian, I'm not. I don't believe in a perfected harmonious social order without antagonisms. For me libertarian communism is utopian in the sense of enacting what seems "impossible" within the current framework of social relations.

Even within a current liberal framework, books such as The Spirit Level point to the link between inequality and violence, so there would be somewhere to start, but I'm not sure how legitimate that is as I feel we are currently entering into 'the era of riots' for which I don't see pacifism playing a part, let alone a progressive one.

Thanks for that history of feminist thought which I'm already completely familiar with and doesn't really contradict what I said, the need for a structural anlysis to counter the prevailing cultural liberal feminism.

Can you point to some of these current examples of engagement with class that don't utilise a sociological understanding of class? Thanks. I'm aware of only a few, and very few in the english speaking world.

Also, I'm not sure what you're saying here "that sort of capitalist subjugation of women's issues is not as much about feminism as it is about women in the labor market - and doesn't adress neither cultural aspects nor structural ones."