Darian Worden. Оригинальная статья: Go Forward to Freedom, 24 мая 2021 года. Переведено Гражданином Ильей

Чем больше людей в США вакцинируются от коронавируса и число заболевших продолжает снижаться, многие начинают думать о том, что будет дальше. Возвращаемся ли мы к «норме»? Есть ли сейчас «новая норма»? Пожалуй, те из нас, кто пережили пандемию, должны смотреть в сторону лучшего, чем на старый мир, который так много потерпел неудач. Мы должны стремиться к лучшему миру.

За прошедший год мы видели людей, собиравшихся вместе, чтобы помочь друг другу. Вместо того, чтобы жестко состязаться в эксплуатации, миллионы людей повели себя индивидуально и одновременно коллективно, чтобы позаботиться друг о друге и найти новое сообщество. Вместо того, чтобы присоединиться к фашистам или принять захват власти ими, многие людей отвергли его, и тысячи людей активно боролись против него разными способами. Вместо того, чтобы позволить капитализму слежки, государственному насилию и расизму остаться без отпора, люди приняли действия, чтобы добавилась личной автономии, одновременно борясь за жизни других. На фоне долговременной катастрофы, вопреки многочисленным угрозами, люди показали, что еще далеко не конец всего на свете. 

Моя точка зрения сосредоточена на США как человек, живущий здесь, однако важно понимать, что пандемия не утихает одинаково для людей во всем мире. Коронавирус по-прежнему широко распространен во многих странах, и доступ к вакцинам есть не у всех. Патентные режимы, лоббирование и юристы, защищающие их, могут по-прежнему препятствовать глобальному производству вакцин и лекарств, необходимых для улучшения жизни всех людей. 

Те из нас, кто пережил пандемию в США, должны задуматься о катастрофе вокруг нас. Сейчас зарегистрировано более 4 млн смертей от ковида, многие люди остались с хроническими заболеваниями, многие также физически пострадали от вторичных последствий пандемии. 

Иногда я вижу, как люди пишут, что «индивидуализм» виноват в общей неадекватной реакции США на пандемию. Хотя и есть некоторые пагубные формы этого поведения, которые может охватывать термин «индивидуализм», фокусируясь на этом игнорируется более широкая картина, которая может увести вину за более серьезные проблемы: усиление правления высшего класса, структурный расизм и авторитарная идеология правящей партии в 2020 году. 

Сказать рабочим, что их долг — рисковать своей жизнью во благо экономики, чей успех они не смогут разделить, потом навесив на них ярлык «героев» за их самопожертвование — не звучит так индивидуалистично. Стремление авторитаризма распределить людей по группам, которые можно сортировать, сегрегировать и ранжировать, на самом деле является причиной того, почему пандемия была настолько разрушительной в США.

Оставление людей во время бедствий практиковалось в периферийных странах, но в итоге дошло и до стран-ядер. В 2017 году ураган «Мария» опустошил Пуэрто-Рико. Вместо того, чтобы использовать ресурсы США и полномочия государства для помощи нуждающимся гражданам США, Трамп и его приспешники попытались усилить пропаганду режима.

Когда ковид впервые поразил США, его в основном находили в оживленных мегаполисах и нескольких пригородных этнических анклавах. Многие люди в США, особенно белые и правые, считают, что те районы находятся за пределами их страны, и люди, которые живут в них кажутся преступниками. Как и пуэрториканцы, которые технически могут считаться американцами, на деле их многими не считают таковыми. Районы, где проживает много бедных цветных людей, часто преподносятся как некая внешняя угроза, такое было часто видно в рекламных объявлениях республиканцев. В них говорилось, что люди и ценности и их ценности стремились вторгнуться в пригород.

До тех пор, пока большинство умирающих людей можно было рассматривать как иных людей, многим было все равно на них. Когда это действительно било по тем, кого они знали, идеология предписывала им обвинять какую-то абстрактную группу людей или находить причину, по которой определенная история здоровья этого человека сделала их исключением, а их смерть менее важной.

Правящая партия США в 2020 году была авторитарным движением, возглавляемым человеком, который называл мигрантов «животными», апокалиптически говорил об угрозах, стоящих перед нацией, и культивировал абсурдный образ физической стойкости (независимо от реальности). Не будет преувеличением предположить, что ее многие сторонники рассматривали массовые смерти как чистку нации, ради которой стоит рисковать жизнью: люди пострадают, но нация может стать сильнее.

Демагоги, мошенники и расисты, возглавляющие федеральное правительство, раздавали жизненно важные вещи для публичной похвалы и политической поддержки. Богатые могли рассчитывать на роскошный карантин и отличное медицинское обслуживание, в то время как другие трудились в опасности. Воображаемые эксперты в области здравоохранения в течение нескольких недель после начала пандемии говорили американцам продолжать работать без масок, а также, что все будет в порядке, если мы споем счастливую песню, пока будем мыть руки. 

Урок пандемии должен заключаться в том, что мы не можем рассчитывать на авторитет, но мы можем создать сообщество, на которое можем рассчитывать. Мы должны взять с этой минуты все, что в наших силах, и бежать к индивидуальному и коллективному освобождению.

Продолжайте носить маску, пока ковид является угрозой, а также носите ее в других случаях, если хотите. Чем более обыденны маски, тем больше разочарования вызывает капитализм слежки и полицейское государство. Маски могут уменьшить распространение болезней, которые раздражают многих и опасны для некоторых. Маски уменьшают количество переносимых по воздуху раздражителей, таких как пыльца и твердые частицы.

Переход к онлайн-встречам и работе из дома имел как положительные, так и отрицательные стороны, и работники должны заставить это работать на них. Эти возможности отлично подходят для многих людей с ограниченными возможностями и делают поездки на работу менее обременительными. Тем не менее, многим трудно было справиться с бессистемной попыткой перенести офис в дом. Существует также опасность распространения контроля на рабочем месте внутри дома, нарушая границы между работой, личным временем и пространством. Контроль над тем, где вы работаете, является важной частью контроля над рабочим днем, и в ближайшие месяцы это станет проблемой.

Борьба рабочих за уважение к ним может стать одной из самых далеко идущих битв года. Будь то неформальные действия, такие как уход всех сотрудников с работы и использование записок с описанием своего разочарования, либо профсоюзные кампании или забастовки, рабочие по всей стране реализуют все большую власть. Смелые действия работников могут принести более высокую заработную плату и более высокие льготы, что станет огромным улучшением для людей, которым уже заявили, что они не заслуживают достаточно, чтобы жить хорошо. Это может вселить в работников больше уверенности и дать им возможность улучшить условия работы. Будем надеяться, что действия рабочих пойдут еще дальше, и люди создадут предприятия и рабочие кооперативы, которые будут действовать во благо рабочих и общества в целом.

Было бы хорошо вернуться к некоторым привычным вещам, которые делают жизнь нормальной. Однако для построения лучшего будущего необходимо видеть, где мы находимся сейчас и двигаться вперед. Вперед с солидарностью. Вперед к равенству. Вперед к освобождению.

I am the founding Executive Director of The Automotive Free Clinic. The AFC is a free and low cost automotive repair shop in Prattville, Alabama, a small town outside of Montgomery, that was designed on the principles of mutual aid and Marx’s labor theory of value. We were founded in March of 2020 as a pandemic relief project and over the past 15 months, we have repaired, maintained, or inspected approximately 100 vehicles. We have also conducted weekly popular education meetings studying Marxism including Capital I, II, and III, the Grundrisse, Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, the Wretched of the Earth, and Society of the Spectacle. The popular education meetings were both for study and to provide support to our working class members during a very difficult time. Our organization is made up of exclusively white workers, we call ourselves “rednecks,” and we practice reparations by donating about 10% of our revenue to a Black-led organization in Birmingham, Alabama.

Marx’s labor theory of value argues that within the capitalist mode of production, value is created by commodity-producing laborers and is the governing principle of capital. Laborers who do not produce a commodity do not technically produce value within this mode of production. Laborers who produce a commodity are often defined as skilled, have more autonomy on the shop floor, and are, at least in some circles, believed to be the historical actor for socialist transformation. Much of what has gone on in socialist history has revolved around trying to find ways for these laborers to gain more power and to gain a larger share of the value that they create. However, what we believe has been missed is a transformation of the value relation itself. Unfortunately the value relation is often seen as a de facto universal instead of a product of capitalist social relations.

In order to transform the capitalist system, the value relation itself must be transformed into a different kind of relation, possibly producing a completely different type of commodity, a socialist commodity.

Let’s look at what types of labor are not value producing. Home healthcare, childcare, customer service, even automotive repair are not value producing. Simply, reproductive labor is excluded from socially necessary labor time or value. To me, this seems backwards, logically, as much of capitalism is. On its most basic level, reproduction is primary in any labor relation. No laborer can exist without first being birthed. Thus, since only people with uteruses can give birth, capitalist social relations are foundationally misogynist since it values secondary labor (production) over primary labor (reproduction).

So how do we change the value relation to primarily or at least equally value reproduction? At The AFC, we #redefinework, by combining productive and reproductive processes into the value that our organization creates. Traditional automotive repair shops have customers and an antagonistic relationship is set up between customers and the shop. Automotive technicians are paid by the job and are therefore incentivized to recommend as many repairs as possible on vehicles that come into the shop. Service writers are also paid by commission so they are incentivized to sell as many repairs as possible. The repairs recommended are often a mix of safety (necessary), defective (needed), maintenance (needed, but not necessary), and marginally defective (likely unneeded). With the overall lack of knowledge of automotive technology and the complexity of modern vehicles, customers are often at a loss as to how to proceed. This creates a high level of distrust in automotive repair shops. It’s in the business model of the industry. The value relation produced by the automotive repair industry harms both technicians and customers.

The AFC does not have customers. We have community members. We provide parts to community members at commercial cost, which saves about 45% on mark-up, and labor is donation-based, pay-what-you-can even if it’s nothing. We keep the doors open with donations from the community and support from sympathetic institutions. The entire community works to keep the vehicles of disadvantaged community members on the road, and this is life-saving in a state with a dearth of public transportation options.

It is a socialist business model that produces a different kind of value relation. Relationships with community members and care for each other, in addition to repairing the vehicle, are valued over trying to bleed as much money out of customers as possible. The AFC produces a commodity that is valued both for its productive and reproductive aspect. It’s a dialectical synthesis and it’s better for community members and for the technicians themselves.

Technicians often get burnt out and by 40 their body is usually failing because of the grueling pace of repairing vehicles. Many move away from repair and into service writer positions. At The AFC, technicians are not paid by the job (we’re all volunteer at this point) so there is no pressure to repair the vehicle quickly. This cuts down on mistakes, wear and tear on technician’s bodies, and leads to more job satisfaction among technicians. Technicians can also take more pride in their work because it’s about serving the people around them.

In order to change the nature of the value relation and thus the commodity, we have #redefinedwork as something done to serve the community instead of to make profit. As we have said over and over, we want the automotive repair industry to become like the fire department, respected working class people who can be counted on to serve the community.

By,

Zac Henson, PhD, Automotive Service Excellence certified automotive technician

Advocating work abolition, I encounter one specific objection very often. “Work,” they say, does not refer to, nor imply, coerced labour. An authoritarian Marxist I recently encountered made the claim that to speak of work abolition is the language of “empty” radicalism. They went on to claim that such “empty” radical language is confined to Twitter discourse and detached from the lives of working people, their material conditions, and all endeavours to meet their needs for liberation.

I am inclined to agree that abolitionist radicalism, and its language, is negative where it non-prescriptively negates the given. Consequently then, it may be empty (empty to leave space open); but is it also detached from the very context in question here? I don’t believe this is true, and in fact, want to show that the opposite is the case.

It often goes like this: The daring radical advocates the abolition of work, the still-unsuspecting liberal or Marxist hears it and shudders. Can this really be? But what would society look like if people didn’t work anymore? Meanwhile, what is usually meant by those advocating the abolition of work is in fact the abolition of coerced labour. “Not all productive activity is work,” they say. So, is the objection then correct? Do work abolitionists really employ some kind of sensationalist language in order to enhance their radical calling superficially? However, not only is there often nothing wrong with sensationalist language — it obviously resonates strongly both with those sympathetic and those opposed to it — but this is not the entire truth here.

What meaning we ascribe to the word “work” will depend on how we interpret the connected experience. Or in other words: Hermeneutics (as making sense of experience) and semantics (as determining a word’s meaning) are dependent here, and there seems to be a gap between those understandings and meanings given to “work,” and the reality of those experiencing work. In my critique, I rely in my understanding on feminist and social epistemologist Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice and argue in light of a concept they title “hermeneutical injustice:”

Our knowledge of the social world is basically interpretive, and it is put at risk if the hermeneutical tools that we have to make sense of things are unevenly informed by the experiences of different social groups.

Fricker argues that “[…] groups can suffer an unfair disadvantage in making sense of their own social experience.” Hermeneutical injustice, according to Fricker, is when a group’s lack of access to collectively shared hermeneutical tools to make sense of their experience upholds a harmful but also wrongful disadvantage (an example Fricker gives is when there was no term to name sexual harassment). I personally prefer to extend that concept to include cases in which we find understandings that are alien to a group’s actual experience, since different groups with opposing interests unevenly participate in constructing them, and thereby also uphold a wrongful and harmful disadvantage, their oppression. I think these alien understandings are the result of hermeneutical hegemonies that are in place precisely to uphold oppression, and that common understandings of work, and — as a result — common meanings ascribed to “work,” seem to be of this kind. Every meaning of a word seems to be grounded in an understanding, in this case of an experience. I distinguish between the meaning of the word “work,” as a result partially of interpreting the experience, and understanding as interpretation (in this case of the experience of work).

Under capitalism, productive labour is unthinkable apart from a certain context. This context is concretely attached to productive labour, and if we look at the writings of 19th century radicals, we will already find the package deal that working people nowadays are also inevitably inclined to think of when they hear “work”: There is a defined workplace, it is carried out to make a living, there usually is a boss and there usually are wages and so on. To give an example, this very package deal had found its poetic expression as the furnaces written of by the 18th and 19th century poet William Blake. And when people nowadays say they hate their work, they rarely mean they experience disgust in regard to their own productive labour. They refer to this broader context in which it is situated; this context that historically has grown to be so concretely attached to productive labour, that we cannot just forget about it when we talk about the history of work. In the rare case where someone is self-employed, this context may only partially obtain; still, those features remain to be found in almost any other place where we find work. If at all, pointing to self-employment only does its job because it so strongly contrasts the arguably less fortunate and privileged position most people have been and are still being coerced into labouring under. Why are these circumstances, why is this context, not commonly accounted for in too many usages of the word “work?” I’ll attempt to answer this question later.

Sometimes, the meaning of “work” is explicitly questioned. This seems to be the case when one dares to account for this coercive context in their usage. Suddenly, “work” is reduced to being synonymous with “productive labour” per se, or work is understood, glorified, as the very foundation of the togetherness of all people and condition for meeting their needs. These understandings and meanings are invoked and ritually repeated by the liberal capitalist and the Marxist. For one of them work manifests as the source of wealth, the wealth of nations even. For the other it manifests as the pillar of a greater good, intimately tied to a notion as being constitutive of humanity. But neither the reductive meaning nor the glorifying understanding comprehensively corresponds to the daily realities of those forced to labour inside of this inseparable context that labour has been historically and is continually always given under capitalism. The predominant usage of the word “work” by people actually experiencing most closely what we distinguish as “work,” seems to commonly take notice of its coercive context. So whose understanding of work, whose meaning of “work” and what it implies more closely approaches the reality of those practising it: The Marxist’s, the liberal’s or perhaps the worker’s and the abolitionist’s? Or asking in a different way: Should we be inclined to agree with the alien hermeneutics of the oppressor or the intimate one of the oppressed?

It does not seem to be a coincidence that such meanings and understandings, reductive or glorifying, are invoked wherever one dares to criticise work — this very pillar of capitalist, or authoritarian Marxist, society. For these understandings and meanings to remain this way ultimately robs workers of a way to find their condition intrinsically unacceptable and so upholds the worker’s oppression. It neatly separates their labour from its coercive context. Only in understanding is this possible, in reality both always form a concrete unity. This is why I’m inclined to propose that groups with opposing interests to the worker’s unevenly participate in interpreting the experience and giving the word “work” its meaning. Under those hermeneutic hegemonies, be they under liberal capitalist or Bolshevik rule, reductive meanings of “work” or glorifying understandings of work, seem to be favoured and then wielded as a weapon. However, it strikes me as highly cynical to approach most workers with any of those. The lack of access to participate in constructing the meaning of the word seems to originate in a lack of access to participate in interpretation of what the experience demands. The worker’s experience hasn’t yet fully penetrated all of intellectual understanding, for if it had it would be accounted for. This gap seems to be purposefully upheld and we can very well see why. We know, however, what the experience actually demands. It is this very context I speak of, the coercive context every work-abolitionist likes to point out.

I conclude, up to this point, productive labour has continually been known and experienced as restrained within a broader context; a broader context attached to it by forces external to the worker and their own choices. This context wherein workers engage in productive activity is formed by the formal, indirect, and legislative boundaries set by the state, capitalist businesses, and those generally upholding and furthering their exploitation. Something the Marxist wouldn’t deny. This context isn’t sufficiently accounted for in Marxist or liberal capitalist understandings of work and meanings given to “work,” but we must develop understandings that account for the unpleasant, coercive context of work and employ the word “work” differently, otherwise we are not doing the experience justice, nor workers a favour. This context also seems to be well accounted for in many instances of usage of the word “work” already, and it should be accounted for, because if it is not, we wield a meaning that originated in the alien and weaponised understanding of the oppressor. But if we have to understand “work” to include a broader context around productive labour that is a coerced setup, we must indeed say work is involuntary.

When we think of post-capitalist societies, there’s often a nagging impulse to solve current social ills. Anti-statists are asked how they would deal with billionaires without taxation, anti-capitalists get grilled on how cities would get built without workplace hierarchy, and police abolitionists get asked how they would respond to high crime rates without prisons – all fallacious lines of inquiry based on the idea that currently existing problems are inevitable in scale and prevalence. It’s no mystery that the present structure of our global economy and political landscape is largely the product of repression, imperialism, and seemingly perpetual war, yet these “necessary evils” are held to no burden of proof, while radical alternatives must prove they can do everything the current system does and more. What I’m describing isn’t new, and while it’s a very effective device for masking reactionary views, it’s often the result of passive ignorance. The extension of this logic I’m about to deconstruct, however, is almost always deliberate and revealing.

Let’s consider a familiar scenario: your centre-normie friends ask you, a state abolitionist, how “crime” would be handled without cops or prisons. You might start with a brief outline of restorative justice and other victim-centered models of conflict resolution – but they clarify that the concern is with “the really bad ones” who wouldn’t cooperate. At that point, you could explain how institutions designed for punishment are susceptible to perverse incentives and power problems that, in combination with other issues, make them ineffective, costly responses to harmful behavior. The conversation then shifts to a specific situation in which a serious offense was committed, one that might result in the death penalty or a life sentence in current day America. You point out the inefficacy of the current system, reminding them that individual cases exist in vastly different contexts – to which they specify further that this person will definitely re-offend, is absolutely intent on harming others or their previous victims, and will stop at nothing to satisfy their urges. The conversation could end here with an admission that yes, sometimes confinement or straight up shooting someone could serve a practical purpose in which it would be appropriate, which is usually taken as an admission of defeat.

So you’re telling me the worst of the worst offenses might warrant carceral treatment or lethal force? No shit! This whole discussion was meaningless, and though I’m severely truncating this hypothetical exchange, I hope I’ve illustrated how truly empty this response to abolition is. Instead of recognizing abolition as an opportunity for experimentation via the removal of coercive institutions, people hear “abolition” and think we’re selling “Justice System 2.0, Everything We Have Now but Better.” Those averse to libertarianism often act as if we believe that freedom and safety are opposite ends of a spectrum and reject safety; in the case of “crime,” many folks assume that less authority (safety) will lead to more danger (freedom), therefore concluding that prison abolitionists require a systematic response to the dangerous people who would thrive in a free world. Without prisons, what is to be done with the truly evil?

This type of goalpost-shifting constitutes what I call the “supervillain fallacy,” the notion that motivated bad actors can be so harmful that carceral institutions become morally legitimate and practically necessary. Key to this framework is the idea that justice systems (courts, prisons, and police) do proportionally less harm than offenders en masse, or aren’t harmful at all, constituting a net benefit to general safety. Abolitionists, therefore, must reckon with the inevitable existence of supervillains; this leads abolitionists to reluctantly accept carceral means as a last resort, shift their focus to “rehabilitation,” or excuse the behaviors of supervillains through active apologia. To clarify what I mean, the common response to abolitionism is based in the belief that serial killers are a greater threat than armed cops and that prisons are the best means for containing violent criminals. Explaining the new world to people who refuse to understand the present one, unsurprisingly, doesn’t result in productive mutual exchange.

Debunking these specific premises, while a great exercise in keyboard warriorship (and, if you’re lucky, genuine critical thinking), is insufficient. To defend statist violence as a proportionate response to individual wrongdoing, one necessarily has to avoid empirical evidence and abandon good faith engagement, resulting in frustrating quasi-arguments that go nowhere. This is the primary purpose of the supervillain fallacy: controlling the conversation. When abolition skeptics open with a bunch of leading questions, we reflexively go into self-defense mode – we’re being backed into rhetorical corners, after all. Playing defense doesn’t look or feel like winning[2], and to an authoritarian audience, the person who asks short questions and receives long answers looks like the intellectual victor. For the abolitionist, however, this dynamic primes them to think like authoritarians, endorsing the existence of hypothetical evils worthy of execution or accepting the rare utility of confinement in desperate attempts to forfeit the conversation.

Since these exhausting conversations often happen soon after folks initially become “radicalized,” many passively accept certain carceral narratives to maintain close relationships with non-radicals. Between tense, draining conversations with people we care about and keeping controversial opinions to ourselves, many understandably choose silence over losing friends. The internalized notion that the supervillain fallacy constitutes reasonable, good-faith skepticism, combined with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to certain radical positions, results in less people discussing abolitionism, pushing an urgently important discourse to the fringes of the overton window.

In case it wasn’t already clear, this myopic focus on prevention and retribution completely disregards the needs of victims. Once a Kyle Rittenhouse is put behind bars, what happens to the marginalized communities in their immediate vicinity? How are the victims’ survivors helped by a carceral solution? None of this matters in a carceral system because “law and order” isn’t about mutual aid or repairing damage. “Law and order” is about bad behavior being punished, disorder being corrected, and the right people receiving what they deserve. Old Left rhetoric pairs well with a focus on punishment, as a lot of anti-capitalism is framed as a righteous deliverance of justice upon the ruling class. 

Our method, on the other hand, isn’t compatible with this approach, since we recognize the role systems and institutions play in furthering exploitation, restrictions of autonomy, and disparities of power. Where others see danger in freedom, abolitionists see opportunities to experiment, arriving at better solutions to reduce violence and keep people safe – be that through competition, cooperation, or something entirely different. Punishing shitty individuals is an inefficient waste of time and resources that serves no purpose beyond mild catharsis for the most authoritarian individuals; abolishing systems that encourage shitty behavior, however, is a practical, scalable solution to violence and exploitation.

I do not know what specific systems such a society will have, all I can speak to is the general effect of abolition. This isn’t so much a “non-answer” as it is a recognition of our general inability to predict the future. Nobody has any clue what the future holds beyond vague predictions and informed speculation. Yes, we could spend hours upon hours solving every single problem with the ethno supremacist police states we all live under, but to what end? A manifesto that’ll age like spoiled milk? From personal experience, I can assure you it’s a waste of time.

When you see this fallacy in action, know that it usually comes from deeply internalized authoritarianism, a lack of self-awareness, and an excessive faith in one’s ability to predict the future. The best way to respond to this is to maintain control of the conversation:

• If victims aren’t mentioned, bring them up
• If you’re getting asked most of the questions, ask what their solution would be
• If “institutionalizing the mentally ill for their own good” is brought up by the other person, block them, they don’t deserve your time
• Never be afraid to admit when you don’t know something

This is only a short list of general tips for getting around the supervillain fallacy. By no means do I think it’s universally applicable. No two conversations will be identical, but I hope my main point is clear: humility isn’t a sign of weakness or ignorance and nobody has the solution to every problem. Rather than plan a predictable utopia, abolitionists should explore the possibilities of a spontaneous, imperfect future. To borrow a tweet from @LibertyCap1312: 

“Too many anarchists are committed to showing they can create a perfect utopia with no social problems. I think bullet biting is a lot more compelling: bad things will happen in a free society. We just think authority amplifies those things, rather than countervailing them.”

[1] Ian Danskin, The Alt-Right Playbook: Control the Conversation

[2] “…if you never look like you’re losing, you can convince a lot of people that you’re not. And, if you keep your statements short and punchy, people will remember what you said better than they remember the long explanation of why it’s untrue. If done correctly, you might even convince yourself you know what you’re talking about.” – Ian Danskin, The Alt-Right Playbook: Never Play Defense

The degree to which the US trade embargo on Cuba has affected the economy of that country has been a matter of recent debate. I’m not concerned directly with Cuba here, but with the nature of what neoliberal ideology calls “free trade” more generally — of which an interesting discussion erupted as an offshoot of the debate on Cuba.

On Facebook, my friend Adam Bates observed:

If the economic principles implied by the left’s view of the embargo of Cuba were applied by them to everything else instead of literally just this single situation in the entire universe, we’d have so much more common ground and the world would be so much better off.

This is an argument I’ve encountered fairly frequently in recent days: Opposition to the embargo on the part of the Left implies that they consider trade to be necessary and desirable. To be consistent, therefore, they should support free trade in general. 

But to be accurate, free trade is not even on the table. There is no major force in American life that advocates free trade, and virtually all of the mainstream voices calling for “free trade” — including some or most right-libertarians — want something in practice that is just the opposite.

In the comments, someone objected to Adam’s framing:

I think most leftists would agree that some level of trade is necessary for any country, capitalist or socialist. The sticking point for most of us is that free trade agreements pushed for by liberal powers give capitalists unlimited leeway to crowd out local producers and extract wealth from the country. 

In response, he said:

So then why complain about the Cuba embargo? Why not applaud it as protecting Cuba from economic exploitation?

I think the inability to distinguish between mutually beneficial exchange and “exploitation” is the problem here.

It’s not an either-or situation, though. Saying that there’s some minimal level of utility to the exploited party in a trade (which is obvious), or that it is necessary, does not contradict the fact of exploitation. It does not contradict the fact that a necessary function takes place on onerous terms to one party. It’s analogous to monopoly pricing, where the dominant party with superior economic power is able to target the price to a revenue-maximizing level, such that rather than the price being at an equilibrium value reflecting what’s necessary to bring the good to market with no economic rents, it’s set to provide just enough value to the buyer to get them to buy while still making them pay more than the fair market value of the good. 

If you poison someone and then sell an antidote that cost you $1 to make for $1000, they’re obviously better off than if the exchange were prohibited. But equally obviously, they’re still being exploited because of the power differential involved. And the conditions of international trade are rigged by a system of power that works the same way.

Capitalism is all about allowing just enough freedom and enough utility to exist to suit its purposes, while maximizing the amount rentiers can skim off the top. That’s why what’s called “liberalization,” “free market reform,” and “free trade” in the billionaire-funded libertarian think tanks, by right-wing politicians, and by right-wing pundits in the press, will never amount to fully free markets or trade. The so-called “free market” or “free trade” agendas promoted by capitalist lobbyists and the billionaires’ pet think tanks really consists of getting rid of those forms of state interventionism and protectionism that serve their purposes, while leaving in place those that continue to be useful, or adding new forms of intervention that are necessary to their profit models under today’s conditions. The amount of freedom allowed is that which maximizes the sustainable level of extraction.

Hence “free trade” involves lowering tariff barriers while leaving in place or strengthening all the monopolies that are necessary to the profit of transnational corporations. It means strengthening the intellectual property protectionism that allows those corporations to enclose nominally outsourced production within their walls. It means the use of debt peonage and IMF structural adjustment programs to force the “privatization” and enclosure of every conceivable form of commons. It means forcing the governments of former colonies, via multilateral institutions and the threat of invasion or coup, into functioning as policemen for Western capital, suppressing labor and land reform activism, and enforcing capitalist title to looted and enclosed commons.

The commenter who previously objected to Adam’s original post said:

the problem is that the US&co established liberal hegemony by, for the most part, giving countries two options when it came to free trade: 0 or 100%. Cuba doesn’t want 100, so they’re getting 0 as punishment.

Adam, in response, wrote:

Well trade is either free or it isn’t. Are you suggesting the U.S. should lift the embargo but impose a half-embargo?

What is the right amount of freedom to permit? Heavy tariffs?

* * *

If McDonald’s wants to open up 15 stores in Cuba should they be allowed to? If Nike wants to build a factory there should they be allowed to?

* * *

My sense is without that embargo the Cuban regime would have collapsed or radically reformed decades ago.

HBO, tourism, new cars, and McDonald’s will accomplish in 10 years what 50 years of saber rattling and violence couldn’t.

But in fairness to the commenter, it seems clear to me that by “100%” they mean not actually free trade, but opening up the economy 100% to domination by McDonalds, HBO, et al on the latter’s terms. All these examples of so-called “free trade” Adam listed are, in fact, actually examples of corporations whose entire profit model depends on a wide range of protectionist measures. It’s just called “free trade” in the neoliberal capitalist ideology because they don’t involve tariffs or import restrictions. 

And if Cuba opened up its economy to “free trade” of the sort that is actually meant by most of the capitalist or establishment libertarian commentariat, it would mean falling 100% under the domination of a global corporate order that is protectionist, exploitative, and extractive to its very core. So allowing trade, but not on the terms dictated either by McDonald’s and Nike or by the Washington Consensus, would not be a half-embargo. It’s what the libertarian right calls “free trade” that would be a half-embargo.

Suppose, on the other hand, that Cuba or some other ex-colonial nation implemented 100% genuine free trade entirely on its own terms, and not the sort being promoted by the Washington Consensus. Suppose it eliminated tariffs and allowed unrestricted imports, but also refused to enforce all the other forms of protectionism which are the lifeblood of global capitalism, namely: 

1) ignored all American patent and trademark claims and permitted Cuban manufacturers to produce unlimited knockoffs of Nike sneakers and other American corporate goods for the domestic market — without the Swoosh markup;

2) refused to enforce the franchise laws that let McDonald’s control the conditions under which local restauranteurs could sell Big Macs; 

3) refused to recognize the licensing and copyright laws that enable HBO to extract rent; 

4) repudiated all odious debt to the World Bank and to private lenders; and 

5) turned the sugar plantations into genuine worker-managed cooperatives, rather than giving it back to the gusanos in Miami (of course applying similar principles by, e.g., placing South African mines and Nigerian oil under commons governance, etc.).

That really would be free trade, but I don’t think it would work out very well for HBO, McDonald’s, et al. And I’ll bet that in the face of such genuine free trade the US would return to doing a lot more than just rattling those sabers in about half no time. Joe Biden, Neera Tanden, Dick Cheney, and Mike Pompeo would be screaming “Failed state!” and the WHISC/SOA coup machine would be quietly kicking into overdrive.

The claim that “trade is mutually beneficial” depends on what is meant by “trade.” It will almost certainly be false, in any sense of “free trade” that you’re likely to see used by anyone on a cable news channel or at a right-libertarian think tank. What’s called “free trade” by virtually all mainstream voices is beneficial mostly to those at the top of the food chain. The kind of free trade I described, on the other hand, will improve the lives of everyone involved except the extractors and parasites.

So let’s have a real free trade agenda — the kind that doesn’t hand a country over to McDonald’s, Nike, car manufacturers, HBO, et al. Let it be the countries of the Global South that force it on McDonald’s and HBO, rather than the other way around. And let it be on such a scale that it acts as dynamite at the foundations of the transnational corporate order, and that the CIA and WHISC coup machines throw up their hands in despair of reversing it.

De Sean Swain. Artigo original: Security Threat Groups: The Industry of Gangs, 12 de abril de 2021. Traduzido para o português por Gabriel Serpa.

Nas prisões de Ohio, quase todo mundo faz parte de uma organização criminosa, quer sejam membros de uma ou não. Se você for um prisioneiro de Ohio e não fizer parte de uma gangue, os administradores da prisão irão colocá-lo em uma. E se não houver, eles criarão uma nova.

A razão para isso é que se trata de um esquema de concessão de subsídios federais. Eis a forma como funciona:

O Departamento de Justiça dos EUA mantém uma espécie de sistema de dados para aquilo que chama de Grupos de Ameaça à Segurança (sigla em inglês STG), que não deve ser confundido com DST (STD em inglês). O Departamento de Justiça não monitora clamídia ou gonorreia, até onde eu sei.

O que é certamente monitorado, os tais STGs, inclui organizações como os Bloods, os Crips, os Gangster Disciples, a Irmandade Ariana, etc. Esses são os maiores grupos, reconhecidos como Grupos de Ameaça à Segurança.

Assim, para monitorá-los, o Departamento de Justiça dos EUA concede aquilo que chama de subsídios em bloco aos estados. Estados-membros que, tal como Ohio, participam do programa de monitoramento de STGs, mantêm uma base de dados os quais compartilham com o Departamento de Justiça, com documentos dos membros das gangues, bem como suas atividades. Para cada membro que o estado registra, o Departamento de Justiça repassa-lhe uma quantia em dinheiro.

Quanto mais membros de organizações criminosas são registrados, mais dinheiro o sistema prisional de um determinado estado recebe.

Nos anos 90, havia não mais do que um punhado de Grupos de Ameaças à Segurança. E cada uma dessas organizações tinha não mais do que um punhado de membros facilmente identificáveis. Em cada prisão havia um investigador cujo trabalho era principalmente cuidar dos arquivos dessas gangues.

Desde então, com a oferta de subsídios federais, temos agora centenas de STGs, alguns deles com apenas dois ou três membros, todos registados no sistema de dados. Aparentemente, temos dezenas de milhares de membros de gangues lotando as prisões de Ohio. E temos não um, mas dois investigadores de tempo integral em cada prisão neste estado, com salários subsidiados; suas despesas são cobertas por mais subsídios; seu equipamento para que faça seu trabalho também é subsidiado.

O crime organizado é uma indústria.

Conheço detentos que foram rotulados como membros de gangues, simplesmente por terem crescido numa determinada área na qual a maioria dos jovens se junta a um determinado grupo; ou por receberem correspondências não solicitadas de uma organização que sequer está listada como uma gangue. Um amigo meu, judeu, foi por anos, secretamente, membro de um bando dos Panteras Negras, sem razão e sem sequer saber.

Todos devem se lembrar que eu fui classificado, em 2012, como líder do Exército dos 12 Macacos — uma organização sem organização —, com base no fato de a minha ideologia coincidir com a deles. Assim, ao imaginar um mundo sem líderes, tornei-me líder de uma organização que sequer conta com uma organização.

Nada disso causa espanto para os que mantém os registos.

Em tudo, são os próprios investigadores — que são recompensados com estabilidade no emprego pela existência de gangues e de seus membros — que validam as organizações criminosas e seus partícipes. Ou seja, os investigadores decidem o que é um STG e decidem quais as organizações que se enquadram nessa definição. Depois, decidem ainda o que significa pertencer ao grupo e o que constitui a prova para tal.

Algumas religiões têm sido classificadas como STGs. Alguns internos chegaram a ser qualificados como membros por associação ao detento com quem dividiam cela. Assim, cumprimentar o interno que foi transferido para o seu cubículo poderia fazer de você um membro do bando ao qual ele pertence… que poderia vir a ser Os Presbiterianos, caso o investigador prisional se revelasse um batista radical do Sul.

Essencialmente, o sistema de dados do Security Threat Group é como uma caixa registadora: cada vez que um investigador prisional bate no teclado, uma nova identificação sai.

Os aparelhos dentários dos filhos deles — bem como a educação universitária que terão — dependem destes investigadores que, constantemente, expandem o número de gangues e membros a ser vigiados, por isso as organizações criminosas se proliferam… ainda que factualmente não o façam. E lembrem-se de que esses rótulos não serão apagados uma vez que os prisioneiros sejam libertados. Não mesmo. Trata-se de uma base federal de dados. Assim, se lhe classificarem na prisão como o Grande Pooh-Bah do Bando das Bananas, quer ele exista ou não, quando você sair, o polícia local que o abordar pode puxar o número da sua placa e receber o alerta de que você provavelmente está armado e é perigoso. Ou o seu sobrinho, adolescente, que pediu seu carro emprestado para levar a namorada ao cinema, pode encontrar-se rodeado por equipes da SWAT por causa de um simples farol traseiro queimado.

Recentemente, os Juggalos processaram o Departamento de Justiça, quando este se recusou a removê-los de sua base de dados para STGs. Caso não saibam, os Juggalos são os fãs de um grupo de rap, chamadoInsane Clown Posse. Os Juggalos geralmente se vestem como palhaços e bebem refrigerantes da Faygo. Isso é coisa deles. Mas, segundo os investigadores prisionais, sua propensão a ouvir a mesma música e desfrutar das mesmas bebidas — e aparentemente partilhar a mesma subcultura — faz deles um grupo que põe em risco a segurança.

Essa ação judicial está atualmente pendente. Porém, faça o que fizer, não deixe que os investigadores escapem da prisão, caso gostem das bebidas Faygo.

Este é o prisioneiro anarquista Sean Swain, do Sistema Correcional Warren, no Líbano, Ohio. Se você estiver no sistema de dados, você é a resistência!

Sean Swain A243-205

Let’s begin this review honestly: despite having referenced her in multiple articles, I—like almost all leftists regardless of ideology—do not like Ayn Rand and am most certainly not an Objectivist. I approach her much like Karl Hess did: seeing her value in comparison to Emma Goldman but rejecting her ostensive, unflattering solipsism. Yet, I consider Chris Matthew Sciabarra both a close friend and mentor. His dialectical interpretation of Rand is one of the only thoroughly elaborated versions of her thought that I can stomach and, in fact, continues to actually have a major influence on my thinking. Therefore, I hope that my distaste for any orthodox understanding of Rand and Objectivism as a whole will be balanced by my deep affection for and intellectual indebtedness to Chris.

Sciabarra’s monograph (or “Homonograph” as he likes to call it) Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation is best understood in a dialectical fashion; that is, to quote some words from Sciabarra himself, to look at it  “from a variety of perspectives and levels of generality, so as to gain a more comprehensive picture of it[,]” which “requires that we grasp the object in terms of the larger system within which it is situated, as well as its development across time.” To accomplish this, I will draw from some conversations I have had with Chris on the topic: He is the first to admit the contextual limitations of the monograph. For one, it was written in the early 2000s—which, wow, was 20 years ago—when the 21st century form of the LGBTQIA+ community was still taking shape (Chris has even mentioned to me how, when writing this, the term was still GLBT). And he is genuinely insistent that if he were to write it today, he would have written it very differently (particularly with a greater emphasis on the inclusion of the experiences and perspectives of trans folk). But in regard to what he did write, he explains that…

[i]n the Homonograph, . . . I operate on the assumption that the world is indeed made up of a cluster of mutually interdependent processes and that the only way to understand it is by grasping it as a larger context across time. We achieve that understanding through a process of abstraction, because we can’t take in the ‘totality’ in one fell swoop. It requires successive shifts of our vantage point and levels of generality in the study of any problem. So, in this instance, my goal was to understand Rand’s view of homosexuality and to study its reciprocal causes and effects, both upon her acolytes and those LGBTQ+ individuals who were drawn to her thought like moths to a flame, only to be burned in the process. But I also wanted to understand why some of these individuals were not burned; in fact, some of these individuals were uplifted to embrace their authentic, evolving selves. 

Ultimately this piece was written with an Objectivist audience in mind—hence its more or less obvious right-wing flavor—but as described above, it is, at its core, a study of the subjective experiences of both LGBTQIA+ individuals and cisheterosexual individuals involved in the Objectivist movement in an effort to ascertain as close to the objective reality of the situation as possible. The ‘situation’ is that many young queer folk identified with Rand’s fictional work in the 20th and early 21st century, seeing in it a sense of individualism, nonconformity, and self-expression not particularly tied to a capitalist ideology. As Roderick Long writes of the subject:

Consider the architectural firm of Francon & Heyer, later Francon & Keating, in The Fountainhead. The head of the company, Guy Francon, is a gladhanding fraud who takes credit for work actually done by his draftsmen, and who cares more about the colour of his employees’ neckties than about the quality of their work. And most of the businesses portrayed in the novel are similar. There are exceptions, most notably the case of the self-made millionaire Roger Enright; but most of the admirable characters are working-class.

Atlas Shrugged of course has heroic capitalists at its center; and . . . I think something does begin to change with Atlas. But even here, for every heroic entrepreneur like Dagny Taggart or Hank Rearden, there’s a slimy rent-seeking plutocrat like James Taggart or Orren Boyle. Indeed James Taggart is, let it be remembered, Dagny’s boss, who takes credit for all her achievements while blaming her for all his mistakes. (And interestingly, the labour organiser Fred Kinnan, though technically a villain, is presented far more sympathetically than are the businessmen and bureaucrats with whom he colludes.) . . . 

Rand’s identification with the capitalist class seems to emerge fairly late in her career – not really before Atlas.

And furthermore in Atlas, as Sciabarra points out in a Facebook thread, “Galt’s Gulch’ is practically a self-governing agrarian cooperative utopia, with folks attending to crops, fruit trees, chickens, cows, and so forth—becoming farmers, gardeners, and ‘blue collar’ workers, in the complete absence of any oppressive corporate or state entity whatsoever!” But, after finding these almost postcapitalist, liberatory themes in her work, when those same LGBTQIA+ individuals came to the actual Objectivist movement, they were, more often than not, confronted with a conservative, homophobic culture tied to the fetishization of an empty capitalist ‘individualism.’ Thus, Sciabarra seeks to understand why? And then offer straightforward and reasonable arguments for why not.

Now that some of the context of the monograph has been established, an outline is due. After beginning with a foreword by Lindsay Perigo—founder of SOLO (Sense of Life Objectivists) and editor of The Free Radical—and then a preface and introduction by Sciabarra (all of which are worth reading), things jump into Ayn Rand’s and the early Objectivists’ personal views on homosexuality. Spoiler alert; they are horrifying. According to Rand and young Nathaniel Branden, homosexuality is “a symptom of psychological dysfunction, altruistic immorality, . . . literary depravity[,]” and “the modern celebration of abnormality.” Furthermore, a primary reason Rand rejected the Women’s Liberation Movement was its promotion of the rights of queer women and sex workers. Overall this section revolves around the infamous response to the question posed to Rand about why she viewed homosexuality as immoral:

Because it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises, but there is a psychological immorality at the root of homosexuality. Therefore I regard it as immoral. But I do not believe that the government has the right to prohibit it. It is the privilege of any individual to use his sex life in whichever way he wants it. That’s his legal right, provided he is not forcing it on anyone. And therefore the idea that it’s proper among consenting adults is the proper formulation legally. Morally it is immoral, and more than that, if you want my really sincere opinion, it is disgusting.

These comments are vile, to say the least, and they anticipate the types of views held by many modern day paleolibertarians, who (sometimes) oppose legislating against LGBTQIA+ rights but (always) seek to strengthen the homophobic, transphobic, cisheteronormative, and heterosexist elements of U.S. and global culture.

Sciabarra then approaches the views on homosexuality by ‘post-Randians,’ which include bizarre faux psychological theories by the likes of Leonard Peikoff and Branden. The former has argued “that sensitive and thinking young men may not be able to fit into the cultural stereotype of the macho male” and thus become drawn to the approval of more ‘manly’ men in the form of homosexual desire. Wow. This actually bears some kind of resemblance to one of the various Freudian analyses of gay men (not that this helps Peikoff out at all). Freud writes in “Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality” that “[i]f a ‘negative’ or ‘inverted’ Oedipus complex occurs, a boy seeks his father’s love and masculine identification by taking on a feminine identification and reverting to anal eroticism.” Pseudoscience obviously, complete pseudoscience. Branden on the other hand, as Sciabarra draws out in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, “has exhibited much growth in his view of homosexuality.” He formerly held that a rigid gender binary was necessary to “fully foster each individual’s awareness of his or her male and female aspects” and therefore saw non-heterosexuality as deviating from this development. However, later in life he moved toward a position of acknowledging numerous factors as contributing to an individual’s sexual orientation and therefore arguing against moralizing on the matter. Chris has also shared a story with me of how, when it came up that he is gay, Branden was apologetic for the harm he had done with his work on homosexuality and stated both that there are a multitude of sexualities and that science and philosophy could not even fully explain heterosexuality. And Branden’s progress on this matter seems to represent a movement toward an at least ostensibly ‘neutral’ and sometimes even positive stance on homosexuality. This is represented to Sciabarra in specific works by Damian Moskovitz (“Is It Moral to be Homosexual?”), David C. Adams (“Rand Among the ‘Queers’”), and Nick Wiltgen (“Employment ‘Rights’ vs. Equal Rights). He also points to The Rattigan Society—a group of Objectivists named for the openly gay Romantic British playwright Sir. Terence Rattigan—who insist that homophobic discrimination is “irrational” and that the ideals of Rand have an important place for LGBTQIA+ individuals, notably for the purpose of utilizing market pessure (educating the public, engaging in private boycotts, etc.) against discriminatory businesses. 

But this frankly minimal progress cannot make up for the cultishly homophobic attitudes in the past and present Objectivist movement. And this is where Sciabarra’s accurately named “Horror File” comes in. This section covers first-hand, (mostly) pseudonymized incidents of homophobia (alongside, of course, heterosexism and heteronormativity) in the Objectivist movement drawn together through numerous interviews and surveys. I would recommend anyone who would feel triggered by these subjects, if it were not already obvious of this whole work, to approach this particular section with extra care. One particularly disturbing story is that of “Ricky.” Ricky was an Objectivist and an active bisexual in the 60s. This was a time when homosexual behavior was a criminal offense, and Ricky, like “many gay respondents to [Sciabarra’s] survey . . . embraced Objectivism because [he] rejected the moralizing of organized religion.” However, he did not find acceptance amongst Rand’s disciples. His Objectivist girlfriend found out about his sexual orientation and revealed it to others in his close social group, and he was eventually pressured into going to an “Objectivist therapist” (I genuinely had to reread that phrase when I encountered it. Its similarity to so-called-Christian mental health ‘professionals’ who promote conversion ‘therapy’ is uncanny). This ‘therapist’ insisted that homosexuality was wrong and that Rand absolutely believed it to be the case. I will not reveal the entirety of Ricky’s story, but in the end he felt the need to break away from Objectivism entirely because of it and Rand’s homophobia and disrespect for his existence. The Horror File is full of stories similar to this to varying degrees.

But in contrast to these stories, Sciabarra argues that “[t]here are growing signs of change in the attitudes toward homosexuality expressed by people who have been involved to varying degrees with Objectivism.” For some, this difference stems from individual, personal development over the years. For example, “Johnathan”—an academic involved in the early Objectivist movement—initially viewed homosexuality as deeply unnatural, but, although not gaining a very ‘enlightened’ view on the matter, eventually grew more comfortable and even served as the faculty advisor for his college’s Gay and Lesbian Society. For others this change is more a product of an intergenerational difference, with younger Objectivists being more open to queerness and sexual nonconformity—this includes LGBTQIA+ identities as well as BDSM and polyamory. But even this progress is always accounted for alongside numerous incidents of homophobia—direct and indirect—amongst old and young guards alike. Notably, some Objectivists noted a belief or suspicion that some relationships between men in Rand’s books are homoerotic. This leads to the chapter titled “Male Bonding in the Randian Novel,” in which Sciabarra notes how many respondents to his survey identified with the possibly homoerotic relationships between Howard Roark and Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead and Hank Rearden and Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged. He then proceeds to identify scholarly work by Roderick Long (another scholar whose interpretation of Rand I particularly respect), Slavoj Žižek, Judith Wilt, Melissa Jane Harie, and even Rand herself that point toward homoerotic components in Rand’s work.

To finish things off, Sciabarra considers a) a new perspective on Rand’s relationship with sexual and gender nonconformity and b) new possible models of queer liberation based around her thought. This first effort is predicated upon the assertion that “[u]ltimately, Rand’s antipathy toward homosexuality was not particularly logical or philosophical; it was a reflection of her own personal tastes,” that “it is possible and necessary to distinguish between the attitudes, tastes, or preferences of Ayn Rand the person and the essential, core philosophical ideas of the philosophy she named Objectivism,” and that “[t]oday, Objectivists are much more inclined to make this [latter] distinction.” Sciabarra points out that Rand had a complicated personal relationship with gender and sexuality. She was very close to her brother-in-law Nick O’Connor (aka Nick Carter), who was very possibly a below-the-radar gay man, and further, having “asked several people who knew Rand personally whether they had ever heard her comment on homosexuality in private[, n]obody suggested that Rand was ever outwardly prejudicial or disrespectful or that she ever used epithets behind people’s backs.” Furthermore, many individuals have pointed out that Rand was a very masculine woman, with some even speculating on her possible ‘butch bisexuality,’ but this has never been substantiated. And, as Sciabarra writes, one might come “to the provocative conclusion that Rand was a gay man trapped in a straight woman’s body. It is the kind of metaphor that Queer Studies professors would relish in their attempts to make sense both of Rand’s expressed view of gender and sexuality as well has her rather more complex psychodynamics as a human being.” This seems far-fetched (and more than a little problematic), but the point is made: Rand (like everyone if you look close enough) had a complicated and multidimensional gender and sexual dynamic. 

The second part (b) is probably the weakest section, but perhaps that is because this is a difficult and deeply unfinished philosophical project. Continuing the argument that Rand’s personal views are separable from Objectivism, Sciabarra posits the latter as a possible basis for a philosophy of queer liberation that opposes the “anti-gay bias [that] is a manifestation of collectivism” in both its right- and left-wing forms. As he writes, “Whatever the impact of the Lavender Left on the movement for sexual liberation, the Marxists . . . once argued that homosexuality was some sort of aberration, a sign of ‘bourgeois’ decadence” and “[t]he Communists used gulags and psychological ‘reconditioning’ as part of their ‘cultural revolution’ to stamp out homosexuality.” But this oppression “was also practiced in Hitler’s National Socialist Germany, where those notorious ‘anti-Marxists,’ the Nazis, discovered the virtue of the Pink Triangle as a way of identifying, incarcerating, enslaving, castrating, experimenting on, or murdering homosexuals.” I do not think Sciabarra meant it this way, but this seems to follow the false presumption that all forms of collectivism are essentially the same (consider the difference between U.S. settler-colonial and imperialist nationalism versus the anti-colonial struggles of rightly sovereign Indigenous nations) and downplays the vastly different roles the libertarian left and right have had in the history of queer liberation—even if, as Sciabarra does, one “distinguish[es] between the modern conservatives, classical liberals, and radical libertarians” on the right. From individualists and mutualists to anarcho-communists and communalists, left-wing anarchism has long been part of the struggle for the individual and collective rights of the LGBTQIA+ community. Right-wing libertarian thought? Not so much. 

This final flaw continues in his consideration of the “gay right,” as he argues that “among ‘gay right’ intellectuals are those who seek to transcend left and right, overturning a tired politically correct framework, which has no tolerance for genuine diversity.” I hate to say it, but this comes off as something too close to the kind of dog whistling rhetoric of cryptoconservatives and fascist/alt-right apologists like Dave Rubin for my taste. However, Chris has emphasized to me that the purpose of this statement was largely to give a selling point to those Objectivists who viewed LGBTQIA+ identity as a political threat to individual liberty through the state. And while personally I do not see much overt value in this kind of appeal to the insecurities and paranoia of the right, I feel strongly that Sciabarra is honest in his ultimate argument that “Ayn Rand’s literary legacy nourishes . . . diversity. It offers . . . an uplifting portrait of the human potential for greatness, unencumbered by personal, cultural, or political forms of oppression. It is a legacy that projects an exalted view of love as a response to values. It is a legacy that belongs to all rational men and women—of whatever sexual orientation.”

At the end of the day, although Rand’s thinking can be useful at times, I still find it difficult to believe that a homophobe like Rand, whose movement is, often very explicitly, committed to the uncritical perpetuation of Anglo-American capitalistic traditions (except the most superficial elements of the puritanical form of Christianity) rooted in white supremacy, cisheteronormativity, imperialism, and settler-colonialism can ever be the primary ideological basis for queer liberation. (For proof consider Long’s point that “Rand denied that the U.S. was an imperial power; dismissed the military-industrial complex as ‘a myth or worse’; advocated censoring antiwar activists; favoured entangling alliances with Israel, Taiwan, and other tripwire regions; and saw no moral problem with bombing innocent civilians,” and see her own anti-Indigenous and imperialist/anti-Arab comments in Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q & A, her anti-African comments in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and the ever infamous article “The Christopher Columbus Controversy: Western Civilization vs. Primitivism” by the Ayn Rand Institute’s Michael Berliner.) Perhaps a favorable argument could be made revolving around Roland Barthes’s “The Death of the Author,” in which he argues that “[t]o give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final significance, to close the writing.” This gives credence to the perceptions of homoeroticism in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, but can one refrain from giving ‘an Author an Author?’ Admittedly an author is ‘made up’ of texts from a literary theory perspective, but then we begin to enter broad conversations largely divorced from the actual arguments being made in the monograph. However, Sciabarra has made the following, related case to me that I find compelling:

I take seriously the Paul Ricoeur principle that a text is detached from its author and develops consequences of its own—transcending its relevance to its initial situation and addressing an indefinite range of possible readers. So any philosophy that embraces personal flourishing, autonomy, and a dialectical project seeking to overturn oppression across personal, cultural, and structural dimensions can be used as a means of transcending the narrow views of its originator. I’d say the same about Marx and Engels (who were not friendly to homosexuality). 

And in an relatively similar fashion, Long argues that…

that there are in effect two Rands, or two strands in Rand: a left-libertarian, feminist, anti-militarist, anti-corporatist, benevolent, experimental strand, and a conservative, patriarchal, homophobic, flag-worshipping, boss-worshipping, dogmatic strand. Which strand represents the “true” Rand? Well, both of them; she just is precisely the person who tried to combine these two strands. 

A better question is: which strand most accurately expresses her fundamental principles? And here it seems to me that the answer is: the left-libertarian strand.

And yet I am not convinced that this changes the fact that Rand’s philosophy—despite being materialist and, through Sciabarra’s interpretation, a genuinely dialectical one with a nuanced theory of power—seems to also fundamentally lack, in almost all practice and popular theory I have seen, the material imperatives for queer liberation. For example, despite being anti-statist, it fails to even begin to account for, or even acknowledge, the material basis of forcibly maintaining sexual conformity (and the gender binary) for the sake of creating legible and productive subjects within state capitalism. Objectivism continues to fall short of understandings such as these because it focuses narrowly, if at all, on the ‘liberation’ of essentially isolated subjects from the most obvious and least nuanced understanding of power. But then again, is beginning to rectify these issues not the point of Sciabarra’s monograph? If contemporary (and good faith) students of Rand are consistently against the state and its manipulation of society, perhaps they will come to realize, as Sciabarra has, that—in this case, for queer folk in particular—capitalism is not an “unknown ideal” but a “known reality.”

And beyond this idealistic (materialist) speculation, the reality is that Rand has had and will likely always have a decisive influence on the liberty movement far beyond just her orthodox admirers. There’s no two ways about it. And if our movement is to be genuinely liberatory, it must be stripped of reactionary bigotry at all costs. As Sciabarra writes in Total Freedom, “Just as relations of power operate through ethical, psychological, cultural, political, and economic dimensions, so too the struggle for freedom and individualism depends upon a certain constellation of moral, psychological, and cultural factors.” In many ways, this is one of the fundamental bases of thick libertarianism, which my colleague Nathan Goodman defines as “any broadening of libertarian concerns beyond overt aggression and state power to concern about what cultural and social conditions are most conducive to liberty.” Despite its critics on the libertarian right, I agree with many of my comrades at the Center that the debate is over. We are all thick libertarians now. The question now is what bundles of values we are to subscribe to: the reactionary values of Randroids, Koch-heads, and folks like Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Keith Preston (who somehow think allying with fascists will lead to a liberatory outcome) or the liberatory values of leftist libertarians—ranging from left-wing market anarchists to left-minarchists & bleeding-heart libertarians—like Long, Charles Johnson, Kevin Carson (although these days he considers himself an anarchist without adjectives), Philippe Van Parijs, Peter Vallentyne, and Matt Zwolinski. Thus, Sciabarra’s monograph serves as one of the centerpieces in the establishment of thick libertarian ideas. It especially forwards the point that it is not enough that people refrain from trying to use the state against the LGBTQIA+ community. We must go further and combat a culture that breeds both physical and nonphysical violence. As Marshall Rosenberg accounts,  

Most people refer to violence as physically trying to hurt another. We also consider violence any use of power over people, trying to coerce people into doing things. That would include any use of punishment and reward, any use of guilt, shame, duty and obligation. Violence in this larger sense is any use of force to coerce people to do things. Violence is also any system that discriminates against people and prevents equal access to resources and justice to all people. 

This is something that Sciabarra understands and accounts for throughout his work. And he has made and continues to make the most thorough, convincing, and nuanced arguments for why Rand’s thought is a genuinely liberatory project. And, of course, if you are an Objectivist, his monograph is required reading.

For the seventh installment of The Enragés, host Joel Williamson met with Nathan Goodman to discuss their article titled Abolition: An Economist’s Perspective. This article is a contribution to an upcoming C4SS anthology called Total Abolition: Police, Prisons, Borders, Empire.

Tune in to learn how economics can contribute to the pursuit of abolition, and how self-governance is best realized through polycentricity and the market process.

This fall, Nathan will become a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics at New York University, where he will be affiliated with the Program on the Foundations of the Market Economy. He earned his Ph.D. in economics at George Mason University, where he was a Ph.D. fellow with the Mercatus Center and a Graduate Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Nathan’s research broadly focuses on political economy, applied microeconomics, market process economics, New Institutional Economics, and defense economics. He analyzes how alternative institutional arrangements shape the provision of security. Nathan is also the former Lysander Spooner Research Scholar in Abolitionist Studies at C4SS.

Vaccine hesitancy is a common issue across the world concerning the COVID-19 vaccine.  There have been all kinds of misinformation, rumors, and conspiracy theories regarding the efficacy and the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, ever since the vaccines were made available to the public.

Vaccine hesitancy is a historically well-documented phenomenon. Several factors concerning vaccine hesitancy cut across race, gender, caste, religion, ethnicity, politics, education, age, working status, and income. According to Maya Goldenberg “vaccine hesitancy has less to do with misunderstanding the science and more to do with the general mistrust of scientific institutions and government” (Haelle, 2021). An understanding of vaccine hesitancy is crucial to overcoming the COVID-19 crisis. 

In the West, women are getting vaccinated at a far higher rate than men, for instance, 43.3 percent of women got vaccinated compared to 38.5 percent of men as per the recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) data. Vaccine hesitancy among white men in western society is connected to their toxic masculine behavior such as heavy drinking, smoking, and illicit drug use. Such masculine behaviors cause men not to seek health care and to adopt preventive healthcare measures such as taking vaccines.

Ironically, the situation in India is the opposite with more men getting vaccinated than women. This vaccine disparity implies that for every 1000 men only 867 women have been vaccinated, which is worse than India’s sex ratio. 

It is important to understand men’s attitudes and behaviors towards vaccination, which are closely associated with their masculinity. Why are more men getting vaccinated than women in India? Who are these men? And what kind of masculine behaviors do they represent? The construction and reconstruction of hegemonic Hindu (Brahmin-Savarna) masculinities associated with their behaviors and actions are important dimensions to understanding the COVID-19 vaccine apartheid in India.

Masculinity and Vaccine Hesitancy

Generally, masculine behavior and attitudes are important dimensions to understanding the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among men. Men who identify themselves as masculine are more likely to hesitate to take vaccines. Taking vaccines makes them non-conforming to their conventional gender roles and norms of men as being physically more resilient, strong, as providers and protectors. Men conforming to conventional masculine gender roles and identity are more skeptical about taking vaccines.

In India, the mainstream discourse about the gender gap in vaccinations conceals more than what it reveals, unless it is seen from the caste perspective. There are multiple dimensions to caste and gender relations and the patterns of inequality. A closer look at each substructure of gender and caste, reveals a pattern of advantages and its associated disadvantages within each category.

Elite affluent men in metropolitan cities, particularly those belonging to the Brahmin-Savarna castes getting early vaccination at a higher rate, are at odds with the conventional masculine behavior of hegemonic men in Western society.

Are all men the same? There are caste and class hierarchies of men.  Connell (2011) in her book, “Confronting Equality” argues, “the men who receive most of the benefits, and the men who pay most of the costs, are not the same individuals. On a global scale, the men who benefit from corporate wealth, physical security, and expensive health care are a very different group from the men who dig the fields and the mines of developing countries. Class, race, national, regional and generational differences cross-cut the category ‘men’, spreading the gains and costs of gender relations very unevenly among men.”

In the Indian context, men are neither monolithic nor are they a stable category. Multiple masculinities are being constructed in relation to the dominant caste categories. The Hindu society is based on graded inequality, divided into four castes the Brahmins, Ksatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras and then, there are those who fall outside of this system who are called the “untouchables” also known as the Dalits. The caste hierarchy determines men’s social status, privilege, and access to social capital in society. For those lying outside of this caste system, none of the privileges or status exists or even applies. The caste system is constructed such that it confers and gives rights, privileges to the upper castes while authorizing these privileged groups to punish and repress the lower castes. Therefore, based on Connell’s (2005) categorization of masculinities, masculinity of Dalit men can be termed as marginalized masculinity based on their marginalized caste status, while the Brahmin- Savarna men can be categorized as hegemonic masculinity due to their heterosexual, dominant status in the caste hierarchy.

There have been many instances of manifestations of dominant masculinities of Brahmin-Savarna men. During the Second wave of India’s COVID-19 crisis, the Brahmin men expressed their hegemonic masculine behavior by refusing to perform their caste-based duties. Brahmin men deliberately refused to perform the Hindu funeral rites and rituals of the deceased during the pandemic. Consequently, the responsibility of cremating and burying the dead was forced upon the Dalit cremation workers, who undertook the task with no protective gears, at the risk of getting directly exposed to the virus.

Many caste-exclusive vaccination drives were organized for Brahmin-Savarna caste groups in various cities across India. For instance, in Bangalore, an exclusive drive for Brahmin priests was allegedly organized by the state-run BJP government. Moreover, the caste exclusive COVID vaccine drives, home food drives, hotel rooms at a special price for self-isolation, and quarantine for Aggarwala samaj (Savarna community) were organized in Bangalore. Similarly, other metropolitan cities like Hyderabad started exclusive vaccination drives for members of their gated communities and corporate employees. There is no doubt that the largest beneficiaries of these exclusive vaccine drives are men belonging to the Brahmin- Savarna castes.

These men use their caste networks and their economic privileges to get vaccines from private hospitals at a price double the actual price when the whole country is reeling under an acute shortage of vaccines. This is a sign of toxic and passively violent behavior of Brahmin-Savarna men towards marginalized sections of society. This behavior perpetuates the idea of domination and the unequal power relation with men and women from other marginalized castes.

R Srivatsan (2015) in his article, Reflections on discrimination and health in India argues that discrimination as a phenomenon in India is interconnected with political power, economic capability, and social (caste) dominance. Discrimination and its various forms is a strategy used by elite caste Hindus to guarantee control and seize the benefits of the developments of a capitalist economy driven by privatization. It is through these discriminatory practices and strategies that the elite dominant castes maintain their privileges. He also argues that discrimination more specifically caste discrimination is an undeniable fact and has always been a means of control, dominance, and exercising of power in Hindu society. This form of liberal capitalist thinking coupled with caste Hindu elitism, magnifying and disguising the caste Hindu’s intolerance for equality keeps large sections of the underprivileged, so-called lower caste or marginalized people deprived of access to resources (Srivatsan, 2015).

Hence, from the perspective of caste discrimination, it can be argued that the Brahmin-Savarna men getting early vaccination is deeply connected to their caste dominance, supremacy, and masculine ego. These men are self-centered, exclusive, and disinterested in the welfare of ‘others,’ particularly those they consider to be a ‘threat’ or morally inferior or marginal. These men lack basic human values and moral reasoning that vaccines should be first provided to the high-risk groups such as the elderly, transgender, women, sanitation worker, cremation workers, frontline health workers, and other day-to-day service providers.

History of Vaccine Hesitancy

‘Vaccine Hesitancy’ and resistance among people is a universal problem that can be greatly reduced and overcome through massive awareness campaigns and literacy about vaccines. History has shown that vaccine hesitancy and popular resistance were common during earlier pandemics like cholera (1817-1920), plague (1894-1920), and influenza (1918-1920). Vaccine hesitancy was huge in the late 19th century which was overcome through massive public communication (Tumbe, 2020). But it took a period of three decades for the mind-shift to change as people realized the worth of the vaccine. This change in mindset is captured by the  Haffkine medical institutes report (1930), which remarks, “where riots were liable to occur when inoculation was pressed, recently a riot was threatened because the supply of vaccine ran short”. Moreover, the massive loss of lives during the second wave of the COVID-19 crisis made people realize the importance of vaccines (Tumbe, 2020).

Role of Mainstream Media in racializing Dalits and Minorities

Moreover, there is an urgent need to critically examine mainstream media’s role in racializing the poor and the marginalized sections. Instead of holding the government responsible and accountable to address the issue of vaccine hesitancy through massive awareness programs, the mainstream media has been selectively targeting and racializing the most marginalized and vulnerable sections of society.  In India, the mainstream both regional and the national media’s reporting on the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy particularly among the backward areas dominated by the Dalit-Adivasi, and minority communities have been sexist, casteist, and Islamophobic so say the least. Some of these phrases are given below:

“Women in rural Bihar hesitant to take vaccines”

“….the hesitancy is higher among Dalits, who are at the bottom of a deeply discriminatory Hindu caste hierarchy.”

“Vaccine hesitancy high in Muslim dominated districts”

“At the root of the vaccine hesitancy in rural and tribal-dominated areas of the state is rumours regarding the safety of the shots.”

The mainstream media blaming Dalits, Adivasi, Minorities,  and women in rural areas for being vaccine hesitant is selective and reductionist. So, rather than vaguely portraying “vaccine deprivation” as “vaccine hesitancy” among the poor and marginalized people, the mainstream media should ask the following questions:

• Has the government launched any massive health awareness program to address vaccine hesitancy among people?
• Does everyone have equal access to the COVID-19 vaccine?
• Is the government able to provide free and universal vaccines to all?
• Shouldn’t the “Right to Free Vaccines”  be included under the “Right to Life and Personal Liberty” of Article-21 of the Indian Constitution?
• What is the gender, caste, and class composition of  about 5% of India’s population who got vaccinated?

The access to privatized healthcare services in India is limited to those who can afford it, which implies that only the hegemonic Hindu (Brahmin-Savarna) men would be the early beneficiaries of the vaccines, while the Dalit-Adivasi, minorities, women, and other marginalized groups will be systematically excluded from getting vaccinated and from all other public health care services. 

The elite caste Hindus in the last few decades have moved away from public to private hospitals, which is largely both inaccessible and unaffordable to the poor who mostly belong to the lower castes. The notion of “well-being” in the Indian context is not a universal to which everyone is entitled to, but rather “well-being” is an exclusive value and property which is accessible to only those who already have caste privilege (Srivatsan, 2015). This then leaves out the marginalized, lower castes, and the poor outside the domain of development and access to resources, such as education and healthcare.

In conclusion, the early vaccination of upper-caste men, the privatization, and deprivation of vaccines to the marginalized or high-risk groups are linked to the casteist-masculine behaviors and actions of the dominant Brahmin-Savarna men. It has been affecting the uniform distribution of the limited COVID-19 vaccines in India. The masculine actions and casteist behaviors of Brahmin-Savarna men are a major obstacle to the universalization of the COVID-19 vaccines and other basic healthcare facilities. The public health system is a cooperative enterprise, where everyone should have an equal stake. The COVID-19 pandemic can only be dealt with through collective effort.  To address the vaccine apartheid and to ensure equal distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines, the casteist and toxic masculine behaviors of the Brahmin-Savarna men have to be deconstructed and dismantled.

Di Kevin Carson. Originale pubblicato il 30 giugno 2021 con il titolo The Status Quo is a Government-Contrived Labor Surplus. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Se non è che vivete nelle caverne o praticate l’astinenza totale dai media, vi sarà capitato di sentire la voce di chi, portavoce del peggio, si lamenta dicendo che “nessuno vuole più lavorare!” Lo sdegno è così grande che c’è chi lo esprime affiggendo cartelli rabbiosi alle vetrine.

Io non so quanto questi cartelli possano attirare chi cerca un lavoro, è certo però che la rabbia è un’enorme fonte di divertimento per chi, come me, bazzica Twitter e Facebook.

Ora ad aiutarli c’è Richard Ebeling, dell’American Institute for Economic Research. Non che sia una sorpresa, visto che la promozione del peggio è proprio la missione dell’AIER. Ma per Ebeling è anche una questione personale. Come spiega lui stesso nell’articolo “The Labor Shortage Is a Government-Contrived Scarcity,” del 14 giugno scorso. Voleva andare in ristorante con la moglie, ma ha dovuto rinunciare per colpa di certi sfaticati che non vogliono lavorare alle condizioni offerte dai datori.

Son sicuro che non solo Ebeling, ma anche il proprietario del ristorante tailandese in questione – erede di chissà quanti padroni oltraggiati dal canagliume spadronato fin dai tempi dei Tudor – condividerebbero quello che dice Hines, il proprietario di cinquanta acri che in Furore (John Steinbeck) dice: “I rossi sono figli di puttana, gli dai venticinque centesimi e ne vogliono trenta!”

Quanto a Ebeling, secondo lui la mancanza di personale ai tavoli non è casuale, ma voluta! E dallo stato! La cena di Ebeling non è morta, è stata uccisa. E chi l’ha uccisa ha nome e indirizzo.

Apparentemente, tutta questa difficoltà a trovare personale è un mistero. “Le proposte sono tante, ma solo pochi sono interessati all’offerta. Perché?”

Qualcuno dice che i datori di lavoro sono avari, non pagano abbastanza da convincere un disoccupato a rientrare nella forza lavoro attiva. Questo però non spiega perché il salario “x” che questi lavoratori accettavano quindici mesi fa, oggi, poco più di un anno dopo, è inaccettabile, soprattutto data la perdita di reddito che si è avuta nel frattempo.

La verità, dice Ebeling, è che le indennità di disoccupazione sono state artificialmente estese e aumentate, e i lavoratori guadagnano altrettanto, se non di più, stando a casa piuttosto che andando a lavorare.

Ebeling vede le cose al contrario. Ad essere artificiale è l’attuale condizione capitalista. Avrebbe fatto meglio a chiedersi come mai prima, in una situazione che lui considera normale, la gente si costringeva a fare un lavoro che odiava profondamente. La risposta, ovviamente, è perché l’unica alternativa erano la fame e la strada.

Ma era il passato, quello a cui Ebeling vorrebbe tanto tornare, l’anomalia creata dallo stato. Artificiale era la piena occupazione del passato, creata dallo stato rendendo difficile l’accesso dei lavoratori ai mezzi di produzione.

Quello stato delle cose che per Ebeling rappresenta la normalità capitalista è stato reso possibile solo da secoli di violenza dello stato. Nasce ad opera dello stato e vive finché lo stato continua a fare violenza.

In Inghilterra tutto cominciò tra il tardo Medio Evo e l’incipiente modernità con l’esproprio delle terre coltivabili nei fondi indivisi, terre che venivano recintate e usate come pascolo per le pecore. I contadini furono privati del tradizionale diritto di accedere alla terra, sfrattati e costretti a pagare affitti salati. I padroni potevano farlo perché c’era la forza dello stato che costringeva i lavoratori, ora senza terra, a lavorare a salario alle condizioni offerte; per chi rifiutava c’era la tortura, la violenza o il bracciantato. Il furto delle terre prosegue nel diciottesimo e diciannovesimo secolo con l’esproprio decretato dal parlamento dei pascoli comuni e delle terre incolte.

I padroni capitalisti confidavano sul controllo sociale totalitario e sulla forza dello stato per imporre e disciplinare la forza lavoro. Le Leggi sulla Residenza istituirono un sistema di passaporti interni. Con le Leggi sulle Associazioni lo stato proibì anche la libera associazione tra lavoratori, e criminalizzò le associazioni di mutuo soccorso temendo che rappresentassero un terreno fertile per il radicalismo, temendo che i fondi potessero essere usati per finanziare gli scioperi. Come spiegano J.L. e Barbara Hammond, la società inglese fu “fatta a pezzi… e rimessa assieme come un dittatore rifà uno stato libero.”

Col diffondersi del capitalismo, i tradizionali diritti terrieri dei contadini furono abrogati, prima in Europa e poi in altre parti del mondo colonizzate dagli europei. Un caso dopo l’altro (l’insediamento permanente di Hastings in Bengala, le haciendas in America Latina e così via in tutto il mondo colonizzato) le persone furono private del loro diritto di lavorare autonomamente la terra e costrette a lavorare per i padroni capitalisti.

E quanto al periodo del cosiddetto “laissez-faire”, i rigidi controlli sociali, la schiavitù, i dazi e altre cose non furono abrogati perché improvvisamente ci si rese conto che erano brutte idee, perché finalmente si ebbe una migliore comprensione dell’economia. Al contrario, lo stato capitalista li eliminò perché non servivano più. Non servivano più ai sistemi di potere perché questi erano consolidati. Che bisogno c’era di imporre dazi commerciali, ad esempio, quando la Gran Bretagna con l’impero controllava metà delle risorse mondiali, quando i suoi mercanti avevano il monopolio dei trasporti al suo interno e soffocavano qualunque minaccia concorrenziale da parte dell’industria tessile indiana?

E poi nonostante le pretese di laissez-faire, lo stato continuò a tutelare scarsità artificiale e diritti di proprietà artificiali, due pilastri del capitalismo. Ancora oggi, lo stato tutela i diritti di proprietà assenteista di eredi e assegnatari dei ladri di cui ho parlato più su. Lo stato americano e i suoi alleati tengono in piedi un impero mondiale con il fine di mantenere al potere quegli stati che tutelano il diritto alle terre e alle risorse razziate sotto il colonialimso e tengono basso il costo del lavoro. Lo stato tutela il monopolio dei brevetti che permette ad aziende mondiali di racchiudere la produzione in appalto in un guscio legale, mantenendo il monopolio legale delle vendite, una forma di protezionismo da cui il capitalismo dipende così come il capitalismo nazionale dipendeva dai dazi un secolo fa.

Lo stato esclusivizza i credit commons, dando così a chi ha accumulato ricchezze il monopolio sul diritto di finanziare le aziende, e dunque il diritto di organizzare l’attività produttiva. È così che Elon Musk diventa un “genio” anche se personalmente non ha mai progettato o inventato nulla. Grazie al controllo degli aspetti finanziari, può appropriarsi del lavoro cooperativo e dell’intelletto sociale altrui, appropriarsi del credito e ricavarne una rendita.

Una persona in polemica con gli interessi dei lavoratori – nell’universo specchiato di Ebeling sarebbe una sorta di malvagio Spock – avrebbe potuto rivoltare così la sua domanda: perché i lavoratori dopo gli espropri delle terre erano più disposti a lavorare a salario, nonostante i salari offerti non fossero cresciuti rispetto a prima né il prezzo del pane fosse calato?

Anche qui, la risposta è semplice: finché potevano accedere a strumenti indipendenti di sussistenza grazie al tradizionale lotto di terra coltivabile che gli spettava, finché avevano diritto di pascolare, fare legnatico e cacciare nelle terre incolte, finché avevano tutto ciò non erano disposti a lavorare per i salari offerti dai datori di lavoro. Una volta privati dei loro mezzi indipendenti di sussistenza, la scelta obbligata fu l’accettazione di qualunque salario offerto, per quanto basso fosse, per non morire di fame.

Un problema di fondo dell’economia politica capitalista, fin dai tempi della Favola delle api di Mandeville, era come far sì che il lavoratore fosse costretto a scegliere tra il lavoro ai termini imposti dal datore e la fame.

Giungere a questo stato di cose era l’obiettivo conscio del capitalista agrario che chiedeva e realizzava le enclosure. Sapeva, e lo diceva apertamente, che finché le persone avrebbero potuto trovare sostentamento nelle terre comuni, si sarebbero rifiutate di lavorare per i possidenti terrieri che chiedevano orari lunghi, lavoro duro e paghe basse. Sapeva, e lo diceva chiaro e forte, che avrebbe potuto sfruttare a piacimento i lavoratori quando l’unica alternativa al salario sarebbe stata la fame.

E tanti lo dicevano a chiare lettere. Ecco qui alcuni esempi tratti da scritti polemici di possidenti inglesi ai tempi delle enclosure volute dal parlamento:

Nel 1739 un panflettista sosteneva: “per rendere attive e obbedienti le classi inferiori… non c’è che ‘porle nella necessità di lavorare per tutto il tempo che non dedicano al riposo e al sonno se vogliono avere ciò che gli occorre per vivere’.”

Un pamphlet del 1770 dal titolo “Saggio sul Commercio e gli Affari” avvertiva che “[i] lavoratori non dovrebbero mai considerarsi indipendenti dai loro superiori… La cura non sarà perfetta finché gli operai poveri non si accontenteranno di lavorare sei giorni per la stessa somma che ora guadagnano in quattro.”

Arbuthnot nel 1773 denunciava i common (comunità basate sulla proprietà terriera collettiva, ndt) come “un pretesto per fare pigrizia; perché, tolto qualcuno, se gli offri un lavoro loro ti dicono che devono accudire le pecore, tagliare il ginestrone, togliere le mucche dal pantano, o magari anche ferrare il cavallo per la corsa dei cavalli o la gara di cricket.”

John Billingsley, nel suo Rapporto sul Somerset presentato nel 1795 al Comitato Agrario, parla di effetti dannosi causati dal common al carattere del contadino: “A furia di passeggiare dietro al bestiame al pascolo, diventa pigro. Perde così un quarto, metà e talvolta anche una giornata intera. Il lavoro giornaliero lo disgusta e più indulge nelle sue pratiche e più cresce il disgusto; poi gli basta vendere un vitello o un maiale male in arnese e alla pigrizia aggiunge l’intemperanza.”

Bishton, nel suo Rapporto sullo Shropshire del 1794, era tra i più onesti nel dichiarare gli obiettivi delle enclosure. “L’utilizzo della terra comune genera nei contadini una sorta di senso d’indipendenza.” le enclosure dovrebbero servire a far sì che “i lavoratori lavorino tutti i giorni dell’anno, e che i anche i loro figli vengano messi a lavorare quanto prima, … così da assicurare quella subordinazione dei ceti inferiori oggi così necessaria.”

John Clark, dell’Herefordshire, scriveva nel 1807 che i coltivatori della sua contea erano “spesso a corto di manovalanza: recintare le terre incolte aumenterebbe le braccia disponibili ed eliminerebbe lo strumento che permette loro di campare pigramente.”

Non somiglia a quei ristoranti che mettono cartelli con la scritta “Nessuno vuole più lavorare”?

I sacrosanti “diritti di proprietà”, alla cui difesa pensatoi libertari di destra come l’AIER dedicano la propria esistenza, le proprie fortune e il sacro onore, sono i diritti di proprietà degli eredi e degli assegnatari dei ladri che realizzarono gli espropri. Ciò contro cui lottano è la richiesta dei discendenti dei derubati di riavere indietro ciò che era loro.

250 anni fa in Inghilterra i portavoce delle classi possidenti sostenevano che “la nazione” avrebbe tratto un beneficio se i lavoratori fossero stati strappati all’indolenza con la disciplina, e se i salari fossero stati così bassi da costringerli a lavorare sei giorni per guadagnare quel sostentamento che prima avevano con meno. Peccato che per la stragrande maggioranza della popolazione costretta al lavoro salariato tutto ciò non portasse nessun beneficio.

Come a significare che non è cambiato nulla, e che i “libertari” di destra di oggi hanno preso il testimone delle succitate classi possidenti settecentesche, Reason pubblica oggi un commento dal titolo “La California e New York hanno tutto da guadagnare dall’abolizione dei sussidi di disoccupazione”. Il quale articolo non fa che spiegare raggiante quante persone sono state costrette ad accettare un posto alle condizioni dei padroni laddove gli extra sono stati abrogati. Da notare che soltanto ora i lavoratori hanno dei benefici perché le aziende sono state costrette ad alzare i salari o a rendere comunque più attraente il lavoro, e che i lavoratori rappresentano la stragrande maggioranza della popolazione sia in California che a New York. Ma quando i “libertari” di destra dicono che ci guadagneranno la California e New York, vogliono dire che a guadagnarci saranno possidenti e padroni; insomma, dicono esattamente quello che dicevano i loro antenati spirituali 250 anni fa quando parlavano della “nazione”.

Ebeling dice che certe cose come i sussidi di disoccupazione creano “un falso ‘costo di opportunità’ per i lavoratori in termini di compromesso tra lavoro e non-lavoro.”

Dico che è “falso” perché se non ci fossero questi programmi ridistributivi i lavoratori poco qualificati valuterebbero diversamente il guadagno perso non accettando un impiego lucroso rispetto magari al nulla. Questi programmi, invece, finché restano in vigore non fanno altro che rappresentare un “livello minimo”, per cui accettando un posto sotto questo livello si va in perdita.

La verità è il contrario di quello che sostiene Ebeling. È lo stato, in combutta con i padroni capitalisti, a distorcere il calcolo del costo di opportunità distruggendo il livello minimo sotto il quale lavorare non conviene.

Ebeling continua la sua predica spiegando che “in un mercato competitivo”, in un mondo senza “scarsità creata” o “ricchezza creata” dallo stato, tutto procederebbe in maniera naturale. Secondo lui, è l’attuale riluttanza dei lavoratori ad accettare un posto al salario corrente che costituisce “scarsità creata”, a cui si oppone la succitata naturale competizione nel “libero mercato”, in cui il lavoratore accetta il lavoro offerto e ringrazia. A distorcere il tutto sarebbe dunque il trasferimento di ricchezza dai ricchi ai poveri, perché se non si accrescesse artificialmente il potere contrattuale del lavoratore a spese del capitale le cose andrebbero altrimenti. Se non fosse per l’intervento socialisteggiante dello stato a favore dei lavoratori, potremmo tornare a un “libero mercato” naturale e competitivo, dove i padroni stanno meglio e i lavoratori peggio.

Il ragionamento di Ebeling è sostanzialmente una versione un po’ più intellettuale di “Quick as Hell Full Employment Theory” (Teoria del pieno impiego immediato, ndt) di Robert J. Ringer: eliminiamo i benefici, i buoni alimentari e le indennità di disoccupazione, e tutti troveranno subito un lavoro.

Ma la verità è l’esatto opposto. Il compito dello stato sotto il capitalismo è di creare, artificialmente, un di più di lavoratori in competizione tra loro per i posti disponibili. Lo stato interviene principalmente per rendere artificialmente inaccessibili le alternative al lavoro salariato, per rendere artificialmente scarsi i mezzi di produzione. Lo stato interviene principalmente per imporre la rendita della terra, del capitale e del credito con la scarsità artificiale, per aiutare la classe padronale a vivere di rendita. Lo stato alimenta un flusso di ricchezza che va principalmente dai poveri verso i ricchi.

Quel poco di reddito che va in direzione contraria, sotto forma di benefici sociali, salario minimo e simili, è del tutto secondario, e riflette il compito dello stato di salvaguardare l’esistenza del capitalismo.

La realtà è l’opposto esatto di quello che dicono i libertari di destra, la “normalità” è un sistema in cui il capitale si accumula in poche mani, i mezzi di produzione sono di proprietà assenteista e quasi tutti sono lavoratori salariati, a cui si aggiunge lo stato che occasionalmente limita le pretese dei padroni e rende la vita un po’ meno schifosa per i lavoratori.

Quella che Ebeling chiama normalità, quell’equilibrio di potere tra lavoratore e padrone che vigeva prima dell’estensione dei sussidi di disoccupazione, non è che una condizione artificiale. La situazione che lui lamenta, così come l’estensione dei sussidi che ne risulta, non è che una pallida imitazione della situazione che prevaleva spontaneamente prima delle enclosure.

Arriviamo così al cuore, alla vera natura del programma dei libertari di destra: presentare come “naturale” o “volontario” un sistema che nasce costrittivo e rimane costrittivo nella sua logica di base. Facciamo un piccolo esperimento mentale. Leggete I, Pencil, un libercolo che celebra le magie dello “scambio volontario” nel mettere assieme le varie parti che costituiscono una matita facendole venire da tutto il mondo. Mentre lo leggete, fermatevi ogni tanto e chiedetevi da dove vengono i vari materiali citati. Sono risorse che provengono da zone colonizzate da uno stato creato da coloni, come gli Stati Uniti, o da qualche impero coloniale europeo, ai tempi di Leonard Read, o poco prima.

Ora, quando dico che i libertari di destra cercano di far passare come “volontario” un sistema creato con la violenza e la costrizione, non parlo a casaccio. Bisogna sempre tenere a mente che tutto ciò è al cuore del programma ideologico capitalista. L’ideologia capitalista è piena di favole, robinsonate e storie preconfezionate, che dicono che la proprietà privata è nata con l’appropriazione pacifica separando la terra dai beni comuni con l’unione del proprio lavoro, o che le economie dominate dalla produzione di merci sul nesso di cassa sono il risultato della “tendenza a commerciare, barattare e scambiare”, o ancora che il dominio della moneta metallica è la risposta spontanea al problema della “doppia coincidenza del bisogno”, e così via.

Per tutti i libertari genuini – ovvero quelli che vogliono dare forza alla capacità d’agire dell’individuuo contro istituzioni autoritarie come lo stato e il capitale, non quel genere di “libertario” che difende d’istinto la ricchezza dei ladri e un modello artificiale di “proprietà privata” imposto dai primi stati moderni – dare più possibilità ai lavoratori di dire no a un lavoro finché non ha una paga migliore, o di vivere bene lavorando meno o senza lavoro salariato, è l’obiettivo.

Cose come la sospensione degli sfratti, l’estensione dei sussidi di disoccupazione, i benefici sociali, i salari minimi e altre cose simili rappresentano fenomeni che nascono quando i privilegi imposti dallo stato capitalista diventano destabilizzanti e lo stato (in quanto comitato esecutivo degli interessi del capitale) deve intervenire per evitare che la gente finisca per strada o che muoia di fame facendo collassare la domanda aggregata e distruggendo il capitalismo. Sono interventi secondari che certo migliorano la situazione dei lavoratori, ma che non riparano affatto il furto perpetrato ai danni dei lavoratori dall’intervento primario dello stato quando impose i privilegi di capitalisti e possidenti.

Non fraintendetemi: non mi agito per chiedere l’eliminazione degli interventi secondari fino ad eliminare anche quelli primari, perché i primi non sono altro che un limite che lo stato impone all’abuso della concessione del potere che esso stesso fa. Finché restano in piedi le concessioni di potere e i privilegi, resto favorevole a qualunque sotterfugio che accresca il potere dei lavoratori.

Come ho già detto, però, quel poco potere fornito da quei benefici che Ebeling odia tanto non sono che un pallido, esile ricordo del potere che avevano i lavoratori prima di essere derubati dal duo stato-capitale. Il nostro obiettivo è la fine del furto: invalidare la proprietà assenteista non fondata sull’occupazione e l’uso, distruggere le barriere al bene comune credito che danno ai ricchi il monopolio della fornitura della liquidità necessaria a finanziare le attività produttive, e infine rendere ai lavoratori il possesso di se stessi.

In breve, il nostro obiettivo è arrivare a quella condizione tanto disprezzata da Ebeling e dai padroni rabbiosi: una condizione per cui i lavoratori impongono i termini e possono astenersi dal prestare lavoro finché i loro termini non vengono rispettati. Tutto questo e anche di più, ovunque e sempre.

Ni Spooky. Orihinal na artikulo: Vulgar Anarcho-Communism: Pacifying Anti-Statism, Hunyo 26, 2020. Salin ni Raj.

Mahirap ibenta ang pakikibaka. Kadalasan, dala din naman ito ng mga panawagan para baguhin nag sistema, di lang sa pagmumungkahi ng “pagbabago” at simpleng pagboto. Mayroong iba—pero baka mas marami pa—na sinubukang palambutin yung talas ng pulitika nila. Kadalasan pinopomada nila sa wika ng good governance o iba pang makulang-kulang na talking points na pinapababaw ang punto para mas madaling maipaliwanag ito (hindi mas-maayos, mas-madali). Isa sa mga pinakakilalang gumagawa nito e si Noam Chomsky, kung saan tinutukoy nya ang “Anarkismo” bilang “paglaban sa mga herarkiyang di-patas.” Maraming nahikayat at nakumbinsi sa ganitong paliwanag; kasama na ako doon.

Kaya lang dahil nakakapit tayo sa ganitong moderate na kahulugan, ilan sa mga nakumbinsi niro ay gumawa ng sarili nilang sangay ng kaisipang libertaryo na tinatawag nilang “anarkismo”. Kaya lang, iba ang kanilang paningin sa maka-kalayaang hinaharap. Tulad ng pinausong term ni Kevin Carson na “libertaryong bulgar” (vulgar libertarians), nakikita kong dapat lang na tignan ang mga tulad nila na mga anarkistang bulgar; kinakatawan nila ang isang parte ng kaliwa na mas naka-pokus sa malabong pag-unawa sa “pagkakapantay-pantay” at sa kolektibong pagmamay-ari kaysa tanggaping buo ang implikasyon ng kalayaan at kawalan ng estado.

Ang pinakamalaking isyu dito ay ang pilit na pag-ugnay ng anarkismo at sa makitid na kahulugan ng “demokrasya”, kung saan merong kung ano mang bersyon ng pangkalahatang kasunduan gamit ng pag-boto o pakikipag-usap sa lahat ng miyembro ng kilusan o ng komunidad. Minsan ang iba sa kanila, gustong magtayo ng sistema kung saan may mga delegadong nangangatawan para sa komunidad na nananawad, bumoboto at nakikipag-sapalaran sa ibang mga pamayanan sa isang pulungang mala-”kamara de representantes”. Nakakagulat na karamihan sa mga bansag na anarkista ay hindi nakikita ang herarkiya at potensyal na apakan nito; na parang imposibleng mangyayari iyon dahil sa magiging “demokratiko” daw ang pamamalakad.

Nangunguna sa kanila ang puntong ito na ang “anarkismo” nila ay mas dapat na mas-ituring na minarkismo o wastong “komunismong sobyet” (council communism). Hindi naman sa minamasama ang ganoong konsepsyon, kaya lang, para sa kanila, binabago nila ang kahulugan ng estado sa kawalang-katuturan. Umaatras sila mula sa buong laban sa estado, na nililinaw nilang hindi sila galit sa “gobyerno” kung hindi sa “estado” lamang, na kadalasan ibig sabihin noon ay tutol lang sila sa mga pinakamasamang ginagawa ng mga bansa’t estado: ang kapulisan, militar, mga trapo, diktador, atbp.

Ang mga konseho ng manggagawa, sangguniang barangay, o iba pang gobyerno munisipal ang magiging batayan ng lipunan pagkatapos ng kapitalismo. Anila, hindi magkakapulis sa ganoong pamamalakad; dahil walang estadong namumuno, hindi magkakaroon ng “kapulisan” na alam natin. Sa halip may mga boluntaryong magtatanod sa mga bahayan kung saan puwede silang sibakin kung sumasalungat sila sa kagustuhan ng komunidad. Iba-iba ang detalye kung paano ito agana—minsan mayroong magsasalitan o merong wastong tanod na mangangatawan—pero laging “demokratiko” ang pamamaraan ng paglakad nito.

Magandang nilarawan ang “anarkismong” ito sa seryeng “How Would Anarchism Actually Work?” (Paano ba talaga gagana ang Anarkismo?) ni Emerican Johnson. Ngayong hindi ko sinasabing lahat ng mga anarkista (o anarko-komunista) ay sang-ayon sa kanyang bersyon ng anarkismo, karamihan ng mga konseptong pinag-uusapan sa seryeng ito ay magandang halimbawa ng mga pananaw ng mga karaniwang “anarkismong bulgar”.

Lahat ng tao sa lipunang anarkista ay may karapatan na makuha ng husto ang kanilang pangangailangan. Pagkain, damit, matitirahan, kuryente, tubig, internet, healthcare at iba pa. Kapalit nito, kailangan nilang magbigay ng sapat na ambag sa komunidad. Mahalagang alalahanin na magmumukha itong work-week na aabot mula 15-20 oras, kasama na ang mga direktang trabaho para sa pamayanan.

Tulad ng sabi ko, mas-komunista ang ganitong sistema kaysa lipunang walang-estado. Parang hindi naman kaakit-akit ang ideya ng work-weeks at “sapat na ambag”, kahit naabot ang ganitong patakaran sa paraang demokratiko. Ang demokrasya, para sa mga anarkistang bulgar, ay madaliang katwiran para sa kahit anong sitwasyon; kung bumoto ang madla sa panandaliang pag-organisa, may matatayuan ang ganitong pamamalakad. Masyadong kahawig nito ang mga kapitalistang libertaryo na kinakatwirang okey lang ibaon sa mahirap na kontrata ang mga empleyado nila dahil “boluntaryo” itong nangyari, pinalitan lang ang lohika ng merkadong kapitalista sa lohika ng demokrasya. Minsan, ginagamit itong dahilan para ipag-tanggol ang pagtayo ng “re-education centers” sa ilalim ng anarkiya, tulad na rin kay Johnson:

…ituturing na “magagaling” ang krimen sa anarkiya, dahil isa itong suliraning panlipunan na puwedeng maiwawasto gamit ng rebilitative na hakbang na batay sa kinalalgayan ng tao… Karamihan ng mga krimen ay masasagot gamit ng counseling, edukasyon, at iba pang pakikisama’t pangingialam ng komunidad para mahilom ang pamayanan at ang indibidwal. Kung ang nakakasamang ugali ng indibidwal ay buhat hindi ng problema sa kaniyang ginagalawan at dahil sa problema sa pag-iisip, maaari silang ilagay sa mga “espesyal na pagamutan” kung saan puwedeng matignan ang kanilang pangangailangan…

Kaya ko nilalarawan ang mga ito mula sa gawa ni Johnson para maipakita kung saan puwedeng maputa ang makitid na pagtingin sa demokrasya o sa mga ugnayang ekonomiko-sosyal. Sikat ang mga kaugaliang anarko-bulgar na ito sa karamihan ng mga espasyong radikal at anti-kapitalista, sa baka ito din ang dahilan kung bakit ito ang nangungunang pangkat ng libertaryong sosyalismo. Kasama na rin ang mga taktika nina Chomsky at Johnson para may maakit na madlang liberal kung bakit ganito. Habang gumana bilang PR strategy ang pagsamo ng demokrasya at kritisismo ng kapitalismo sa gawa nila; dahil sa kawalang-pokus nila sa pagkontra sa estado, malayang pagsasarili, at buong pagtutol sa lahat ng herarkiya, nagkakaroon ng pagkalito-lito kung ano ba talaga ang gusto ng mga anarkista.

Ang mga ganitong pag-awat ng kontra-statismo sa pulitika ay kadalasang mga sagot sa mga liberal na pilit na nagtatanong kung paano gagana ang imprastuktura at lipunan sa labas ng kapitalismo. Kaya lang, karamihan ng mga sumasagot ay natutuon sa pagdisenyo ng mga plano ng kanilang ideyal na utopia sa halip na talagang tignan ang mga posibilidad sa kawalan ng estado. Ang pinakalakas ng lipunang walang estado ay ang pagkadesentralisado nito. Dahil sa kawalan ng estado para magpataw ng iisang sistema ng pamumuno, malayang pag-eksperimento ng iba’t-ibang pamamalakad na ekonomiko-politikal at sa pagtingin kung alin ang gagana. Hindi minamalay ng mga anarkistang bulgar ang potensyal ng ganoong posibilidad para magpakita ng iisang template na makakatulong sa lahat kuno, kahit imposibleng matupad ang ganoong pangako.

Hindi natin kailangang babawan ang prinsipyo natin para lang may moderatong politiko na sasang-ayon sa atin.

Oleh: Logan Marie Glitterbomb. Teks aslinya berjudul Toward an Agorist-Syndicalist Alliance. Diterjemahkan kedalam Bahasa Indonesia oleh Ameyuri Ringo.

“Seluruh gagasan milik Konkin hanya berbicara tentang kepentingan dan keprihatinan kelas marginal yang berwiraswasta. Sebagian besar orang di dunia adalah pekerja upahan penuh-waktu; mereka adalah orang-orang dengan pekerjaan tetap. Konkinisme tidak memiliki apapun untuk dikatakan kepada orang-orang ini. Untuk mengadopsi strategi Konkin, di tanah ini (Amerika Serikat) saja, akan menjadi jalan buntu bagi gerakan libertarian. Kita tidak bisa menang jika tidak ada kemungkinan untuk berbicara tentang keprihatinan sebagian besar penerima upah di negara ini dan negara lain.”¹

Demikian kritik Murray Rothbard terhadap filosofi agorisme yang membuat SEK3² tertawa terbahak-bahak sebelum akhirnya menunjukkan bahwa: banyak dari mereka yang merupakan kelas pekerja sudah mengambil bagian dalam berbagai kegiatan kontra-ekonomi, seperti tidak melaporkan total pendapatan secara benar pada formulir pajak mereka, dan melakukan pembayaran gaji (dari pemberi kerja ke pekerja) yang dilakukan dengan ‘tunai’ dan tanpa laporan guna memangkas pajak [dan agar tidak terlacak]. Meskipun demikian, kritik Rothbard masih digaungkan hingga hari ini oleh beberapa orang, terutama di kalangan aktivis anti-kapitalis. Menjadi ironis karena sebenarnya banyak individu di kalangan anarkis anti-kapitalis juga mengambil bagian dalam kegiatan kontra-ekonomi dalam praktiknya. Namun, kritik ini bukannya tanpa inti kebenaran, yang membuat beberapa agoris bertanya-tanya ‘apakah agorisme tidak membutuhkan pembaruan ide’. Bagaimanapun, Konkin sendiri meyakini agorisme sebagai filosofi hidupnya.

Seorang agoris dan jurnalis, Derrick Broze, sering berbicara tentang konsep ‘vertical’ dan ‘horizontal agorism’. Agorisme horizontal adalah apa yang kebanyakan dari kita pahami, secara tradisional, sebagai agorisme. Agorisme horizontal ini adalah penggunaan pasar gelap dan abu-abu untuk bersaing dengan negara sebagaimana diuraikan dalam The New Libertarian Manifesto dan The Agorist Primer karya SEK3. Contohnya termasuk bisnis tanpa izin, penghindaran pajak, penyelundupan, perdagangan narkoba, melindungi imigran tidak berdokumen, penyelundupan senjata, aksi pendudukan bangunan, dan penggunaan mata uang alternatif; misal Bitcoin, dll. Sementara itu, agorisme vertikal difokuskan pada lokalisme dan swasembada dan terinspirasi oleh buku-buku seperti Community Power karya Karl Hess. Praktik agorisme vertikal juga termasuk: membeli barang dari toko milik petani dan pertanian komunitas, rooftop gardening, penggunaan tenaga surya dan sistem akuaponik baik secara pribadi maupun komunitas, berbagi alat dan berbagi keterampilan komunitas, gaya hidup mandiri, urban farming, jaringan perlindungan komunitas, dan sekolah gratis. Meskipun tidak semua taktik vertikal benar-benar merupakan aktivitas pasar gelap atau abu-abu (seperti sekolah gratis dan pasar petani), namun taktik tersebut tergolong sebagai aktivitas kontra-ekonomi karena menantang monopoli perusahaan dan negara serta memberikan alternatif kerja yang jauh lebih libertarian sebagai perbandingan.

Jadi, jika tidak semua aktivitas harus benar-benar dalam lingkup hitam atau abu-abu untuk bisa dianggap sebagai aktivitas kontra-ekonomi, lalu apakah berarti kita akan meninggalkan aktivitas-aktivitas seperti koperasi dan kolektif pekerja atau bahkan serikat pekerja model klasik seperti wildcat dan bentuk-bentuk kerja alternatif yang lebih baru? Apakah aktivitas-aktivitas ini tidak menantang kekuasaan negara dan perusahaan secara signifikan, dan menempatkan lebih banyak kekuasaan di tangan individu/komunitas daripada otoritas koersif? Rothbard sendiri menunjukkan bahwa: sebagian besar – jika tidak semua – perusahaan bersandar pada klaim properti yang tidak sah; dan oleh karena itu, harus diduduki dan dieklola oleh para pekerja – penerima upah yang menurut Rothbard, ‘agorisme tidak mampu melakukan apa-apa untuknya’ – yang menginvestasikan waktu, tenaga, dan energi mereka untuk menjalankan operasi sehari-hari, tetapi bukankah hal ini hanyalah bentuk sindikalisme?

Karl Hess menganjurkan kombinasi taktik sebagai bentuk praksis dari agorisme, baik secara vertikal maupun horizontal, dan anggota Industrial Workers of the World, serikat pekerja yang telah berusia lebih dari 100 tahun yang hadir sebagai tantangan menyegarkan untuk model serikat bisnis eksploitatif dari kelompok-kelompok seperti AFL-CIO sambil menganjurkan taktik sindikalis. Dan taktik-taktik semacam itu tampaknya saling melengkapi dalam teori dan praktiknya, menawarkan tantangan signifikan bagi negara dan kekuatan korporat, juga melintasi batas-batas ideologis antara anarkis pasar bebas dan anarkis sosial. Faktanya, banyak libertarian pasar bebas selain Hess telah membuat aliansi semacam itu dengan organisasi dan serikat buruh alternatif.

Bergerak maju secara sadar dalam membangun aliansi semacam itu terbukti cukup menguntungkan. Sementara para agoris membangun alternatif untuk pasar putih di dalam pasar gelap dan abu-abu, sindikalis dapat berfokus pada menantang entitas pasar putih yang ada dari dalam, dan akhirnya mengambil alih seperti yang dianjurkan Rothbard. Tapi hal itu tidak harus berhenti di situ. Agoris memang harus menganjurkan agar sindikalis melangkah lebih jauh. Setelah bisnis pasar putih berhasil disindikasikan, agoris-sindikalis harus membantu transisi bisnis ke agora. Bisnis kolektif yang baru pada akhirnya harus melakukan apa yang dilakukan semua bisnis agoris yang baik: mengabaikan rezim perizinan negara, menolak membayar pajak, terlibat dalam penggunaan mata uang alternatif, dan umumnya mengabaikan campur tangan negara dalam urusan bisnis mereka. Mereka baru saja berhasil menggulingkan bos, mengapa tunduk pada otoritas lain? Mereka baru saja menyingkirkan kroni-kroni korporat yang menjadi kaya dengan mencuri hasil kerja mereka, lalu mengapa membiarkan negara melakukan hal yang sama melalui pajak?

Bagi mereka yang keberatan dengan klaim tersebut dan berteriak #notallbosses, saya memaparkan kutipan dari Konkin:

“Dalam masyarakat agoris, pembagian kerja dan penghargaan-diri setiap pekerja … mungkin akan menghilangkan organisasi bisnis tradisional – terutama hierarki korporat: sebuah tiruan dari Negara dan bukan Pasar. Sebagian besar perusahaan akan menjadi asosiasi kontraktor independen, konsultan, dan perseroan-perseroan lainnya. ‘Banyak’ enterprenir mungkin akan menjadi ‘satu’ [asosiasi]; dan begitupun dengan semua layanannya, semua komputer-komputernya, serta semua pemasok dan pelanggannya.”³

Bahkan Konkin, tidak bisa tidak, memperhatikan sifat eksploitatif dari hierarki korporat; ia percaya bahwa itu adalah sisa-sisa feodalisme yang bertahan lama; dan percaya bahwa jika individu benar-benar dihormati, bos perlahan-lahan akan menjadi bagian dari masa lalu. Di pasar yang benar-benar bebas, serikat pekerja akan diizinkan untuk beroperasi seperti halnya asosiasi dan kelompok sukarela seperti IWW yang menunjukkan kepada kita cara untuk berserikat tanpa meminta bantuan negara.

Memiliki agora⁴ lokal yang mapan, tidak peduli sekecil apapun, juga dapat memberikan kenyamanan bagi pengurus serikat pekerja yang sering takut kehilangan pekerjaan karena aktivitas pengorganisiran mereka. Agora akan memberikan rasa tenang bagi para organisator karena tahu bahwa: seandainya mereka dipecat karena mengorganisir pekerja, mereka dapat mencari nafkah di luar struktur korporat-kapitalis. Hal ini akan memungkinkan para organisator untuk lebih berani dalam beraksi, dan lebih menantang dominasi korporatis. Agoris yang tertarik dengan ide aksi langsung dan pembangkangan sipil bahkan mungkin dapat memutuskan untuk mengambil pekerjaan di sebuah perusahaan dengan tujuan untuk ‘menggaramkan’⁵ perusahaan dan membantu menjatuhkan mereka dari dalam’ hal itu dilakukan dengan tidak seperti dalam ‘permainan politik’ yang kita takuti, dilakukan dengan tidak melibatkan pengambilan posisi sebagai otoritas yang bertentangan dengan prinsip-prinsip libertarian.

Dalam kata-kata mendiang SEK3:

“Terkadang istilah “perusahaan bebas” dan “kapitalisme” digunakan untuk mengartikan “pasar bebas.” Kapitalisme berarti ideologi (isme) kapital atau kapitalis. Sebelum Marx datang, seorang pendukung ide pasar bebas murni, Thomas Hodgskin telah menggunakan istilah kapitalisme sebagai sebuah penghinaan; kapitalis mencoba menggunakan paksaan — Negara — untuk membatasi pasar. Kapitalisme, kemudian, tidaklah menggambarkan pasar bebas melainkan suatu bentuk statisme …”⁶

Jadi mengapa tidak secara terbuka menentang kapitalisme dan negara? Mengapa tidak mengambil kombinasi contoh dari Rothbard, Konkin, dan Hess sebagai inspirasi tentang cara membuat agorisme lebih menarik bagi “sebagian besar penerima upah di negara ini (Amerika Serikat) dan negara lain?” Mengapa tidak melebarkan jangkauan dan membentuk aliansi agoris-sindikalis?

1 Rothbard, Murray, Konkin on Libertarian Strategy.

2 Nama panggilan Samuel Edward Konkin III. [Penerj.]

3 Konkin, Samuel, New Libertarian Manifesto.

4 Agora adalah tempat yang digunakan untuk pertemuan publik dan aktivitas pasar pada era Yunani Kuno. Dalam konteks artikel ini, agora yang dimaksud adalah tempat usaha dimana para pekerja bisa bekerja secara paruh waktu. [Penerj.]

5 Menggaramkan atau salting adalah taktik yang umum dilakukan serikat buruh di mana serikat akan membayar salah satu aktivisnya untuk bekerja ke sebuah perusahaan dengan tujuan mengorganisir atau menyebarkan ide radikal kepada para pekerjanya. Baca lebih lanjut di https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/whatdoestheterm%E2%80%9Csalting%E2%80%9Dasaunionorganizingtacticmean.aspx [Penerj.]

6 Konkin, Samuel, An Agorist Primer.

Jaimine Vaishnav. Artículo original: Social Statism Called Caste, 18 de mayo de 2021. Traducido al español por Camila Figueroa.

El valor de una vida humana está intrínsecamente ligado a la necesidad de autonomía y de una existencia con decencia, autoestima y libertades. Estos pilares son muy importantes para la supervivencia social y el crecimiento colectivo. Cuando la vida humana prospera en una sociedad, es importante compartir la solidaridad y la fraternidad con los factores constructivos que permiten la emancipación. En el contexto de la India, una fuerza particular que sigue determinando la actitud de la sociedad hacia los individuos, tanto de forma visible como invisible, es la casta (jati/varna).

Contexto

En textos como el Manusmriti o los Vedas del hinduismo, la jati viene determinada por el nacimiento. Es casi como un sistema de “contrato social” que se impone a los grupos sociales sin su consentimiento. Se sanciona religiosamente con la intención de controlar y sostener el ‘fascismo social’, lo que finalmente conduce a una generación sistemática de varna en la comunidad. La varna es una ocupación basada en la casta. Desde el punto de vista holístico, esta socialización ha conducido a una desigualdad graduada. La relación mutua de ambas ha dejado muy poco margen para la ósmosis comunitaria y la movilización interna. Shankaracharya de Puri, en tono condescendiente, se burló de la ignorancia de las élites indias al confirmar que “el varna se decide por nacimiento, que es lo mismo que el jati”. Continúa diciendo que “mucha gente dice que sólo cree en el varna, no en el jati. Estas personas ni siquiera conocen el primer capítulo del Bhagavad Gita, un texto sagrado hindú, versículo 1.42”

Los que pertenecen a una casta inferior (dalit/bahujan) no tienen la posibilidad de realizar los deberes “brahmánicos”, ya que la religión del hinduismo ha prescrito la asignación de “deberes” también en función del “nacimiento”. Por ejemplo: El desollado de vacas/ganado muerto es realizado por el clan dalit, y un dalit no puede ejercer como sacerdote del templo. El casticismo como “tiranía social” es responsable de la explotación sistemática de los clanes de las castas inferiores y de sus libertades. Incluso las medidas adoptadas para interrelacionar los deberes basados en las castas no promueven la sostenibilidad social debido a la política “simbólica”.

El casticismo se manifiesta como estatismo “social”; la doctrina de que la opresión es una fuerza “legítima”. Aunque es la propia comunidad la que impone estas normas, en lugar del Estado que las impone desde arriba, el resultado no es menos totalitario. La sociedad india experimenta el casticismo en el espacio de las microesferas y las mesoesferas. Es tan religioso como cultural. ¿Recuerdan el sistema del “impuesto sobre los pechos”? El “Mulakkaram” era un impuesto que el Reino de Tranvancore (en el actual estado indio de Kerala) imponía a las mujeres dalit de casta inferior e intocables si querían cubrirse los pechos en público, hasta 1924. Los recaudadores de impuestos (hombres hindúes de casta superior) visitaban todas las casas para cobrar el impuesto sobre los pechos a las mujeres de casta inferior que superaban la edad de la pubertad. El impuesto era evaluado por los recaudadores en función del tamaño de los pechos.

Una breve anatomía

La casta privilegiada -que se ha beneficiado mucho del capitalismo de castas- proyecta una versión diferente y defensiva del sistema de castas, mientras que las no privilegiadas siguen trabajando en ocupaciones basadas en la casta, como la recogida manual de basura y las actividades de cremación. Como afirmó el sociólogo Satish Deshpande, “al transformar su capital de casta en capital moderno, las castas superiores pueden ahora afirmar que no tienen casta y acusar a las castas inferiores de ser proveedores ilegítimos de casta”.

La casta, como tipo de autoritarismo social, también es responsable de la violencia de casta y de la violencia de género. Los recientes datos de la NCRB de 2019 ratiocinan que las mujeres de las castas inferiores (grupos dalit y adivasi) sufren más violencia e incidentes desafortunados. Esto indica claramente la intersección de la violación y la casta también. Los incentivos detrás de esta violencia agresiva contra los grupos dalit o adivasi provienen de la actitud religiosa y la misoginia que sostiene la jerarquía social (desigualdad graduada) llamada casta-ismo. Un informe (2019) de American Civil Society Research descubrió que el 40% del contenido de las redes sociales en plataformas populares como facebook, twitter, etc. está lleno de insultos de casta (especialmente dirigidos a individuos de castas inferiores). Este es otro ejemplo de cómo el casticismo ha permitido con vehemencia la intolerancia y ha generado una cultura de opresión, sumisión, obediencia y patriarcado.

Estamos en el siglo XXI y la idea de “reserva” (representación) parece opresiva y explotadora para la casta privilegiada. Los que han sostenido la hegemonía social sobre la base de la casta durante los últimos 3.000 años siempre se sienten agitados ante la idea de que un dalit/bahujano disfrute de los beneficios de la “acción afirmativa”. En la esfera política o en el sector educativo, la proporción de puestos de trabajo ocupados por personas de castas inferiores sigue siendo menor de lo que debería. Todo este pastel sigue siendo brahmánico y, para colmo, el gobierno de Modi quiere disminuir el tamaño de la representación “dalit” mediante sus políticas capitalistas neoliberales.

Un hecho amargo

El hinduismo como tal no es una religión. Muchos occidentales, por su consciente ignorancia, asumen que “el hinduismo es una forma de vida” y están hipnotizados con el marketing realizado por los activistas del yoga. Pero poco saben todos que el hinduismo no es más que una agregación de castas. De hecho, el Yoga, tal y como fue fundado por Patanjali bajo el imperio Shunga (la dinastía que era violentamente intolerante con los monjes budistas) permitió el llamado ejercicio espiritual (Yoga) sólo para la casta privilegiada. Hoy en día, el yoga es una opción, excepto porque el actual gobierno de la India, encabezado por Narendra Modi, lo ha hecho obligatorio en las escuelas públicas. Esto animó a ciertas escuelas privadas a sumarse también a este “efecto vagón”.

Los datos del censo de 2011 también presentan un panorama sombrío y amargo. Los casos de exogamia (matrimonios entre castas) no superan el 6%, en medio de los 1.300 millones de habitantes de la India. Esto sigue acechando la esperanza de socialización y movilidad de una u otra forma. La casta también determina las opciones matrimoniales. En un informe (2018) de la Fundación Lok y la Universidad de Oxford, los indios urbanitas siguen casándose como lo hacían sus abuelos de casta. La cifra es asombrosa porque solo el 3% prefirió el matrimonio entre castas. Se supone que el matrimonio entre castas (exogamia) es un paso radical hacia la eliminación de los sentimientos de casta o de los privilegios de casta, pero no hay pruebas científicas que puedan demostrar que puede causar la aniquilación del castismo en la sociedad. Dado que el casticismo se ha convertido en una intersección con la esfera del género, la dieta alimentaria y otros niveles de vida, ¡se necesitará un buen Thanos para destruir el sistema de castas con un chasquido de dedos!

Para una nación como la India, que es heterogénea, el casticismo está renegando de los principios y las máximas del laicismo y la fraternidad. La casta provoca la homogeneidad y estimula la “conciencia de género”. Sin embargo, el apellido importa más que el nombre. Si algunos paleoliberales y “anarcocapitalistas” de la esfera política india suponen que el casticismo es una mera expresión de la “libertad de asociación”, ¿les importaría explicar cómo se lincha, asesina y condena al ostracismo a los individuos de casta inferior por beber agua de un tanque público, sentarse en una silla, montar a caballo, hacer alarde de bigote, expresar sus opiniones, etc.?

¡El monstruo que existe!

Recientemente, se ha observado que los hindúes de casta superior también han exportado el casticismo al extranjero. El caso de Estados Unidos es ejemplar. Este martes (11 de mayo de 2021), varios trabajadores de BAPS (Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha) presentaron una demanda en Nueva Jersey. Un informe de la revista Forbes destacó que la demanda afirma que más de 200 trabajadores fueron reclutados en la India bajo falsos pretextos, se les dio visas religiosas, y a menudo se les obligó a pasar más de 12 horas al día (alrededor de 80 horas mas a la semana) haciendo trabajos de albañilería en un templo afiliado a BAPS en Robbinsville, Nueva Jersey. También se ha informado de que los pasaportes de los trabajadores fueron supuestamente confiscados poco después de su llegada a Estados Unidos, y se les obligó a vivir en un recinto espartano, vallado y estrechamente vigilado, y se les prohibió salir del recinto del templo sin supervisión. La mayoría de estos trabajadores pertenecían a la comunidad dalit y estaban groseramente mal pagados. El FBI está investigando el caso, actualmente.

Los mismos problemas de casta se denunciaron en julio de 2020, cuando los reguladores de California demandaron a CISCO systems por tolerar una cultura laboral discriminatoria basada en las castas en sus instalaciones. Se descubrió que dos hindúes de casta superior empleados en esta organización internacional estaban siendo injustos con un compañero de trabajo que pertenecía a la comunidad dalit. El episodio violaba la Ley de Derechos Civiles de 1964.

El libro de Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, nos ofrece un retrato magistral de un fenómeno nunca visto en Estados Unidos, a través de una narración envolvente y profundamente investigada y de historias sobre personas reales, de cómo Estados Unidos, hoy y a lo largo de su historia, ha sido moldeado por un sistema de castas oculto, una rígida jerarquía de clasificaciones humanas. Vinculando los sistemas de casta de Estados Unidos, la India y la Alemania nazi, Wilkerson explora ocho pilares que subyacen a los sistemas de casta en todas las civilizaciones, incluyendo la voluntad divina, las líneas de sangre, el estigma, y más. A través de historias fascinantes sobre personas -como Martin Luther King, Jr., el jugador de béisbol Satchel Paige, un padre soltero y su hijo pequeño, la propia Wilkerson y muchos otros- muestra las formas en que la insidiosa resaca de las castas se experimenta cada día. Documenta cómo los nazis estudiaron los sistemas raciales de Estados Unidos para planificar su expulsión de los judíos; analiza por qué la cruel lógica de las castas exige que haya un peldaño inferior para que los de en medio se midan con él; escribe sobre los sorprendentes costes sanitarios de las castas, en depresión y esperanza de vida, y los efectos de esta jerarquía en nuestra cultura y política.

La necesidad de la metodología Phule-Ambedkar

El Dr. Ambedkar, arquitecto de la Constitución india, fue un firme defensor del anticastismo en su época. Era de la opinión de que “la casta no es sólo una división del trabajo, sino también una división de los trabajadores”. Es autor de excelentes libros como: Caste in India (1917), Annihilation of Caste (1936), Who were the untouchables? (1946), y The Untouchables (1948), que deberían ser leídos por todo el mundo a partir del nivel “escolar” para que el casticismo sea aplastado y repudiado. Más vale tarde que nunca. Dirigió movimientos revolucionarios como Mahad Satyagraha (1927) para elevar la conciencia crítica de los individuos de las castas inferiores. Mahad Satyagraha fue un movimiento de resistencia no violenta lanzado por el Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Se impidió a la comunidad dalit beber agua del tanque público. (En agosto de 1923, el Consejo Legislativo de Bombay aprobó una resolución por la que se permitía a las personas de las clases deprimidas utilizar los lugares construidos y mantenidos por el gobierno. En enero de 1924, Mahad, que formaba parte de la provincia de Bombay, aprobó la resolución en su consejo municipal para aplicar la ley. Pero no se aplicó debido a la protesta de los hindúes de casta).

Después de beber agua del tanque público, el Dr. Ambedkar también hizo una declaración dirigiéndose a las mujeres dalit durante la Satyagraha. Les pidió que abandonaran todas las viejas costumbres que proporcionaban marcadores reconocibles de intocabilidad y les pidió que llevaran saris como las mujeres de las castas altas. Antes de ese momento, a las mujeres dalit no se les permitía vestir los saris por completo. Inmediatamente después del discurso de Ambedkar en Mahad, las mujeres dalit decidieron vestir sus saris como las mujeres de las castas superiores.

Según el texto hindú, el Dr. Ambedkar pertenecía a la casta de los “intocables”. También es conocido por desacreditar a “Mahatma” Gandhi, el padre de la India moderna, por su apoyo al sistema de castas o la justificación de la limpieza manual basada en las castas. Cuando el Dr. Ambedkar pidió electorados separados para los dalits (intocables), Gandhi se sometió a un “ayuno hasta la muerte” y con ello chantajeó indirectamente al Dr. Ambedkar por mantener intactas políticamente las castas inferiores en la jerarquía del hinduismo. Véase el Pacto de Poona (1930).

Jyotirao Phule, un reformista nacido en una casta inferior, fue el autor de un libro, Slavery (1873), en el que destacaba el origen antropológico del sistema de castas. Educó a su esposa Savitribai y abrió una escuela para niñas e intocables, por lo que fue rechazado, atacado y condenado al ostracismo. La educación como herramienta estaba destinada a la casta privilegiada, aunque mantenía a sus propias mujeres y al clan dalit fuera de este redil.

Para razonar, el casticismo sigue degradando la vida y las libertades de la casta oprimida (dalit/bahujan). El “velo de ignorancia” que lleva el opresor de casta es el que menos admite su propio privilegio y admite la explotación de la casta. No es posible introducir cambios internos en el sistema mantenido por la estructura de castas porque es socialmente genético. Para colmo de males, la sensibilización sobre las castas está ausente en el sistema escolar. Debido a la abstención de la sensibilización sobre las castas en las escuelas o en el modo de formación empresarial, los individuos castistas permiten el fanatismo en formas meso.

El Dr. Ambedkar, un polímata, nacido en la “casta de los intocables”, comprendió a principios de los años 50 que la única panacea para destruir el sistema de castas es buscar la liberación fuera de la propiedad del hinduismo. Al igual que el activista contra las castas Iyothee Thass, llegó a la conclusión de que no es posible reformar el hinduismo ni siquiera convirtiéndose en un “terrorista suicida cultural”, por lo que inició la secta “Budismo Navayana” como alternativa a la opresión social. “Educar, Organizar, Agitar” fue su visión, que sigue inspirando muchos movimientos sociales en la política india, aunque a un ritmo gradual.

Kevin Carson. Article original : The Status Quo is a Government-Contrived Labor Surplus, 30 juin 2021 Traduction Française par Cristhian Ravelo.

À moins que vous n’ayez été sous une roche le mois dernier ou que vous soyez un abstinent total des médias sociaux, vous avez vu certaines des pires personnes sur terre se plaindre du fait que « plus personne ne veut travailler! » En effet, l’indignation de beaucoup est si grande que seule la pose de pancartes de colère à la fenêtre de leurs établissements commerciaux pourrait l’exprimer suffisamment.

Si l’on peut se demander dans quelle mesure le message était attrayant pour les employés potentiels, il ne fait aucun doute que leur déconfiture a énormément contribué au plaisir de gens comme moi sur Twitter et Facebook.

Mais maintenant, ils ont trouvé un champion en la personne de Richard Ebeling, de l’American Institute for Economic Research. Ce n’est pas vraiment une surprise; la promotion des intérêts des pires personnes sur terre est, après tout, la mission de l’AIER. Mais c’est plus qu’une question de devoir pour Ebeling. Un soir, il n’y a pas si longtemps, comme il le raconte (« The Labor Shortage Is a Government-Contrived Scarcity », AIER, 14 juin), c’est devenu personnel. Souhaitant simplement profiter d’un repas assis au restaurant avec sa femme, il a vu ses espoirs anéantis par les no-goodniks qui refusaient d’accepter un emploi aux conditions que l’employeur jugeait bon de leur offrir.

Il ne fait aucun doute que non seulement Ebeling, mais aussi le propriétaire du restaurant thaïlandais en question – héritier d’employeurs potentiels dédaignés de la même manière par de robustes voyous et des hommes sans maître depuis l’époque des Tudors – auraient sympathisé avec Hines, le fermier de trente mille acres dans Les Raisins de la colère qui disait: « Un rouge, c’est n’importe quel fils de pute qui veut trente cents de l’heure alors que nous en payons vingt-cinq! ».

Quant à Ebeling, il tient à préciser que ce manque de personnel pour le service à table ne s’est pas produit par hasard. C’était une invention! Par le gouvernement! Le dîner de M. Ebeling n’est pas mort, il a été tué. Et les gens qui l’ont tué ont des noms et des adresses.

A première vue, on se demande pourquoi tant d’emplois sont vacants. « Il y a beaucoup d’offres d’emploi; c’est l’échec d’un bon nombre de personnes aptes à l’emploi qui ne sont pas intéressées à occuper les créneaux que les employeurs aimeraient remplir. Pourquoi? »

Certains ont affirmé que c’est parce que les employeurs sont trop bon marché, c’est-à-dire qu’ils ne sont pas disposés à payer un salaire suffisamment élevé pour ramener les chômeurs dans la population active. Le problème de cette dernière explication est qu’elle ne permet pas de comprendre pourquoi le salaire « x » auquel certains de ces travailleurs étaient disposés à être employés il y a 15 mois est maintenant inacceptable un peu plus d’un an plus tard, compte tenu de la perte de revenu subie pendant tout ce temps.

Selon lui, la vraie réponse est que, grâce aux allocations de chômage prolongées et plus élevées que la moyenne, les travailleurs sont payés autant – ou parfois plus – pour rester à la maison que pour travailler.

Mais Ebeling a tout faux. C’est le statu quo capitaliste qui est artificiel. Il aurait mieux fait de demander pourquoi, dans l’état antérieur des choses – qu’il considère comme normal – les gens se traînaient quotidiennement dans des emplois qu’ils redoutaient de toutes leurs forces. La réponse, bien sûr, est que c’était la seule alternative au sans-abrisme ou à la famine.

Mais c’est cet état de fait antérieur, celui auquel il aspire à revenir, qui a été créé par le gouvernement. C’était une plénitude de travail créée par le gouvernement, résultant d’une rareté créée par le gouvernement de l’accès de la classe ouvrière aux moyens de production.

L’état des choses qu’Ebeling considère comme le capitalisme normal n’est possible que grâce à des siècles de violence d’État. Il a été fondé sur la violence d’État, et il continue d’exister à cause de la violence d’État actuelle.

En Angleterre, cela a commencé par la saisie, à la fin du Moyen-Âge et au début de l’ère moderne, des terres arables en plein champ et leur transformation en pâturages pour les moutons. Les paysans ont été privés de leurs droits d’accès coutumiers à la terre, mis en location et expulsés. Tout au long de ce processus, les classes employeuses ont eu recours à la violence de l’État pour forcer les nouveaux travailleurs sans terre à travailler pour un salaire, quelles que soient les conditions proposées, avec fouet, mutilation et péonage pour ceux qui refusaient. La spoliation des terres s’est poursuivie avec les enclosures parlementaires des pâturages communs et des terres incultes au XVIIIe siècle et au début du XIXe siècle.

Les employeurs capitalistes continuent de s’appuyer sur les contrôles sociaux totalitaires de l’État pour imposer la discipline à la main-d’œuvre. Les lois d’établissement fonctionnent comme un système de passeport interne. En plus des Combination Laws, l’État interdit également la libre association entre les travailleurs en criminalisant les sociétés amicales et les sociétés de bienfaisance, craignant qu’elles ne deviennent des foyers de radicalisme ou que leurs bénéfices ne soient utilisés comme fonds de grève de facto. Comme l’ont décrit J. L. et Barbara Hammond, la société anglaise a été « mise en pièces… et reconstruite à la manière dont un dictateur reconstruit un gouvernement libre ».

Pendant ce temps, à mesure que le capitalisme se répandait, les droits coutumiers des paysans sur la terre étaient annulés, d’abord en Europe, puis dans les parties du monde colonisées par l’Europe. Dans de nombreux cas – la colonie permanente de Hastings au Bengale, le système de l’hacienda en Amérique latine, et ainsi de suite, dans l’ensemble du monde colonisé – les gens ordinaires ont été privés de leur droit à un travail indépendant sur la terre afin qu’ils travaillent pour des employeurs capitalistes.

Quant à l’ère dite du « laissez-faire », ces contrôles sociaux stricts, l’esclavage, les tarifs douaniers, etc., n’ont pas été abolis parce que les gens ont soudainement réalisé qu’ils étaient de mauvaises idées, parce qu’ils comprenaient mieux l’économie. Non, l’État capitaliste a cessé de faire ces choses parce qu’elles n’étaient plus nécessaires. Les systèmes de pouvoir qu’ils avaient été nécessaires pour créer étaient solidement établis. Quel besoin de barrières commerciales, par exemple, lorsque les Britanniques avaient consolidé la moitié des ressources et des marchés du monde sous le contrôle de leur Empire, que leur flotte marchande avait le monopole de la navigation à l’intérieur de celui-ci et qu’ils avaient complètement supprimé toute menace de concurrence de l’industrie textile indienne?

Pendant ce temps, malgré les prétentions au laisser-faire, l’État a continué à imposer les pénuries artificielles et les droits de propriété artificiels qui étaient les plus essentiels à la survie du capitalisme. Aujourd’hui encore, il fait respecter les titres de propriété absents au nom des héritiers et des ayants droit des voleurs décrits dans les paragraphes précédents. L’État américain et ses alliés entretiennent un empire mondial pour maintenir au pouvoir des gouvernements qui feront respecter les titres de propriété sur les terres et les ressources pillées par le colonialisme, et contribueront à maintenir une main-d’œuvre bon marché. L’État fait respecter les monopoles de brevets qui permettent aux entreprises mondiales d’enfermer la production délocalisée dans des murs juridiques et de maintenir un monopole légal sur l’élimination du produit – une forme de protectionnisme dont le capitalisme mondial est aussi dépendant que le capitalisme national l’était du tarif douanier il y a un siècle.

L’État enferme les biens communs du crédit, donnant ainsi aux propriétaires de la richesse stockée un monopole sur le droit de fournir des fonds aux entreprises commerciales – et donc sur l’organisation de l’activité productive. C’est pourquoi Elon Musk est considéré comme un « génie », bien qu’il ne conçoive ou n’invente absolument rien lui-même. Son contrôle sur la fonction financière lui permet d’enfermer le travail coopératif et l’intelligence sociale des autres, de s’en attribuer le mérite et d’en tirer des rentes.

Un polémiste pour les intérêts de la classe ouvrière il y a deux cents ans – une sorte d’image miroir de l’univers maléfique de Spock d’Ebeling – aurait pu demander le contraire de sa question: Pourquoi les ouvriers étaient-ils plus disposés à travailler pour un salaire après la fermeture et l’expropriation qu’avant, alors que le salaire offert n’avait pas augmenté et que le prix du pain n’avait pas diminué.

La réponse, encore une fois, est simple: Tant qu’ils avaient accès à un moyen de subsistance indépendant sur leur part coutumière de terres arables ouvertes, de pâturages communs, de bois et de gibier dans les déchets communs, les travailleurs n’étaient pas disposés à travailler pour les salaires que les employeurs jugeaient bon de leur offrir. Mais une fois qu’ils étaient privés de ces moyens de subsistance indépendants, le choix était d’accepter de travailler pour n’importe quel salaire proposé – aussi bas soit-il – ou de mourir de faim.

En effet, l’un des problèmes centraux de l’économie politique capitaliste, qui remonte à la Fable des abeilles de Mandeville, a été de mettre les travailleurs dans une position où la seule alternative à l’acceptation du travail aux conditions de l’employeur est la famine.

Atteindre cet état de fait était le but conscient des capitalistes agraires qui ont agité et réalisé les enclosures. Ils savaient, et disaient tout haut, que tant que les gens pourraient se nourrir sur leur propre terre commune, ils refuseraient de travailler pour les classes propriétaires terriennes aussi longtemps, aussi durement ou aussi bon marché que le voulaient les classes propriétaires terriennes. Ils savaient, et disaient tout haut, que les classes possédantes pouvaient exploiter les classes ouvrières aussi impitoyablement qu’elles le souhaitaient, tant que la seule alternative au travail était la famine.

Ils l’ont vraiment dit haut et fort. Voici quelques exemples tirés de la littérature polémique contemporaine des classes possédantes en Angleterre pendant la période des Enclosures parlementaires:

En 1739, un pamphlétaire soutient que « la seule façon de rendre les classes inférieures tempérées et industrieuses… est de les obliger à travailler tout le temps qu’elles peuvent consacrer au repos et au sommeil, afin de se procurer les nécessités communes de la vie. »

Un traité de 1770 intitulé « Essai sur le commerce » mettait en garde contre le fait que « les travailleurs ne devraient jamais se croire indépendants de leurs supérieurs…. «. Le remède ne sera pas parfait, tant que nos pauvres dans les manufactures ne se contenteront pas de travailler six jours pour le même montant qu’ils gagnent aujourd’hui en quatre jours.

Arbuthnot, en 1773, dénonçait les communes comme « un plaidoyer pour leur oisiveté; car, à l’exception de quelques-uns, si vous leur offrez du travail, ils diront qu’ils doivent aller s’occuper de leurs moutons, couper des fourrures, sortir leur vache de la fourrière, ou peut-être, faire ferrer leur cheval pour qu’il puisse les porter à une course de chevaux ou à un match de cricket.

John Billingsley, dans son rapport de 1795 sur le Somerset au Conseil de l’agriculture, a écrit sur l’effet pernicieux du commun sur le caractère d’un fermier: « En s’occupant de son bétail, il acquiert l’habitude de l’indolence. Des quarts, des demi-journées et parfois des journées entières sont imperceptiblement perdus. Le travail de jour devient dégoûtant; l’aversion augmente avec l’indulgence; et finalement la vente d’un veau ou d’un cochon à moitié nourri fournit le moyen d’ajouter l’intempérance à l’oisiveté. »

Bishton, dans son rapport de 1794 sur le Shropshire, est l’un des plus honnêtes à énoncer les objectifs de l’Enclosure. « L’utilisation de la terre commune par les ouvriers agit sur l’esprit comme une sorte d’indépendance ». Le résultat de leur clôture serait que « les ouvriers travailleront tous les jours de l’année, leurs enfants seront mis au travail tôt… et cette subordination des rangs inférieurs de la société qui, à l’heure actuelle, est tellement souhaitée, serait ainsi considérablement garantie ».

John Clark, du Herefordshire, écrivait en 1807 que les fermiers de son comté étaient « souvent à court de main-d’œuvre: l’inclusion des terres incultes augmenterait le nombre de travailleurs, en supprimant les moyens de subsister dans l’oisiveté ».

Ils ressemblent un peu à ces restaurateurs avec leurs pancartes « Personne ne veut plus travailler », n’est-ce pas?

Les « droits de propriété » sacrés, à la défense desquels les groupes de réflexion libéraux de droite comme l’AIER engagent leur vie, leur fortune et leur honneur sacré, sont les droits de propriété des héritiers et des ayants droit des voleurs qui ont procédé à ces expropriations. La principale exigence contre laquelle ils défendent ces droits de propriété est que les héritiers et les ayants droit des voleurs reprennent tout.

En Angleterre, il y a 250 ans, les porte-parole des classes possédantes soutenaient couramment que « la nation » bénéficierait d’une discipline suffisante pour sortir la main-d’œuvre de son indolence, et d’une baisse des salaires qui obligerait les ouvriers à travailler six jours pour la même subsistance que celle assurée auparavant par les pauvres. Peu importe que pour l’écrasante majorité de la population qui était forcée de travailler pour un salaire, ce ne soit pas un avantage.

Pour montrer que les choses n’ont pas changé et que les « libertaires » de droite d’aujourd’hui ont repris le flambeau des classes possédantes du XVIIIe siècle, Reason a publié aujourd’hui un commentaire intitulé « La Californie et New York ont le plus à gagner de la suppression des allocations de chômage supplémentaires ». Le tout se résume à des rapports élogieux sur le nombre de personnes supplémentaires qui ont été contraintes d’accepter des emplois aux conditions des patrons lorsque les paiements supplémentaires ont été annulés. Il vous est peut-être venu à l’esprit que les travailleurs bénéficient actuellement de ces versements supplémentaires parce que les entreprises sont contraintes d’augmenter les salaires et de rendre le travail plus attrayant, et que les travailleurs constituent l’écrasante majorité des personnes vivant en Californie et à New York. Mais lorsque les « libertariens » de droite disent que la Californie et New York ont tout à gagner, ils veulent bien sûr parler des propriétaires et des employeurs de New York – tout comme leurs ancêtres spirituels le faisaient lorsqu’ils parlaient de « la nation » il y a 250 ans.

Ebeling écrit que des programmes tels que les allocations de chômage créent « un faux « coût d’opportunité » pour les personnes appartenant à ces catégories de travailleurs en termes de compromis entre le travail et le non-travail ».

Je dis « faux » parce que si ces programmes de redistribution n’existaient pas, les travailleurs moins qualifiés devraient peser différemment le revenu auquel ils renoncent en n’acceptant pas d’emploi rémunéré et celui qu’ils ne gagnent peut-être pas. Au lieu de cela, tant que ces types de programmes sont en vigueur, ils établissent essentiellement un « plancher » en dessous duquel on perd davantage en travaillant qu’en prenant un emploi.

Mais encore une fois, il prend les choses à l’envers. C’est l’État, de concert avec les employeurs capitalistes, qui a faussé le calcul du coût d’opportunité en détruisant le plancher en dessous duquel on perd plus en travaillant qu’en prenant un emploi.

Ebeling continue avec une homélie sur la façon dont les choses fonctionnent naturellement « dans le marché libre compétitif », par opposition aux « raretés artificielles » et aux « plénitudes artificielles » qui sont créées par le gouvernement. Il indique clairement que, dans sa vision des choses, c’est le refus actuel des travailleurs d’accepter des emplois au salaire existant qui constitue la « pénurie artificielle », par opposition à l’état d’esprit du « marché libre » concurrentiel naturel antérieur, dans lequel les travailleurs acceptaient les emplois qu’on leur proposait et étaient par Dieu reconnaissants. Ce sont toujours les transferts de revenus des riches vers les pauvres qui faussent les choses, et la situation qui prévaudrait autrement si le pouvoir de négociation du travail n’était pas artificiellement augmenté au détriment du capital qui est naturel. S’il n’y avait pas toute cette intervention socialiste du gouvernement au nom des travailleurs, nous pourrions revenir à l’état naturel de concurrence du « marché libre » où les choses sont meilleures pour les employeurs et pires pour les travailleurs.

L’argument d’Ebeling est essentiellement une version légèrement plus intellectualisée de la « théorie du plein emploi rapide comme l’enfer » de Robert J. Ringer: supprimez les prestations sociales, les coupons alimentaires et l’assurance chômage, et tout le monde trouvera rapidement un emploi.

Mais la vérité est exactement le contraire. Le rôle de l’État sous le capitalisme est de créer une pléthore de travailleurs en concurrence pour les emplois disponibles, ce qui est artificiel et non naturel. La principale forme d’intervention de l’État consiste à rendre les alternatives au travail salarié artificiellement inaccessibles pour la main-d’œuvre, et à rendre les moyens de production artificiellement rares. La direction centrale de l’intervention de l’État capitaliste a été d’imposer des rentes de rareté artificielles sur la terre, le capital et le crédit, et de faciliter l’extraction des rentes par les classes possédantes. Le flux prédominant de revenus permis par l’État a été, dans une large mesure, celui des pauvres vers les riches.

Tous les flux de revenus qui ont lieu dans la direction opposée – l’aide sociale, les lois sur le salaire minimum, etc. – sont entièrement secondaires et reflètent la réponse de l’État capitaliste aux impératifs de survie du capitalisme lui-même.

La réalité est donc directement contraire à l’image que la droite libertaire se fait d’un système « normal » dans lequel le capital est accumulé entre quelques mains, les moyens de production sont détenus par des absents et la plupart des gens travaillent pour un salaire, avec des perturbations occasionnelles par l’intervention du gouvernement qui affaiblit la prérogative des employeurs et rend les choses un peu moins merdiques pour les travailleurs.

Ce qu’Ebeling considère comme la normalité, l’équilibre du pouvoir entre les travailleurs et les employeurs qui prévalait avant l’extension des allocations de chômage, est la situation construite artificiellement. L’état de choses dont il se plaint, en tant que résultat présumé de l’élargissement et de l’extension des allocations de chômage, n’est qu’une pâle imitation de l’état de choses qui prévalait naturellement avant les enclosures.

Ainsi, nous voyons, au fond, la véritable nature du projet de la droite libertaire: faire passer pour « naturel » ou « volontaire » un système qui était coercitif dans ses fondements et qui le reste dans sa logique fondamentale. Pour voir ce que je veux dire, il suffit de faire une petite expérience de pensée. Lisez le misérable petit pamphlet « Moi, Crayon », censé être une célébration de la magie opérée par « l’échange volontaire » en rassemblant les composants d’un crayon du monde entier. En le lisant, arrêtez-vous chaque fois que vous voyez un matériau particulier mentionné et faites attention à sa provenance. Prêtez une attention particulière s’il s’agit d’une ressource naturelle dans une région qui a été colonisée par un État colonisateur comme les États-Unis, ou par un empire colonial européen, à l’époque où Leonard Read l’a écrit ou peu avant.

Quand je dis que le droit-libertarisme cherche à encadrer un système créé par la violence et la coercition comme étant « volontaire », ce n’est pas une simple phrase en l’air. C’est quelque chose qui ne peut pas être assez souligné. C’est au cœur du projet idéologique capitaliste. L’idéologie capitaliste est remplie de fables enfantines, de Robinsonnades et d’histoires à dormir debout: la propriété privée est née d’une appropriation pacifique et d’une séparation du commun par le biais du travail; les économies dominées par la production de marchandises pour l’argent liquide sont nées de la « propension humaine à vendre, troquer et échanger »; la domination de la monnaie fiduciaire était une réponse naturelle et spontanée au problème de la « double coïncidence des besoins «. Etc.

Pour quiconque est véritablement libertaire – c’est-à-dire intéressé à maximiser l’agence individuelle contre les institutions autoritaires comme l’État et le capital, par opposition au type de « libertaires » qui défendent servilement la richesse des voleurs et un modèle artificiel de « propriété privée » imposé par les premiers États modernes – augmenter la capacité des travailleurs à refuser de travailler jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient mieux payés, ou à vivre confortablement avec moins ou pas de travail salarié, devrait être l’objectif.

Des choses comme les sursis d’expulsion, le chômage prolongé, l’aide sociale, le salaire minimum et autres sont ce qui se passe lorsque les formes de privilèges imposées par l’État capitaliste deviennent déstabilisantes, et que l’État (en tant que comité exécutif des intérêts du capital) doit intervenir pour empêcher que les sans-abris, la famine et l’effondrement de la demande globale ne détruisent le capitalisme. Ces interventions secondaires laissent les travailleurs dans une meilleure situation que si elles n’existaient pas, mais elles sont loin d’être égales à la quantité de vols que les travailleurs subissent par le biais des interventions primaires de l’Etat visant à renforcer les privilèges des capitalistes et des propriétaires.

Je ne vais certainement pas militer pour la suppression de ces interventions secondaires tant que les interventions primaires n’auront pas été éliminées, car elles ne sont rien d’autre qu’une limite de l’Etat à l’abus de ses propres pouvoirs. Tant que les octrois de pouvoir et de privilèges resteront en vigueur, j’encouragerai tous les moyens que les travailleurs trouveront pour en tirer parti en vue de leur propre autonomisation.

Mais comme je l’ai déjà dit, le pouvoir limité dont disposent les travailleurs grâce aux avantages dont se plaint Ebeling n’est qu’une pâle et faible ombre du pouvoir qu’ils avaient avant d’être volés par l’État et le capital en collusion. Notre objectif devrait être de défaire le vol lui-même: annuler les titres de propriété absents qui ne sont pas fondés sur l’occupation et l’utilisation, démolir les enclosures des biens communs de crédit qui donnent aux propriétaires de la richesse le monopole de la fourniture des liquidités nécessaires pour financer l’entreprise productive, et remettre le travail en possession de ses propres biens.

Notre objectif, en bref, devrait être l’état de choses dont se plaignent Ebeling et ces employeurs à la tête dure – un état de choses dans lequel les travailleurs fixent les conditions, et sont en mesure de retenir leur travail jusqu’à ce que ces conditions soient remplies – mais plus encore, partout et tout le temps.

Discussions about anarchy and anarchism too often jump right into talking points about competing ways to organize economic or political structures. This doesn’t seem to happen only when skeptics and cynics are present — it also tends to be a pitfall for those who value a stateless future. But it’s putting the cart before the horse. Whether you’re trying to introduce someone to anarchist ideas or even going through your own intellectual journey, thinking about anarchy first in terms of systems and structures is a false start for many reasons. Most importantly, it misses fundamental principles. 

Unintentionally, it positions anarchist ideas (and the history of anarchist thought) as merely an alternative to the current systems of organization. In this way, one skips past how, at its core, anarchism is a fundamental set of ideas and values that begins with understanding the validity of our lives and those of our fellow human beings, and how one should regard the validity (or lack thereof) of interactions and dynamics between people (i.e. hierarchy and authority).

Anarchists and those learning about anarchism should prioritize the bare-bone fundamentals of anarchist thinking, and these tenets should be the starting point. Such fundamentals almost always simply and neatly refer back to how one regards hierarchies and power in general, and which ones (if any) can justify themselves. If they can’t justify their existence, they ought not exist. Put another way, underneath it all, the anarchist — regardless of what social or economic question is at hand — should apply a critical eye to: 1) identifying and understanding hierarchies and power dynamics, 2) assessing if said hierarchy or dynamic is able to justify itself or is justifiable, and 3) if it is not, then calling for it to be dismantled. 

One and two are relatively easy to navigate — in fact, a proud part of many areas of the anarchist tradition is the conviction that most of our fellow human beings have the capacity to judge interactions and dynamics as just or unjust with the same sort of base-level intuition. It’s this intuition that tells everyone (and can be teased out in an accessible fashion) that a parent or guardian grabbing a three-year-old before they run into traffic is a justified use of authority and force. It’s that same intuition that tells us that a parent or guardian beating one of their adult children to a pulp for spilling a beverage on the floor — and then claiming they can do so because it’s “their child” and they can do what they want with them — is an exercise of authority that cannot be justified, and warrants the end of their authority. Ultimately, if any authority or dynamic is considered justifiable — like the parent grabbing a young child from running across the road — then the task of the anarchist is thinking about the conditions of justified and unjustified force, and when one crosses the boundaries in between.

Three is a little trickier to navigate, and, of course, doesn’t stop with simply the statement that an authority ought to be dismantled. Each social and economic arrangement, institution, and so forth claiming authority that you yourself don’t have is not as simple to be rid of as a bad parent in a mental experiment might be. And, many will argue, much of what is enjoyed and provided to us in modern society is done in less-than-just or even deeply unjust ways. If that is the case, and, say, a state ought to be dismantled, the anarchist is tasked with understanding the desirable effects or actions (if any) being delivered by such an arrangement, institution, or dynamic, and then think on how the same could be enjoyed from arrangements and structures built up via voluntary actions between individuals that can be justified. 

Building up from such fundamental principles makes eventual touring through, and grappling with, more complex anarchist (or market-based) works on macroeconomic and macro-social observations a lot more understandable and coherent. In fact, it is the absence of these principles that make anarchism, in certain presentations, seem to be a kind of stripped-down set of ideas and proposals for social and economic frameworks that just don’t have a state — full stop.

Consider a contract between a business owner and hired help that stipulates a wage to be paid and hours of weekly work. Many market anarchists could consider such an arrangement acceptable and even preferable in certain circumstances, but questionable and perhaps disturbingly exploitative in others, while also serving as an example of larger problems with the dynamics of production and trade (and masters and wage-earners) in modern capitalist society. Some tend to be confused as to how this could be logically coherent, and find themselves concluding that market anarchists themselves are confused, and ultimately immature utopians — wanting their market cake while eating their anarchist (socialist) rhetoric too. In reality, to get to what’s really going on with any of these stances without an understanding of the anarchist fundamentals discussed in this essay would be extremely difficult. One would be drawn into many different directions and questions that parse through exactly why such-and-such a contract might be valid or not, or how one could question the validity of a voluntary contract. It is only by starting from anarchist fundamentals that one can set up a framework of thinking that leads to understanding how an employment arrangement and a dynamic in a truly freed market setting is one thing, but perhaps another in the broader context of a state-capitalist corporatocracy.

These anarchist fundamentals are often tightly paired with the assertion (or at least hunch) that they are most compatible with maximum opportunity for individuals to flourish in their own way, with minimal constraint. One might be (at least I certainly am) so bold as to say that they are also, in fact, necessary assumptions, and most compatible with natural human tendencies:  creativity, problem-solving, community feeling, cooperation, inquisitiveness, and desire for justice and fairness.

Ultimately these fundamentals are starting points for anarchist thinking. Discussions on how affordable shoes would be produced without the kind of huge corporations that exist within our systems today; how a community might decide on who has the right to use the communal stream and how they’re allowed to; what kind of structures exist for group decision making and what they would be applied to (and not); all these discussions come after these fundamentals. Without them you have a superficial version of anarchy up for discussion. That superficial version is only capable of criticism (some might say cynicism) that only goes as far as pointing out the negative tendencies of states and current arrangements as far as issues like taxation are concerned — it’s just the most radical political and social version of telling your mom to get out of your room. 

To be clear, yes, absolutely, one important aspect of anarchist thinking is sharp criticism against current systems and arrangements, but that is nothing without being able to explain why many of the current arrangements are such an affront to human dignity and justice, and on what fundamental tendencies and principles we should base our proposed alternative arrangements and systems. If the only thing that you can do with a hammer is break things, then you don’t know how to use it.

De Jason Lee Byas. Título original: Melting Mountains of Ice, de 14 de abril 2021. Traducido al español por Kathiana Thomas.

Una Doctrina de No-Gobierno para el Siglo 21

En la actualidad, casi todos aceptan al menos una idea utópica: que la esclavitud es tan inaceptable desde la moral que esta práctica debe ser erradicada allí donde se encuentre, y cualquier institución que dependa de ella debe demolerse inmediatamente.

Es probable que sea incluso un eufemismo el decir que las personas aceptan esa idea. Es el núcleo mismo del sentido común moral; si cualquier otra idea parece que, en determinadas circunstancias, podría implicar algo distinto, esa idea queda descartada.

Pero como he dicho, es una idea utópica. En el mundo antiguo, había algunas personas que pensaban algo así —como el estoico Dion Crisóstomo o el primer obispo cristiano Gregorio de Nisa—, pero eran pocos y distantes. Incluso cuando llegamos a mediados del siglo XIX, en vísperas de la abolición, William Lloyd Garrison estuvo a punto de ser alquitranado y emplumado en Boston por promoverla.

Garrison y otros como él representaron el flanco radical al rechazar que alguna persona pueda llegar a poseer otra. Entonces, no es sorprende que pudieras a menudo escuchar algunas otras ideas utópicas al hablar con los abolicionistas. Tal como los apologistas de la esclavitud gustaban de recordar a las personas, Garrison también sostuvo una «doctrina de no-gobierno».

Él se encontraba sólo entre los abolicionistas en dicha doctrina. Junto a las denuncias de esclavitud y exhortaciones para abolirla a través de la insurrección, Lysander Spooner componía proclamas anarquistas proponiendo anular todas las legislaturas y tribunales estatales en favor de un sistema legal que no diera cabida al monopolio de la autoridad.

A medida que nos acercamos a los doscientos años desde que Garrison estuvo a poco de ser alquitranado y emplumado, la victoria sobre la esclavitud está más que consolidada; sin embargo, la doctrina del no-gobierno sigue pareciendo una causa sin remedio tal como lo fue para aquel entonces.

Son estas batallas aparentemente irremediables las cuales este libro busca pelear: En contra de la clase protegida de pandillas con poder de monopolio, el uso del asesinato o encierro como sistema de responsabilidad, un apartheid internacional entre los que nacen bajo distintos mandatarios, y juegos globales de poder derribando peones humanos.

Esto es lo que tenemos en mente cuando hablamos de la abolición a día de hoy. Tal como Garrison y Spooner lo miraron, la abolición que está por venir es una extensión de la abolición ya realizada.

La doctrina del no-gobierno supone un inconveniente para el resto de marcos referenciales políticos, ya que este apunta hacia las funciones centrales de cualquier Estado: conservador, nacionalista, progresista, socialista, e incluso, liberal clásico.

Incluso para aquellos que todavía se aferran a dichos marcos, es fácil ver la emoción de encontrar un mundo puesto de cabeza y proponerte el enderezarlo. La tremenda enormidad de la tarea puede ser una fuente de energía, tal como con la famosa exclamación de Garrison de que se encontraba «en llamas», teniendo «montañas de hielo que derretir».

¿Importa Si Otro Mundo Es Posible?

Al mismo tiempo, encontrarse en llamas puede llevar a quemarse (o desgastarse).

Algunos de quienes aceptan las ideas del anarquismo en lo abstracto, que es correcto «en la teoría ideal», o incluso que las instituciones que rechaza son innecesarias, siguen teniendo un problema diferente con él.

Los Estados a día de hoy, o al menos muchos de ellos, no simplemente son los Estados del mundo premoderno. Estos son instituciones extractivas; pero esta extracción es constitucionalmente limitada. Estas rigen sobre nosotros; no obstante, este dominio a menudo va de la mano de concesiones que benefician las vidas reales de personas reales.

Sí, la extracción constitucionalmente limitada continúa siendo extracción, y las concesiones que recibimos no son nada comparadas al mundo que podríamos tener sin ellas. Seguro, dice este detractor. Pero, prosigue, esto pierde de vista su punto.

Los Estados han sido contenidos y reentrenados con un éxito no-trivial, y nosotros sabemos que esto puede funcionar hasta cierto punto ya que hemos visto esto ocurrir. Las bandas pueden utilizar libremente la cabeza decapitada del Presidente en la portada de un álbum, el Estado enseñará matemática y ciencia a tu hijo durante cinco días a la semana sin costo adicional; cada cuatro de noviembre, si suficientes personas no quieren que el presidente sea presidente más, ese Presidente solo deja de ser Presidente. Debe admitirse que todo esto es bastante increíble en el gran esquema de las cosas.

Si son muchas las personas circulando a alta velocidad por tu vecindario y poniendo en peligro a tu familia, ciertamente es posible que puedas realizar acciones directas e instalar badenes por tu cuenta. Pero también podría ir a una reunión del ayuntamiento.

En resumen, incluso si la doctrina del no gobierno tiene respuestas adecuadas para «¿Es lo correcto?» y «¿Puede funcionar?», algunos pueden seguir preguntándose «¿Por qué molestarse?».

La tentación de añadir un «¿y qué importa?» a la doctrina del no-gobierno recae en los anarquistas experimentados, tanto en su calidad de teóricos de la política como de agentes del cambio político. ¿Por qué entrar en sus extrañas opiniones sobre cómo podríamos despenalizar el crimen y hacerlo todo a través de la responsabilidad civil —¡a través de agencias de arbitraje competentes, nada menos!— cuando puedes limitarte a hablar de lo obviamente injusto que es el decomiso de bienes civiles? ¿Qué propósito práctico tiene esa salvaje creencia de fondo cuando puedes simplemente hacer banca telefónica para el candidato a gobernador que pasó treinta años como abogado defensor?

Es en contra de esta tentación de pensamiento y acción en la que quiero invertir el resto de esta introducción. Es una tentación de complacencia, pero es una tentación que, sin embargo, merece una respuesta.

Mantener el Fuego Encendido

En resumen, hay tres razones básicas para molestarse: estar alerta, permanecer fieles, y estar preparados.

Estar alerta

En nuestro mundo estructurado alrededor del Estado, es fácil perderse al tratar preguntas tangenciales como fundacionales.

Es probablemente cierto que hubo mejores y peores reclamos a alguna corona, o que algunos teóricos de la sucesión real fueron más consistentes que otros. Sin embargo, toda la tinta derramada en estas preguntas ha desaparecido en mayor medida de la memoria colectiva.

No recordamos de ninguna manera los debates intra-monarquistas tan bien como lo hacemos con las primeras defensas de la democracia representativa. Esto no se debe a que estos últimos fueran intrínsecamente más sofisticados, sino a que los primeros trataban sobre cuestiones contingentes cuyo tiempo ha pasado. Al insistir en cuestiones básicas sobre lo que hace que un orden político sea legítimo en primer lugar, son los teóricos democráticos los que se han quedado con nosotros.

Partiendo de la base de que la democracia liberal podría no ser el fin de la historia —una suposición compartida por alguien que está de acuerdo en que el anarquismo es correcto, y puede funcionar, pero que sólo se pregunta por qué debería molestarse—, hurgar en las cuestiones de la teoría democrática hoy corre el riesgo de acabar como los monarquistas de ayer.

Elaborar los mejores y más consistentes principios para un Estado democrático liberal es ciertamente suficiente trabajo para una vida. Sin embargo, esa vida se pasaría yendo y viniendo por un laberinto sin salida al final, buscando la forma adecuada de un acuerdo que no puede hacerse verdaderamente justo.

Además, el exceso de familiaridad con ese laberinto puede llevarte a olvidar que sus paredes son paredes. Los ajustes parciales de las teorías «para una sociedad básicamente justa como la nuestra» pueden no dar nunca la respuesta que se busca, cuando esa respuesta existe más allá de esos muros.

Teorizar la política como teorizar los gobiernos significará a menudo tratar los fundamentos básicos de un gobierno como una caja negra, tanto normativa como positivamente. Se perderán o minimizarán las fuentes de orden social que provienen de fuera del Estado, y se perderán o minimizarán los elementos de justicia con los que el Estado es incompatible.

Cualquier doctrina de no-gobierno va a ser un no-comienzo para muchas conversaciones políticas de hoy en día, con la premisa de guiar la acción del estado. Pero la relevancia en las conversaciones de hoy es la relevancia dentro de las conversaciones que son en sí mismas irrelevantes en un sentido más ulterior. El mundo es el campo abierto más allá del laberinto de preguntas y respuestas internas del Estado democrático liberal.

También una posición complaciente encarcela la acción política práctica. Si tratas los canales electorales como los verdaderos canales de cambio, seguirás corriendo en esa rueda de hámster para siempre.

Por ejemplo: Si devuelves el libre flujo de ideas a lo que dicen las leyes del Estado sobre el libre flujo de ideas, te centrarás en intentar persuadir a los tribunales y a las legislaturas para que flexibilicen la propiedad intelectual. Esto no ha tenido éxito.

En cambio, si se tiene firmemente en cuenta que el flujo real de ideas no tiene ninguna relación necesaria con lo que las leyes del Estado dicen al respecto, estarás alerta. Las oportunidades de hacer que la propiedad intelectual sea inaplicable mediante el intercambio de archivos serán visibles para ti, y podrá aprovecharlas. Esto ha demostrado ser muy exitoso.

Este punto se generaliza: Por ejemplo, la preocupación por la autodefensa y la capacidad de armarse en consecuencia, filtrada a través del marco centrado en el Estado se convierte en un grupo de presión. Esto, en la práctica, significa la financiación de organizaciones cuya misión se centra más en los mensajes culturales populistas de derechas que en la derogación de las restricciones a las armas. Sin la venda estadocéntrica, simplemente se puede asegurar el acceso a las armas haciendo que sean más fáciles de construir en casa.

Si te preocupas por el anarquismo, te mantienes alerta a las cuestiones de importancia duradera, y alerta a los medios reales de promover la causa de la libertad.

Permanecer fieles

Por supuesto, lo peor para los defensores del viejo orden no se trata de que sus contribuciones se hayan vuelto irrelevantes. Es la mancha moral del sistema que defendieron: El robo flagrante de la propiedad campesina, las masacres sin más propósito que la expansión y la tortura pública contra quienes lo desafiaban.

No sólo eso, sino que muchos de los horrores debieron serlo en sus propios términos. Los defensores del derecho divino se aferraban a una religión de poner la otra mejilla y bendecir a los pacificadores, pero se encontraron apoyando el derecho de los principados y potencias a quemar vivos a los disidentes.

La analogía aquí resulta evidente: aquellos quienes proponen la libertad individual y se conforman con el Estado liberal democrático también se conforman con instituciones que de manera segura hacen criminales de personas pacíficas. Quienes se conforman con dicho sistema, junto a la justicia social como su convicción permanente, se conforman con un sistema que sin lugar a dudas redistribuye la riqueza hacia arriba.

Quienes aceptan el anarquismo en lo abstracto, pero optan por ajustar el Estado liberal democrático, se resistirán a esta descripción, y tienen razones claras para hacerlo. Ellos no apoyan el hecho de que el Estado liberal democrático crea criminales de personas pacíficas, ni tampoco que en todo caso redistribuya la riqueza hacia arriba. De hecho, su proyecto es aplastantemente el reducir y revertir los procesos por los cuales las personas pacíficas son convertidas en criminales y la riqueza sea redistribuida hacia arriba.

Aquí de nuevo, sin embargo, conviene mirar al presente a la luz del pasado.

La defensa de Aristóteles a la «esclavitud natural» es una parte incómoda de su Política. Lo que potencialmente se pierde en nuestra incomodidad es que Aristóteles rechazaba la esclavización de alguien quien no entrara dentro de sus estipulaciones de «esclavitud natural», y, por lo tanto, podemos ver estos pasajes como un intento de reformar y restringir la institución.

Independientemente de las intenciones de Aristóteles, nosotros generalmente no recordamos que su defensa de la esclavitud fue más limitada que las instituciones atenienses existentes, ni tampoco pensamos en su discusión como un esfuerzo loable de reforma. Nosotros recordamos sólo que Aristóteles defendió la esclavitud, y esto justamente nos deja con gran malestar.

Quizás algunas teorías de la pena capital no tendrían al Estado matando ritualmente a nadie, y encerrar ritualmente a menos personas, por una cantidad de tiempo mucho menor, y en condiciones mucho mejores. Todo eso está bien, y merece la pena esperar que estas teorías venzan a las más brutales.

Pero defender incluso estas teorías como si estas fueran correctas es todavía defender un proceso de violencia ritual. Si la violencia es en sí misma inaceptable, la defensa de la violencia ritual es todavía defender lo inaceptable.

Si el Estado es lo que el anarquismo dice que es, entonces que el Estado haya sido defendido como legitimo será más notorio luego de que el Estado desaparezca, no los estándares aún mayores a los cuales los Estados fueron sometidos.

Más serio que haber dado apoyo retórico a los horrores es haber participado en ellos. Y el tipo de actores que probablemente apoyes en una trayectoria de acción política marcada por la autocomplacencia es poco probable que cumpla incluso con los estándares laxos del pensamiento político marcado por la autocomplacencia.

Como Aristóteles, John Locke proveyó una limitada defensa de la esclavitud que no se extendió a las instituciones tal como existieron a su alrededor. En su caso, el pensamiento fue que solo los agresores injustos en una guerra pueden ser esclavizados; no sus hijos, no su familia, solo los mismos agresores injustos.

Claramente, la esclavitud generacional y basada en la raza que fue practicada en la América Británica no podría tener una defensa lockeana. Al mismo tiempo, el lugar de Locke en la política de su tiempo lo llevó a estar involucrado en la elaboración de las Constituciones Fundamentales de Carolina, las cuales preveían la esclavitud sin ninguna de estas salvedades.

Los propios principios de Locke estuvieron muy por encima de aquellos promulgados en las Constituciones Fundamentales de Carolina. Y a la vez, sobre él recae la culpa por lo último.

Aunque no fue un anarquista, es difícil pensar en mejores defensores de la libertad individual en el siglo XX que F. A. Hayek. Sin embargo, al aceptar los términos de la política del siglo XX, se encontró así mismo aprobando el liderazgo de Augusto Pinochet en Chile, pasando por alto los asesinatos extrajudiciales que le acompañaron.

Aunque no fue un anarquista, es difícil pensar en mejores defensores de la justicia social en el siglo XX que W. E. B. Du Bois. Pero al aceptar los términos de la política del siglo XX, se vio así mismo aprobando el liderazgo de Mao Zedong en China, pasando por alto la hambruna y el terror que le acompañó.

Los Estados Unidos y países similares no son la Chile de Pinochet, ni la China de Mao, y menos aún la Carolina colonial. No obstante, cuando los escrúpulos anarquistas se ponen entre paréntesis por la política del momento, sigue habiendo concesiones desmedidas.

Tal vez el candidato que va a acortar los impuestos también va a brutalizar inmigrantes. Tal vez el candidato que va a abrir caminos para la ciudadanía también va a empoderar el Estado de vigilancia más allá de lo que ninguno pensó posible. Estos son tiempos para dar un paso atrás desde la complacencia y repensar los términos de la acción política.

Para dejarlo claro, nada de esto es una apelación a «estar del lado correcto de la historia», entendida como la idea de que los mejores juicios morales son siempre los que se encuentran más alejados en el futuro. Los juicios morales en cuestión son internos a los de las personas siendo juzgadas; Hayek debió haber sabido mejor en sus propios términos que haber dado cobertura a Pinochet, Du Bois debió haber sabido mejor en sus propios términos que dar cobertura a Mao, y Locke debió haber sabido mejor en sus propios términos que ayudar a elaborar una constitución que permitió que las personas nacieran en esclavitud.

En cambio, la cuestión es que, al aceptar complacientemente los términos políticos de su día, estas figuras abdicaron sus principios en favor del poder. Siguiendo estos principios foráneos sin la debida reflexión y reajuste les hizo cómplices de una manera que nosotros podemos ver claramente porque estamos más alejados de sus circunstancias políticas.

Y el punto adicional detrás de eso es que jugar complacientemente a la política en esos términos que el poder ofrece puede cegarnos moralmente de la misma manera. Lo que atrapó a Hayek, Du Bois y Locke puede atraparnos a nosotros, a menos que nos mantengamos alerta para seguir siendo fieles.

Estar preparados

También debemos preocuparnos por el anarquismo porque está arribando. Otro mundo no sólo es posible, es inevitable.

Ese otro mundo es inevitable porque no hay alternativa. Los principios organizativos del libre intercambio y la libre asociación son fundamentalmente incompatibles con el Estado y su principio organizativo del mando. Sin embargo, la depredación del mando siempre depende de la producción previa del libre intercambio y la libre asociación, y por ello es su propio sepulturero.

Aquí puede que haya perdido a mi público objetivo: después de miles de años de faraones, césares, káiseres, zares, cancilleres, secretarios generales, presidentes y primeros ministros, puede resultar inverosímil que la victoria haya estado siempre en las cartas. Hemos tenido suficiente tiempo para ver nuestra mano, seguramente ya la habríamos visto y cobrado.

Aquí veo tus miles de años de reyes y reinas y te planteo cientos de miles de años de tribus sin Estado. Lo que hoy parece fijo y congelado empezó realmente la semana pasada, si nos centramos en la escala de tiempo correcta.

Al igual que nuestra prehistoria sin Estado dio paso a la civilización y a sus Estados parasitarios, este gran periodo de transición dará paso a la sociedad abierta del verdadero autogobierno. A fin de cuentas, debería ser más fácil ver ese futuro que ver el presente desde el pasado. No estamos soñando con la alfabetización o el comercio en un mundo sin ellos, sólo estamos abstrayendo esas partes de nuestro mundo de los burócratas y las zonas de guerra.

Por lo tanto, tenemos que tomarnos en serio la verdad de la doctrina del no-gobierno porque nos da razones para pensar que algún día nos encontraremos en un mundo sin gobierno.

Ese mundo sin gobierno viene con sus propios desafíos: ¿Cómo se disuade la depredación individual sin una pandilla dominante? ¿Dónde se encuentra la responsabilidad una vez que las prisiones se desmoronan? Una vez que todo el movimiento es, por defecto, incuestionable e indiscutible, ¿con qué herramientas podemos frenar cualquier enfermedad una vez que aparezca en algún lugar de este planeta? Suponiendo que la liberación no llegue a todas partes de una vez, ¿cómo podrían los habitantes del mundo libre defenderse de los Estados persistentes?

Estas preguntas exigen respuestas. La dificultad de encontrar esas respuestas puede ser una motivación para caer en la complacencia con el mundo tal y como lo conocemos. Sin embargo, la dificultad de encontrar esas respuestas, combinada con el hecho de que las necesitaremos, es exactamente la razón por la que la complacencia no es una opción.

Cuando lleguemos a nuestro destino, necesitaremos un mapa. Esbozar lo poco que podamos de ese mapa por adelantado es el propósito de pensar en la doctrina del no-gobierno. Porque cualquier doctrina de no-gobierno es realmente una doctrina que predice algún orden futuro que llena ese agujero de no-gobierno, y debemos saber qué ocupa ese lugar si queremos estar preparados para ello.

Nuestra política debe ser también una política de preparación.

El lema del cambio social anarquista es «construir el nuevo mundo en la cáscara del viejo». Es importante no pasar por alto cómo esto describe implícitamente el fracaso: quedarse con nada más que la cáscara.

La diferencia entre un Estado fallido y una anarquía exitosa es la diferencia entre un vacío de poder y unas instituciones robustas de autogobierno. El caso basado en el riesgo de vivir cautelosamente la vida como un liberal clásico corriente, socialdemócrata, o cualquier otra cosa a pesar de que el anarquismo «es verdadero en lo abstracto» se trata de una razón para dejar de hacerlo y trabajar en hacer del anarquismo una realidad concreta.

Necesitamos saber cómo es un mundo libre para que funcione, y necesitamos construir lo que es necesario para que un mundo libre funcione. De lo contrario, podríamos renunciar a ese mundo libre durante otros mil años en un ciclo de mando, colapso, mando y colapso.

Debemos encontrar lo que llene el vacío del no-gobierno. Debemos estar alerta, permanecer fieles y estar preparados, por lo que no podemos quedarnos satisfechos.

Debemos estar todos en llamas, porque todavía tenemos montañas de hielo que derretir.

When we think about the term “abolition,” we think of removing our old notions or of breaking free from the constraints of tradition. We might conjure up the idea of wiping clean our slate and being left with the freedom to imagine things from the ground up, without being hindered by the structures of the past. When we abolish a building, we erase it from existence and clear the empty rubble to reveal a clean patch of earth free to be developed or undeveloped to fit our current needs, without worry for its past use as the foundation for our now non-existent building.

By abolishing the structures of old, we open up possibilities for building in the future and free our systems from the oppressive shadows of those present structures. The countercurrent to this necessity to abolish is the necessity to build horizontal structures and create the world that replaces the present. Engaging in mutual aid and direct action provides the solidarity that replenishes societies atomized by state structures. 

When explaining why it makes sense to abolish buildings, it helps to examine the ruins of these sites and their effects on the community around them. When we examine state structures for abolition—police, prisons, borders, empire—these structures are not simply ineffective in their service but perform a disservice by destroying otherwise open pathways for mutual aid and autonomous solutions. The harm caused by the police system is not simply a result of certain police acting in extralegal fashion, or even of the system’s persistence in enforcing class and status structures. 

As the system of policing professionalizes, the communities they police atrophy in their ability to react to or resolve crisis situations. When vagrancy or homelessness becomes the job of the police to handle, the prized citizen can do their part by informing the police of an offending individual and carrying on with their day, satisfied that management will resolve the problem of poverty—or at least remove the symptom from sight. 

Buildings targeted for demolition are generally those most-neglected—weary eyesores that catch our attention on the street. The boarded-up house or long-abandoned commercial building are favored sites for development projects to destroy and rebuild. Stretching our analogy, the state’s structures face similar assessments. When we listen in on questions of government failures, or the ineffectiveness of a certain office to meet its chartered goals, we find similarly dilapidated systems being targeted for revamping. Zealous politicians and activists look at these vestigial organs of the state and see opportunities to recycle and reuse their original mandates to meet new goals and build their careers upon these successful redeployments. 

Even when the state is ineffective, it is effective at laying the boundaries of the conversation. Even with the building demolished, its lot remains an imposing underground “shadow” of the building that once was, embedding the recent past with the dinosaurs of governance prehistory. While the state allows for examination of its means of governance, the fact that it will govern cannot be disputed. Even government failure is simply a justification for a “better” government.

Abolishing state systems, then, requires at least one step beyond that abolition which we ascribe to the destruction and rebuilding of a city-block or corner. It means digging within the foundation of our systems and ferreting out the entrenched hierarchies that have invaded our ecological framework. We seek the abolition not only of the state structure itself, but of the idea that the state structure was or is a workable solution. 

By abolishing police, we free communities to rethink their needs and goals and work out how to address these problems. The questions need not be how to police effectively, or even whether policing is needed, but may rather be how to help resolve this particular conflict and help each other grow from our conflict towards a place of healing. 

The fundamental premise upon which the fantasy of state supremacy resides—that state solutions can be final, impartial, and just—is false. This fantasy is hierarchy’s allure. When we admit that many problems do not have perfect solutions, or even solutions at all, we can abolish the drive to hierarchy and statehood and instead open ourselves up to becoming mature  individuals and communities which accept that conflict is a place for growth, even when it is painful or irreparably tragic. The neglected building or abandoned lot may be a sign of failure in many ways, but that failure need not remain so. 

The failure represented by an abandoned building or a late train is the crack in the veneer that reveals the fantasy of governance. For the person fully captured by the ideology of the state, this crack is simply the impetus to cover up the problem with a patchwork reform. To the statist, failures may be due to an improper policy choice or an ineffective mechanism but they appear to be resolvable problems. There need not be a reckoning with the inherent limitations of government, because a reckoning would be too costly and too painful to work out. Every failure simply justifies the action that leads to the next failure. To acknowledge that the system itself is predicated on this failure would be catastrophic to the state system, and entails an acceptance that this constant movement from failure to failure is a symptom of hierarchical systems, even when that symptom is what the systems are charged with solving. 

When we create a conceptual framework for understanding what these systems are, it is important to frame the conversation with our ideas of what the null system is. The original position need not be one of statehood. Modern police, prisons, empire, and borders have not always existed, but are recent inventions. 

While these institutions have not existed forever, they have considerable influence now. State systems have replicated themselves throughout the world with remarkable consistency. Even in independence movements with a strong anticolonial focus, the ruling classes of newly independent nations have tended to view the tactics of their imperial oppressors as quite favorable tools for meeting their ends and continued or mimicked these institutions in their new states. 

Acknowledging the newness of states and state institutions, we can examine the role that state institutions play in stifling the potential for self-governance. Government and government systems funnel the efforts of well-meaning people into the locus of a state that may not be as well-meaning as they are and takes away power that could better serve local interests if it were decentralized. State institutions not only coopt the tools and philosophies of nonstate systems, but they also vacuum up effective personnel and fold them into their own apparatus. 

After George Floyd was killed by police, a series of protests called for defunding or abolishing police departments throughout the United States, but these movements quickly found their organizing efforts directed towards the existing means within state control. Prominent speakers and organizers found their work funneled into task forces and committee meetings with little interest in meeting public demands. To work within the world of state pronouncements, they were required to distance themselves from the violence of riots or protest action which was necessary to compel action at all, while putting their names and voices towards the legitimization of the state’s violence. Where they were able to deviate from the state’s premise that police violence was aberrant, their contention that violence was systemically inherent to policing was channeled towards efforts for reform within that system. 

Questions regarding separating police responsibilities to remove crimes of poverty from policing became calls for increasing police budgets to allow for hiring personnel with expertise in mental health or social work, and calls for police to be more racially sensitive in their work became increased funding for police training and professionalization. Within the criminal justice industry, the term “community policing” has long been appropriated by those working to leverage booming prison and jail populations with the rise of surveillance technology in an attempt to recreate prisons without prison walls. Allowing prisoners to remain in their communities and with their families meant fitting them with ankle bracelets and assigning security personnel to monitor their movements, reducing prison housing costs by shifting the financing of imprisonment onto the prisoner. While those incarcerated outside prison walls maintain the stigma of conviction in their search for employment, their captors leverage physical access to job opportunities as a reason to extract more value from them in the form of surcharges or fines to pay for their own monitoring. 

To the prison industry, overcrowding is simply a chance to utilize “catch, tag, and release” tactics of policing, prosecuting, and releasing people back onto the street with little change in their circumstances but a new criminal record and a hefty sum of fines. Each conviction creates the administrative justification for harsher sentencing if the next conviction is during a lull in the prison population. The machinery continues, absent justice or healing, but ready to produce an underclass primed for experimental tactics of surveillance and monitoring. 

Amongst the minority of crimes which are not victimless, the state’s policing efforts provide little comfort or healing. The vast majority of police reports simply fill intelligence databases to further the efforts of predictive policing. The criminal justice industry is as aware as anyone that there is little chance of solving a crime reported after the fact, and investors would rather chase the thrill of an exciting goal such as knowing of crimes that have not yet occurred. While these delusions may not be effective, even within the narrow goals of state policing, they do bolster the image of police as on the cutting edge of a cops-and-robbers game of high-speed pursuit that covers our television screens and movies. These flights of fantasy may not get you back your belongings or sense of peace, but recruitment drives would surely fail without them. 

While policing does little to prevent harm from occurring, its harmful effects are often felt instantly. The state’s machinery is most ready to act when the public has burdened themselves with all the weighty tasks of investigating and producing evidence, and even delivered an apologetic perpetrator into the state’s hands (though sometimes even this is not enough). In these moments, the state does what it does best. It classifies, adjudicates, and administers punishment—with little ceremony or tolerance for individual circumstances. The law exists to administer rights of property, and in the service of that goal finality will always supersede justice, and predictable efficiency will supersede accuracy. From the first contact with the state, the unstoppable force of bureaucratic weight pulls people with a gravitational force.  

Once the wheels are in motion, there is often little room for humanity within the machine. Sister Helen Prejean, in her work to end the death penalty, highlights the pain felt by some murder victim’s families as decades later they tried to prevent the executions the state claimed would give them closure. They found themselves thrown away by the state, no longer useful as pawns in front of sympathetic juries, the families were retraumatized as they saw the official process rob them of the last chance they had to let go of the pain that had dominated their lives.    

The state, as a creation, is destructive, but the state and its systems have not always existed and they need not continue to exist. The state smothers attempts to work outside of its grasp and it coopts independent action through insidious attempts to funnel work towards its own furtherance. 

It would be a mistake to claim that the state is simply ineffective, instead of cruel, that it is misinformed or misguided, instead of intentionally obtuse. The state is a self-reproducing ideology. It attempts to recreate its organizational patterns within all institutions. And it sees institutions that are nonhierarchical as threats. Because nonhierarchical organization does not present a means to be coopted, where horizontal organization exists it shows that loci of power can exist outside the state, and that power can be so decentralized as to be functionally nonexistent. The power of decentralized systems is a defensive power: the power to protect oneself through strong bonds of trust or mutual support, and the security culture and organizational autonomy that protect the sanctity of individuals, even at the expense of the organization. 

This defensive power may at first seem little match for the “productive” potential of state institutions. After all, they are effective at recreating themselves in organizations, even during directly oppositional conflicts, as in anticolonial movements. It may be true that horizontal organizations sacrifice some of this directional force away from production and towards the reproduction of healthy individual connections. That is, while the organization may be weakened, or even nonexistent, the bonds between individuals form a network that is more conducive to positive social relations. 

The inability of the state to nurture these bonds is its fundamental conceit. While Adolf Hitler stressed the communal benefits of a society that valued time spent together in joint activity, such as public physical exercise or great spectacles of political fervor, Hannah Arendt correctly described this need as the symptom of a society which had become so devoid of societal connections that she referred to it as atomized. People were unable to see themselves as part of each other or part of a connected whole. Rather, in their blind individuality, they became so starving for community that they identified wholly with the state as a substitute for the community for which they had been searching. 

The state’s power is in creating the fantasy that it is, if not an effective solution, a somewhat decent solution. But the deception that the state can be useful is a distraction from the bigger picture of what the state is effective at doing. It is effective at polluting the environment and creating the incentives for massive economic risk-taking. It is effective at preventing violence if that violence is directed toward systems of property or class structure. It is effective at turning its every failure into a justification for its future iteration. It defines all actions outside of prescribed resistance as unjustifiable and reacts to them with force.

John Brown, in his final statement before being sentenced to death by hanging for a failed raid of the Harper’s Ferry federal armory with plans to arm slaves in an abolitionist rebellion, called on a higher law than the state’s: 

…which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction…I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right. 

Brown understood that anything short of the complete abolition of slavery was an injustice to slaves and that a just person must oppose injustice.

While Brown’s direct action was ill-conceived to achieve his stated goal of a slave insurrection, his subsequent writings and trial thoroughly captured the psyche of the nation and moved the question of abolition to the front, exacerbating the tensions that led to the Civil War and the abolishment of state-sanctioned, non-punitive, non-martial slavery. 

Brown had successfully led a small band of slaves to freedom in Canada in a previous expedition, and he had worked with a few former slaves as well as family members to further the raid at Harper’s Ferry, but his most revolutionary action was in the subtleties of his life and his actions both under state repression after his arrest and his egalitarian, if Puritan, family and lifestyle habits. His unwillingness to accept the state’s argument that slavery was just and legal and his consistency in condemning the state’s actions are what transformed him into a folk hero, exalted by the Transcendentalists as the paragon of American ideals and feared by slaveholders as a harbinger of their true fear—a slave uprising. 

State-sanctioned forced labor remains in the United States as a requirement for all able-bodied prisoners. As deterritorialized prisons move into our communities through the everyday supervision of financial transactions, geolocation, and social association, it is unlikely that the state will relinquish this opportunity to subsidize surveillance capitalism. While extracting value from prison workers, the state experiments with new modes of control. Probation officers work remotely and the walls of the prison turn inside-out. The exceptional tools of today become the mundane necessities of governance tomorrow. 

An analogy to Brown’s failed raid may exist in Alexander Berkman’s failed assassination of a Carnegie Steel executive, in retaliation for the executive’s actions during the Homestead Strike. When news of Berkman’s failed attack reached strikers, most did not make any connection between the attack and their strike. The prevailing rumor was that it must have been a personal dispute over money, rather than a political act. Both Berkman and Brown felt compelled to violence against the powerful institutions of their day, and they did so going directly to the seats of hierarchical power and putting themselves in harm’s way. Both of their actions put their compatriots at considerable risk, though it would be callous to claim that the situation of slaves or striking workers was in any way safe before their actions. 

Their critics point out that they had little, if any, strategy for helping the slaves and strikers themselves. By attacking on behalf of these groups, without being assured that they would have agreed to the attack, one might argue that they took away from the autonomy of these groups. But what autonomy did slaves and striking workers have? Slaves were being killed for the most mundane assertions of personhood. Strikers were shot in the streets for claiming they had the right to refuse work. 

At Homestead, strikers and other townspeople would end up capturing hundreds of Pinkerton agents; Frederick Douglass, one of the financiers of Brown’s raid, fought with the man who claimed to own him many times before eventually escaping to the North; and slavery, even when openly supported by the government, was a constant push and pull of violence between slaves and captors. In slave country or the company towns of America, building up the community power to pass along information and resources effectively without alerting slaveholders or steel magnates was no easy task. We cannot know whether Brown’s and Berkman’s actions would have been supported if they had more effectively spread information prior to their attacks, but it’s possible that the spread of that information would have made their success even more unlikely. 

When it comes to engaged resistance, the effectiveness of anarchist practice becomes clear. By utilizing leaderless organization or rotating positions, every member learns the specialized skills otherwise reserved for the managerial classes and organizations remain immune from having their head cut off. Decentralized power protects against the compromise of certain key players. Autonomous cells protect each other from the burden of bureaucratic processes and maintain the flexibility to take on different tasks, as well as specialized ones. Theory becomes the secret handshake that identifies parties to praxis. 

To achieve abolition requires a willingness to step into the unknown of the recently forgotten past, but this step becomes much easier when we bridge the gap between now and then by building the relationships and networks that replace state power today. During the pandemic, as governments the world over scrambled to prevent the crisis from revealing their own inability to protect the average person, they coordinated the continued enrichment of the propertied classes and exacerbated the global health crisis. Mutual aid became commonplace as people worked to fill the gaps of state power. While the state gathered all its resources to simultaneously funnel wealth from workers to capitalists and unleash a flurry of repressive actions worldwide, solidarity and decentralized movements did what was needed. Tenant protection groups evicted police and sheriffs from their towns. The sharing of food, shelter, and PPE amongst disparate groups replaced the unresponsiveness of government. Where capitalism would not provide and public transport chose to shut down rather than bear the cost of operating safely, local groups helped transport people safely to and from appointments, workplaces, and to their groceries.

Abolition is not simply destruction. It is the opening of new pathways and opportunities for organization. By clearing the abandoned building of justice within the state system and ripping out the foundations of hierarchy and domination that undergird police, prisons, empire, and borders, we free ourselves to work together without the limitation of the state. Within abolition is the creativity to explore in the absence of the state. Rebuilding our connections and rediscovering the capacity for self-governance is both the cause and effect of abolition. 

The abolition of slavery allowed former slaves to live without being treated as property by the state, but work by slaves escaping and resisting domination set the stage for open conflict regarding the question of slavery. Abolishing state institutions requires denying those institutions’ claims to provide justice, identity, and safety, and opposing the insistence that these systems of domination are necessary or useful. The cracks in the system are more apparent than ever, and abolition can and is happening now, in varying capacities through the displacement of state activities with transformative alternatives. Continuing on that path means combating the entrenched biases that imply the fantasy of governance has a future. 

The New York Times recently published an article mentioning the failures of the government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a COVID-relief program meant to keep businesses afloat and people employed. The article noted that the PPP was not distributed fairly, with the lion’s share of funds going to White-owned businesses, while minorities got less. Coupled with the widely acknowledged fact that the COVID-relief programs benefited large companies far more than smaller ones, and we come to the reality that the relief programs were mostly a forced redistribution of wealth upwards — the lower classes and minorities were taxed, and those taxes went to fund megacorporations, the wealthy, and Whites. A program with stated intentions of keeping “Main Street” alive not only drained it of capital, but then gave that capital to its business competitors, while racial minorities yet again were forced to shore up racial inequality through taxation. In this way, racial and economic inequality is reinforced under the guise of protecting the people.

Some might argue that the government needs to be held accountable, in order to ensure that the bailouts are used properly. But that assumes that bailouts are currently being used improperly. Given numerous historical examples (such as the 2008-9 bailouts), it seems to be that the intention of bailouts is, in fact, to redistribute money from the masses to the elites, in which case scrapping bailouts altogether is the better choice. Letting businesses fail and oligarchs go bankrupt — or in other words, letting the free market do its job — will do more for economic and racial equality than any government program.

If bailouts were ended, many businesses would fail. This is a good thing. When a large business fails, space is created in its market for smaller businesses to enter and compete. New business methods and products can enter the market, and more agile companies can try their luck. Business failures rejuvenate markets and create new opportunities. Similarly, when stock markets fail, real estate markets crash, and so on, poorer members of society can start buying assets cheaply. In doing so, they can start climbing the socioeconomic ladder.

Bailouts reverse this process. A bailout not only reinforces incumbents, it does so by stripping the masses and small businesses of capital, a one-two punch that enforces inequality. When stock and housing prices are artificially boosted by government intervention, when taxes are levied on the masses to bailout oligarchs and megacorporations — most of whom don’t even pay taxes themselves — inequality is hardened. Even worse, the state picks and chooses which members of society are looted, a burden which almost always falls most heavily on minorities and other oppressed groups, reinforcing racial inequality and stoking tensions among peoples. Ending bailouts and other similar programs, and letting businesses succeed and fail as the free market decides, would lead to more economic dynamism and less economic inequality. It would allow minorities, who have had their resources stolen for generations, to finally keep their money and climb the socioeconomic ladder. And it would go a long way to eliminating the government’s role in the economy.

De Sean Swain. Artículo original: Security Threat Groups: The Industry Of Gangs de 12 de abril 2021. Traducido al español por Camila Figueroa.

En las prisiones de Ohio, casi todo el mundo está en una pandilla, esté o no en una pandilla. Si eres un prisionero de Ohio y no estás en una pandilla, los administradores de la prisión te pondrán en una. Y si no hay una pandilla para ti, crearán una nueva.

La razón es que se trata de una estafa federal de subvenciones en bloque. Así es como funciona:

El Departamento de Justicia de EE. UU. mantiene una especie de base de datos sobre lo que llama “Grupos de Amenaza de Seguridad”, o STG, que no debe confundirse con las ETS, o “Enfermedades de Transmisión Sexual”. El Departamento de Justicia no vigila la clamidia ni la gonorrea. Todavía. Al menos, que yo sepa.

Lo que sí vigila, los Grupos de Amenaza de Seguridad, incluye grupos como los Bloods, los Crips, los Gangsta Disciples, la Hermandad Aria. Esos son los grupos más grandes y reconocidos como Grupos de Amenaza a la Seguridad.

Así pues, para controlar a estos grupos, el Departamento de Justicia de EE. UU. concede lo que denomina “subvenciones en bloque” a los estados. Los estados que, como Ohio, participan en el programa de vigilancia de los STG, mantienen una base de datos que comparten con el Departamento de Justicia, con archivos sobre los miembros de las pandillas y sus actividades. Por cada miembro de la pandilla que el estado vigila, el Departamento de Justicia asigna una determinada cantidad de fondos.

Cuantos más miembros de las pandillas, más dinero recibe el sistema penitenciario estatal.

En los años 90, había un puñado de pandillas o Grupos de Amenaza de Seguridad. Cada una de esas pandillas tenía un puñado de miembros bastante visibles. En cada prisión había un investigador cuyo trabajo era principalmente otro, que mantenía archivos sobre estas pandillas.

Desde entonces, con la disponibilidad de subvenciones federales en bloque, ahora tenemos aparentemente cientos de grupos de amenaza a la seguridad, algunos de ellos con sólo dos o tres miembros, todos registrados en la base de datos informática. Tenemos aparentemente decenas de miles de miembros de pandillas llenando las prisiones de Ohio. Y tenemos no uno, sino dos investigadores empleados a tiempo completo en cada prisión de Ohio, con sus salarios cubiertos por los fondos de la subvención en bloque; los gastos de sus oficinas cubiertos por los fondos de la subvención en bloque; su hardware informático para llevar a cabo su trabajo cubierto por los fondos de la subvención en bloque.

Las pandillas son una industria.

Conozco a presos que han sido catalogados como miembros de pandillas por el simple hecho de haber crecido en una zona específica donde la mayoría de los niños se unen a un grupo concreto, o por recibir correo basura de una organización que no figura como pandilla. Un amigo mío judío estuvo en secreto como pandillero de los Panteras Negras durante años sin ninguna razón y ni siquiera lo sabía.

Recordaran que yo fui encasillado en 2012 como “líder” del Ejército de los 12 Monos -una organización sin organización-, sobre la base de que mi “ideología” coincidía con la suya. Así que, como imagino un mundo sin líderes, me convertí en líder de una organización que no tiene organización.

Nada de esto parece dudoso para los que mantienen los archivos.

En todo esto, son los propios investigadores -los que se ven recompensados con la seguridad laboral por la existencia de bandas y pandilleros- los que hacen la validación de las pandillas y los pandilleros. Es decir, los investigadores deciden qué es un “grupo de amenaza para la seguridad”, y deciden qué organizaciones se ajustan a esa definición, y luego deciden además qué significa “pertenecer” al grupo y qué constituye una “prueba” de “pertenencia”.

Algunas religiones han sido validadas como grupos de amenaza para la seguridad. Algunos presos han sido validados como miembros por “asociarse” con el otro preso que los funcionarios de prisiones asignaron a la misma celda. Así, saludar al preso que fue trasladado a tu celda podría convertirte en miembro de su pandilla… que podría ser “Los Presbiterianos” si el investigador de la prisión resulta ser un bautista del sur demasiado sectario.

Esencialmente, la base de datos del Grupo de Amenaza de Seguridad es como una caja registradora. Cada vez que un investigador de la prisión pulsa el teclado, sale otro cheque.

Los tirantes de sus hijos y la educación universitaria dependen de que estos investigadores amplíen constantemente el número de bandas y miembros de pandillas a vigilar, por lo que las pandillas proliferan… aunque no lo hagan. Y ten en cuenta que estas chaquetas de pandilleros no se borran al salir de la cárcel. Oh, no. Esta es una base de datos federal. Así que, si te ponen una chaqueta de pandillero en la cárcel como el gran poo-bah de la pandilla bananera, exista o no, cuando salgas, ese policía local que te detiene puede marcar tu número de matrícula y obtener una alerta de que probablemente estás armado y eres peligroso. Tu sobrino en edad de ir al instituto, que te pidió prestado el coche para llevar a su novia al cine, puede verse rodeado por equipos SWAT y francotiradores por culpa de una luz trasera rota.

Recientemente, los Juggalos demandaron al Departamento de Justicia cuando éste se negó a sacar a los Juggalos de su base de datos de grupos de amenaza a la seguridad. Por si no lo sabes, los Juggalos son fans de un grupo de rap llamado Insane Clown Posse. Los Juggalos generalmente se visten como payasos y beben muchos refrescos de la banda Faygo. Eso es lo suyo. Pero, según los investigadores de la prisión, su proclividad a escuchar la misma música y a disfrutar de los mismos refrescos y a compartir aparentemente la misma subcultura los convierte en un grupo que amenaza la seguridad.

Su demanda está actualmente pendiente. Mientras tanto, hagas lo que hagas, no dejes escapar a los investigadores de la prisión si disfrutas de los refrescos Faygo.

Este es el prisionero anarquista Sean Swain del Correccional Warren en Lebanon, Ohio. Si está en la base de datos del grupo de amenazas de seguridad federal, tu ERES la resistencia…

Sean Swain A243-205

Logan Marie Glitterbomb. Artigo original: Terrorist is the New Green, 18 de Março de 2017. Traduzido por Gabriel Serpa.

Algumas greves promovidas pelo sindicato IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), combinadas com a revolução bolchevique na Rússia, foram suficientes para instaurar nos Estados Unidos uma paranoia sobre uma suposta ameaça comunista. Assim começou o chamado primeiro Terror Vermelho. Casas de anarquistas, socialistas, social-democratas, comunistas e outros foram invadidas e averiguadas, e pelo menos 500 pessoas foram deportadas durante os chamados Palmer Raids. O Estado fez pouca distinção entre as várias ideologias revolucionárias e, por vezes, investigou pessoas com base em suspeitas infundadas. Os mais afetados foram os imigrantes: Wilson concluiu que eles injetaram o veneno da discórdia nas veias da vida nacional. Para ele, os imigrantes eram criaturas de paixão, traidores, anarquistas que devem ser esmagados. O Terror Vermelho continuou até cerca de 1920, não sem aprovar a Lei da Sedição, de 1918, e várias outras leis estaduais contrárias aos sindicatos.

O segundo Terror Vermelho surgiu após a Segunda Guerra Mundial sob o nome de macartismo. O medo de espiões comunistas soviéticos e chineses levou muitos a denunciar vizinhos, colegas, amigos, família e qualquer pessoa suspeita de ser comunista. As pessoas foram levadas ao Comitê de Atividades Antiamericanas e questionadas sobre supostas associações com o Partido Comunista dos EUA. Muitos acabaram numa lista negra que os impedia de trabalhar, viver e muito mais; outros foram presos ou deportados. Em Agosto de 1956, no final do segundo Terror Vermelho, o FBI lançou a COINTELPRO. O programa envolvia originalmente a vigilância ilegal dos membros da PC americano; foi posteriormente alargado para incluir os defensores dos direitos civis e do poder negro, antimilitaristas e a nova esquerda — até ser desmascarado e encerrado em 1971.

Em 2002, uma audiência do Congresso chamada A Ameaça do Eco Terrorismo deu origem ao que se chama hoje de Terrorismo Verde. Desde então, os agentes governamentais têm visado ambientalistas e ativistas dos direitos dos animais envolvidos em associações como a Frente de Libertação da Terra (ELF), a Frente de Libertação Animal (ALF) e a Terra Primeiro. Em 2006, o Congresso aprovou o Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, uma expansão do Animal Enterprise Proteciton Act, de 1992. Isto resulta em possíveis acusações de terrorismo para ambientalistas e ativistas dos direitos dos animais, mesmo para atos não violentos como um website.

Sob o reinado de Trump, os legisladores republicanos aproveitaram a oportunidade para tentar aprovar, em pelo menos dez estados, várias leis anti protesto, incluindo uma proibição de cobertura facial no Missouri e uma lei que reclassificaria a adulteração de equipamento petrolífero, ou de gás, de uma contravenção a um crime de Classe 6. Em Dakota do Norte, está em discussão um projeto de lei que legalizaria o atropelamento de manifestantes.

Segundo o advogado do sindicato das liberdades civis, Lee Rowland, esta tendência de fazer leis anti protesto disfarçadas de obstrução à justiça é muito preocupante. Uma lei que permite ao Estado multar um manifestante em 10.000 dólares por colocar o pé no lugar errado, ou que absolve o condutor de acusações de homicídio involuntário porque a vítima era um manifestante, só serve para sufocar os protestos.

Rotular associações como a Ação Antifascista, Black Lives Matter e Water Protectors como terrorismo doméstico; autorizar a sua detenção arbitrária; espancá-los na rua; e cortá-los com um carro só serve para priva-los da liberdade de expressão e de reunião — garantida pela Primeira Emenda. Ao rotulá-los como terroristas, o Estado dá bom uso à propaganda da guerra ao terror da última década e justifica a guerra à dissidência contra os nossos concidadãos. Não podemos permitir que o Estado governe desta forma com impunidade. Como anarquistas, devemos desafiar a autoridade e apoiar os nossos amigos que se juntam a nós na luta, mesmo quando não pensamos como eles. O sucesso da nossa luta futura depende da nossa vontade de ajudar os nossos amigos que são vítimas destas novas leis.

É por isso que o Partido Verde criou recentemente a Ala de Defesa Geral do Green Party, formulada a partir do Comitê de Defesa Geral do IWW, para angariar dinheiro e oferecer recursos aos ativistas do Partido Verde presos pelas suas atividades. A Audacious Caucus do Partido Libertário, no seu esforço de promover a ação direta e a desobediência civil entre os ativistas daquele partido, também estabeleceu o seu próprio fundo de proteção.

Não podemos, contudo, confiar inteiramente nos partidos, especialmente quando o seu objetivo principal é a defesa dos seus membros. Muitos manifestantes não são membros de nenhum partido. Muitos querem que a semana de 1 a 7 de Abril se torne a Semana de Solidariedade, em defesa dos manifestantes do #DisruptJ20 que enfrentam acusações criminais; dos Protetores da Água presos por se manifestarem contra o Gasoduto de Sabal Trail e o Gasoduto de Dakota; ativistas do Black Lives Matter na prisão ou em julgamento; e todos os outros que foram afetados pela repressão contra dissidentes. Pode-se participar angariando dinheiro para os detidos, organizando um comício para chamar a atenção para estas novas leis, exercendo pressão sobre os políticos locais, de forma a convence-los a votar contra elas, ou fazendo o que quer que se imagine para ajuda-los. É claro que não vamos ficar parados enquanto os manifestantes levam a pecha de terroristas.