Culture Wars

Culture Wars, by the editors

"…this makes it very clear that the struggle for
liberation is not only a cultural fact but also
a factor of culture."

—Amilcar Cabral

Culturally, as with resources and organizing
capabilities, we are out gunned. It’s up to us
to make our struggle exist culturally and in
every sense. Capitalists and the state can
manipulate the feelings of millions in a matter
of days. Schools, prisons, and entertainment
continually shape peoples’ thinking and
behavior. Anarchists both inhabit and confront
this reality. So how can we a) sustain our lives
as challenges to domination and b) produce
within our inherited world the visions and
imperatives of a new world?

The question of culture trips up the old
strategies. Culture tends to get treated as
either a by-product of a material base, as
something made only by those who are
particularly "gifted," or as some random,
unfathomable monster. None of these
perspectives, addressing culture as something
separate from people’s lives, will change
anything.

How do we define, locate, and strengthen
anarchist culture? We need to talk about
anarchist culture because we see it as integral
to our struggle for liberation. Protests and co-
ops, peaceful or militant, will always fall
short if they cannot create culture that makes
revolution a necessity.

We’re really talking about two types of
culture—what we want now and what we want in a
free society. Our culture, the now and the then,
shares a common history, character, affinity,
analysis, awareness, rigor and passion. In the
present we tend to position our culture against
those that dominate the world. This
fundamentally colors the culture we build as
anarchists. Images and symbols of negativity and
resistance are invaluable parts of anarchist
culture. But anarchists must somehow look toward
a culture that includes more than it excludes,
that builds more than it destroys, that seeks in
the end to cease being "anarchist" culture and
becomes instead an essential characteristic of
the many and varied cultures that exist
throughout the world.

Anarchist culture is a fighting culture. We keep
expressing ourselves and communicating about the
world we seek to transform. We remember a lot
and often make up what’s missing as we go.
Feeding this fighting culture means more than
just sustaining our "cultural production"
(newspapers, events, art). We have to ask
questions of our culture that keep it connected
to our lives: How does anarchism transform us?
Does it challenge domination? Does it touch
other cultures, grow, and relate to reality?

Anarchist culture is a utopian culture. We
describe quite well what’s wrong, but we also
try to say what can be right. We try to state
what it is that we’re fighting for. As we
struggle to transform our everyday lives, we
draw the world to be made. The questions here
are: How much of our lives is anarchist? Is our
anarchism alive? Are we crossing cultures to
provide and find ways to freedom?

Culture is most lively near the margins, at
points of interaction. This condition should not
be mistaken for an excuse to become marginalized
and exist solely beyond the boundaries of the
mainstream, in cul-de-sacs and insulated
enclaves. We must cross borders. Even as we
defend what we can claim as our own, we have to
relate to non-anarchist allies in an anti-
authoritarian way. Our work must model non-
hierarchical relationships that build increased
participation and territory.

Moving our reach outward means redrawing the
maps. Icons, from our circle A to posters by the
Federation of Iberian Anarchists, are markers
rather than comprehensive and clear explanations
of who we are and what we do and why. Our
symbols give space to our scenes, territory to
our movement and claim to a cultural and
strategic anarchist future.
The symbols of any culture are absolutely
important but without much capacity to be
critical. They are only the beginning of our
cultural territory.

Simple slogans can be replicated, shouted and
worn by anyone. Words, action, style and more
can be co-opted and/or criminalized by our
enemies. That can’t stop us. The state, its
agents and others will never adopt our
revolutionary intent. They will never promote
potent content that will reveal their own limits
and contribute to the downfall of their agenda.
Our words and actions have meaning and intention
they can’t imitate, profoundly different ways of
seeing the world and living in it.

Anarchist vision integrates resistance culture
and utopian culture, teaches us to make politics
relevant, encourages participation and
commitment, expresses the discipline and agency
that leads to clear and unified action. Our
culture means more than what can be shattered or
painted, printed or recorded. It is how we live
and fight and how and what we hope to win.

Anarchist culture will be a meaningful force
when our process and programs spell out our
politics, ways & means, actions & ideas, a clear
conception of the world and our place in it, our
values, sense of right & wrong, how we respond
to crisis, and the directions we take. Whether
we concentrate on anarchist literature or sports
leagues, debates or art, through it all a rich
culture will express the how and what and why of
our future. Fair play, competition, teamwork,
training, commitment, leadership, winning, and
discipline will prompt a different expectation
when the terms are connected to "anarchist."

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#3 Spring 2001 Contents

Articles

Anarchists in the Mix by Natalia Shotwell

What Good are Nations? by Michael Staudenmaier

From Here to the Free State by Austin, David, &
Emily Night

Home & the World by Robert Helms

Reviews

Whose 'Net? Our 'Net! by Derek Kenney

The Continuing Appeal of Authoritarianism by
Sara Jane Smith

Columns

Ask a Fallen Comrade

Outside the Circle by Cindy Milstein

Art

Revolutionary Frills by Mat Defiler

And more…

In this issue: The editorial collective asks,
"How do we define, locate, and strengthen
anarchist culture?" In two articles, the authors
look for lessons from struggles against
gentrification in San Francisco and against
highway construction in Minneapolis. Michael
Staudenmaier considers two opposing answers,
from Anarcho-Syndicalist Review and the
Anarchist Black Cross Federation, to the
question of nationalism. Robert Helms looks for
anarchist spaces "to secure our freedom or put
our imaginations to use." Derek Kenney looks at
the use of the internet by TAO. Sara Jane Smith
asks, what did anarchists find in Fire by Night,
a non-anarchist organization? Sacco and Vanzetti
advise the youth. Cindy Milstein argues for
constructing a vision of what would replace the
state. All this, some illustrated fashion
suggestions for the black bloc, and more art.

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you.

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