Anarchist Opinions on Violence
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[edit] Anarchists and Violence
On violence, a subject that still divides anarchists, Malatesta was very clear.
"Anarchists are opposed to violence; everybody knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations…" but also "It is abundantly clear that violence is needed to resist the violence of the adversary, and we must advocate and prepare it, if we do not wish the present situation of slavery in disguise, in which most of humanity finds itself, to continue and worsen. But violence contains within itself the danger of transforming the revolution into a brutal struggle without the light of an ideal and without possibilities of a beneficial outcome; and for this reason one must stress the moral aims of the movement, and the need, and the duty, to contain violence within the limits of strict necessity.
"We do not say that violence is good when we use it and harmful when others use it against us. We say that violence is justifiable, good and 'moral,' as well as a duty when it is used in one's own defence and that of others, against the demands of those who believe in violence; it is evil and 'immoral' if it serves to violate the freedom of others …
"… We consider violence a necessity and a duty for defence, but only for defence. And we mean not only for defence against direct, sudden, physical attack, but against all those institutions which use force to keep the people in a state of servitude…" A review of Malatesta, Life and Ideas Edited by Vernon Richards
[edit] Today's Anarchists and Violence
See Main Article: Anarchism
Anarchists have often been portrayed as dangerous and violent, due mainly to a number of high-profile violent acts including riots, assassinations, and insurrections involving anarchists. Since the 1970s, the punk image of irresponsible youths has also been associated with anarchist symbolism, so furthering the association with violence.
Depictions in the press and popular fiction (for example, a malevolent bomb-throwing anarchist in Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent) helped create a lasting public impression that anarchists are violent terrorists. This perception was enhanced by events such as the Haymarket Riot, where anarchists were blamed for throwing a bomb at police who came to break up a public meeting in Chicago.
More recently, anarchists have been involved in protests against World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings across the globe, which have often turned violent (being described by some as "riots"). Traditionally, Mayday in London has been a day of marching, but in recent years the Metropolitan Police have warned that a "hardcore of anarchists" are intent on causing violence. Anarchists often respond that it is the police who initiate violence at these demonstrations, with the anarchist intent being only to defend themselves. The anarchists involved in such protests often formed black blocs at these protests and some engaged in property destruction, vandalism, or in violent conflicts with police, though others stuck to non-violent principles.
[edit] Analysis of Violence
[edit] A Post-Left Critique of Violence
From Against the Corpse Machine: Defining A Post-leftist Anarchist Critique of Violence
..Instead of claiming that smashing a window isn't violent - a point that average people reject out of common sense (and therefore makes me wonder about the common sense of some anarchists) - why don't we drop the semantics and admit that, yes, it's very clearly violent and then make a case for it? Do we consider the Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian homes non-violent? If, on the other hand, smashing a window is merely a symbolic act, but not violent, what message are we trying to send? With smashing a window thus set as the absolute limit of appropriate dissent, aren't we really making the absurdly contradictory point that this violent system must be opposed through a variety of tactics, up to and including smashing a window (which is not violent, by the way). But no further. Is this the limit, then, of our resistance? What a sad comment on our motivations, if non-violence is the furthest frontier of our rage in the face of this corpse machine, America.
What do we do then, once anarchists or, more realistically, everyday folk do start picking up rocks (or other weapons) and using them against cops? In the case of average people engaged in revolt, what will distinguish our moralizing denunciations from those of the Leftists and the State? When this happens with anarchists (much less frequently, of course), Leftists and liberals point fingers and, in response, anarchist comrades will go to great lengths to explain how the poor anarchists were merely defending themselves. But let's examine the logic of this point: must we always be on the defensive then? Are we perpetual victims? Or is it more likely, as Alfredo Bonnano pointed out in his essay, Armed Joy, that we have created an ideological construct which does not allow us to see ourselves as instigators of conflict?..
..The dirty little secret that many anarchists and Leftists alike are trying desperately to avoid exposing is that violent actions often have a mass base of support (consider popular support for the many late 20th and early 21st Century wars and the death penalty as but two obvious mainstream socially acceptable examples), but that anarchists today have failed to maintain their place within this base. Hence the ease with which the Left has subsumed and co-opted our energies and at the same time foreshadowing the ease with which the State will bring its violence to bear on us, likely accompanied by hardly a whimper of dissent from the amongst the poor, for whom our actions often have little relevance, regardless of our grand pronouncements to the contrary. What's particularly troubling – for anarchists, that is - is that all this is despite the fact that poor folk kill police, rob banks, shoot politicians and attack capitalists (and their proxies) relatively frequently, and with much quiet support from oppressed people across the country. Much of the reason for this disconnect is the privileged way anarchists have continued to locate themselves within the Leftist tradition, unlike the majority of the poor who have quietly opted out of both the Left and the Right, along with electoral and union politics in general (largely for the same reasons). When did anarchists start believing the inherently conservative Leftist lie that "now is not the time", that non-violence is the only legitimate method of social change or that "the people are alienated by violence," especially given the massive evidence to the contrary? Rejecting the millenarianism of Marxism, anarchists have always insisted that any time could be the right time..
..The fact is, sometimes violence is an appropriate means of dealing with a problem, political or not. The victim kills her rapist in the act. Two people with a grudge duke it out. A bomb goes off at a government or corporate building. Who's to say that these are inappropriate methods of dealing with problems? Not every dispute needs to be mediated or moderated by an outside force. Isn't this principle, too, at the core of the anarchist critique? While ends and means are both important, many anarchists today fetishize the means, ignoring entirely the fact that different means, while not justified by the ends, can have different outcomes, some of which are more desirable than others. Simply because we have created a category ("violence") into which we have arbitrarily lumped all sorts of dis-similar actions (everything from fistfights to fusion bombs) does not mean that we are off the hook when it comes to evaluating their usefulness and place in society. Further, all sorts of things that probably could just as well be considered violent have been left out, and each omission reflects specific value judgments in its own right. "Self-defense", fishing, a bug smashed on the windshield of a speeding car, carpal tunnel syndrome, a worker buried under a load of bricks at work, pumping gas into your car that was taken from a pipeline in Colombia so you can go to work, an ant squashed underfoot, a car crash, and a white blood cell devouring a virus are all examples of actions that are not generally considered violent, despite the quite reasonable case that could be made for qualifying them as such..
[edit] Natural Violence
From: Myths of Primitivism: an interview with Ted Kaczynski
V: Don’t you think violence is violence? TK: Of course, violence is violence. And violence is also a necessary part of nature. If predators did not kill members of prey species, then the prey species would multiply to the point where they would destroy their environment by consuming everything edible. Many kinds of animals are violent even against members their own species. For example, it is well known that wild chimpanzees often kill other chimpanzees. See Time Magazine, August 19, 2002, page 56. In some regions, fights are common among wild bears. The magazine Bear and Other Top Predators, Volume 1, Issue 2, pages 28-29, shows a photograph of bears fighting and a photograph of a bear wounded in a fight, and mentions that such wounds can be deadly. Among the sea birds called brown boobies, two eggs are laid in each nest. After the eggs are hatched, one of the young birds attacks the other and forces it out of the nest, so that it dies. See article “Sibling Desperado,” Science News, Volume 163, February 15, 2003.Human beings in the wild constitute one of the more violent species. A good general survey of the cultures of hunting-and-gathering people is The Hunting Peoples, by Carleton S. Coon, published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto, 1971, and in this book you will find numerous examples in hunting-and-gathering societies of violence by human beings against other human beings. Professor Coon makes clear (pages XIX, 3, 4, 9, 10) that he admires hunting-and-gathering peoples and regards them as more fortunate than civilized ones. But he is an honest man and does not censor out those aspects of primitive life, such as violence, that appear disagreeable to modern people.Thus, it is clear that a significant amount of violence is a natural part of human life. There is nothing wrong with violence in itself. In any particular case, whether violence is good or bad depends on how it is used and the purpose for which it is used.So why do modern people regard violence as evil in itself? They do so for one reason only: They have been brainwashed by propaganda. Modern society uses various forms of propaganda to teach people to be frightened and horrified by violence because the techno-industrial system needs a population that is timid, docile, and afraid to assert itself, a population that will not make trouble or disrupt the orderly functioning of the system. Power depends ultimately on physical force. By teaching people that violence is wrong (except, of course, when the system itself uses violence via the police or the military), the system maintains its monopoly on physical force and thus keeps all power in its own hands.Whatever philosophical or moral rationalizations people may invent to explain their belief that violence is wrong, the real reason for that belief is that they have unconsciously absorbed the system’s propaganda.
[edit] Property Violence
From: N30 Black Block Communique
We contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property--especially corporate private property--is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it. Private property should be distinguished from personal property. The latter is based upon use while the former is based upon trade. The premise of personal property is that each of us has what s/he needs. The premise of private property is that each of us has something that someone else needs or wants. In a society based on private property rights, those who are able to accrue more of what others need or want have greater power. By extension, they wield greater control over what others perceive as needs and desires, usually in the interest of increasing profit to themselves. Advocates of "free trade" would like to see this process to its logical conclusion: a network of a few industry monopolists with ultimate control over the lives of the everyone else. Advocates of "fair trade" would like to see this process mitigated by government regulations meant to superficially impose basic humanitarian standards. As anarchists, we despise both positions. Private property--and capitalism, by extension--is intrinsicly violent and repressive and cannot be reformed or mitigated. Whether the power of everyone is concentrated into the hands of a few corporate heads or diverted into a regulatory apparatus charged with mitigating the disasters of the latter, no one can be as free or as powerful as they could be in a non-hierarchical society. When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights. At the same time, we exorcize that set of violent and destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost everything around us. By "destroying" private property, we convert its limited exchange value into an expanded use value. A storefront window becomes a vent to let some fresh air into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet (at least until the police decide to tear-gas a nearby road blockade). A newspaper box becomes a tool for creating such vents or a small blockade for the reclamation of public space or an object to improve one's vantage point by standing on it. A dumpster becomes an obstruction to a phalanx of rioting cops and a source of heat and light. A building facade becomes a message board to record brainstorm ideas for a better world. After N30, many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a thousand-fold. The number of broken windows pales in comparison to the number broken spells--spells cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into forgetfulness of all the violence committed in the name of private property rights and of all the potential of a society without them. Broken windows can be boarded up (with yet more waste of our forests) and eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come.
[edit] A Critique of Immediacy
From: I believe the children are our future...
No future for me
It's my suspicion that the exclusion of children in anarchist culture and lifestyles occurs for a number of reasons, one of them being the tendency of anarcho-culture to attract transitory high school and college aged "kids" who haven't gotten to the point of makin’ babies. Having children, let alone incorporating them into anarchist resistance/lifestyle, just isn't even an issue. The second theory as to why children are left at the margins is the immediacy of our perspectives/politics. Anarchists tend to be realistic dreamers, critics who have escaped from their mental ghettos to realize that we can live lives of absolute freedom, by our own dictates, by our own desires. We have come to these realizations and furthermore educated ourselves as to the obstacles that stand in the way of our freedom. When we understand the restrictions upon our lives, we then, everyday, are confronted with the social relations and institutions that act to restrict and control us, which translates into an awareness that if those institutions and social relationships were gone TODAY, then TODAY we could live free yet again. This sense of immediacy, this rightful sense of immediacy, tends to dissuade us from a more long-term strategy, from a future even. Those that hold this sense of immediacy, this desire to liberate ourselves often are attracted to the collapsist, primitivist, anti-civ, insurrectionary strains and cultures of anarchism, which makes sense. I certainly find myself leaning towards those groupings. When we see the bars in front of us, why wouldn't we try to rip them down immediately? There is nothing shameful and naive about wanting to liberate oneself, denying a future strategy, living free. There is only shame in resignation and compromise.
Still, this sense of immediacy tends to push anarchists away from future strategies that involve our children and their inclusion as participants in the now. This is hopeful for liberation, yet problematic for our children. I have desires that a social rupture will give us a taste of liberation and self-reliance, but I also know any future world created by a social rupture or even a continuation of civilization as we know it won't be a pretty sight for my child, and all our children, therefore I recognize the need to plan for them as well.
At a job I once worked at I met a guy who was just a bit younger than me, but more established for the future, with an organic farm, a partner, four kids, and a socially conservative perspective rooted in rural racism. He was undoubtedly a Klan member. Regardless, he had a good perspective on the future. He believed shit was going down so he planned for it, buying certain guns, growing his own food, learning how to can vegetables, securing his land, etc., but he also wasn't convinced it was happening in his lifetime. He believed in social rupture, but also believed in making sure his kids were safe if it happened when they were around, just like his parents did for him. Anarchists could learn from that sort of outlook.
[edit] Autonomy and Resistance
Anarchists avoid situations of direct violence, preferring instead to accomplish claims of autonomous space. These can be in the form of workplace strikes, protests, street disturbances, squatting, infoshops, bike co-ops and so on. The permanence of the space claimed is one measure of success while the amount of resistance the space claim creates is another. A legally purchased infoshop space and an illegal city center street disturbance both present advantages, the former providing a social center for anarchists to deepen their connections while the latter brings attention to a tension anarchists feel is important.
Anarchists are often pro-resistance and see property destruction as a form of "propaganda of the deed" and sometimes as a method for "direct action". Whether this is actually violence is disputed because only objects are targetted. Also, because property tied to the privilege of capitalism is often seen as coercion by most anarchists, it is seen as a legitimate way to take direct action against and/or to create visibility of exploitive practices.
Violence against people is discouraged in most situations, primarily due to the social nature of most anarchist views on revolution, preferring to target symbols of the systematic oppression society is forced to endure. When violence occurs, either in self-defense or in an attack against symbols, it is usually with police officers that are attempting to control a situation of tension or when they are defending a targetted symbol for attack. The latter is rarely attempted outside of areas of extreme tension. Often anarchists are immersed in some sort of popular movement in these occurances as well, playing a major role in defending situations of resistance. Places of tension include Italy, Greece, Argentina, South Korea, Germany, Mexico and others.
[edit] Beyond a Critique of Violence, Beyond a Justification for Self-Defence
Anarchists offer justifications for mass society and its use of violence that challenges preconceived notions of pacifism and nonviolence. This shatters the illusions that some hold, often falsely believing that violence is alienating, when it is often people that are alienated from violence.
Individuals often take violent action, this is perceived. It is also perceived that they are reacting to the paradigms of civilization. We can explain why others do such things, we can even explain why anarchists do such things. When speaking as anarchists, self-defense is often a given reason for why anarchists resort to violence. In order to move beyond self-defense, some of today's anarchists examine classic revolutionary history. This research reveals early anarchists and social revolutonaries more eager to bring violence to their oppressors. Tracing this vein of thought, the origins of this social revolutionary position can find nihilist roots in Tzarist Russia. In this period, the new educated individual and the newly freed peasant suffered under absolutism for a variety of reasons. When their struggles intertwined, the Tzar's forces enacted the brutality of white terror to repress them. In this era of desperation, the terrorist was created and rationalized by revolutionary militants, many of whom were influenced by the "Catechism of the Revolutionist", a program that challenged the Tzar's white terror with a cold methodic strategy and system of revolutionary arbitration towards society.
Anarchists influenced by this strategy had a much different situation, but were dealing with similar levels of desperation as poverty permeated Western Europe and America. They were also able to have more open dialogues on the conditions of resistance and what could and doesn't work for their time. Starting from a social perspective, anarchists challenged the electorialism of the social democrats and pressed for direct action instead of electorialism. Often perceiving their actions as propaganda, the program of propaganda of the deed developed to speak the message of anarchists with action. After a couple of decades of scattered practice, lots of hard talk and increased repression, most anarchists moved away from the first programs of propaganda of the deed. Even in this era people were divided over the dichotomies of using violence to obtain goals with the defenders of violence providing little satisfactory answers, some claiming it is only self-defense, others saying it is justified because of the exploitive practices of the times.
Rarely have anarchists attempted to weigh violence as something to master as an individual expression of power and therefore a positive influence in society. Violence too often is perceived as a method for expressing desperation, not as something to practice between friends and comrades. While ugly violence is explained, why not explain a method of violence people can openly discuss and agree to? Something that is visible to people on a practical, engaging and social level. Something they can learn about themselves and not through the media. While some scream "the time is now" and "what we are doing now is pointless and isn't going to change anything" we can instead opt to say we don't know, because that is the truth. With a desperate attitude no wonder people give in to the system so easily. Society is pacified while the Chicken Little's of the world demanding we take up arms or desert the cities. Anarchists can give up on the future and be free because of it. In an age when progress is questioned and doom dances in the heads of a great many, giving up on the future can be a very positive thing. No more must we worry that in a number of years we will see the appocalypse, the collapse, nuclear meltdown, global war, depressions, recessions, national strife and so on. Instead we can act without the future, we can become ourselves and understand our relation to violence. We can express the lives we've always wanted to live and fuck the dark future. We are stronger than that.
[edit] Anarchist Views on Violent Resistance
Violent Resistance is an aspect of how anarchists sometimes express their desires in conflict with the present social order. Here are some views on how anarchists view violent resistance.
[edit] Anarchist Primitivist and Anti-Civilization Anarchist View
From: Notes on Green Anarchy & Primitivism: Summarizing Primitivism for purposes of exploration and debate with Michael Albert By John Zerzan, Eric Blair, and Green Anarchy Collective
While most of us strive for a peaceful and harmonious existence among ourselves and the rest of life, it is important to recognize the context we currently live within. Most of the world’s people are living under deplorable conditions, not because they have not become “civilized” or “modernized”, but instead are forced to be the workforce and dumping ground for, or dependent on, the so-called “first world” powers. Those of us living in the “first world” are also suffering from this rotten set-up. With extreme alienation, physical deterioration, psychological distortions, and spiritual emptiness, there is no question we are all quickly headed down a one-way path of ultimate doom. Needless to say, it is also undeniable that we are on the verge of ecological collapse. With this being said, it is important for us to take responsibility for this situation and to take action now. . . as we understand that time is running out!
Inherent in being a revolutionary anarchist is the notion of insurrection, or the promotion and insurgence of uprising for the purpose of liberation. This can take many forms, but reform of the systems of domination cannot be viewed as revolutionary. While most actions anarchists take would be considered non-violent, there can be no limitation set on our resistance. As anarchists, we should flatly refuse any ideological and philosophical confines to how we choose to resist. Physical interaction with authority needs to move beyond the passive and symbolic. In fact, many anarchists embrace revolutionary violence as a necessary and natural reaction to oppression. If we look anywhere in the natural world, we see that self- defense is instinctual. This cannot be overridden by hypothetical ideals. It is important to question ideological limitations stemming from a place of extreme privilege. Most people on earth do not have the comfort to decide what the most "righteous" response to domination should be, and often the stakes are life and death. It is not a matter of individual reflection or ideological refinement; it's do or die. This is not to say that everyone needs to engage in violent resistance, but rather, to say that it exists, it is justifiable (in many situations), and should not be condemned. Revolutionary violence, in a variety of forms, is a necessary response to the system’s institutionalized violence, and necessary for the continuation of all of life. Yes, we need to heal the wounds caused by this death-trip we call civilization, but the healing process can only go so far until we are able to stop the infliction of these wounds by our oppressors. As Franz Fanon suggested, there is also a kind of catharsis and deepening in connection between one another in the act of revolt and in the physical removal of one’s oppressor. Although some cannot or refuse to see that we are all looking down the barrel of a gun, it is there and we must respond to it in an act of self- defense and of liberation.
[edit] Insurrectionary Anarchist View
From Some notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism
PERMANENT CONFLICTUALITY versus mediation with institutional forces
- Conflictuality should be seen as a permanent element in the struggle against those in power. A struggle which lacks this element ends up pushing us towards mediating with the institutions, grows accustomed to the habits of delegating and believing in an illusory emancipation carried out by parliamentary decree, to the very point of actively participating in our own exploitation ourselves.
- There might perhaps be individual reasons for doubting the attempt to reach one’s aims with violent means. But when non-violence comes to be raised to the level of a non-violable principle, and where reality is divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ then arguments cease to have value, and everything is seen in terms of submission and obedience. The officials of the anti-globalization movement, by distancing themselves and denouncing others have clarified one point in particular: that they see their principles--to which they feel duty-bound--as a claim to power over the movement as a whole.
The anarchist minority and the exploited and excluded:
- We are of the exploited and excluded, and thus our task is to act. Yet some critique all action that is not part of a large and visible social movement as “acting in the place of the proletariat.” They counsel analysis and waiting, instead of acting. Supposedly, we are not exploited alongside the exploited; our desires, our rage and our weaknesses are not part of the class struggle. This is nothing but another ideological separation between the exploited and subversives.
- The active anarchist minority is not slave to numbers but continues to act against power even when the class clash is at a low level within the exploited of society. Anarchist action should not therefore aim at organizing and defending the whole of the class of exploited in one vast organization to see the struggle from beginning to end, but should identify single aspects of the struggle and carry them through to their conclusion of attack. We must also move away from the stereotypical images of the great mass struggles, and the concept of the infinite growth of a movement that is to dominate and control everything.
[edit] Platformist View
From Wayne Price: Revolution, Violence, and Nonviolence
In my country, the United States of America (and in similar countries), I foresee one of two outcomes for a revolution. One is that a revolution may be a particularly bloody conflict, a vicious civil war. After all, the U.S. has a large middle class and a well-off layer of workers, with traditions of patriotism, religious superstition, racism and sexism, as well as the already-mentioned reactionary ruling class. Such forces may oppose a working class rebellion to the bitter end. It may be necessary for U.S. rebels to bring in a revolutionary army from Mexico.
On the other hand, it is possible that a U.S. revolution could be fairly peaceful and almost nonviolent. Unlike many other countries, the big majority of U.S. people are working class (perhaps 80%). Most of the military ranks are from the working class. Unity among the workers, as well as other oppressed groups, could prevent much violence. Especially if revolutions have been successful in other countries, the ruling class and its agents could be demoralized and easier to overthrow.
But even in the preferred case, violence will be kept to a minimum precisely if we are prepared, organized, and unified. The more prepared our class is to defend itself, the more likely the enemy is to be demoralized and to give up easily. And if an armed conflict becomes inevitable, as per the first possibility, then obviously it will be better to have been prepared. So either way, it is better for workers and the oppressed not to have illusions in the peaceful nature of the capitalist enemy.
Revolutions always use elements of what is otherwise regarded as “nonviolence.” Revolutionary struggles often include strikes and other mass actions which are often unarmed, at least at first. Also, revolutions always try to win over the troops on the other side (and no future revolution will succeed without winning over the troops of the empire’s army), as well as to raise the morale of the troops in any revolutionary army. Revolutions seek to win over the population behind the troops on the counterrevolutionary side as well as to encourage the population on the revolutionary side. Revolutions try to demoralize the core of hardened counterrevolutionary forces. These effects are done by propaganda but more than that, by politics. Revolutionaries raised demands for land, freedom, an end to poverty and oppression, and peace, and implement these ideas in whatever territory they control.
Strikes, propaganda, and political moves are all part of any revolutionary struggle--but they are not enough. For example, troops will not lightly come over to the workers’ side. After all, it is a very serious matter for soldiers to disobey their officers--they can be shot. Rebellious troops must believe that the people are prepared to go all the way, to protect them through a successful revolution. Nonviolent methods may be used, but are not sufficient.
We anarchists want a world without war or any sort of violence. But to get it, there will have to be a social revolution to completely change society, overturning the ruling class and its state. We will try to keep revolutionary violence to a minimum, but the vicious, brutal, nature of the capitalist class will require at least the threat of mass violence.
