Sociology of the Anarchists - Gozips.uakron.edu - The University of ...

International Monetary Fund (IMF). 20
Critical theory says that conflict is not in the realm of resources, but in the realm of
culture and ideas. Anarchism appears to be somewhat sympathetic to this view, too, since
the quest to overcome oppressive ideologies (and replace them with freedom) is a battle
of ideas, i.e. is socialism more just than capitalism, can egalitarian families be constructed
minus patriarchy, etc.? The “oppression” of rationalization kills our creativity, says
critical theory, and anarchist would likely say similar things (the Machiavellian quest for
economic efficiency is detrimental to creative and liberating social relations).
Georg Simmel's conflict theory of sociation does not address inequality, but abstract
forms. He says society is patterned interactions, in which humans interact with each other
in patterns that exist on the level of individuals or nations. Simmel focused on the
patterns of interactions not the content itself. This can be applied to network theory
(where parties interact with each other in huge spiderwebs of connections). There is a
distinction between strong and weak ties. A close tie is an intimate or family connection,
while weak ties are acquaintance connections. This difference would be useful for
anarchists (and other leftists) to understand why the same people get recycled through
their movements (via only strong connections). Weak connections (ties to outside groups)
gives access to more information and thus more possibility for movement building—a
fancy way of repeating the old adage: “don't preach to the choir”. Thus, each sociation has
both positive and negative aspects: fighting and arguing over something (such as political
views or values) is negative, but the fact that it is important enough to fight over is
positive (according to Simmel's thinking).
Simmel also distinguishes between conflict and competition: conflict requires the defeat
of an opponent to achieve a goal, while competition is parallel efforts by opponents to
achieve the same goal, but the defeat of the opponent does not mean you are successful in
completing your goal. This is a useful lens for the direct action movement to consider:
does locking down a street for an hour or two accomplish a goal, even though the
opponent (police, the city, conference delegates, “the system”) is temporarily beat?
According to Simmel, such things are not true conflict, but rather competition (in this
example, competition for control over city streets or access, but not conflict that
challenges/changes existing power relations). Perhaps a corollary to this theory might be
to say that competition can be channeled into conflict (via social revolution)?
Concepts of conflict resolution can be derived from Simmel. First, inter-group conflict
between group members can lead to factions, something all anarchists know about due to
the strong feelings many anarchists have about things. In recent years, there has been
much contention within anarchist organizations about issues of racism, sexism,
homophobia, etc. The “APOC” (anarchist people of color) movement has been very
encouraging in one of these respects—collectives and conferences are occurring in many
parts of the US now.
External threats, in the form of common enemies can unify factions and reduce internal
20 Including other neo-colonist organizations and schemes: TABD, APEC, WEF, NAFTA, FTAA, MAI,
and other alphabet soup acronyms.
[ Williams 21 ] [ this is a draft. do not cite. ]