Anarchy Works.pdf - Infoshop.org

evolution
Anorchy Works
institutions. Even in the rare case that they legitimately come from
dispempowered constituencies and build internally democratic
structures, they still must negotiate with existing authorities to
gain influence, and their ultimate objective is to gain control over
a centralized power structure. For political parties to gain power
through the parliamentary process, they must set aside whatever
egalitarian principles and revolutionary goals they might have had
and cooperate with pre-existing arrangements of power-the needs
of capitalists, imperialist wars, and so on. This sad process was
demonstrated by social democratic parties around the world from
Labour in the UK to the Communist Party in Italy, and more recently
by the Green Party in Germany or the workers' Party in Brazil. On
the other hand, when political parties-such as the Bolsheviks, the
Khmer Rouge, and the Cuban communists-seek to impose change
by taking control in a coup d'etat or civil war, their authoritarianism
is even more immediately visible.
However, expressly anti-authoritarian revolutionaries have a
history of destroying power rather than taking it. None of their
uprisings have been perfect, but they do provide hope for the future
and lessons on how an anarchist revolution could be achieved.
While authoritarianism is always a danger, it is not an inevitable
outcome of struggle.
In 2001, following years of discrimination and brutality, the
Amazigh (Berber) inhabitants ofKabylia, a region of Algeria,
rose up against the predominantly Arab government. The
trigger to the uprising came on the 18t h of April when the
gendarmerie killed a local youth and later subjected a number
of students to arbitrary arrest, though the resulting movement
clearly demonstrated itself to be much broader than a reaction
against police brutality. Starting April 21, people fought with the
gendarmerie, burned down police stations, government buildings,
and offices of opposition political parties. Noting that the offices of
government social services were not spared, domestic intellectuals
and journalists as well as leftists in France paternalistically
admonished that the misguided rioters were destroying their own
neighborhoods-omitting out of hypocrisy or ignorance the fact
that social services in poor regions serve the same function as the
police, only that they perform the softer part of the job.
The riots generalized into insurrection, and the people of
Kabylia soon achieved one of their main demands-the removal of
the gendarmerie from the region. Many police stations that were
not burnt down outright were besieged and had their supply lines
cut off so that the gendarmerie had to go out in force on raiding
missions just to supply themselves. In the first months, police killed
over a hundred people, and wounded thousands, but the insurgents
did not back down. Due to the fierceness of the resistance rather
than the generosity of the government, Kabylia was still off limits to
the gendarmerie as of 2006.
The movement was soon organizing the liberated region
along traditional and anti-authoritarian lines. The communities
resurrected the Amazigh tradition of the aarch (or aaruch in plural),
a popular assembly for self-organization. Kabylia benefited from
a deep-rooted anti-authoritarian culture. During the French
colonization, the region was the home to frequent uprisings, and
daily resistance to government administration.
In 1948, a village assembly, for example, formally
prohibited communication with the government
about community affairs: "Passing information to any
authority, be it about the morality of another citizen,
be it about tax figures, will be sanctioned with a fine
of ten thousand francs. It is the most grave type of
fine that exists. The mayor and the rural guard are
not excluded"[ ... ] And when the current movement
began to organize committees of neighborhoods and
villages, one delegate (from the aarch of Ait Dj ennad)
204
205