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strategies for change 147 Over a hundred years since Kropotkin there is little sign that people feel compelled to seek alternatives to the services offered by the bureaucratic state. And though Ward is probably right that practical anarchism is more attractive to more people than strategies that promise revolution and civil war, it runs the risk of encouraging would-be anarchists to judge ‘what should be’ by the standards of ‘what is’. protest The difference between protest and revolution used to be one of expectation: anarchists protested when they believed that there was little potential for revolution and in the hope that the protest would increase it. Now, some new anarchists – particularly those influenced by postmodern and poststructuralist ideas – see protest as the only legitimate form of revolutionary action. On the first view, protest provides a means of mobilizing peoples and, by provoking counteraction, of illustrating the truly repressive character of authority. On the second, it is not directed towards the removal or replacement of constituted power, but towards the expression and development of plural ways of acting. For both, however, it is possible to distinguish four categories of protest: constitutional action, symbolic action, direct action and civil disobedience. This section examines these forms of protest and then considers the ways in which anti-globalizers have employed them as instruments of mass protest. constitutional action Constitutional action describes orthodox, legal forms of protest. Owing to their denunciation of representative or parliamentary democracy anarchists are not usually associated with this form of action. Yet anarchists make good use of the legal framework and the liberal freedoms of speech, press and association it provides to produce books, leaflets and journals, organize public meetings, lecture series, summer schools, conferences and discussion groups. Today the internet provides anarchists with perhaps the most effective means of constitutional action – even primitivists who despise technology are well organized on the web. 51
148 anarchism: a beginner’s guide Most constitutional action is directed towards education and the publication of anarchist ideas. In the hands of groups like the Guerrilla Girls, it is also used as an instrument of cultural subversion. By organizing workshops and producing posters, freely available on the web, the group reveal the male norms embedded in modern culture – and in particular in the Hollywood film industry – and probe the relationship between masculinity, power and violence. Constitutional action is also used as a critical tool. In their pamphlet ‘What’s Wrong with McDonald’s?’ London Greenpeace asked readers ‘to think for a moment about what lies behind McDonald’s clean, bright image’ and attempted to enlighten them with the facts. In 1990 the McDonald’s corporation disputed the factual basis of London Greenpeace’s claims in what became known as the McLibel trial – the longest libel trial in English judicial history. But in doing so they unwittingly underlined the power of constitutional action to fulfil a strong propaganda role. symbolic action Symbolic action consists of ‘those acts that aim to raise awareness of an issue or injustice, but by themselves do not attempt to resolve it’. Symbolic acts are those that ‘signify other acts’. 52 April Carter suggests that symbolic actions are designed to ‘create solidarity and confidence’, pointing to vigils and marches, fasts, slogans and songs as examples of symbolic acts. 53 More recently, Lindsay Hart has distinguished between two main forms of symbolic action: ‘bearing witness’ and ‘obstruction’. The first, which has a long history in the Quaker movement, is designed to tap the public’s conscience. By attending incidents or sites of injustice, protestors aim to exploit media coverage to raise awareness of abuse and provoke outrage at its continuation. This form of protest has been employed by groups from the Clamshell Alliance – an association of American antinuclear protestors in New Hampshire – to those involved in the International Solidarity Movement who draw attention to acts of violence and degradation committed by Israeli forces in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The second is widely employed to prevent road building, tree clearing, the movement of traffic and of arms and it demands of activists that they use their bodies to block unjust or oppressive actions – locking-on (to heavy machinery, transport, etc.) or sitting down in front of trains, tanks and bulldozers. 54
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contents Acknowledgements vii intro
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acknowledgements A number of people
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chapter two anarchist rejections of
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chapter three anarchy We have alway
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Page 186 and 187: index 177 Farrow, Lynne 119 fascism
Page 188 and 189: index 179 and state 30, 45-6, 50, 5
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