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strategies for change 155
extend the influence of their ideas. They have been encouraged in
this belief by the apparent ‘unconscious’ anarchism of the movement:
both the appeal that decentralist and anti-hierarchical principles
exercise across the movement as a whole, notwithstanding its
plurality, and the unity of action demonstrated by activists. As
Naomi Klein argues, there is a general consensus within the antiglobalization
movement that ‘building community based decisionmaking
power – whether through unions, neighbourhoods, farms,
villages, anarchist collectives or aboriginal self-government – is
essential to countering the might of multinational corporations’. 67
Whilst new social movements, non-governmental organizations and
political parties channel these ideas to state agencies, anarchist
anti-globalizers contend that the mobilization of popular opinion
against neo-liberal corporate economics is the movement’s greatest
strength. For them, the anti-globalization movement has opened up
a new sphere of democratic participation and, through this participation,
it has drawn ordinary citizens across the globe into anarchistic
action. The promise of the anti-globalization movement is that it
avoids the ‘staging’ and ‘workerism’ of syndicalist strike actions and
extends beyond the sprayings, brickings, glueings and bombings
undertaken by disparate ‘guerrilla’ groups. The challenge of the
anti-globalization movement is to discover how to translate intuitive
anarchistic practice into anarchist action.
Peace activists in the 1960s confronted a similar problem. Then,
advocates of non-violent civil disobedience argued that the protest
movement had a revolutionary potential, but that protestors needed
to be drawn into a wider campaign of direct action. Anarchists
disagreed about how they should release this potential. Some argued
for programmes of practical anarchy, others for more aggressive
strategies, shaped by affinity groups. Alan Lovell’s hope was that
protest would bring about gradual social change: ‘you gain power
over this institution, you change that one, you put a bit of pressure
here’. In time, he argued, ‘there is a change, so that people have much
more control over their lives, control which they have actually taken
themselves’. 68 Similarly, in 1964 Robert Swann argued that the peace
movement was ‘equipped by the way of organisation, motivation,
and understanding’ to accomplish lasting anarchist change and that
they ‘should include in their agenda … a constructive programme
for revitalization of the cities’. 69 On the other side of the argument,
Vernon Richards argued that the peace movement had succeeded in
convincing ‘many thousands of people … to participate in “illegal”