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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”
156 anarchism: a beginner’s guide demonstrations’ but it was an illusion to suppose that ‘the violence of our existing social system can be destroyed by massive nonviolent demonstrations’. 70 The way forward was to combine practical programmes with strike actions and permanent rebellion. Militants in the anti-globalization movement tend not to see the parallel between their predicament and that faced by the ’60s activists. Indeed, many accounts suggest that the campaign for peace has a different dynamic from the anti-globalization movement. Whereas the former was idealistic and passively engaged in anarchist struggle, the latter is and actively engaged. Anarchists active in the anti-globalization movement undertake a full range of protest actions. Some are involved in labour organizations, others prefer what are called ‘fluffy’ or non-violent forms of symbolic protest (‘Tactical Frivolity’). As a participant in Genoa describes, anarchists in this group wear pink and silver, dress up as fairies, are inspired by the vision of ‘a massive global party full of happy loving rocking tick tockin’ fun and funky free people living in peace, laughing singing dancing and playing like they’ve never played before’. 71 Less fluffy Wombles (White Overalls Movement Building Libertarian Effective Struggles) invert symbols of violence by dressing in foam and paper protective gear and organize a range of confrontational activities – from samba parties and lockdown blockades to illegal camps and squats and the occupation of public transport. At the ‘spikier’ end of the spectrum, anarchists join the Black Bloc, a loosely organized black-clad cluster of affinity groups and individuals, distinguished by their commitment to violence – as a means to resist arrest, assist in ‘un-arrests’, break police lines and meet state violence head-on. Elements within the Black Bloc are also committed to property damage, some targeting symbols of multinational power and sweat-shop production – financial institutions, Nike and Levi stores, Starbucks and McDonald’s – others undertaking the indiscriminate destruction of shops, cars, bus shelters, telephone kiosks, and other public buildings and utilities. These forms of action appear to have little in common. Yet militants consider that there is more that binds these direct actions together than there is to tie any one of them to the peace protests of the past. As one militant puts it, ‘the fact that [actions] … haven’t involved ritualistic wandering up and down through city streets has given people a reason for taking part’. The lesson, he continues,
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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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