o_195qg5dto17o4rbc85q1ge61i84a.pdf

celebrates power. ‘Human beings have a need … for something that
we will call the “power process”’. This process is not the same as a
lust for power – which might be linked to state domination – and it
does not exist in all people to the same degree. Nevertheless the
power process is about ‘goal, effort … attainment of goal’ and
‘autonomy’ and it is properly satisfied when individuals have the
opportunity to fulfil meaningful, moderately difficult ‘drives’. This
kind of power is usually denied in civilization but can be realized
through engagement with civilization’s destruction. Perlman, who
finds revolution in remembrance, similarly defines the state’s abolition
with reference to power. The memory of the past, of the time
before Leviathan, is ‘a power … a power to remove [man’s]
Leviathanic mask while still enmeshed in a Leviathanic web’. 64
Anarchists influenced by postmodern and poststructuralist
thought adopt a similarly open approach to power. However, rather
than seeing power as something to be claimed by workers from the
state or as an essential human drive, they conceptualize power
within the context of the rhizome. Here, power might be arranged
hierarchically and it might be concentrated at particular sites. Yet
power is transgressive and transformative. As Todd May explains, it
can be ‘suppressive’ or ‘productive’, it ‘suppresses actions, events,
and people, but creates them as well’. 65 Power is neither to be abolished
nor possessed. To think of power in these conflictual (‘binary’)
terms is to misunderstand it. Power must be utilized in new and different
ways, not relocated.
The three alternatives are mapped below:
Three Anarchist Views of Power
anarchist rejections of the state 75
State Means of Legitimate power
critique struggle
Anarcho- Exploitative Foster solidarity Collective/class
syndicalism/
communism
Primitivists Alienating Mass rebellion/ Individual/mass
self-assertion/
regeneration
Postmoderns Hierarchical Networking Local, diverse,
non-hierarchical