Thursday, December 19, 2024

 

I would prefer revolutionary internationalism

Dec
17
2024
comments

From libcom.org
December 8, 2024

A response to Wayne Price's ‘Should Anarchists Defend Ukraine? A Response to Bill Beech’ in Black Flag, Autumn 2024, Vol4.

‘The struggle for class and self-liberation is not to be compared with national conflicts. It is the function of the impersonal State to squander lives in war, or of a superior class to regard lesser humans as expendable; thus any war of the nation-state must in itself be in the nature of an atrocity. [...] [C]ompared with other conflicts, social liberation is the most difficult of all to achieve, beside which national liberation is a divertissement. For class struggle implies not merely collective action but the breaking down of that sequence of events ingrained in our society as command-and-obey. Any form of social protest may be useful as an attempt to destroy this sequence, which saps the lifeblood of mankind and makes it possible for the few to govern the many.’

The Floodgates of Anarchy - Stuart Christie & Albert Meltzer

To those who read the pages of Black Flag, it will be clear from Wayne Price’s response to my essay ‘War on Anarchism’, that his arrogance can only be matched by his ignorance.1 It is hard to debate someone who is fully committed to remaining ignorant and who persistently avoids any discussion of specifics, while retreating into abstract slogans and idealistic positions. In response to the many facts I present and the 48 footnotes, Wayne Price offers a stale reference to Bakunin, an oblique reference about Ukrainian anti-semitism (to quarrel with an argument I didn’t make), and a reference TO HIMSELF, Wayne Price. He also gives a potted history of Ukrainian struggle for national self-determination, which is as vague, as it is emotive. And makes a baseless claim that Nestor Makhno was a nationalist. It’s clear that Price and the Natopolitans2 are much more comfortable in the giddy heights of abstract, ahistorical, non-factual idealism, than the blood and piss and vomit of the Ukrainian trenches, or the realpolitik of inter-imperial conflict. Or the realities of class struggle.

Because he doesn’t dare touch the facts, Price quarrels with points I haven’t made, such as Ukraine being a hotbed of anti-semitism, that I subscribe to a Russian view that Ukraine has no right to exist, or that the lesser evil in this conflict would be to support Russian imperialism against NATO. None of them are positions I hold, so there is no need to defend them. What Price doesn’t and cannot engage with are the points I do make: about the origins and causes of the war, about the nature and course of it, its ongoing realities.

I will comment on a few of Price’s arguments before outlining as precisely as I can the ideological differences between the Natopolitan-defencist-nationalist position on one hand and the antimilitarist-defeatist-internationalist position on the other. For those who want to skip to the summary, see the last section below.

The Final Crusade

Let’s start with the anti-semitism question, since it is a common refrain and since it is of some interest. Also, it is worth considering, since Wayne Price was at pains to introduce it into the debate. Considering that in the last year, we’ve heard the most monstrously grotesque imperialist and racist excuses for Zionism shielded by charges of anti-semitism, I am greatly tickled that Price chooses to whitewash Ukraine, which is to all intents and purposes the world champion of armed Hitlerian and Banderite folklore.

The ultimate gotcha by the Ukrainian nationalists and Natopolitans is that Zelensky himself is Jewish, so therefore anti-semitism cannot be a strong force in Ukraine. There is as much truth to this, as Obama ushering in an end to racism, as anyone with even the basic interest in the facts will acknowledge. However, how do we explain the fact that this Jewish president led a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, a bona fide Ukrainian Nazi of WWII stature? The simple reason is that Ukrainian fascism’s main enemy is Russianness. It can therefore shelve the Jewish Question until Ukraine has dealt with Russia and its Russian minorities – it is the same principled deferral that Wayne Price advocates: defend the nation, and the revolution comes afterwards.

But while Price is happy to remain a keyboard warrior, the blood-steeped Azov Battalion is touring Europe (its 2024 mini-tour got quite a bit of pushback along the way), spreading their boot-shiny ideas and making links with likeminded individuals and groups. Its founder Biletsky famously stated that Ukraine’s national purpose is to ‘lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen’3 This charming lad was a Maidan ultra, then a fascist paramilitary in the Donbas (trained by NATO on how to operate grenade launchers and other US weapons) who finally graduated to being a member of the Ukrainian parliament. He is but one in a gallery of ghouls that populate the Ukrainian state and para-state formations. For those who want to follow the deep currents of Ukrainian fascism, I would point them to the two blogs of Moss Robeson: Bandera Lobby Blog and Ukes, Kooks and Spooks. There, you can read how Neo-Nazis train Ukraine’s Presidential Brigade, and its top instructor calls Ukrainians slaves that must be weaponized. About Ukraine’s Nazi paganism. About Azov Nazis visiting NATO HQ. About Holocaust denial. About Ukrainian Nazi paramilitaries invading Russia. Etc. etc. etc.

At risk of repeating myself, I want to underline that the point I am making here is not that all Ukrainians are Nazis, or that Ukraine is a Nazi state. What I am saying is that the Ukrainian fascists are playing an oversized role in shaping the Ukrainian national project, that they were directly involved in some of the worst violence of the civil war and that they continue to be the spearhead against everything Russian. They are the sharpest tools of US imperialism because their hatred of Russia and everything Russian is maniacal. To deny the size of this problem (as Price does) is to deny that these people have been strengthened by the post-Maidan governments and by the NATO sponsors of the proxy war with Russia. It is also to deny one of the causes of the war: Russia’s refusal to accept a fascist-friendly regime in Ukraine. Any regime which rehabilitates fascists from WWII4, which incorporated Nazis into its state and military structures, is unacceptable to the Russian state, this is a simple fact. Especially, if they are to be armed with NATO weapons and could become a station for nuclear missiles. But because we aren’t allowed to understand the motivations of the Russian state, we can only accept the Natopolitan analysis of why Russia invaded (to erase Ukraine!). Therefore Putin is Hitler and this is a cosmic fight to the death, on which there can be no debate. We must abandon all principles in the struggle against Russian fascism and defend the Ukrainian state. The truth is much more dirty and unpleasant: Ukraine is a tool, and every tool must be kept sharp.

The conclusion we should draw is precisely the opposite of Wayne Price’s. He believes that by minimising Ukraine’s fascist problem, we are refusing to play into the Russians’ hands, and we are supporting the ‘democratic’ Ukrainian state which must be defended against imperialist invasion. On the contrary, as anarchists, we must oppose fascism, because it is the enemy of all libertarian principles, because it is the sharpest manifestation of nationalism (and its crybully victimhood), because it is steeped in militarism and fantasies of racial purity.5 It is also the triumph of capitalism and the interests of capital. Ukrainian oligarchs Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Serhiy Taruta are bankrolling the Azov Battalion (and other paramilitary organisations) with the aim of keeping out Russian oligarchs. Their patriotism doesn’t extend to protection from US/EU capital, e.g. the Ukraine ‘reconstruction bank’, which has been set up by BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase to buy up the country cheaply and arrange for concessions to extract its wealth. We compromise ourselves as anarchists and we compromise all that is good in Ukraine, and we give the Russian state a legitimate line of attack, by giving Ukrainian fascism a free pass.6

The danger of Wayne Price’s position which advocates the defence of the nation, is the notion that there is a good nationalism and a good state, which simply and naturally emerges out of opposition to the invader and occupier. Because self-determination can only be achieved and articulated through the nation, and because self-determination precedes anarchist revolution/liberation, anarchism must be deferred until a clear, untroubled national space is secured. The complete imbrication of state and nation is something that passes Price by. He’s an anarchist committed to bolstering a state, only to tear it down. And he is prepared to go rogue, either by state collaboration or collaboration with Nazis, by joining NATO-controlled brigades, for years on end, until Russia is defeated (whatever that means, since Russia holds the world’s greatest nuclear arsenal). Then he will emerge as the anarchist that he is, and by Jove! he will show the Ukrainian ruling class what he’s made of. Only he won’t, because he’s a keyboard warrior, and the Ukrainians and the anarchists will do the dying for him.

The fatherland of the rich

In discussing the ‘national question’ and the problems of self-determination, Rosa Luxemburg proved more of an anarchist than Wayne Price or his quote from Bakunin. Her pamphlet from 1909 boldly states:

In a word, the formula, ‘the right of nations to self-determination,’ is essentially not a political and problematic guideline in the nationality question, but only a means of avoiding that question.7

Luxemburg holds fast to the class struggle, and refuses to be blindsided by floating notions of freedom and self-detemination. The nation is an instrument of class rule, national rights are expressed by the ruling class, they are expressed through ruling class interests, which come at the expense of the working class. Put simply: ‘In a class society, “the nation” as a homogeneous socio-political entity does not exist.’8

And, in a spicy retort to anarchists, she defends the class struggle:

In this case, as in many others, anarchism, the supposed antagonist of bourgeois liberalism, proved to be its worthy child. Anarchism, with characteristic “revolutionary” seriousness, accepted at face value the phraseology of the liberal ideology and, like the latter, showed only contempt for the historical and social content of the nation-state, which it set down as nothing else than an embodiment of “freedom,” of the “will of the people,” and of similar empty words.9

If you prefer this stated in an anarchist voice, we can turn to Rudolf Rocker in his big book ‘Nationalism and Culture’ (1933) - the content is broadly the same:

It is, therefore, quite meaningless to speak of a community of national interests; for that which the ruling class of every country has up to now defended as national interest has never been anything but the special interest of privileged minorities in society secured by the exploitation and political suppression of the great masses. Likewise, the soil of the so-called “fatherland” and its natural riches have always been in the possession of these classes, so that one can with full right speak of a “fatherland of the rich.” If the nation were in fact the community of interests which it has been called, then there would not be in modern history revolutions and civil wars, because the people do not resort to the arms of revolt purely from pleasure — just as little do the endless wage fights occur because the working sections of the population are too well off!10

Class struggle traverses every aspect of the nation state, it cannot be shelved in deference to the interests of the ruling class, or some fatherland of the rich. But this is exactly what Price is advocating. He starts by boilerplate libertarian statements, only to throw them all away:

Anarchists oppose their statist ruling classes. In Ukraine, anarchists do not support Zelensky’s party, nor run in elections, nor give any political support to his government. They oppose the government’s austerity policies and its anti-union laws. They do not endorse the conscription laws and the bureaucratic army. But they do not condemn the government and army for fighting against invasion and occupation! With this they can cooperate (so long as they are too weak to overturn the capitalist state).

Who are these anarchists Price speaks of? No example is given. To him ‘anarchists’, like ‘Ukrainians’ are a monolithic, united mass. These anarchists do not endorse conscription (because presumably conscription is slavery), but they also don’t condemn the government and the way it fights (through conscription!). Because they are too weak, these anarchists will and do and should abandon their anarchism, to submit to the ‘capitalist state’ which will lay claim to their bodies and send them to fight in their ‘bureaucratic army’ which they don’t endorse. Because they are too weak to fight the state, they should abandon all class war and submit to the state’s war for its own survival. As if this will increase their capacities for class struggle! Instead it’s much more likely to land them dead in a ditch. But even dead in a ditch, they will have retained their principles of cooperating with a state, as long as they denounce it. In the words of Wayne Price: ‘I would prefer revolutionary internationalism.’ But… the nation comes first.

Near the end of his text, Price upbraids me for not raising the standard of anarchist revolution. He even accuses me of pacifism. The indignity! To be honest, I’d rather be a pacifist committed to creative libertarian forces, than someone who advocates for the pressganging of working class men abroad, in the defence of soil and nation, all the while hiding behind a computer screen. As things stand, we class struggle anarchists aren’t pacifists, we are antimilitarists and internationalists. We understand the state as the mechanism of nationalist command-and-obey which claims the monopoly on violence, enshrines the justness of its wars, and the monopoly on killing machines (from tanks all the way to nuclear weapons). We don’t issue plucky and manly calls for the slaughter of our working class brothers and sisters. In fact, we see this as hopelessly compromised. We see all the politicians, all the nation states and the media and their little Natopolitans baying for hate and industrial murder. We see the racket which is the arms manufacturing and trade and the revolving doors of the military-industrial-political-media complex. We see the global system of imperial domination and economic exploitation by Western states, i.e. the NATO bloc. We see how our states are hard-wired for armed domination, war and genocide. We know the history of NATO wars and US crimes and we work against them. We understand very well that a strengthened state, engaging in war abroad will turn its sights on us domestically, at the first given opportunity.

To rhapsodise about armed revolution when our numbers are small, when our movement is divided by identity politics, separated from the mass of working class people and split by support for statist, nationalist projects like the Ukrainian one, would be unseemly. Moreover, it seems that Price can only think of revolution as an armed uprising, a Maidan-like putsch, which is why he cannot understand that antimilitarism is one of the pillars of social revolution, that undermining the control of the state and disarming it is what anarchists are working for. Until militarism is weakened, discredited and dismantled, the state’s and the nation’s stranglehold on the working class and its free liberatory forces will continue. For Price, antimilitarism is an interesting pastime, perhaps a page from history, perhaps even outside of the domain of revolutionary activity. For us, it is one of the main pillars of working class liberation, because, as Rudolf Rocker says:

War not only affects human nature calamitously in general by constant appeal to its most brutal and cruel motives, but the military discipline which it demands at last stifles every libertarian movement among the people and then systematically breeds the degrading brutality of blind obedience, which has always been the father of all reaction.11

Dreams of Ukrainian Agency

The above quoted passage from Price about cooperation with the government and the army, is the clearest expression of the position of ‘defencism’ which says that the nation comes first, libertarian struggle second. And because the nation – i.e. the Ukrainian ruling class – has allied itself with NATO12, it is also a Natopolitan defencism. In his response, Price gets exercised about being called a Natopolitan, which surprises me. He openly advocates allying with NATO against Russia. Perhaps a ‘Tactical Natopolitan’ would suit him better and his taste for paradox? Strategically anti-imperialist and libertarian, but tactically a NATO shill.

In the Black Flag issue from Spring of 2023, Price wrote: ‘That they take arms from the Western governments means little – they need arms and where else can they get them?’ In the Black Flag issue from the Autumn of 2024: 'Is the NATO involvement so great that the Ukrainians cannot be regarded as fighting for their country?’ In typically deceptive language, Price speaks of ‘Ukrainians’, never the Ukrainian state, and of ‘weapons’ instead of complete NATO training-logistics-targetting-command. In this kindergarten world, ‘Ukrainian agency’ is a notion with some currency. Which agency is that? The one that was denied when Boris Johnson was sent to tear up the Istanbul Accords in Spring of 2022? The one that sees NATO deciding on when and where Ukraine should launch its catastrophic offensives, such as Summer of 2023? The one which drives Ukrainian women to fill German brothels?13 What I see is brutal exploitation of a people in the service of NATO interests and with the aim of bleeding Russia, and ideally regime change and Russia’s Balkanisation. And their ultimate exploitation is the cynical use of their country and resources as a NATO proxy. Here, for once, Wayne Price and I agree:

‘Ukrainians, not Americans, or Germans, or French people, are doing the fighting and dying. For them it is not a “proxy war”.’

And therein is the tragedy of the thing: they are cheap meat which the American and European ruling class are using to fight Russia. For keyboard warrior Wayne Price, laying down your life is priceless. And because you are fighting in a real army, for a real nation, that means that your death can never be for the interests of your ruling class and state, which is a client state of US Empire. All is pure in this azure sky.

All is clear for Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov also, who spoke openly about his country being a NATO proxy. He reflected on how Ukraine is defending ‘the entire West’ and how Russia was seen as the greatest threat to NATO:

‘Today, Ukraine is addressing that threat. We’re carrying out NATO’s mission today, without shedding their blood. We shed our blood, so we expect them to provide weapons.’14

That’s the Ukrainian ruling class. Here’s a sample from the British one, from the mouth of the Prime Minister who torpedoed the peace talks in the spring of 2022 and who hosts Ukrainian Nazis in the English Parliament - Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson:

‘Mate, let's face it. We're waging a proxy war!’15

Another reason, according to Price, this cannot be a proxy war, is because this is not an inter-imperial conflict. Why then is the US deciding if Ukraine can use long-range weapons to strike into Russia? Why is the whole NATO alliance committed to this war? Hasn’t every NATO war been an imperialist one? It would be an uncomfortable truth exposing interests so large that they cannot be hidden behind the fig leaf of ‘a small country’s struggle for national self-determination’. One final reason the war in Ukraine cannot be understood as a proxy conflict, is that, in that case, Wayne Price and his Tactical Natopolitans would look like US Empire’s useful idiots. But sooner or later they will have to accept the reality, since even Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s (then) Secretary General has openly spoken of the inter-imperialist origin of the war. He also confirmed that it was the actions of NATO (which Ukraine isn’t a member of), which provoked the Russian invasion. So much for ‘Ukrainian agency’:

‘President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement,’ Stoltenberg told a joint committee meeting of the European Parliament on September 7 [2023]. ‘That was what he sent us. And [that] was a pre-condition for not invade [sic] Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that. He went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.’16

This is the casus belli, and therein lie the seeds for an end to this war, or a fatal escalation. Far from the question of a few weapons and provisions, the question of NATO is at the heart of the geopolitical and inter-imperialist nature of this conflict. As John Mearsheimer correctly analysed the post-Maidan moment in 2015, it was ever an inter-imperialist competition:

‘The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.’17

That was ten years ago – there is presently no basis or justification for Wayne Price and his Tactical Natopolitans holding the views that they do.

Bitter Pills

Because Price is so thoroughly NATO-pilled, he cannot accept the responsibility of Zelensky’s regime and the Ukrainian state for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian conscripts. To Price, it is all very simple: the invading Russians are killing them and they are to blame – any acknowledgement of the role of the Ukrainian state in the slaughter of the Ukrainian working class betrays what he calls ‘an imperialist mindset’.

But let’s see how a local anarchist group describes this regime which Wayne Price is working for. In their circular from November 11th 2024, the Kharkov-based anarchist group Assembly calls it ‘the agonizing dictatorship in Ukraine’. They report graffiti from the city of Zaporozhye: ‘Zelensky is an executioner’.18 Far from an imperialist mindset, this is the mindset of class struggle. And it is the support for inter-state and inter-imperial war, which is statist, militarist, nationalist, and imperialist.

To give him some due, Wayne Price acknowledges the positioning of the Ukrainian state: ‘The Ukrainian state has leaned toward the Western imperialists against Russian imperialism.’19 But this was to be expected, Price writes, after centuries of Russian domination. Our Tactical Natopolitan is so blinkered that he can’t see that something which is against Russia, isn’t automatically pro-Ukrainian. And like with the question of government and state military collaboration, this is for Price a necessary evil: one ends up in a state army which is part of an imperialist bloc, such is life, we must soldier on ‘for national self-determination’. Nothing stops us from Abracadabra! declaring that as anarchists we oppose imperialism and ‘our statist ruling classes’. It is just that these statements have been made meaningless through our actions. There is no greater support for your ‘statist ruling class’ and imperialism than to offer your body and life for it. And there is no greater hypocrisy than Wayne Price’s which calls for someone else to die in your stead.

The conservative estimate by the capitalist press is 500,000 dead, maimed and missing-in-action Ukrainians.20 The reality is surely much higher, for anyone who has followed the front lines. Since February 2022, three Ukrainian armies have been killed off by the Russian one. This is why young Ukrainian men are being pressganged by Zelensky’s heavies in a desperate bid to send 160,000 more into death’s jaw (this is a target figure they released in November 2024). Ukrainian soldiers are some of the oldest in the world, with an average age of 43 in November 2023, 10 years older than in March of 2022. A battallion commander of the 65th Brigade says:

‘I’m being sent guys, 50 plus, with doctors’ notes telling me they are too ill to serve. At times it feels like I’m managing a day-care centre rather than a combat unit.’21

60,000 cases of desertion have been launched in the courts in the first 10 months of 2024 – the total numbers are surely higher.22 Poorly trained, the soldiers are abandoned in positions which are impossible to defend, such as Vuhledar. Here is what a soldier who deserted from the 123rd brigade said: ‘No one fucking needed Vuhledar.’ It had been reduced to rubble, more than a year ago, he is convinced there was no need to leave those Ukrainian soldiers there. He puts the blame on the Ukrainian army: ‘They’re just killing them, instead of letting them rehabilitate and rest.’ But this is not enough, Ukraine’s overlords (Wayne Price’s spiritual leaders) are demanding from the client state that it lower the conscription age to 18.23 Even those ‘unfit’ for health reasons will no longer be excluded from military registration and will remain in the register.24 If you have a pulse, you are able to offer your life for the nation.

And because Price mentally lives deep in Natostan, he cannot understand that the war, as waged by Russia is an attritional one.25 This is why he makes the claim that the war is ‘stalemated at best’. Apparent small movements of the front lines are interpreted as a stalemate. But the Russian army is following the dictums of Clausewitz who advocated for the destruction of armies and not the conquest of territories:

What do we mean by the defeat of the enemy? Simply the destruction of his forces, whether by death, injury, or any other means—either completely or enough to make him stop fighting. . . . The complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as the sole object of all engagements. . . . Direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration.26

This is why the Russians have pursued the strategy of sucking Ukrainians into cauldrons and fire pockets to devastating effect. The killing field near Robotyno, also known as Bradley Square, and the completely impregnable Surovikin Line. Bakhmut. Vuhledar. Chasiv Yar. Avdeevka. Kursk. Over 1000 days the Russians have been destroying scores of Ukrainian men and NATO machines, because they know that Ukraine’s imperial overlords, and cheerleaders like Wayne Price, are forcing them to advance despite the odds, to prove that they are a viable client and demonstrate the investment made in them by taking territory back.

Price quibbles with me quoting Noam Chomsky because he is ‘a philosophical anarchist’, who doesn’t believe or propose a strategy for anarchist revolution. Wayne Price’s strategy for anarchist revolution is to (temporarily!) give up your autonomy and enlist in a NATO proxy army. Chomsky, on the other hand, understands that adding fire to an inter-imperial conflict under the banner of ‘fighting to the last Ukrainian’ is a disaster for any kind of libertarian movement or social revolution there. Chomsky is also aware of the pernicious effect of silencing antimilitarist and anti-imperial voices in our imperial NATO heartlands.27Of course, Chomsky is a threat to Price’s world view, because for Price, the carrot of (Global) anarchist revolution, like the ultimate threat of (Russian) fascism – are both used to justify whatever he wants: conscription, imperialism, nationalism.

TLDR

To conclude, let’s summarise the position of the Tactical Natopolitans. It is premised on:

denial of the origins of the war (NATO expansion),
denial of the nature of the war (a proxy war), and therefore
denial of US/NATO imperialism, which is supported by
denial of the primacy of class struggle,
under the banner of defending the nation as the ultimate vessel to defend peoples, communities, individuals.

Our position as class struggle anarchists is that this is an inter-imperial conflict, where the working class is being slaughtered, exploited and lied to. Nothing can be gained for the working class or the cause of libertarian revolution by allying ourselves with any of the states or imperial blocs. Such an alliance only weakens our cause and forces, and fatally compromises anarchism.

Lastly, we need to resolutely and completely abandon the idea that the nation is the ultimate vehicle for self-determination and liberation. There is a richness of traditions, experiences, institutions, communities, languages and cultures which exist apart from and despite the nation and the state. This is our libertarian legacy. This is where the wellsprings of anarchy stem from. We should be guided by them, and not by the siren voices of chickenhawkish imperialist ultras like Wayne Price.

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Separation Perfected: Domination and Alienation in Stirner and Debord

Dec
18
2024
comments

From CounterPunch
September 19, 2024
by David S. D’Amato

We have allowed the American ruling class[1] to abstract themselves almost entirely from their substantive political positions and practices. So deeply engrossed are we in their branding as products of consumption, in their spectacular representations, that we seem to have no capacity to grapple critically with the situation we find ourselves in. The moment calls for careful reengagement with French philosopher Guy Debord’s book The Society of the Spectacle, as well as one of its most important, if unsung, precursors, German philosopher (perhaps anti-philosopher) Max Stirner’s book The Ego and Its Own. These masterworks of critical theory, separated by more than one hundred years (Debord’s book was first published in 1967, Stirner’s in 1844), offer vital tools for helping us make sense of the present moment and for consciously cultivating an “ethos of non-domination.”

Debord is perhaps best known as among the principals of the Situationist International, a group and movement that emerged in the late 1950s out of several avant-garde artistic and social tendencies. The group’s name implies the conscious creation of situations to free spaces of daily life from the alienation and falsity of the existing order, characterized by the spectacle as Debord describes it. (This emphasis on the deliberate recapture of autonomy in everyday life is also an echo of Stirner, as we shall see.) Debord offers a comprehensive update on the traditional Marxist theory of alienation, further developing and broadening the notion to describe “the world of the autonomous image.” Here, alienation is not confined to productive and consumptive aspects of life, but is a pervasive fact of social reality, as he puts it, “a social relation among people, mediated by images.” We are separated not only from active control over our own time and the products of our work, but from other people and our communities, culture, political participation, leisure and entertainment, and even from ourselves and our relationships with ourselves.

The Society of the Spectacle evinces a series of striking parallels with The Ego and Its Own, frequently cited as “the most revolutionary [book] ever written.” Debord opens his book with a quote from Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), which is notable, among other reasons, because Stirner dedicates a large part of The Ego and Its Own to a critical analysis of Feuerbach’s philosophy. In the passage quoted by Debord, Feuerbach is critical of the modern world’s preference for illusion, favoring “the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality.” Feuerbach argues that we should endeavor to uncover the true essences underneath mere symbols and representations. But for Stirner, Feuerbach thus holds onto the fundamental mistake of seeking out a fixed and grounded target that does not exist, only swapping the Christian god out for a new universal of human nature, identified with Gattungswesen(translating to “species-being” or “species-essence”). Stirner denies that there is a universal Gattungswesen to be accessed or retrieved, and claims that Feuerbach is actually constructing a new illusory device for the repressive subjectification of the individual.

In seeing the spectacle “[w]herever representation becomes independent,” Debord’s thinking echoes that of Stirner. Stirner’s critique of the suite of ideological systems associated with modernity sets out a very similar attack on representations that become independent, taking on a power and volition of their own. For Stirner, our systems of thought have become “fixed ideas,” abstract ideals that, though they are not the ultimate reality, come to be treated as sacred and thus to dominate us. We focus our attention on such abstractions to the detriment of our ability to confront reality—in its deeply contingent, irreducible nature. Stirner and Debord overlap significantly in their criticism of the ways we interact with images and narratives as a substitute for meaningful, authentic engagement with each other and for the development of functioning social institutions. Both Stirner and Debord address “the recruitment of desire toward the workings of power,” concerned to point out the use and manipulation of manufactured, superficial substitutes for genuine desires. Our desires are redirected toward consumable commodities—commodities in both the physical sense and as collections of images and ideas that inform our perceptions and undergird the state and capitalist relations.

In addressing Debord’s notion of the spectacle, it is important to consider at least two senses of distraction or the consumption of appearances—one sense in which our attention is pulled away from more socially important or consequential things—for example, the abstract notion of democracy—toward other, more superficial objects of attention or consumption, and another in which our focus is in fact directed as those more important things, but is mediated from them nonetheless due to our ways of formulating them. For example, what is being addressed and contemplated as democracy today is in fact a series of slogans, performances, and totemic symbols standing in for democracy, heading off at the pass even the possibility of a coherent discourse about it. How can we talk about it other than nonsensically when “all gazing and all consciousness” is concentrated on accreted “diversions of the spectacle”? Ironically, our phones, devices ostensibly for communication, have preempted dialogue, cutting it off through a layered and recursively reflected series of images.

We can engage with the appearance of democracy, democracy as a symbolic gesture and an image, but not democracy as communities governing themselves directly and collectively. That is, we have democracy as a consumable commodity or brand name, but not as a lived relation between people. To call our current system of “democracy” highly mediated is an understatement. An infinitesimally small and shrinking group of people make the important decisions at the national level, particularly in the national security and foreign policy arena. We can analyze this by examining the several ways in which decision-making capacity is kept from the people: comparing the total number of people (at both the state and national levels) to the number of elected politicians who purport to represent them; analyzing the coercive social, economic, and legal power exercised by the leaders of the two major political parties within our electoral system; comparing the number of unelected officials that exercise real influence over policy making to the total population; evaluating the layers of mediation and separation—whereby voters choose between a narrow range of candidates who then appoint functionaries, who are influenced by corporations and their hired advocates and spokespeople. Tiered layers of intermediaries stand between the ordinary citizen and even the merest iota of real political power, as well-funded and organized corporate interests enjoy direct and privileged access to and apparently near-total control over politicians and bureaucrats at the highest levels. Given the vast distance between the American people and appreciable political power and influence, and the effective rule of a small minority, a much more accurate characterization of the United States’ political system is as an oligarchy. The insulation of this small governing group from the people’s will—that is, the anti-democratic character of the system—is indeed among the most salient defining qualities of American politics. Several important studies in recent years have underscored this fact (including a widely-read 2014 paper by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page).

This bureaucratic, highly managed and mediated mode of democracy allows the semblance of political participation and efficacy without the reality. We pass our opinions into a fathomless stream of images, as isolated members of the “lonely crowds” Debord described. The independent representation of democracy in the United States and in the West more generally manifests as a fetishization of and fixation on voting; this voting and talking-about-voting spectacle has entrenched itself so deeply in the imagination that there is apparently little energy leftover to commit to building community or counter-institutions. This is the paradox of always-online participation in mass consumer society while feeling increasingly disconnected socially. We see this expressed in a worsening crisis of hopelessness and despair. We lack a grounded concept of democracy because our attention is focused on a simulacrum, where certain conspicuous symbols are interposed between us and democracy as a lived and embodied part of community life. In the passive, inattentive mode of engagement, decisions are made for us while we accept a version of political participation that finds us voting in rigged elections between nearly identical candidates. Cultivating the habit of challenging the assumptions underlying this approach—and so challenging the idea of democracy as merely a spectacular image—will be necessary to creating institutions that are genuinely responsive to community and invested in human wellbeing. “The human built world is not built for humans,” but for power, for the kinds of economic and technological optimization that allow us to deploy power over the world, and thus enable us to dominate and manipulate it and each other. These are very different goals from the intentional nurturing of societies that put human flourishing and wellbeing first. Anarchists reject the highly mediated political participation of representation by various groups, whether they purport to be parliaments or revolutionary vanguards. We don’t want to be represented—our assumption and expectation is that each individual represents themself. Our demand is full, active control over our daily lives, in an active struggle against what Debord called the “unqualified” and “universal wrong” of “exclusion from life.” We don’t want stylized, institutionalized versions of equality, rights, and freedoms that are “in reality based on power and can be easily violated or removed by governments.” Only witness how quickly and easily liberal governments today “transform seamlessly into post-liberal security regimes.”

Both Debord and Stirner point out that we bear much of the responsibility for our own alienation and subjugation. It is not just that we are complicit in our own oppression; we actively uphold and perpetuate it by loudly trumpeting and recreating the ideological paradigms that make it possible. Debord beckons us to examine our internalization of the spectacle and our role in regenerating it. He sees us as dominating ourselves by tacitly accepting the false and mediated as real and immediate. Stirner’s approach, while similar, presents a more fundamental challenge to the methods of philosophy and to the idea of collective, revolutionary efforts to overturn the existing order. Stirner sees fixed ideas (or “spooks”) as “vestigial theological abstraction[s],” attempts to identify and freeze in place universal essences that exist nowhere. Important to underscore here is that Stirner’s attack on the subject-object distinction is central to his entire philosophical (perhaps better understood as anti-philosophical) project; he regards the distinction as another abstract fixed idea or that serves to alienate the individual by insisting that the object inhabits a reality separate from the subject—leading to the untenable situation in which the object assumes the primary position. As Widukind De Ridder explains, “My alienation (Entfremdung) of the object means that I am ‘possessed’ by it, that I do not own the object and thus myself, but that the object ‘possesses’ me.”

We willingly give ourselves over to self-denial and domination, constituting our identities around metaphysical abstractions, captured by a religion of Man. Religious authority is no less potent in the modern age; it has been universalized and, in “taking on the guise of the rational and the secular,” may even exercise more complete power and subjection. The debasement of the unique individual under the perfect ideals of humanism is no less complete and oppressive than it was under God. Stirner reframes liberalism, grounded in a carefully constructed and deeply ideological idea of Man, as entailing “a technology of normalization,” which depends and must depend on our own self-condemnation and self-subjection. In Stirner’s ideas, we find an account of the ideological technologies of normalization and discipline later associated with Foucault, but also present in various ways in Debord. Debord sees us as manipulated through the spectacle into an acceptance of “the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue,” to the detriment of our understanding of concrete “relations among men and classes.” Power relations are thus disguised. But where Debord’s ideas are positioned within a framework of humanistic philosophy, Stirner regards this philosophy as inherently dangerous. For Stirner, fundamentally, “Essences are ideological constructions from which political oppression can be exercised.” In positing certain concepts—humanity, the state, rationality, freedom, socialism, for example—as fixed and universal in appearance and application, and thus as worthy of universal deference and worship, we subdue what is unique in us and in the world and become alienated from ourselves and each other. As a result, social ties become more and more attenuated, subordinated to reified illusions. Those at the top of hierarchical structures of power leverage our veneration of such illusions to subjugate and oppress us. Modern, apparently “liberal” institutions have no less given us inherently hierarchical and infantilizing “pastoral power,” in which an initiated group arrogates the power to decide who is a sinner, with the sinner now affronting the religion of humanity. The modern state has reconstituted such pastoral power in therapeutic terms, the terms of helping or curing the derelict. Or as Stirner puts it:

Curative means or healing is only the reverse side of punishment, the theory of cure runs parallel with the theory of punishment; if the latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former takes it for a sin of the man against himself, as a falling away from his health.

Here, we can contrast the “vernacular order” to with “official order,” where the former refers to the spontaneous, bottom-up ways in which people relate to each other and solve their problems without the oversight or intervention of ostensible experts. The official order is the one created and imposed by an authoritative class standing outside of local communities but in between their members. This class of experts is treated as a special priesthood possessed of unique knowledge of perfect ideals in specialized areas; we process our world not directly, but through thoughts, opinions, and expertise.

Similarities between their ideas notwithstanding, Stirner and Debord come to different conclusions about the best, most plausible path out of the mediation, alienation, and domination of modern society. Their ideas provide fertile ground for anarchists, and while anarchists have drawn on them, both offer trenchant criticisms of anarchism, Debord explicitly, Stirner by implication. Where Debord articulates an explicit call for collective revolutionary practice, Stirner sees this as another ideological project that subject the individual to domination and new despotisms. Stirner dismisses the idea of revolution, its aim “new arrangements,” in favor of insurrection, growing out of “men’s discontent with themselves,” “a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it.” Stirner has no interest in anarchism as a totalizing closed system whose boundaries are policed piously by a group with special access to a body of religious knowledge. His work implies a mode of political practice that much more honestly confronts the temporariness, locality, and contingency of social relations as well as their predicates, individuals’ own self-constructions. Examining Stirner’s idea of insurrection, Saul Newman describes it as “a process of separation and detachment, not from the real world, but from the world of illusions … .” If revolution contemplates changed conditions, prescribed and shepherded by those who know the straight and narrow path to a free and just society, insurrection is the individual’s refusal to be a subject, the conscious reappropriation of autonomy against our own attachments to power. Stirner’s insurrection is more akin to a “permanent revolution,” but one that plays out as the individual’s exorcism of their own attachments and concessions to power. Stirner understood that property “should not and cannot be abolished,” but must instead be actively reclaimed, “torn from ghostly hands,” in a rejection of the “erroneous consciousness, that I cannot entitle myself to as much as I require.” This is not the homiletical message of one building a new system, reverent before some absolute standard of value. To Stirner, we are the first source of the power exercised over us, because it cannot exist without our acquiescence. We don’t need to be freed by special, designated others—indeed they may not even exist. Stirner suggests that we can be fully aware and active in the fluid, creative processes that give rise to the identities we assume and to the social world itself. Stirner contends that we cannot hope to construct the framework for a new, liberatory political program before critically interrogating the ways we construct ourselves and our relationships with the ideological systems to which we subject ourselves.

Like Stirner’s, Debord’s relationship with anarchist ideas is a complicated one. In terms similar to those deployed in Stirner’s general critique of ideology, Debord takes both Bakunin and Marx to task for “instituting themselves into ideological authorities.” For Debord, the fundamental mistake of anarchism is its sense of immediacy (he acknowledges that this is also its strength), its departure from “the historical terrain” as a “merely ideological” insistence “that the adequate forms for this passage [from ideas and theory] to practice have already been found and will never change” (emphasis added). In arguing that anarchism has divorced itself from questions of historical development as a pure ideology that is contemptuous of method, Debord exhibits both similarities with and differences from Stirner. Certainly Stirner would have agreed with his critical appraisal of anarchism as a “simple, total conclusion,” frozen in place and “considered in the absolute.” Debord sees anarchists as articulating only a negative vision—no more state, no more class hierarchies—without presenting a positive vision or a roadmap that is sensitive to historical conditions and developments. But while Stirner would certainly reject, with Debord, an anarchism construed as a “definitive solution brought about by one single blow,” he would not have shared Debord’s assessment of the “individual caprice” arguably found in anarchist thought. For Stirner, there is much to recommend individual caprice, not only as a form of liberatory practice, but more importantly as a recognition of the individual’s ownness against those who hope to impose religious obligations by reference to, for example, stages of historical development.

At this moment in history, it is clear that we have succumbed to a diminished capacity to engage with and interact with the world, and that a new set of tools is critically necessary for both analysis and action. Stirner’s spooks and Debord’s spectacle appear increasingly relevant and illuminative as ways to understand a world overwhelmed by a relentless cavalcade of digital content and captured by highly-mediated, globe-spanning government and corporate institutions. If, as Stirner and Debord suggest, we are participating in our own alienation and oppression, as passive consumers of hollow images and ideologies, then we have an opportunity to actively cast these asides both individually and collectively in the creation of spaces for autonomy and authenticity.

Notes.

[1] Though many of the arguments set out here apply no less to other groups of global elites, I have chosen to address the American ruling class, because it is the one of which I have the most intimate knowledge, and because the American ruling class most typifies and illustrates Debord’s theory of the spectacle.

David S. D’Amato is an attorney, businessman, and independent researcher. He is a Policy Advisor to the Future of Freedom Foundation and a regular opinion contributor to The Hill. His writing has appeared in Forbes, Newsweek, Investor’s Business Daily, RealClearPolitics, The Washington Examiner, and many other publications, both popular and scholarly. His work has been cited by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, among others.

    There are 2 Comments

    Submitted by SirEinzige on Wed, 12/18/2024 - 09:29

    You basically shit sandwiched an other wise good piece connecting the dots between Debord and Stirner. Your homework assignment is to read 'Debunking Democracy' by Bob Black. Things like Oligarchy, Fascism and other types of authority come through democracy not in spite of it. There is no authentic 'radical' democracy to be had or pursued. Many of the great thinkers who mattered saw it for what it is/was and rejected it accordingly.

    Beyond that good piece. Stirner and Debord will obviously play a role in a reconstituted radicalism to come in the greater 21st century. One of the things that will absolutely need to be done is a critique of the problem of profilicity as analyzed by Hans Georg Moeller. The Sits were obviously a radical authenticity driven movement in times that were more driven by authenticity. So was Stirner of course. Digital profilitic identitarianism is the new abstraction to be taken on in pursuit of authentic and sincere personalization.

    Submitted by anon (not verified) on Wed, 12/18/2024 - 14:49

    Good ol' Guy and Max, luv those 2 rads.

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    Scotland: Clydeside Anarchist Zine 2 + Radical Bookfair Reportback

    Dec
    18
    2024
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    From Clydeside Anarchist Noise
    December 12, 2024

    On Saturday 7 December, Clydeside Anarchist Noise sent a delegation of rabble-rousers to the Glasgow Radical Bookfair, at the Quaker House. We handed out loads of our zines (and ran out – possibly slightly too early!), participated in the discussions, chatted to comrades from across the anarchist scene in Scotland, and made loads of new pals! Additionally, we were able to raise some money for legal fees and to help a single mother pay her rent this month – thank you to everyone who contributed to these efforts.

    Overall, we had a grand time – thank you to Red & Black Clydeside for putting it on and thanks to Food Not Bombs Govanhill for feeding us throughout the day!

    Finally, attendants at the Bookfair were (un)lucky enough to be the first to see the 2nd issue of the Clydeside Anarchist Zine. This new issue is more colourful and prettier (if we dare say so ourselves), and contains a number of (not-so) theoretical texts, poems and how-to guides for local extremists. There’s a digitally readable version available below, as well as a link to Zine #1.

    We are always looking for stuff to go on our blog / in our next zine – email us at notcan@riseup.net

    Download zine: https://noisenoisenoise.blackblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1911/202...


    San Antonio Anarchist Bookfair Reportback

    Dec
    15
    2024
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    San Antonio had a sliding scale anarchist bookfair december 7th 2024 at presa house gallery. tablers came from dallas, houston, tuscon, san antonio, and rio grande valley. It was raining so the food vendor had to scrap the menu and did soup instead and did sliding scale, she was happy with how it turned out. as far as i know only other booth doing sliding scale was feral distro.

    there was a noise show in the back yard while it was misting, i'm counting on the owners never seeing this. After 40 minutes someone came out and said "the owner wants to talk to you" so we shut the music off. food not bombs had free food and we brought them more than they brought so everyone got fed. Someone gave an impromptu wheat pasting demonstration, handing out supplies after.

    Pleasantly surprised by someone coming to my (feral distro) table and asking for all my stuff on "egoism/individualism"; got him like 5 books. Made a friend at the after party at a bar, where there was a discussion trashing various subcultures we were all in and anarchy related talk. Great time, don't think i'll ever do it again which i guess is what i said the first damn time two years ago. post/anti left stuff in same room as black rose rosa negra which was a hoot.

    Idk it was fun, i got to play my favorite chopped and screwed music on their speakers and everyone was very nice. there were in fact homemade (in a way that appalls publishers who have lots of money for equipment) and mass produced books there! thanks to everyone who came to get books and zines, thanks to the people who tabled and no thanks to the trolls on here!

    Art As A Vehicle For Anarchist Ideas (ACAB 2024)

    Dec
    15
    2024

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    From The Final Straw Radio

    This week, we’re sharing another presentation from the 2024 ACABookfair in so-called Asheville. On youtube you’ll find the audio sync’d up with the slideshow presentation from the bookfair by visiting youtube.com/@thefinalstrawradio.

    The following is a recording from the 2024 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville, NC. You can find more info and recordings from this and other years at ACABookfair.NoBlogs.Org. This is a presentation entitled Art as a Vehicle for Anarchist Ideas with N.O. Bonzo, Des Revol, and Sugarbombing World. From the description:

    “Three longtime anarchist artists—N.O. Bonzo, Des Revol, and Sugarbombing World—will explore the role that art plays in resistance and movements, along with remembrance of the past and visions of the future. They’ll look at ways that art brings people together, and can serve as a great tool, whether in organizing and agitating, and/or inviting people into anarchism.”

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