Black flags and social movements

A sociological analysis of movement anarchism

Dana M. Williams

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781526105561
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia social

An in-depth analysis of contemporary anarchist movements, focusing upon who anarchists are, and where they may be found.

Part I
Movement overview

1
Introduction to social movements: anarchism as a unique example

The purpose of my life all has been focused on: helping everyone to have a spring, so that everyone's heart will be bright, everyone will have a happy life, and everyone will have the freedom to develop in any way they want. (李尧棠 [Ba Jin])¹

Today's anarchist movements are not brand new, neither are they simple replicas or resurrections of old anarchist movements. They are reasonable – if not always predictable – descendants of previous anarchist movement iterations. While new in many of their foci, rhetoric, and tactics, today's anarchist movements also have remarkable consistency over time and a solid connection to past anarchist movements, both in outsider aesthetic, radicalism, and vision. There has also been regular overflow between anarchist movements and other movements in the same local environment. Anarchists routinely cross over into other movements, and in doing so they labor to blur boundaries between those acting as anarchists and those who self-identify as anarchists. In most times and places, conscious anarchists have likely been in the minority of the non-anarchist movements they participate in, although they may often be some of the most active partisans driving forward campaigns and struggles in those very movements.

This chapter introduces the central issues relevant to the sociological study of anarchist movements, especially Mario Diani's (1992) well-known definition of a social movement: networks of individuals and organizations, united by some shared identity, that engage in extra-institutional action with the interest of changing society. This definition is used as the starting place for understanding how anarchist movements are similar to, and different from, other movements (in terms of leadership, representation, and autonomy), and the chapter presents an overview of certain attributes of anarchism that continue across the next two chapters. Perhaps surprising to some critics, anarchism does indeed satisfy all the requisite criteria for being a social movement. The chapter ends by modeling the anti-anarchist counter-network (corporations, governments, and media), considering the various levels of analysis of anarchism that could be investigated, and describing the helpful comparisons worth making to better understand anarchist movements. Where relevant, I note future chapters which include further exploration of a topic.

First steps toward understanding anarchist movements

The Preface presented some anarchist history and a summary of major anarchist ideas. But we should consider what the term “anarchism” can refer to. Owing to the slanderous triumvirate of chaos, violence, and fantasy, it is possible to confuse the subject of focus. There is an anarchist identity, which is a way of describing, or labeling oneself. Along with anarchist identity, there is a lifestyle to adopt and imitate, as well as cultural codes to employ around other anarchists. While relevant, these anarchist identities are not themselves the sole subject of this book. There is also an anarchist ideology. This ideology can be viewed as a radical impulse that influences adherents’ behaviors. It is a historically derived set of strategies, attitudes, and practices, linked to anarchist theories, concepts, and values (such as anti-authoritarianism, self-management, and mutual aid). In practice, anarchist ideology serves as a cognitive and moral system of guiding beliefs which help to ensure that the codes used by those identifying as anarchists are employed appropriately and correspond with expectations. Of course, there are many ideological subvariants, which may share similar strands of agreement, but also vary significantly. Although ideology is part of this book's story, it is not the central focus. Finally, there is an anarchist movement. Anarchism is a movement independent of other movements, but also one that has much interaction and overlap with many compatible movements. Consequently, much of this book seeks to explore where movement “boundaries” exist, and where we can find blurry, unsuccessful attempts to distinguish anarchism from other movements.

Anarchism is and can be all of the above, but I am most interested in it as a movement, and thus anarchist movements are the subject of this book. I chose a plural identifier for anarchism, since it is inaccurate to claim there is an anarchist movement, let alone an anarchist identity or an anarchist ideology. There are actually multiple variations of each, sometimes incredibly varied and even at odds with each other. There is a joke that hints at this diversity: “Ask three anarchists to describe anarchism and you will get four, maybe five different definitions.” For example, anarcho-syndicalists (a.k.a., “workerist” anarchists) and green anarchists (a.k.a., “anti-civilization” anarchists) find themselves at great odds with each other, and some might even argue that their versions of anarchism are incompatible (see Williams 2009b). A primary way to identify this movement diversity is in the focus on different anarchist movements throughout the world, noting that anarchist movements differ by country, and even by city and region. Consequently, I refer to anarchist movements from hereafter, as opposed to, presumptively, the anarchist movement. It is inappropriate and inaccurate to assert that all anarchists see themselves as part of the same movement, or that they are even capable of being part of a singular movement.²

Of course, some – including some anarchists, most notably, so-called “philosophical anarchists” – have been indifferent or hostile to associating anarchism with social movements. While none of these arguments hold much weight for me, I present five such idealized arguments that are worthy of brief consideration – in order to be formally rejected.³ These arguments are sometimes vague assertions from critics as well as general claims that flow from the misperception triumvirate. First, there may not be “enough” participants in an anarchist movement – thus, its membership is too small to warrant the label “movement.” This presumes that movements must contain a large, if unspecified, number of participants to qualify. Over the course of this book it will become clear that there are surely hundreds of thousands, likely millions of conscious anarchists throughout the world. If far smaller groupings can be designated as “movements,” then so can anarchism.

Second, anarchism is too unorganized (recall the “chaos” misrepresentation already described); since movements are organized and anarchism is supposedly disorganized, then anarchism is not a movement (QED). Many...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface: where does anarchy begin?
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Part I Movement overview
• Part II Theoretical interpretation
• Part III Interaction
• Appendix: Sources of knowledge and error
• Bibliography
• Index