Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theor [Paperback]

Uri Gordon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0745326838 | ISBN-13: 978-0745326832 | Publication Date: November 20, 2007

Anarchist politics are at the heart of today’s most vibrant and radical social movements. From squatted social centres and community gardens to acts of sabotage and raucous summit blockades, anarchist groups and networks are spreading an ethos of direct action, non-hierarchical organizing and self-liberation that has redefined revolutionary struggle for the 21st century.Anarchy Alive! is a fascinating, in-depth look at the practice and theory of contemporary anarchism. Uri Gordon draws on his activist experience and on interviews, discussions and a vast selection of recent literature to explore the activities, cultures and agendas shaping today’s explosive anti-authoritarian revival. Anarchy Alive! also addresses some of the most tense debates in the contemporary movement, using a theory based on practice to provocatively reshape anarchist discussions of leadership, violence, technology and nationalism. This is the ideal book for anyone looking for a fresh, informed and critical engagement with anarchism, as a mature and dynamic political force in the age of globalisation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Uri Gordon has made us look at the anarchist movement through new eyes. He illuminates and makes us question our most basic assumptions, puts his finger squarely on our most painful dilemmas, and opens up new vistas of choice and understanding. -- Starhawk

About the Author

Uri Gordon has been tear-gassed in several major European cities. An Israeli activist and journalist, he wrote his PhD on anarchist politics at Oxford while organising with the Dissent! network, Indymedia, Peoples' Global Action and Anarchists Against the Wall.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Pluto Press (November 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745326838
• ISBN-13: 978-0745326832
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #914,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review by Lawrence Jarach, October 14, 2008

By 

Uri Gordon - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theor (Paperback)

Review of Anarchy Alive! by Lawrence Jarach
www.anarchymag.org
Re-posted with permission

An Oxford University trained sociologist wrote this book, a retooling of his doctoral thesis?! An activist with Indymedia, Peoples' Global Action, and Anarchists Against the Wall?! A participant-observer in current anarchist-led and/or anarchist-oriented and/or anarchist-tinged struggles?! How dare he write a book about anarchist politics that attempts to break down the barriers of the (in)famous dichotomy between theory and practice, between writers and activists? The audacity! The gall!

When I started reading the preface and acknowledgements, I was underwhelmed. He thanks various tenured academics (for whom it is now safe to write about anarchism) and activists who are not exactly the favorite authors of this writer and some of whom have come in for some heavy criticism (if not in these pages, then at least in less formal conversations). Gordon begins by recounting some heady moments at the Gleneagles anti-G-8 demonstrations as a way of introducing unfamiliar readers to the concept of participant-observer. Then on page 3 of the introduction, he lets readers know what to expect:

Anarchy Alive! is an anarchist book about anarchism. It...aims to demonstrate what a theory based on practice can achieve when applied to central debates and dilemmas in the movement today... [T]he major aim is to make a contribution within anarchist theory, without having to apologise about it.

Sounds both plausible and ambitious, but can this academic participant-observer deliver the goods? After a cursory introduction, Gordon does indeed start to deliver with an examination of areas of contention between and among anarchists and others interested in social change. The questions of Violence, Power, Technology, and Nationalism are each given their own chapters, with a few excellent points raised, some common misunderstandings demolished, and a few surprises for those accustomed to reading academic liberals pretending to be anarchists.
Not content to leave the question of violence to the pacifists and hand-wringing moralists, Gordon (re-) introduces the issue of power (both as personal/group capacity and as the ability to exert compulsion or coercion on others) into the discourse--despite each topic getting its own chapter, there are clearly overlaps. His style throughout the book is densely informative, and therefore worth quoting at length. Eventually, after some preliminary discussion of definitions of coercion and capacity, the idea of enforcement looms large and central.

Enforcement is coercion that follows formal procedures and guidelines... the means and protocols for enforcement are constantly available to the enforcer. The coercer, on the other hand, may have to `invent' their own means and strategy for coercion.
...[W]hereas diffuse social sanctions are indeed coercive, they are hardly something on which an edifice of enforcement could be built... And aside from social sanctions, the available sanctions that can be exercised in a networked social movement are next to nil.... [t]he lack of appropriate sanctions, then, makes enforcement not only undesirable for anarchists in their politics, but structurally impossible...

I am not asking whether this absolute non-enforcement can or cannot work in an anarchist society and apply to all areas of life... [D]ecentralisation and autonomy are not just values but also facts on the ground. They are there because [of] the impossibility of rationalised, permanent enforcement...

(67-9)

And in the very next paragraph, he even manages to sneak in (well it's not really that sneaky, but it was a bit unexpected nonetheless) a dig at the obnoxiously persistent topic of democracy as it relates--or more accurately, doesn't--to anarchist practice. Most anarchist critics of democracy take issue with representation, or majority rule, and try to force democratic processes into a more familiar anarchist framework--using the strange and internally contradictory term "direct democracy" as if that somehow alters the tensions between no rule and majority rule. Gordon, however, due to his examination of enforcement, scrutinizes a more interesting theoretical objection to anarcho-democracy.

Once we shift our understanding...we are able to shift the mistake that most clouds our thinking over process - the continued couching of the debate in the language of democracy... Democratic discourse assumes without exception that the political process results, at some point, in collectively binding decisions... Binding means enforceable and enforceability is a background assumption of democracy. But the outcomes of anarchist process are inherently impossible to enforce. That is why the process is not `democratic' at all, since in democracy the point of equal participation in determining decisions is that this is what legitimates these decisions' subsequent enforcement - or simply sweetens the pill. Anarchism, then, represents not the most radical form of democracy, but an altogether different paradigm of collective action.

(69-70)

The issue of accountability as it relates to non-affinity group decision making takes another unexpected turn. In discussing the difference of location between a more formal and public venue (what he calls the Plenary) and a truly informal, even secretive, location (what he dubs the Campfire), Gordon declares that decision-making

in the Plenary requires precisely those resources which are most difficult to share - public confidence, articulation and charisma. Not only that, often these resources only become ones that generate inequality in such formal and assemblary venues of decision-making. Because it is so difficult to share this resource, and because its current distribution strongly reflects patterns of domination in society, the only way to equalise the access to the influence it generates is to minimise its relevance as a resource...
While anarchist networks may well be a supportive environment for self-deprogramming and empowerment, as matters stand it is unfair to say to a woman `you have to get self-confidence' as a condition for participation. Why does she have to make a special effort to change in order to participate on equal footing just because she is a woman in a patriarchal society? At the same time, privileging the Plenary erases and de-legitimises the manifold forms of using power that women have developed in response to patriarchy, and the ways in which many people find it most comfortable to empower themselves. As a result of these considerations, I think anarchists are bound to acknowledge that this invisible, subterranean, indeed unaccountable use of power is not only inevitable in some measure (because of habit and secrecy), but also needs to be embraced, since it coheres with their worldview in important respects.
The quest for accountability, then, arrives at a dead end... any modification to how people reflect upon and wield power in anarchist organising would have to be viewed not as a restriction on freedom, but as its expression. Rather than discouraging empowerment in informal venues, it would make people more encouraged and excited to create, initiate and do - only perhaps in a different way. Precisely because the entire edifice of anarchist organising is built on pure voluntarism, any change would have to be actively desired rather than seen as a concession.

For these reasons, I would suggest that the only way to resolve this particular set of anarchist anxieties would be through a culture of solidarity around the invisible wielding of power... inasmuch as solidarity modifies behaviour it does so as a positive motivation, not as a limiting duty... People can initiate change in their own organisational practices, taking initiative to create habits of resource-sharing and of reflective and considerate use of informal power, displaying that agenda and hopefully inspiring others to follow suit. If these practices catch on, then resource-sharing and solidarity will have become something that people keep in mind by default. Such a resolution is clearly partial and imperfect, but at least it is something that can actually happen, unlike a 180-degree turn away from informal organising that extinguishes the Campfire of initiative.

(75-77)

His discussion of violence/non-violence is just as subtle and meaningful. Rather than keeping it on the level of rhetoric and cursing, Gordon introduces another axis of meaning: justified/unjustified. Now we're getting somewhere, and that somewhere is intellectual honesty and reflection rather than quick denunciation and attempts at marginalization from supposed allies. Another important topic that Gordon isn't shy about is the place of revenge as a motivating factor in justifying violence. This is good stuff, even if it takes place over the space of only three and a half pages.

Aside from the old (but constant) question of what is labeled violence, Gordon devotes a chapter to one of the other most vexing issues among contemporary anarchists--what he calls "a curious ambivalence" (109) toward technology. Avoiding the usual critics of technology cited by most primitivists (Mumford and Ellul, perhaps Heidegger and Marcuse), Gordon goes directly to contemporary non-anarchist academics, those whose entire careers are devoted to the topic. On that basis, Gordon assures readers that the "neutrality [of technology] thesis has been rejected," (115) because "modern society has come to depend materially on the pervasive stability of large-scale infrastructures." The deployment of particular technologies creates "technical arrangements that determine social results in a way that logically and temporally... Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent -- well written, interesting, balanced - A++, October 23, 2009

By 

Jesse Taylor (North Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theor (Paperback)

This is an excellent book.

Gordon has done a great job at analyzing numerous core issues which face the modern anarchist movement, as well as presenting ideas about how we might start working towards solutions for them.

Most importantly, while I don't agree with everything in it, I can definitely say that it was honest and balanced, unlike numerous other anarchist tracts such as the "Anarchist FAQ", which blatantly misrepresent opposing viewpoints to try to convince people to agree with their own.

The coverage of the question of violence and of technology is excellent. I really like the approach the author chose to discussing technology, which as he said, is a very sensitive topic due to the animosity between the primitivists and pro-technology anarchists, which leaves no room to discuss the large number of ideas that fall somewhere in between.

Anyway, I'd definitely recommend giving it a read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anarchist Philosophy Without Unnecessary Pretentiousness, November 15, 2008

By 

S. Shukaitis "linguistic functionary" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theor (Paperback)

This is a lovely little book that does a fantastic job of giving an in depth overview and then exploration of many of the important concepts and debates within contemporary anarchism, particularly within the networks of the antiglobalization movement. And more than that Gordon does not treat philosophy or political theory as something that is external to these debates and that he brings into the debate to clarify and add conceptual rigor to them. Rather, Gordon starts from the theory and concepts produced within movements, working through and from them, thus elaborating and embodying a form of militant philosophical practice that is quite refreshing. While some of the chapters might read like old hat to those who have been enmeshed with such debates for the past few years, they are written with a good degree of clarity so that their importance will be clear regardless one's involvement in movement organizing. Gordon also makes a number of quite intriguing and perhaps controversial claims, such as that since non-hierarchical decision making networks typically lack enforcement mechanisms for decision then they cannot really be considered forms of democracy in a formal sense. Agree or not, it is this kind of drawing from movement debates, and working from them, and pushing them in new directions, that is one of the most important tasks in any process of political recomposition. And this is why Gordon's book is definitely worth a read.