Is Anarchism an Idea Whose Time Has Come?

(Katherine Acosta, Alternet.org, October 13, 2012)
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It seems that everywhere, these days, people are talking about anarchism. Now Dmitry Orlov [3] joins the discussion with a 3-part series, “In Praise of Anarchy.” Utilizing primarily the work of the 19th century Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, Orlov argues that anarchy, rather than hierarchy, is the dominant pattern in nature, that hierarchical organizations ultimately end in collapse, and that the impending collapse of the capitalist industrial system presents an opportunity for the emergence of anarchism. . . . Orlov,(aka kollapsnik at Club Orlov [3]), is probably best-known for his book, Reinventing Collapse [4], in which he compares the collapse of the Soviet Union with the imminent collapse of the United States. . . . With a wry Russian wit I find immensely attractive, Orlov describes in Reinventing Collapse how people in the USSR were better positioned than are Americans for economic collapse. For example, most Soviet citizens did not own their homes; instead they lived in state-owned dwellings. When the USSR collapsed, they simply remained where they were and nobody evicted them. Compare that with the United States, where people were seduced into signing questionable mortgage agreements for outrageously priced homes, and where, since the economic crisis of 2008, 3 million have been foreclosed upon. . . . Similarly, few Soviet citizens owned cars, but they could take advantage of a highly developed public transportation system. Most Americans, on the other hand, are car dependent, burdened with the expense car ownership and operation entails. In the USSR, citizens used to inefficient, centrally-planned agricultural policies were already in the habit of growing some of their own food. In recent years, some Americans have wised up to this necessity, but not nearly enough. I’m constantly amazed by the number of people I meet who can’t identify common garden vegetables by their leaves. . . . When, exactly, the economic and political collapse of the United States that Orlov has been predicting for five years, (convincingly, in my view), will occur, Orlov cannot say. But he believes it is not far in the future. (His specific arguments for collapse are collected in his most recent book of essays, Absolutely Positive [5].) Orlov uses the analogy of a deteriorating bridge [6] to explain how predictingwhen, something will happen is separate from predicting that it will happen:  Suppose you have an old bridge: the concrete is cracked, chunks of it are missing with rusty rebar showing through. An inspector declares it “structurally deficient.” This bridge is definitely going to collapse at some point, but on what date? That is something that nobody can tell you. . . . If anarchism is the natural pattern for life on earth, as Orlov asserts, why are most contemporary human societies organized otherwise? According to Orlov: Glimmers of anarchism could be discerned going as far back as the Reformation, in movements seeking autonomy, decentralization, and independence from central governments. But eventually virtually all of them were drowned out by socialist and communist revolutionary movements, which strove to renegotiate the social contract so as to distribute the fruits of industrial production more equitably among the working class. In all the developed countries, the working class was eventually able to secure gains such as the right to unionize, strike and bargain collectively, public education, a regulated work-week, government-guaranteed pensions and disability compensation schemes, government-provided health care and so on–all in exchange for submitting to the hierarchical control system of a centralized industrial state. Anarchist thought could gain no purchase within such a political climate, where the rewards of submitting to an official hierarchy were so compelling. But now the industrial experiment is nearing its end . . . Setting aside for a moment the facts that examples of anarchist societies go back further than the Reformation, and that more recent examples (such as among indigenous people in the Americas) were damaged or destroyed by colonial and imperial powers, Orlov’s thesis is intriguing. If people are more or less willing to submit to hierarchical authority when it distributes resources a little more equitably than laissez faire capitalism, what happens when the hierarchy no longer throws a few bones our way? . . . Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward demonstrate in their classic text Poor People’s Movements [13] that opportunities for popular insurgencies to emerge are relatively rare and usually coincide with “profound changes in the larger society” (p7). The decline of industrial society and impending collapse of global capitalism is, and will continue to, produce social dislocation and misery, but this rupture with the past also creates the space to build something new; perhaps something more equitable? More freeing? More caring? After all, industrial society produced its own forms of misery: boredom, conformity, stifling of creativity, and alienation to name a few. . . . “We can only hope,” Orlov writes,”that, with the waning of the industrial age, anarchism is poised for a rebirth, gaining relevance and acceptance among those wishing to opt out of the industrial scheme ahead of time instead of finding themselves pinned down under its wreckage.”