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| Libertarian socialism |
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche expressed the opinion that because the weak are used to being subjugated, they don't know anything about freedom; therefore, all of the ideas they produce will necessarily stifle the creative impulses of those who adopt them. He explained that the "slave morality" is a morality by slaves and for slaves, and that only the noble can understand the nuances of freedom. Edmund Burke made a similar argument in denouncing the French Revolution.
This argument is false.
Socialism developed in England in the 1800's out of the natural desire of workers to live decent lives and to establish communal relations in place of the alienating relations of factory life. The Socialist theories they adopted were distinctly libertarian, involving the idea of worker's cooperatives, democratic assemblies and unions working together to combat political and economic domination; they developed spontaneously the same ideas that Proudhon developed through much intellectual labor later in the century.
I would argue that libertarian socialism is the most natural reaction to industrial capitalism. What makes capitalism fundamentally oppressive is that it turns humans into isolated instruments of their masters, masters who alone are responsible for the creative element of production. Karl Marx thought that this dualism between manual and creative labor developed as a result of the alienation between the working and educated classes. In this spirit, the objective of left anarchist thought has been the elimination of alienation: between the laborer and his task; between one laborer and another (as subjects of the capitalist economy are forced to compete with one another); and, perhaps most importantly, between man's physical and intellectual self. Freedom of the individual to realize both his physical and intellectual self entails the ability to manage his affairs in all areas--in the workplace, in political institutions, in educational institutions, etc... When the leaders of an institution determine the nature of the institution, the subjects of these institutions become mere bodies, as they are not given an opportunity for intellectual input.
Libertarian socialism seeks to end the age of dismembered men and women, who are denied the realization of their entire natures, and of dismembered social relations, which operate based on the destructive principle of competition rather than the productive principle of cooperation. Every man should be both his own worker and his own manager, and his creative efforts should be multiplied by the input of those with whom he associates in non-hierarchical arrangements.
Libertarian socialism is the result of a psychological reaction to domination from above within social conditions conducive to individualism, as capitalist society is. Under these conditions, the individual's psychology is affected both by the oppression of external authority and by consciousness of individuality. If allowed to germinate freely, rebellion in these circumstances tends to express itself as a reaction not just to the government of economic structures, but to all forms of imposed authority, which by their very nature restrict the creative potential of the individual. For example, in Spain, anarchist mountain communities rebelled not only against large landowners but also against the Catholic Church, the state, and the traditional family structure.
As the classical liberal thinker Wilhelm Von Humboldt explained: "While [emancipated individuals] would break all fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many new social bonds as possible. The isolated man is no more able to develop as one who is fettered." Because imposed institutions of authority control their subjects by preventing creative collaboration among individuals, the desire to form social bonds in order to complement one's own freedom with the freedom of another tends to become an important part of the drive for individual emancipation. This is especially true in communities of factory workers, where people learn that only through unionization can any improvements in conditions ever be brought about, and has historically also been true in many peasant communities, where communal relations had been long established as an essential part of rural life.
When revolutionary developments happen, and are allowed to unfurl without interference from propagandists from the authoritarian socialist camp, they are likely to unfold spontaneously in the way that I have described.In fact, I would judge the essential quality of libertarian ideas to be that they have tended to be devised free from indoctrination. On the other hand, authoritarian socialists have historically gained the upper through clever political maneuvering rather than through allowing their ideas to develop gradually in the minds of workers and peasants. For example, in Soviet Russia, between the revolution of 1905 and the revolution of 1917, the idea of a society governed through community and workplace democracy developed as a natural reaction to the political authoritarianism of the czars and the economic authoritarianism of the new capitalist class. In both revolutions, workers naturally turned to libertarian socialist models of self-management without consciously pursuing models sketched out by anarchist philosophers. In the second revolution, this was done on a wide scale, until the Bolsheviks came to power with the support of a tiny minority and through the use of military force and misleading propaganda. This propaganda was effective because it actually advocated libertarian socialist models (which Lenin was determined to undermine once he obtained power).
In Spain, between the 1870's and the 1830's anarchism proliferated among the industrial and rural poor, and anarchism was not merely a popul ar idea spread through propagnada, but, as Murray Bookchin demonstrates, an anti-authoritarian way of life that developed as a reaction to the rule of clerics, large landowners and capitalists,and the inneficency of the liberal republic, which was not prepared to carry out the demands of the poor. It is because Spanish anarchism was developed spontaneously that experiments in self-management in the 1930's were so remarkably creative, despite the fact that they operated under the constraints of wartime demands. The Spanish Communist party, the authoritarian faction of the leftist camp, eventually came to dominate the leftist war effort through the influence of Soviet monetary aid (which was secretly kept out of anarchist hands by the Communists and liberals, and sometimes handed over to the fascists to keep the anarchists from getting it). This aid was welcomed, however, as the leftist army was short on supplies; because the aid was associated with the Russian Communist Party, the Spanish Communist Party, called the PSUC, became popular among the soldiers, and many soldiers then began to buy into the Communist faith as an act of gratitude for Communist assistance. Meanwhile, the Soviets used the PSUC to destroy collectives and, according to some accounts, to murder wounded libertarian soldiers.
We are justified in believing that un-indoctrinated people in revolution are likely to develop libertarian objectives. There is historical evidence of what Mikhail Bakunin considered a biological drive for freedom in humans, a natural tendency to rebel against external authority. We can not be certain of the existence of such a drive, but as I have proven, we are entitled to reject categorical denunciations of popular revolutionary movements on the grounds that the oppressed don't understand freedom. And, more importantly, we as anarchists have a responsibility to resist authoritarian trends in Leftism.
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Posted by julio on 2008-10-27 22:23:08 | Rating: | Views: 48
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