Posted on March 11th, 2011 in AK News
Property is Theft, the gigantic Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology has just been delivered from the printer, and dropped off at our door here in Baltimore. Did I mention it’s gigantic? To answer the question “Why a Proudhon collection?”, editor Iain McKay blogged about it just this morning, giving some insight into his reasons for diving into this monumental project, some of the things he uncovered in the process, and the ways that the book changed along the way.
Check out Iain’s entire blog post here.
Now, after two years, I can look forward to getting the book in my hands. It has been time consuming but worth it. I think the book will transform the understanding of Proudhon’s ideas in the English speaking world. The new texts and the introduction should help expose the many, many distortions of his ideas that we have been subjected to for so long. It should also help our understanding of the development of anarchism in the 19th century, showing (at the very least) how indebted Bakunin was to Proudhon (as Daniel Guerin explained in one of his articles) and the links between mutualism (reformist anarchism, if you like) and the revolutionary anarchism which developed in the First International. Yes, there are differences (and some unfortunate Proudhon bashing due to the need to refute those around Tolain) but in terms of their analysis of capitalism (exploitation rooted in production due to wage-labour), the state as an unreformable hierarchical institution of class rule and their vision of a socio-economic federation based on workers’ self-management of production and communal self-government the links are obvious.
Suffice to say, if someone asks why Proudhon is important the obvious answer is to ask why the Paris Commune is important. You cannot dismiss Proudhon and praise the Commune — the later reflected the ideas of the former. Similarly, there is good reason why the likes of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rocker and Guerin all praised Proudhon and considered him the founder of anarchism. Yes, he is not perfect but he contributed immensely to the commonwealth of ideas which is anarchism. You can get a taste of this from the three reviews I did of his works for Freedom: What is Property?, System of Economic Contradictions and General Idea of the Revolution. Property is Theft! will show that is the case and why, for all his flaws, he is worth reading today.
Capital F Friends, you’ll be seeing it in the mail soon. If you’re the other kind of friend, pick up a copy here. You won’t be disappointed. Property is Theft challenges us all to look further back, dig in, and re-discover the roots of our radical tradition.
Posted on March 6th, 2011 in AK Authors!, Happenings
AK author Ben Dangl is on tour this week in California! Yay! You can see all of Ben’s upcoming events on our events calendar, but here’s a great post from his Dancing with Dynamite blog about the first few days of the tour … Plus, be sure to catch his events IN THE BAY at the Mission Cultural Center (March 9) and at Modern Times Bookstore (March 11).
Read Ben’s tour blog here: http://www.dancingwithdynamite.com/blog/
San Francisco at Night: From the Dancing with Dynamite Blog by Ben Dangl
San Francisco Bay at night
At night, looking down on San Francisco from a descending plane, the cars look like little ants going up and down the highways. I got off the plane, took an escalator, elevator, train, car, then another train, then a bike, until finally arriving at some friends’ house in Davis, California, as part of a book tour with Dancing with Dynamite. (I’ll be in Sacramento and all over the Bay Area this coming week. Check out the tour dates and details here.)
Article on my book talks, below “Pets of the Week” in Davis newspaper
On Friday, March 4, I spoke with a crowd of students, teachers and activists at UC Davis, where the flowers are in blossom and there are bike paths snaking throughout the city. People there were particularly interested in discussing the lessons that can be learned from Latin American social movement victories. That same day I went to the Avid Reader in Davis, where some people asked questions about Cuba’s influence in the region, and were impressed with the story of Take Back the Land in Miami, which has been pairing homeless people with foreclosed homes.
Following the bookstore event, I wandered over to a bar with new and old friends from around the hemisphere, where we sat around a fire outside talking about Argentinean rock and bad presidents.
Days earlier on a visit to New Orleans, a guitarist howled the blues in one bar where graffiti in the bathroom lamented the BP oil spill. Another graffiti artist had responded on the ancient walls: “Don’t blame me, I voted for anarchy.”
Posted on March 4th, 2011 in AK Book Excerpts
| The following excerpt from Ramor Ryan’s forthcoming book recently appeared on the Institute for Anarchist Studies website. The ever-helpful IAS gave Ramor a grant to support his writing. Zapatista Spring will be out this April! |
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“Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is in solidarity, it is a radical posture.” —Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Roberto Arenas is a small tseltal1 community of twenty-three subsistence farmer families located in the Chiapas Lacandon Rainforest, a six-hour drive from the nearest major commercial center, the market town of Ocosingo. The occupants, adherents of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, its Spanish acronym), formed a nuevo poblado, a new community, here about three years ago. The land makes up part of the territory that was taken over or ‘re-cuperated’ by the Zapatistas in the midst of the January 1st 1994 uprising, as the land owners fled and the rebels took control of the zone. Under the mantle that the land is owned by those who work it, the Zapatistas began slowly dividing out the vast swathes to Zapatista militia and support base families – usually landless indigenous peasants or campesinos who previously labored on large fincas under difficult conditions. About 300,000 hectares of land were recuperated by the insurgent Zapatistas after the tumultuous state-wide uprising. The newly formed community of Roberto Arenas, fell under the jurisdiction of the Francisco Gomez Autonomous region, a self-governing Zapatista municipality where there is no state authority and, as the sign entering the municipality announces, “Here the people govern and the government obeys!”
Like hundreds of other little villages dotted throughout the region, theirs is a community characterized by pastoral simplicity. The roughly hewn, earthen floor dwellings are scattered around the undulating hills, and converge on a grassy community plaza with a muddy basketball court, flanked by a couple of rustic wooden structures that serve as church, community hall, and school. Although the community would probably be considered to exist in extreme poverty by any standard indices, they are poor mostly in the sense that they lack buying power—surviving on less than $2 a day. Nevertheless, all vital needs of daily life are satisfied with farming and the natural resources around them, and only a small part of their needs are satisfied in the market. Roberto Arenas is a frugal rather than impoverished community, it is self-sufficient in a traditional way, and would only approach extreme poverty if they lost the forests, rivers, and commons that are part of their home.
Like most other indigenous settlements in the region, Roberto Arenas has no electricity or potable water. Water for washing is hauled from the jungle river and drinking water is carried from a small water-hole 1 kilometre away. There are few latrines, and, as is customary, adults and children alike mostly use the natural surroundings. Almost all water sources are contaminated by human and animal feces. Waterborne illnesses affect the population (predominantly children) including those related to amoebas and giardia, and there is a threat of cholera and typhoid. Lack of potable water sources increase the risk of scabies infection, lice, salmonella, ascariasis and enterovirus diarrheas.
Good, sweet water is available from an abundant freshwater spring 2 km up the mountain, but is unattainable as the villagers lack everything they need to pipe it into the community. The cost of basic materials like pipes and tools is beyond the community budget, and they lack the technical know-how to implement such a project. Historically, generations of colonizers of the Lacandon jungle dealt with this problem by taking basic precautions like adding iodine or boiling the water—but these are inadequate. Some communities would make do with the most basic of water systems, budget allowing—a makeshift concoction of pipes connected to the nearest water source. If the community was fortunate it might get some institutional support from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, or church organizations. In a region where the government does nothing to provide basic services, water systems are few and far between. The lack of this basic necessity, added to the long list of communities’ grievances and the injustices suffered, ultimately resulted in the Zapatista uprising. Off the political map in the eyes of the state, they are ignored and cast into the void. So, typical for the region, Roberto Arenas has received no institutional support from either government or NGOs.
Without government or state, how does political autonomy work in the Zapatista zone? How do the people organize to get things done, like realizing a water system for the community? In Roberto Arenas, like all Zapatista villages, the community assembly—with representatives from each household—meets in the community hall, weekly—or more frequently if there are things to decide. Together they determine the manner and method of developing their own village, taking into account what resources are available. Decisions are made by the assembly, preferably by consensus. If there is a split and no clear decision, the debates and discussions go on until the assembly reaches a consensus. Occasionally, this can take days on end. This is participatory democracy in action, warts and all.
This kind of assembly-based decision-making process is not unique to the Zapatistas: indigenous communities throughout the region have always worked like this, most likely since pre-colonial times. It is in this forum, that all the major decisions concerning the community are taken – from land issues to community development, to justice—and are then passed on to the relevant commission for fine tuning. The decision to join the Zapatistas and go to war on January 1st, 1994 was taken in such an assembly. And if asked what influence the EZLN has had on the traditional community assembly procedures, compañeros and compañeras will mention how more women and youth are now involved in the decision making than before. Previously the assemblies were dominated by older male members but with Zapatista influence, the old patriarchal ties are not as binding.
So it was that Roberto Arenas decided that their biggest priority was getting a fresh water supply. This necessity was prioritized over other pressing needs, like electricity, new work tools, a hammock bridge to span the river that separated them from the dirt road, and the construction of a church building.
The assembly nominated three water “commissioners” to investigate the matter and to petition the local autonomous council for help and support. The three made their preliminary survey of what would be needed and walked the arduous mountain paths through the jungle, arriving at La Garrucha, the regional autonomous municipality center. They attended the weekly council meetings— or juntas— overseen by the council representatives there by rotation, and attended by community members from any of the several hundred communities in this particular autonomous municipality (one of seven throughout the Zapatista zone of influence). This system of local governance is part of their aspiration to organize in a participatory manner, from the bottom-up instead of the top-down. The Zapatista slogan— to lead by obeying— captures this concept.
The de-facto autonomy of the Zapatista zone is a result of the never-ratified San Andreas Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture negotiated between the EZLN and the Mexican government in 1996. Under provisions of the agreement approved but never sanctioned by the government, majority indigenous municipalities would be granted limited autonomy over land, habitat, exploitation of natural resources, the environment, education, health, and agrarian policies. Authorities and municipal posts would be designated by traditional usos y custumbres2 instead of being divided up among political parties. In response to the government’s betrayal of the San Andreas agreements, the Zapatistas set up autonomous structures without official state authorization. Such pirate action has resulted in a burgeoning and successful system of rebel autonomy that exists under the constant threat of dismantlement by the Mexican Army.
The three compas of Roberto Arenas patiently wait their turn at the autonomous municipality seat of La Garrucha, prosaically entitled the Good Government Council “The Path of the Future” Caracol. The wait could be days as the business of the municipal council is long and complicated, but eventually they will present their petition. The various representatives listen, take note of the petition, and discuss the project. Everything is taken into account and the three compas return to their village to await the outcome.
The good government committee of the autonomous municipality refer the case to their elected water commission and the options are weighed. The commission consults various parties including the local EZLN commander and clandestine committee members, and so, in the end, after the issue has been bandied around what seems like half the inhabitants of this particular region of the jungle, the community of Roberto Arenas is notified about the eligibility of their request. It’s a process similar to what happens anywhere in the world at a local council level, except for one significant difference: the state authorities have no involvement whatsoever; this is an autonomous process overseen by the communities’ people. There is no separation between who is governed and who is governing—they are one and the same. The various committees and bodies are overseen not by elected or appointed officials, but by members of the community, a duty performed by rotation. Here, in a place off the map, a nowhere of sorts, the people have adopted an enlightened form of governance. This is how an autonomous administration functions. This is peoples’ power in action.
And, most significantly, for this particular little story, the decision for the community is… Affirmative! Yes to assigning a water project to Roberto Arenas! So the momentum to bring potable water to the isolated rural community on recuperated Zapatista lands begins. Now to find a way to make it happen!
Not surprisingly, the Zapatista autonomous municipalities are chronically lacking in funding and resources. Revenue comes from their own base—from Zapatista agricultural ventures like coffee or honey, from NGOs (local, national, and international) and from solidarity groups. In the case of getting water to a base community, the municipalities have a couple of options: A fairly basic project—a DIY job—can be self-financed, though is often only a temporary solution. A more sophisticated water system is very costly and requires local engineers and plumbers to be hired to oversee the project. Another option is to petition an NGO or solidarity group to support and realize a community water project.
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