               J.4 What trends in society aid anarchist activity?

   In this section we will examine some modern trends which we regard as
   being potential openings for anarchists to organise. These trends are
   of a general nature, partly as a product of social struggle, partly as
   a response to economic and social crisis, partly involving people's
   attitudes to big government and big business partly in relation to the
   communications revolution we are currently living through, and so on.
   We do this because, as Kropotkin argued, the anarchist "studies human
   society as it is now and was in the past. . . He [or she] studies
   society and tries to discover its tendencies, past and present, its
   growing needs, intellectual and economical, and in his ideal he merely
   points out in which direction evolution goes." [Anarchism and Anarchist
   Communism, p. 24] In this section we highlight just a few of the
   tendencies in modern society which point in an anarchist direction.

   Of course, looking at modern society we see multiple influences,
   changes which have certain positive aspects in some directions but
   negative ones in others. For example, the business-inspired attempts to
   decentralise or reduce (certain) functions of governments. In the
   abstract, such developments should be welcomed by anarchists for they
   lead to the reduction of government. In practice such a conclusion is
   deeply suspect simply because these developments are being pursued to
   increase the power and influence of business and capital and undermine
   working class power and autonomy. Similarly, increases in
   self-employment can be seen, in the abstract, as reducing wage slavery.
   However, if, in practice, this increase is due to corporations
   encouraging "independent" contractors to cut wages and worsen working
   conditions, increase job insecurity and undermine paying for health and
   other employee packages then is hardly a positive sign. Obviously
   increases in self-employment would be different if such an increase was
   the result of an increase in the number of co-operatives, for example.

   Thus few anarchists celebrate many apparently "libertarian"
   developments as they are not the product of social movements and
   activism, but are the product of elite lobbying for private profit and
   power. Decreasing the power of the state in (certain) areas while
   leaving (or increasing) the power of capital is a retrograde step in
   most, if not all, ways. Needless to say, this "rolling back" of the
   state does not bring into question its role as defender of property and
   the interests of the capitalist class -- nor could it, as it is the
   ruling class who introduces and supports these developments.

   As an example of these multiple influences, we can point to the
   economic crisis which has staggered on since 1973 in many Western
   countries. This crisis, when it initially appeared, lead to calls to
   reduce taxation (at least for the wealthy, in most countries the
   tax-burden was shifted even more onto the working class -- as was the
   case in Thatcher's Britain). In most countries, as a result, government
   "got off the back" of the wealthy (and got even more comfy on our
   back!). This (along with slower growth) helped to create declining
   revenue bases in the advanced capitalist nations has given central
   governments an excuse to cut social services, leaving a vacuum that
   regional and local governments have had to fill along with voluntary
   organisations, thus producing a tendency toward decentralisation that
   dovetails with anarchist ideals.

   As Murray Bookchin points out, a sustainable ecological society must
   shift emphasis away from nation-states as the basic units of
   administration and focus instead on municipalities -- towns, villages,
   and human-scale cities. Interestingly, the ongoing dismantling of the
   welfare state is producing such a shift by itself. By forcing urban
   residents to fend for themselves more than ever before in meeting
   transportation, housing, social welfare, and other needs, the economic
   crisis is also forcing them to relearn the arts of teamwork,
   co-operation, and self-reliance (see his Remaking Society: Pathways to
   a Green Future, p. 183).

   Of course the economic crisis also has a downside for anarchists. As
   hardships and dislocations continue to swell the ranks and increase the
   militancy of progressive social movements, the establishment is being
   provoked to use ever more authoritarian methods to maintain control
   (see D.9). As the crisis deepens over the next few decades, the
   reactionary tendencies of the state will be reinforced (particularly as
   the neo-liberal consensus helps atomise society via the market
   mechanism and the resulting destruction of community and human
   relationships). However, this is not inevitable. The future depends on
   our actions in the here and now. In this section of the FAQ we
   highlight some developments which do, or could, work to the advantage
   of anarchists. Many of these examples are from the US, but they apply
   equally to Britain and many other advanced industrial states.

   In this section, we aim to discuss tendencies from below, not above --
   tendencies which can truly "roll back" the state rather than reduce its
   functions purely to that of the armed thug of Capital. The tendencies
   we discuss here are not the be all nor end all of anarchist activism or
   tendencies. We discuss many of the more traditionally anarchist
   "openings" in [1]section J.5 (such as industrial and community
   unionism, mutual credit, co-operatives, modern schools and so on) and
   so will not do so here. However, it is important to stress here that
   such "traditional" openings are not being downplayed -- indeed, much of
   what we discuss here can only become fully libertarian in combination
   with these more "traditional" forms of "anarchy in action."

   For a lengthy discussion of anarchistic trends in society, we recommend
   Colin Ward's classic book Anarchy in Action. Ward's excellent book
   covers many areas in which anarchistic tendencies have been expressed,
   far more than we can cover here. The libertarian tendencies in society
   are many. No single work could hope to do them justice.

J.4.1 Why is social struggle a good sign?

   Simply because it shows that people are unhappy with the existing
   society and, more importantly, are trying to change at least some part
   of it. It suggests that certain parts of the population have reflected
   on their situation and, potentially at least, seen that by their own
   actions they can influence and change it for the better.

   Given that the ruling minority draws its strength of the acceptance and
   acquiescence of the majority, the fact that a part of that majority no
   longer accepts and acquiesces is a positive sign. After all, if the
   majority did not accept the status quo and acted to change it, the
   class and state system could not survive. Any hierarchical society
   survives because those at the bottom follow the orders of those above
   it. Social struggle suggests that some people are considering their own
   interests, thinking for themselves and saying "no" and this, by its
   very nature, is an important, indeed, the most important, tendency
   towards anarchism. It suggests that people are rejecting the old ideas
   which hold the system up, acting upon this rejection and creating new
   ways of doing thinks.

   "Our social institutions," argues Alexander Berkman, "are founded on
   certain ideas; as long as the latter are generally believed, the
   institutions built upon them are safe. Government remains strong
   because people think political authority and legal compulsion
   necessary. Capitalism will continue as long as such an economic system
   is considered adequate and just. The weakening of the ideas which
   support the evil and oppressive present-day conditions means the
   ultimate breakdown of government and capitalism." [The ABC of
   Anarchism, p. xv]

   Social struggle is the most obvious sign of this change of perspective,
   this change in ideas, this progress towards freedom.

   Social struggle is expressed by direct action. We have discussed both
   social struggle and direct action before (in sections [2]J.1 and [3]J.2
   respectively) and some readers may wonder why we are covering this
   again here. We do so for two reasons. Firstly, as we are discussing
   what trends in society help anarchist activity, it would be wrong not
   to highlight social struggle and direct action here. This is because
   these factors are key tendencies towards anarchism as anarchism will be
   created by people and social struggle is the means by which people
   create the new world in the shell of the old. Secondly, social struggle
   and direct action are key aspects of anarchist theory and we cannot
   truly present a picture of what anarchism is about without making clear
   what these are.

   So social struggle is a good sign as it suggests that people are
   thinking for themselves, considering their own interests and working
   together collectively to change things for the better. As the French
   syndicalist Emile Pouget argues:

     "Direct action . . . means that the working class, forever bridling
     at the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from outside
     people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of
     struggle and looks to itself for its methodology . . . Direct Action
     thus implies that the working class subscribes to notions of freedom
     and autonomy instead of genuflecting before the principle of
     authority. Now, it is thanks to this authority principle, the pivot
     of the modern world - democracy being its latest incarnation - that
     the human being, tied down by a thousand ropes, moral as well as
     material, is bereft of any opportunity to display will and
     initiative." [Direct Action]

   Social struggle means that people come into opposition with the boss
   and other authorities such as the state and the dominant morality. This
   challenge to existing authorities generates two related processes: the
   tendency of those involved to begin taking over the direction of their
   own activities and the development of solidarity with each other.
   Firstly, in the course of a struggle, such as a strike, occupation,
   boycott, and so on, the ordinary life of people, in which they act
   under the constant direction of the bosses or state, ceases, and they
   have to think, act and co-ordinate their actions for themselves. This
   reinforces the expression towards autonomy that the initial refusal
   that lead to the struggle indicates. Thus struggle re-enforces the
   initial act of refusal and autonomy by forcing those involves to act
   for themselves. Secondly, in the process of struggle those involved
   learn the importance of solidarity, of working with others in a similar
   situation, in order to win. This means the building of links of
   support, of common interests, of organisation. The practical need for
   solidarity to help win the struggle is the basis for the solidarity
   required for a free society to be viable.

   Therefore the real issue in social struggle is that it is an attempt by
   people to wrestle at least part of the power over their own lives away
   from the managers, state officials and so on who currently have it and
   exercise it themselves. This is, by its very nature, anarchistic and
   libertarian. Thus we find politicians and, of course, managers and
   property owners, often denouncing strikes and other forms of direct
   action. This is logical. As direct action challenges the real
   power-holders in society and because, if carried to its logical
   conclusion, it would have to replace them, social struggle and direct
   action can be considered in essence a revolutionary process.

   Moreover, the very act of using direct action suggests a transformation
   within the people using it. "Direct action's very powers to fertilise,"
   argues Pouget, "reside in such exercises in imbuing the individual with
   a sense of his own worth and in extolling such worth. It marshals human
   resourcefulness, tempers characters and focuses energies. It teaches
   self-confidence! And self-reliance! And self-mastery! And shifting for
   oneself!" Moreover, "direct action has an unmatched educational value:
   It teaches people to reflect, to make decisions and to act. It is
   characterised by a culture of autonomy, an exaltation of individuality
   and is a fillip to initiative, to which it is the leaven. And this
   superabundance of vitality and burgeoning of 'self' in no way conflicts
   with the economic fellowship that binds the workers one with another
   and far from being at odds with their common interests, it reconciles
   and bolsters these: the individual's independence and activity can only
   erupt into splendour and intensity by sending its roots deep into the
   fertile soil of common agreement." [Pouget, Op. Cit.]

   Emma Goldman also recognised the transforming power of direct action.
   Anarchists, she argues, "believe with Stirner that man has as much
   liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct
   action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and
   restrictions, economic, social and moral. But defiance and resistance
   are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal
   necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls
   for free independent spirits. . ." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 61-2]

   Social struggle is the beginning of a transformation of the people
   involved and their relationships to each other. While its external
   expression lies in contesting the power of existing authorities, its
   inner expression is the transformation of people from passive and
   isolated competitors into empowered, self-directing, self-governing
   co-operators. Moreover, this process widens considerable what people
   think is "possible." Through struggle, by collective action, the fact
   people can change things is driven home, that they have the power to
   govern themselves and the society they live in. Thus struggle can
   change people's conception of "what is possible" and encourage them to
   try and create a better world. As Kropotkin argued:

     "since the times of the [first] International Working Men's
     Association, the anarchists have always advised taking an active
     part in those workers' organisations which carry on the direct
     struggle of labour against capital and its protector -- the State.

     "Such a struggle, they say, . . . permits the worker to obtain some
     temporary improvements. . ., while it opens his [or her] eyes to the
     evil that is done by capitalism and the State. . . , and wakes up
     his thoughts concerning the possibility of organising consumption,
     production, and exchange without the intervention of the capitalist
     and the State."
     [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 171]

   In other words, social struggle has a radicalising and politicising
   effect, an effect which brings into a new light existing society and
   the possibilities of a better world ("direct action", in Pouget's
   words, "develops the feeling for human personality as well as the
   spirit of initiative . . . it shakes people out of their torpor and
   steers them to consciousness."). The practical need to unite and resist
   the boss also helps break down divisions within the working class.
   Those in struggle start to realise that they need each other to give
   them the power necessary to get improvements, to change things. Thus
   solidarity spreads and overcomes divisions between black and white,
   male and female, heterosexual and homosexual, trades, industries,
   nationalities and so on. The real need for solidarity to win the fight
   helps to undermine artificial divisions and show that there are only
   two groups in society, the oppressed and the oppressors.

   Moreover, struggle as well as transforming those involved is also the
   basis for transforming society as a whole simply because, as well as
   producing transformed individuals, it also produces new forms of
   organisation, organisations created to co-ordinate their struggle and
   which can, potentially at least, become the framework of a libertarian
   socialist society.

   Thus anarchists argue that social struggle opens the eyes of those
   involved to self-esteem and a sense of their own strength, and the
   groupings it forms at its prompting are living, vibrant associations
   where libertarian principles usually come to the fore. We find almost
   all struggles developing new forms of organisation, forms which are
   often based on direct democracy, federalism and decentralisation. If we
   look at every major revolution, we find people creating mass
   organisations such as workers' councils, factory committees,
   neighbourhood assemblies and so on as a means of taking back the power
   to govern their own lives, communities and workplaces. In this way
   social struggle and direct action lays the foundations for the future.
   By actively taking part in social life, people are drawn into creating
   new forms of organisation, new ways of doing things. In this way they
   educate themselves in participation, in self-government, in initiative
   and in asserting themselves. They begin to realise that the only
   alternative to management by others is self-management and organise to
   achieve thus.

   Given that remaking society has to begin at the bottom, this finds its
   expression in direct action, individuals taking the initiative,
   building new, more libertarian forms of organisation and using the
   power they have just generated by collective action and organisation to
   change things by their own efforts. Social struggle is therefore a two
   way transformation -- the external transformation of society by the
   creation of new organisations and the changing of the power relations
   within it and the internal transformation of those who take part in the
   struggle. And because of this, social struggle, "[w]hatever may be the
   practical results of the struggle for immediate gains, the greatest
   value lies in the struggle itself. For thereby workers learn that the
   bosses interests are opposed to theirs and that they cannot improve
   their conditions, and much less emancipate themselves, except by
   uniting and becoming stronger than the bosses. If they succeed in
   getting what they demand, they will be better off . . . and immediately
   make greater demands and have greater needs. If they do not succeed
   they will be led to study the causes of their failure and recognise the
   need for closer unity and greater activism and they will in the end
   understand that to make their victory secure and definitive, it is
   necessary to destroy capitalism. The revolutionary cause, the cause of
   the moral elevation and emancipation of the workers must benefit by the
   fact that workers unite and struggle for their interests." [Errico
   Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 191]

   Hence Nestor Makhno's comment that "[i]n fact, it is only through that
   struggle for freedom, equality and solidarity that you reach an
   understanding of anarchism." [The Struggle Against the State and other
   Essays, p. 71] The creation of an anarchist society is a process and
   social struggle is the key anarchistic tendency within society which
   anarchists look for, encourage and support. Its radicalising and
   transforming nature is the key to the growth of anarchist ideas, the
   creation of libertarian structures and alternatives within capitalism
   (structures which may, one day, replace capitalism and state) and the
   creation of anarchists and those sympathetic to anarchist ideas. Its
   importance cannot be underestimated!

J.4.2 Won't social struggle do more harm than good?

   It is often argued that social struggle, by resisting the powerful and
   the wealthy, will just do more harm than good. Employers often use this
   approach in anti-union propaganda, for example, arguing that creating a
   union will force the company to close and move to less "militant"
   areas.

   There is, of course, some truth in this. Yes, social struggle can lead
   to bosses moving to more compliant workforces -- but, of course, this
   also happens in periods lacking social struggle too! If we look at the
   down-sizing mania that gripped the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, we see
   companies down-sizing tens of thousands of people during a period where
   unions were weak, workers scared about loosing their jobs and class
   struggle basically becoming mostly informal and "underground."
   Moreover, this argument actually indicates the need for anarchism. It
   is a damning indictment of any social system that it requires people to
   kow-tow to their masters otherwise they will suffer economic hardship.
   It boils down to the argument "do what you are told, otherwise you will
   regret it." Any system based on that maxim is an affront to human
   dignity!

   It would, in a similar fashion, be easy to "prove" that slave
   rebellions are against the long term interests of the slaves. After
   all, by rebelling the slaves will face the anger of their masters. Only
   by submitting to their master can they avoid this fate and, perhaps, be
   rewarded by better conditions. Of course, the evil of slavery would
   continue but by submitting to it they can ensure their life can become
   better. Needless to say, any thinking and feeling person would quickly
   dismiss this reasoning as missing the point and being little more than
   apologetics for an evil social system that treated human beings as
   things. The same can be said for the argument that social struggles
   within capitalism do more harm than good. It betrays a slave mentality
   unfitting for human beings (although fitting for those who desire to
   live of the backs of workers or desire to serve those who do).

   Moreover, this kind of argument ignores a few key points. Firstly, by
   resistance the conditions of the oppressed can be maintained or even
   improved. After all, if the boss knows that their decisions will be
   resisted they may be less inclined to impose speed-ups, longer hours
   and so on. If they know that their employees will agree to anything
   then there is every reason to expect them to impose all kinds of
   oppressions, just as a state will impose draconian laws if it knows
   that it can get away with it. History is full of examples of
   non-resistance producing greater evils in the long term and of
   resistance producing numerous important reforms and improvements (such
   as higher wages, shorter hours, the right to vote for working class
   people and women, freedom of speech, the end of slavery, trade union
   rights and so on).

   So social struggle has been proven time and time again to gain
   successful reforms. For example, before the 8 hour day movement of 1886
   in America, for example, most companies argued they could not introduce
   that reform without doing bust. However, after displaying a militant
   mood and conducting an extensive strike campaign, hundreds of thousands
   of workers discovered that their bosses had been lying and they got
   shorter hours. Indeed, the history of the labour movement shows what
   bosses say they can afford and the reforms workers can get via struggle
   are somewhat at odds. Given the asymmetry of information between
   workers and bosses, this is unsurprising. Workers can only guess at
   what is available and bosses like to keep their actual finances hidden.
   Even the threat of labour struggle can be enough to gain improvements.
   For example, Henry Ford's $5 day is often used as an example of
   capitalism rewarding good workers. However, this substantial pay
   increase was largely motivated by the unionisation drive by the
   Industrial Workers of the World among Ford workers in the summer of
   1913 [Harry Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capitalism, p. 144]. More
   recently, it was the mass non-payment campaign against the poll-tax in
   Britain during the late 1980s and early 1990s which helped ensure its
   defeat (and the 1990 poll-tax riot in London also helped and ensured
   that the New Zealand government did not introduce a similar scheme in
   their country too!). In the 1990s, France also saw the usefulness of
   direct action. Two successive prime ministers (Edouard Balladur and
   Alain Juppe) tried to impose large scale "reform" programmes that
   swiftly provoked mass demonstrations and general strikes amongst
   students, workers, farmers and others. Confronted by crippling
   disruptions, both governments gave in. Compared to the experience of,
   say Britain, France's tradition of direct action politics proved more
   effective in maintaining existing conditions or even improving on them.

   Secondly, and in some ways more importantly, it ignores that by
   resistance those who take part can the social system they live in can
   be changed. This radicalising effect of social struggle can open new
   doors for those involved, liberate their minds, empower them and create
   the potential for deep social change. Without resistance to existing
   forms of authority a free society cannot be created as people adjust
   themselves to authoritarian structures and accept what is as the only
   possibility. By resisting, people transform and empower themselves, as
   well as transforming society. In addition, new possibilities can be
   seen (possibilities before dismissed as "utopian") and, via the
   organisation and action required to win reforms, the framework for
   these possibilities (i.e. of a new, libertarian, society) created. The
   transforming and empowering effect of social struggle is expressed well
   by the Nick DiGaetano, an one time Wobbly who had joined during the
   1912 Lawrence strike and then UAW-CIO shop floor militant from the late
   1930s to the 1950s. By fighting their bosses for union recognition what
   the workers gained was not only better conditions and pay but also a
   changed mentality:

     "the workers of my generation from the early days up to now [1958]
     had what you might call a labour insurrection in changing from a
     plain, humble, submissive creature into a man. The union made a man
     out of him . . . I am not talking about the benefits . . . I am
     talking about the working conditions and how they affected the men
     in the plant . . . Before they were submissive. Today they are men."
     [quoted by David Brody, "Workplace Contractualism in comparative
     perspective", pp. 176-205, Helson Lichtenstein and Howell john
     Harris (eds.), Industrial Democracy in America, p. 204]

   Other labour historians note the same radicalising process elsewhere
   (modern day activists could give more examples!):

     "The contest [over wages and conditions] so pervaded social life
     that the ideology of acquisitive individualism, which explained and
     justified a society regulated by market mechanisms and propelled by
     the accumulation of capital, was challenged by an ideology of
     mutualism, rooted in working-class bondings and struggles. . .
     Contests over pennies on or off existing piece rates had ignited
     controversies over the nature and purpose of the American republic
     itself." [David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labour, p. 171]

   This radicalising effect is far more dangerous to authoritarian
   structures than better pay, more liberal laws and so on as they need
   submissiveness to work. Little wonder that direct action is usually
   denounced as pointless or harmful by those in power or their
   spokespersons, for direct action will, taken to its logical conclusion,
   put them out of a job! Struggle, therefore, holds the possibility of a
   free society as well as of improvements in the here and now. It also
   changes the perspectives of those involved, creating new ideas and
   values to replace the ones of capitalism.

   Thirdly, it ignores the fact that such arguments do not imply the end
   of social struggle and working class resistance and organisation, but
   rather its extension. If, for example, your boss argues that they will
   move to Mexico if you do not "shut up and put up" then the obvious
   solution is to make sure the workers in Mexico are also organised!
   Bakunin argued this basic point over one hundred years ago, and it is
   still true -- "in the long run the relatively tolerable position of
   workers in one country can be maintained only on condition that it be
   more or less the same in other countries." If, for example, workers in
   Mexico have worse wages and conditions than you do, these same
   conditions will be used against you as the "conditions of labour cannot
   get worse or better in any particular industry without immediately
   affecting the workers in other industries, and that workers of all
   trades are inter-linked with real and indissoluble ties of solidarity,"
   ties which can be ignored only at your own peril. Ultimately, "in those
   countries the workers work longer hours for less pay; and the employers
   there can sell their products cheaper, successfully competing against
   conditions where workers working less earn more, and thus force the
   employers in the latter countries to cut wages and increase the hours
   of their workers." Bakunin's solution was to organise internationally,
   to stop this undercutting of conditions by solidarity between workers.
   As recent history shows, his argument was correct [The Political
   Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 306-7]. Thus it is not social struggle or
   militancy which is bad, just isolated militancy, struggle which ignores
   the ties of solidarity required to win, extent and keep reforms and
   improvements. In other words, our resistance must be as transnational
   as capitalism is.

   The idea that social struggle and working class organisation are
   harmful was expressed constantly in the 1970s. If we look at the
   arguments of the right in the 1970s, we also find evidence that the
   "struggle does more harm than good" viewpoint is flawed. With the
   post-war Keynesian consensus crumbling, the "New Right" argued that
   trade unions (and strikes) hampered growth and that wealth
   redistribution (i.e. welfare schemes which returned some of the surplus
   value workers produced back into their own hands) hindered "wealth
   creation" (i.e. economic growth). Do not struggle over income, they
   argued, let the market decide and everyone will be better off.

   This argument was dressed up in populist clothes. Thus we find the
   right-wing guru F.A. von Hayek arguing that, in the case of Britain,
   the "legalised powers of the unions have become the biggest obstacle to
   raising the standards of the working class as a whole. They are the
   chief cause of the unnecessarily big differences between the best- and
   worse-paid workers." He maintained that "the elite of the British
   working class. . . derive their relative advantages by keeping workers
   who are worse off from improving their position." Moreover, he
   "predict[ed] that the average worker's income would rise fastest in a
   country where relative wages are flexible, and where the exploitation
   of workers by monopolistic trade union organisations of specialised
   workers are effectively outlawed." ["1980s Unemployment and the Unions"
   reproduced in The Economic Decline of Modern Britain, p. 107, p. 108,
   p. 110]

   Now, if von Hayek's claims were true we could expect that in the
   aftermath of Thatcher government's trade union reforms we would have
   seen: a rise in economic growth (usually considered as the means to
   improve living standards for workers by the right); a decrease in the
   differences between high and low paid workers; a reduction in the
   percentage of low paid workers as they improved their positions when
   freed from union "exploitation"; and that wages rise fastest in
   countries with the highest wage flexibility. Unfortunately for von
   Hayek, the actual trajectory of the British economy exposes his claims
   as nonsense.

   Looking at each of his claims in turn we discover that rather than
   "exploit" other workers, trade unions are an essential means to shift
   income from capital to labour (which is way capital fights labour
   organisers tooth and nail). And, equally important, labour militancy
   aids all workers by providing a floor under which wages cannot drop
   (non-unionised/militant firms in the same industry or area have to
   offer similar programs to prevent unionisation and be able to hire
   workers) and by maintaining aggregate demand. This positive role of
   unions/militancy in aiding all workers can be seen by comparing Britain
   before and after Thatcher's von Hayek inspired trade union and labour
   market reforms.

   As far as economic growth goes, there has been a steady fall since
   trade union reforms. In the "bad old days" of the 1970s, with its
   strikes and "militant unions" growth was 2.4% in Britain. It fell to 2%
   in the 1980s and fell again to 1.2% in the 1990s [Larry Elliot and Dan
   Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity, p. 236]. So the rate of "wealth
   creation" (economic growth) has steadily fallen as unions were
   "reformed" in line with von Hayek's ideology (and falling growth means
   that the living standards of the working class as a whole do not rise
   as fast as they did under the "exploitation" of the "monopolistic"
   trade unions). If we look at the differences between the highest and
   lowest paid workers, we find that rather than decrease, they have in
   fact shown "a dramatic widening out of the distribution with the
   best-workers doing much better" since Thatcher was elected in 1979
   [Andrew Glyn and David Miliband (eds.), Paying for Inequality, p. 100]

   Given that inequality has also increased, the condition of the average
   worker must have suffered. For example, Ian Gilmore states that "[i]n
   the 1980s, for the first time for fifty years. . . the poorer half of
   the population saw its share of total national income shirk." [Dancing
   with Dogma, p. 113] According to Noam Chomsky, "[d]uring the Thatcher
   decade, the income share of the bottom half of the population fell from
   one-third to one-fourth" and the between 1979 and 1992, the share of
   total income of the top 20% grew from 35% to 40% while that of the
   bottom 20% fell from 10% to 5%. In addition, the number of UK employees
   with weekly pay below the Council of Europe's "decency threshold"
   increased from 28.3% in 1979 to 37% in 1994 [World Orders, Old and New,
   p. 144, p. 145] Moreover, "[b]ack in the early 1960s, the heaviest
   concentration of incomes fell at 80-90 per cent of the mean. . . But by
   the early 1990s there had been a dramatic change, with the peak of the
   distribution falling at just 40-50 per cent of the mean. One-quarter of
   the population had incomes below half the average by the early 1990s as
   against 7 per cent in 1977 and 11 per cent in 1961. . ." [Elliot and
   Atkinson, Op. Cit., p. 235] "Overall," notes Takis Fotopoulos, "average
   incomes increased by 36 per cent during this period [1979-1991/2], but
   70 per cent of the population had a below average increase in their
   income." [Towards an Inclusive Democracy, p. 113]

   Looking at the claim that trade union members gained their "relative
   advantage by keeping workers who are worse off from improving their
   position" it would be fair to ask whether the percentage of workers in
   low-paid jobs decreased in Britain after the trade union reforms. In
   fact, the percentage of workers below the Low Pay Unit's definition of
   low pay (namely two-thirds of men's median earnings) increased -- from
   16.8% in 1984 to 26.2% in 1991 for men, 44.8% to 44.9% for women. For
   manual workers it rose by 15% to 38.4%, and for women by 7.7% to 80.7%
   (for non-manual workers the figures were 5.4% rise to 13.7% for men and
   a 0.5% rise to 36.6%). If unions were gaining at the expense of the
   worse off, you would expect a decrease in the number in low pay, not an
   increase. [Paying for Inequality, p.102] An OECD study concluded that
   "[t]ypically, countries with high rates of collective bargaining and
   trade unionisation tend to have low incidence of low paid employment."
   [OECD Employment Outlook, 1996, p. 94]

   Nor did unemployment fall after the trade union reforms. As Elliot and
   Atkinson point out, "[b]y the time Blair came to power [in 1997],
   unemployment in Britain was falling, although it still remained higher
   than it had been when the [the last Labour Government of] Callaghan
   left office in May 1979." [Op. Cit., p. 258] Von Hayek did argue that
   falls in unemployment would be "a slow process" but over 10 years of
   higher unemployment is moving at a snail's pace! And we must note that
   part of this fall in unemployment towards its 1970s level was due to
   Britain's labour force shrinking (and so, as the July 1997 Budget
   Statement correctly notes, "the lower 1990s peak [in unemployment] does
   not in itself provide convincing evidence of improved labour
   performance." [p. 77]).

   As far as von Hayek's prediction on wage flexibility leading to the
   "average worker's income" rising fastest in a country where relative
   wages are flexible, it has been proved totally wrong. Between 1967 and
   1971, real wages grew (on average) by 2.95% per year (nominal wages
   grew by 8.94%) [P. Armstrong, A. Glyn and John Harrison, Capitalism
   Since World War II, p.272]. In comparison, in the 1990s real wages grew
   by 1.1 per cent, according to a TUC press release entitled Productivity
   Record, how the UK compares released in March 1999.

   Needless to say, these are different eras so it would also be useful to
   compare the UK (often praised as a flexible economy after Thatcher's
   "reforms") to France (considered far less flexible) in the 1990s. Here
   we find that the "flexible" UK is behind the "inflexible" France. Wages
   and benefits per worker rose by almost 1.2 per cent per year compared
   to 0.7% for the UK. France's GDP grew at a faster rate than Britain's,
   averaging 1.4 per cent per year, compared with 1.2 per cent. Worker
   productivity is also behind, since 1979 (Thatcher's arrival) Britain's
   worker productivity has been 1.9 per cent per year compared to France's
   2.2 per cent [Seth Ackerman, "The Media Vote for Austerity", Extra!,
   September/October 1997]. And as Seth Ackerman also notes, "[w]hile
   France's dismal record of job creation is on permanent exhibit, it is
   never mentioned that Britain's is even more dismal." [Ibid.]

   Moving further afield, we find von Hayek's prediction falsified yet
   again. If we look at the USA, frequently claimed as a model economy in
   terms of wage flexibility and union weakness, we discover that the real
   wages of the average worker has decreased since 1973 (the weekly and
   hourly earnings of US production and non-supervisory workers, which
   accounts for 80% of the US workforce, have fallen in real terms by
   19.2% and 13.4% respectively [Economic Report of the President 1995,
   Table B-45]). If we look at figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census
   (Current Population Survey) we can see how increased flexibility has
   affected income:

                          Income Growth by Quintile

                        Quintile   1950-1978 1979-1993
                       Lowest 20%    138%      -15%
                         2nd 20%      98        -7
                         3rd 20%      106       -3
                         4th 20%      111        5
                       Highest 20%    99        18

   As can be seen, flexible wages and weaker unions have resulted in the
   direct opposite of von Hayek's predictions. Within the US itself, we
   discover that higher union density is associated with fewer workers
   earning around the minimum wage -- "the percentage of those earning
   around the minimum wage are both substantially higher in right-to-work
   states [i.e. those that pass anti-union laws] than overall and lower in
   high union density states that overall" and "in right-to-work states .
   . . wages have traditionally been lower." [Oren M. Levin-Waldman, The
   Minimum Wage and Regional Wage Structure] If unions did harm non-union
   workers, we would expect the opposite to occur. It does not. Of course,
   being utterly wrong has not dented his reputation with the right nor
   stopped him being quoted in arguments in favour of flexibility and free
   market reforms.

   Moreover, the growth of the US economy has also slowed down as wage
   flexibility and market reform has increased (it was 4.4% in the 1960s,
   3.2% in the 1970s, 2.8% in the 1980s and 1.9% in the first half of the
   1990s [Larry Elliot and Dan Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity, p. 236]).
   In addition, inequality in the US has dramatically increased since the
   1970s, with income and wealth growth in the 1980s going predominately
   to the top 20% (and, in fact, mostly to the top 1% of the population).
   The bottom 80% of the population saw their wealth grow by 1.2% and
   their income by 23.7% in the 1980s, while for the top 20% the
   respective figures were 98.2% and 66.3% (the figures for the top 1%
   were 61.6% and 38.9%, respectively). [Edward N. Wolff, "How the Pie is
   Sliced", The American Prospect, no. 22, Summer 1995]

   Comparing the claims of von Hayek to what actually happened after trade
   union reform and the reduction of class struggle helps to suggest that
   the claims that social struggle is self-defeating are false (and
   probably self-serving, considering it is usually bosses and employer
   supported parties and economists who make these claims). A lack of
   social struggle has been correlated with low economic growth, stagnant
   (even declining) wages and the creation of purely paid service jobs to
   replace highly paid manufacturing ones. So while social struggle may
   make capital flee and other problems, lack of it is no guarantee of
   prosperity (quite the reverse, if the last quarter of the 20th century
   is anything to go by!). Indeed, a lack of social struggle will make
   bosses be more likely to cut wages, worsen working conditions and so on
   -- after all, they feel they can get away with it! Which brings home
   the fact that "to make their [the working class'] victory secure and
   definitive, it is necessary to destroy capitalism." [Errico Malatesta,
   Life and Ideas, p. 191]

   Of course, no one can know that struggle will make things better. It is
   a guess; no one can predict the future. Not all struggles are
   successful and many can be very difficult. If the "military is a role
   model for the business world" (in the words of an ex-CEO of Hill &
   Knowlton Public Relations [quoted by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
   in Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!, p. 47]), and it is, then any struggle
   against it and other concentrations of power may, and often is,
   difficult and dangerous at times. But, as Zapata once said, "better to
   die on your feet than live on your knees!" All we can say is that
   social struggle can and does improve things and, in terms of its
   successes and transforming effect on those involved, well worth the
   potential difficulties it can create. Moreover, without struggle there
   is little chance of creating a free society, dependent as it is on
   individuals who refuse to bow to authority and have the ability and
   desire to govern themselves. In addition, social struggle is always
   essential, not only to win improvements, but to keep them as well. In
   order to fully secure improvements you have to abolish capitalism and
   the state. Not to do so means that any reforms can and will be taken
   away (and if social struggle does not exist, they will be taken away
   sooner rather than later). Ultimately, most anarchists would argue that
   social struggle is not an option -- we either do it or we put up with
   the all the petty (and not so petty) impositions of authority. If we do
   not say "no" then the powers that be will walk all over us.

   As the history of the last 20 years shows, a lack of social struggle is
   fully compatible with worsening conditions. Ultimately, if you want to
   be treated as a human being you have to stand up for your dignity --
   and that means thinking and rebelling. As Bakunin often argued, human
   development is based on thought and rebellion (see God and the State).
   Without rebellion, without social struggle, humanity would stagnant
   beneath authority forever and never be in a position to be free. We
   would agree wholeheartedly with the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass:

     "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to
     favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who want crops
     without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and
     lightning. That struggle might be a moral one; it might be a
     physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be a
     struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and
     never will. People might not get all that they work for in this
     world, but they must certainly work for all they get."

J.4.3 Are the new social movements a positive development for anarchists?

   When assessing the revolutionary potential of our own era, we must note
   again that modern civilisation is under constant pressure from the
   potential catastrophes of social breakdown, ecological destruction, and
   proliferating weapons of mass destruction. These crises have drawn
   attention as never before to the inherently counter-evolutionary nature
   of the authoritarian paradigm, making more and more people aware that
   the human race is headed for extinction if it persists in outmoded
   forms of thought and behaviour. This awareness produces a favourable
   climate for the reception of new ideas, and thus an opening for radical
   educational efforts aimed at creating the mass transformation of
   consciousness which must take place alongside the creation of new
   liberatory institutions.

   This receptiveness to new ideas has led to a number of new social
   movements in recent years. From the point of view of anarchism, the
   four most important of these are perhaps the feminist, ecology, peace,
   and social justice movements. Each of these movements contain a great
   deal of anarchist content, particularly insofar as they imply the need
   for decentralisation and direct democracy. Since we have already
   commented on the anarchist aspects of the ecology and feminist
   movements, here we will limit our remarks to the peace and social
   justice movements.

   It is clear to many members of the peace movement that international
   disarmament, like the liberation of women, saving the planet's
   ecosystem, and preventing social breakdown, can never be attained
   without a shift of mass consciousness involving widespread rejection of
   hierarchy, which is based on the authoritarian principles of domination
   and exploitation. As C. George Bennello argued, "[s]ince peace involves
   the positive process of replacing violence by other means of settling
   conflict. . . it can be argued that some sort of institutional change
   is necessary. For if insurgency is satisfied with specific reform
   goals, and does not seek to transform the institutional structure of
   society by getting at its centralised make-up, the war system will
   probably not go away. This is really what we should mean by
   decentralising: making institutions serve human ends again by getting
   humans to be responsible at every level within them." [From the Ground
   Up, p. 31]

   When pursued along gender, class, racial, ethnic, or national lines,
   these two principles are the primary causes of resentment, hatred,
   anger, and hostility, which often explode into individual or organised
   violence. Therefore, both domestic and international peace depend on
   decentralisation, i.e. dismantling hierarchies, thus replacing
   domination and exploitation by the anarchist principles of
   co-operation, sharing, and mutual aid.

   But direct democracy is the other side of decentralisation. In order
   for an organisation to spread power horizontally rather than
   concentrating it at the apex of hierarchy, all of its members have to
   have an equal voice in making the decisions that affect them. Hence
   decentralisation implies direct democracy. So the peace movement
   implies anarchism, because world peace is impossible without both
   decentralisation and direct democracy. Moreover, "[s]o long as profits
   are tied to defence production, speaking truth to the elites involved
   is not likely to get very far" as "it is only within the boundaries of
   the profit system that the corporate elites would have any space to
   move." [Op. Cit., p. 34] Thus the peace movement implicitly contains a
   libertarian critique of both forms of the power system -- the political
   and economical.

   In addition, certain of the practical aspects of the peace movement
   also suggest anarchistic elements. The use of non-violent direct action
   to protest against the war machine can only be viewed as a positive
   development by anarchists. Not only does it use effective, anarchistic
   methods of struggle it also radicalises those involved, making them
   more receptive to anarchist ideas and analysis (after all, as Benello
   correctly argues, the "anarchist perspective has an unparalleled
   relevance today because prevailing nuclear policies can be considered
   as an ultimate stage in the divergence between the interests of
   governments and their peoples . . . the implications when revealed
   serve to raise fundamental questions regarding the advisability of
   entrusting governments with questions of life and death. . . There is
   thus a pressing impetus to re-think the role, scale, and structure of
   national governments." [Op. Cit., p. 138]).

   If we look at the implications of "nuclear free zones" we can detect
   anarchistic tendencies within them. A nuclear free zone involves a town
   or region declaring an end of its association with the nuclear military
   industrial complex. They prohibit the research, production,
   transportation and deployment of nuclear weapons as well as renouncing
   the right to be defended by nuclear power. This movement was popular in
   the 1980s, with many areas in Europe and the Pacific Basin declaring
   that they were nuclear free zones. As Benello points out, "[t]he
   development of campaigns for nuclear free zones suggests a strategy
   which can educate and radicalise local communities. Indeed, by
   extending the logic of the nuclear free zone idea, we can begin to
   flesh out a libertarian municipalist perspective which can help move
   our communities several steps towards autonomy from both the central
   government and the existing corporate system." While the later
   development of these initiatives did not have the radicalising effects
   that Benello hoped for, they did "represent a local initiative that
   does not depend on the federal government for action. Thus it is a step
   toward local empowerment. . . Steps that increase local autonomy change
   the power relations between the centre and its colonies. . . The
   nuclear free zone movement has a thrust which is clearly congruent with
   anarchist ideas. . . The same motives which go into the declaration of
   a nuclear free zone would dictate that in other areas where the state
   and the corporate systems services are dysfunctional and involve
   excessive costs, they should be dispensed with." [Op. Cit., p. 137, pp.
   140-1]

   The social justice movement is composed of people seeking fair and
   compassionate solutions to problems such as poverty, unemployment,
   economic exploitation, discrimination, poor housing, lack of health
   insurance, wealth and income inequalities, and the like. Such concerns
   have traditionally been associated with the left, especially with
   socialism and trade-unionism. Recently, however, many radicals have
   begun to perceive the limitations of both Marxist-Leninist and
   traditional trade-unionist solutions to social justice problems,
   particularly insofar as these solutions involve hierarchical
   organisations and authoritarian values.

   Following the widespread disillusionment with statism and centrally
   planned economies generated by the failure of "Communism" in the
   ex-Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, many radicals, while
   retaining their commitment to social justice issues, have been
   searching for new approaches. And in doing so they've been drawn into
   alliances with ecologists, feminists, and members of the peace
   movement. (This has occurred particularly among the German Greens, many
   of whom are former Marxists. So far, however, few of the latter have
   declared themselves to be anarchists, as the logic of the ecology
   movement requires.)

   It is not difficult to show that the major problems concerning the
   social justice movement can all be traced back to the hierarchy and
   domination. For, given the purpose of hierarchy, the highest priority
   of the elites who control the state is necessarily to maintain their
   own power and privileges, regardless of the suffering involved for
   subordinate classes.

   Today, in the aftermath of 12 years of especially single-minded pursuit
   of this priority by two Republican administrations, the United States,
   for example, is reaping the grim harvest: armies of the homeless
   wandering the streets; social welfare budgets slashed to the bone as
   poverty, unemployment, and underemployment grow; sweatshops mushrooming
   in the large cities; over 43 million Americans without any health
   insurance; obscene wealth inequalities; and so on. This decay promises
   to accelerate in the US during the coming years, now that Republicans
   control both houses of Congress. Britain under the neo-liberal policies
   of Thatcher and Major has experienced a social deterioration similar to
   that in the US.

   In short, social injustice is inherent in the exploitative functions of
   the state, which are made possible by the authoritarian form of state
   institutions and of the state-complex as a whole. Similarly, the
   authoritarian form of the corporation (and capitalist companies in
   general) gives rise to social injustice as unfair income differentials
   and wealth disparity between owners/management and labour.

   Hence the success of the social justice movement, like that of the
   feminist, ecology, and peace movements, depends on dismantling
   hierarchies. This means not only that these movement all imply
   anarchism but that they are related in such a way that it's impossible
   to conceive one of them achieving its goals in isolation from any of
   the others.

   To take just one example, let's consider the relationship between
   social justice and peace, which can be seen by examining a specific
   social justice issue: labour rights.

   As Dimitrios Roussopoulos points out, the production of advanced
   weapons systems is highly profitable for capitalists, which is why more
   technologically complex and precise weapons keep getting built with
   government help (with the public paying the tab by way of rising
   taxes).

   Now, we may reasonably argue that it's a fundamental human right to be
   able to choose freely whether or not one will personally contribute to
   the production of technologies that could lead to the extinction of the
   human race. Yet because of the authoritarian form of the capitalist
   corporation, rank-and-file workers have virtually no say in whether the
   companies for which they work will produce such technologies. (To the
   objection that workers can always quit if they don't like company
   policy, the reply is that they may not be able to find other work and
   therefore that the choice is not free but coerced.) Hence the only way
   that ordinary workers can obtain the right to be consulted on
   life-or-death company policies is to control the production process
   themselves, through self-management.

   But we can't expect real self-management to emerge from the present
   labour relations system in which centralised unions bargain with
   employers for "concessions" but never for a dissolution of the
   authoritarian structure of the corporation. As Roussopoulos puts it,
   self-management, by definition, must be struggled for locally by
   workers themselves at the grassroots level:

     "Production for need and use will not come from the employer. The
     owners of production in a capitalist society will never begin to
     take social priorities into account in the production process. The
     pursuit of ever greater profits is not compatible with social
     justice and responsibility." [Dissidence]

   For these reasons, the peace and social justice movements are
   fundamentally linked through their shared need for a worker-controlled
   economy.

   We should also note in this context that the impoverished ghetto
   environments in which the worst victims of social injustice are forced
   to live tends to desensitise them to human pain and suffering -- a
   situation that is advantageous for military recruiters, who are thereby
   able to increase the ranks of the armed forces with angry, brutalised,
   violence-prone individuals who need little or no extra conditioning to
   become the remorseless killers prized by the military command.
   Moreover, extreme poverty makes military service one of the few legal
   economic options open to such individuals. These considerations
   illustrate further links between the peace and social justice movements
   -- and between those movements and anarchism, which is the conceptual
   "glue" that can potentially unite all the new social movement in a
   single anti-authoritarian coalition.

J.4.4 What is the "economic structural crisis"?

   There is an ongoing structural crisis in the global capitalist economy.
   Compared to the post-war "Golden Age" of 1950 to 1973, the period from
   1974 has seen a continual worsening in economic performance in the West
   and for Japan. For example, growth is lower, unemployment is far
   higher, labour productivity lower as is investment. Average rates of
   unemployment in the major industrialised countries have risen sharply
   since 1973, especially after 1979. Unemployment "in the advanced
   capitalist countries (the 'Group of 7'. . .) increased by 56 per cent
   between 1973 and 1980 (from an average 3.4 per cent to 5.3 per cent of
   the labour force) and by another 50 per cent since then (from 5.3 per
   cent of the labour force in 1980 to 8.0 per cent in 19994)." [Takis
   Fotopoulos, Towards and Inclusive Democracy, p. 35] Job insecurity has
   increased (in the USA, for example, there is the most job insecurity
   since the depression of the 1930s [Op. Cit., p. 141]). In addition,
   both national economies and the international economy have become far
   less stable.

   This crisis is not confined to the economy. It extends into the
   ecological and the social. "In recent years," point out Larry Elliot
   and Dan Atkinson, "some radical economics have tried to [create] . . .
   an all-embracing measure of well-being called the Index of Sustainable
   Economic Welfare [ISEW] . . . In the 1950s and 1960s the ISEW rose in
   tandem with per capita GDP. It was a time not just of rising incomes,
   but of greater social equity, low crime, full employment and expanding
   welfare states. But from the mid-1970s onwards the two measures started
   to move apart. GDP per head continued its inexorable rise, but the ISEW
   start to decline as a result of lengthening dole queues, social
   exclusion, the explosion in crime, habitat loss, environmental
   degradation and the growth of environment- and stress-related illness.
   By the start of the 1990s, the ISEW was almost back to the levels at
   which it started in the early 1990s." [The Age of Insecurity, p. 248]
   Which indicates well our comments in [4]section C.10, namely that
   economic factors cannot, and do not, indicate human happiness. However,
   here we discuss economic factors. This does not imply that the social
   and ecological crises are unimportant or are reducible to the economy.
   Far from it. We concentrate on the economic factor simply because this
   is the factor usually stressed by the establishment and it is useful to
   indicate the divergence of reality and hype we are currently being
   subjected to.

   Ironically enough, as Robert Brenner points out, "as the neo-classical
   medicine has been administered in even stronger doses [since the
   1960s], the economy has performed steadily less well. The 1970s were
   worse than the 1960s, the 1980s worse than the 1970s, and the 1990s
   have been worse than the 1980s." ["The Economics of Global Turbulence",
   New Left Review, no. 229, p. 236] This is ironic because during the
   crisis of Keynesianism in the 1970s the right argued that too much
   equality and democracy harmed the economy, and so us all in the long
   run (due to lower growth, sluggish investment and so on). However,
   after over a decade of pro-capitalist governments, rising inequality,
   increased freedom for capital and its owners and managers, the
   weakening of trade unions and so on, economic performance has become
   worse!

   If we look at the USA in the 1990s (usually presented as an economy
   that "got it right") we find that the "cyclical upturn of the 1990s
   has, in terms of the main macro-economic indicators of growth --
   output, investment, productivity, and real compensation -- has been
   even less dynamic than its relatively weak predecessors of the 1980s
   and the 1970s (not to mention those of the 1950s and 1960s)." [Op.
   Cit., p. 5] Of course, the economy is presented as a success because
   inequality is growing, the rich are getting richer and wealth is
   concentrating into fewer and fewer hands. For the rich and finance
   capital, it can be considered a "Golden Age" and so is presented as
   such by the media. Indeed, it is for this reason that it may be wrong
   to term this slow rot a "crisis" as it is hardly one for the ruling
   elite. Their share in social wealth, power and income has steadily
   increased over this period. For the majority it is undoubtedly a crisis
   (the term "silent depression" has been accurately used to describe
   this) but for those who run the system it has by no means been a
   crisis.

   Indeed, the only countries which saw substantial and dynamic growth
   after 1973 where those which used state intervention to violate the
   eternal "laws" of neo-classical economics, namely the South East Asian
   countries (in this they followed the example of Japan which had used
   state intervention to grow at massive rates after the war). Of course,
   before the economic crisis of 1997, "free market" capitalists argued
   that these countries were classic examples of "free market" economies.
   For example, right-wing icon F.A von Hayek asserted that "South Korea
   and other newcomers" had "discovered the benefits of free markets"
   when, in fact, they had done nothing of the kind ["1980s Unemployment
   and the Unions" reproduced in The Economic Decline of Modern Britain,
   p. 113]. More recently, in 1995, the Heritage Foundation released its
   index of economic freedom. Four of the top seven countries were Asian,
   including Japan and Taiwan. All the Asian countries struggling just
   four years latter were qualified as "free." However, as Takis
   Fotopoulos argues, "it was not laissez-faire policies that induced
   their spectacular growth. As a number of studies have shown, the
   expansion of the Asian Tigers was based on massive state intervention
   that boosted their export sectors, by public policies involving not
   only heavy protectionism but even deliberate distortion of market
   prices to stimulate investment and trade." [Op. Cit., p. 115] After the
   crisis, the free-marketeers discovered the statism that had always been
   there and danced happily on the grave of what used to be called "the
   Asian miracle."

   Such hypocrisy is truly sickening and smacks of a Stalinist/Orwellian
   desire to re-write history so as to appear always right. Moreover, such
   a cynical analysis actually undermines their own case for the wonders
   of the "free market." After all, until the crisis appeared, the world's
   investors -- which is to say "the market" -- saw nothing but blue skies
   ahead for these economies. They showed their faith by shoving billions
   into Asian equity markets, while foreign banks contentedly handed out
   billions in loans. If Asia's problems are systemic and the result of
   these countries' statist policies, then investors' failure to recognise
   this earlier is a blow against the market, not for it.

   Still more perverse is that, even as the supporters of "free-market"
   capitalism conclude that history is rendering its verdict on the Asian
   model of capitalism, they seem to forget that until the recent crisis
   they themselves took great pains to deny that such a model existed.
   Until Asia fell apart, supporters of "free-market" capitalism happily
   held it up as proof that the only recipe for economic growth was open
   markets and non-intervention on the part of the state. Needless to say,
   this re-writing of history will be placed down the memory-hole, along
   with any other claims which have subsequently been proved utter
   nonsense.

   So, as can be seen, the global economy has been marked by an increasing
   stagnation, the slowing down of growth, in the western economies (for
   example, the 1990s business upswing has been the weakest since the end
   of the Second World War). This is despite (or, more likely, because of)
   the free market reforms imposed and the deregulation of finance capital
   (we say "because of" simply because neo-classical economics argue that
   pro-market reforms would increase growth and improve the economy, but
   as we argued in [5]section C such economics have little basis in
   reality and so their recommendations are hardly going to produce
   positive results). Of course as the ruling class have been doing well
   in this New World Order this underlying slowdown has been ignored and
   obviously

   In recent years crisis (particularly financial crisis) has become
   increasingly visible, reflecting (finally) the underlying weakness of
   the global economy. This underlying weakness has been hidden by the
   speculator performance of the world's stock markets, whose performance,
   ironically enough, have helped create that weakness to begin with! As
   one expert on Wall Street argues, "Bond markets . . . hate economic
   strength . . . Stocks generally behave badly just as the real economy
   is at its strongest. . . Stocks thrive on a cool economy, and wither in
   a hot one." [Wall Street, p. 124] In other words, real economic
   weakness is reflected in financial strength.

   Henwood also notes that "[w]hat might be called the rentier share of
   the corporate surplus -- dividends plus interest as a percentage of
   pre-tax profits and interest -- has risen sharply, from 20-30% in the
   1950s to 60% in the 1990s." [Op. Cit., p. 73] This helps explain the
   stagnation which has afflicted the economies of the west. The rich have
   been placing more of their ever-expanding wealth in stocks, allowing
   this market to rise in the face of general economic torpor. Rather than
   being used for investment, surplus is being funnelled into the finance
   markets, markets which do concentrate wealth very successfully
   (retained earnings in the US have decreased as interest and dividend
   payments have increased [Brenner, Op. Cit., p. 210]). Given that "the
   US financial system performs dismally at its advertised task, that of
   efficiently directing society's savings towards their optimal
   investment pursuits. The system is stupefyingly expensive, gives
   terrible signals for the allocation of capital, and has surprisingly
   little to do with real investment." [Henwood, Op. Cit., p. 3] As most
   investment comes from internal funds, the rise in the rentiers (those
   who derive their incomes from returns on capital) share of the surplus
   has meant less investment and so the stagnation of the economy. And the
   weakening economy has increased financial strength, which in turn leads
   to a weakening in the real economy. A viscous circle, and one reflected
   in the slowing of economic growth over the last 30 years.

   In effect, especially since the end of the 1970s, has seen the
   increasing dominance of finance capital. This dominance has, in effect,
   created a market for government policies as finance capital has become
   increasingly global in nature. Governments must secure, protect and
   expand the field of profit-making for financial capital and
   transnational corporations, otherwise they will be punished by the
   global markets (i.e. finance capital). These policies have been at the
   expense of the underlying economy in general, and of the working class
   in particular:

     "Rentier power was directed at labour, both organised and
     unorganised ranks of wage earners, because it regarded rising wages
     as a principal threat to the stable order. For obvious reasons, this
     goal was never stated very clearly, but financial markets understood
     the centrality of the struggle: protecting the value of their
     capital required the suppression of labour incomes." [William
     Greider, One World, Ready or Not, p. 302]

   Of course, industrial capital also hates labour, so there is a basis of
   an alliance between the two sides of capital, even if they do disagree
   over the specifics of the economic policies implemented. Given that a
   key aspect of the neo-liberal reforms was the transformation of the
   labour market from a post-war sellers' market to a nineteenth century
   buyers' market, with its effects on factory discipline, wage claims and
   proneness to strike, industrial capital could not but be happy with its
   effects. Doug Henwood correctly argues that "Liberals and populists
   often search for potential allies among industrialists, reasoning that
   even if financial interests suffer in a boom, firms that trade in real,
   rather than fictitious, products would thrive when growth is strong. In
   general, industrialists are less sympathetic to these arguments.
   Employers in any industry like slack in the labour market; it makes for
   a pliant workforce, one unlikely to make demands or resist speedups."
   In addition, "many non-financial corporations have heavy financial
   interests." [Op. Cit., p. 123, p. 135]

   Thus the general stagnation afflicting much of the world, a stagnation
   which has developed into crisis as the needs of finance have undermined
   the real economy which, ultimately, it is dependent upon. The
   contradiction between short term profits and long term survival
   inherent in capitalism strikes again.

   Crisis, as we have noted above, has appeared in areas previously
   considered as strong economies and it has been spreading. An important
   aspect of this crisis is the tendency for productive capacity to
   outstrip effective demand (i.e. the tendency to over-invest relative to
   the available demand), which arises in large part from the imbalance
   between capitalists' need for a high rate of profit and their
   simultaneous need to ensure that workers have enough wealth and income
   so that they can keep buying the products on which those profits depend
   (see [6]section C). Inequality has been increasing in the USA, which
   means that the economy faces as realisation crisis (see [7]section
   C.7), a crisis which has so far been avoided by deepening debt for
   working people (debt levels more than doubled between the 1950s to the
   1990s, from 25% to over 60%).

   Over-investment has been magnified in the East-Asian Tigers as they
   were forced to open their economies to global finance. These economies,
   due to their intervention in the market (and repressive regimes against
   labour) ensured they were a more profitable place to invest than
   elsewhere. Capital flooded into the area, ensuring a relative
   over-investment was inevitable. As we argued in [8]section C.7.2,
   crisis is possible simply due to the lack of information provided by
   the price mechanism -- economic agents can react in such a way that the
   collective result of individually rational decisions is irrational.
   Thus the desire to reap profits in the Tiger economies resulted in a
   squeeze in profits as the aggregate investment decisions resulted in
   over-investment, and so over-production and falling profits.

   In effect, the South East Asian economies suffered from a problem
   termed the "fallacy of composition." When you are the first Asian
   export-driven economy, you are competing with high-cost Western
   producers and so your cheap workers, low taxes and lax environmental
   laws allow you to under-cut your competitors and make profits. However,
   as more tigers joined into the market, they end up competing against
   each other and so their profit margins would decrease towards their
   actual cost price rather than that of Western firms. With the decrease
   in profits, the capital that flowed into the region flowed back out,
   thus creating a crisis (and proving, incidentally, that free markets
   are destabilising and do not secure the best of all possible outcomes).
   Thus, the rentier regime, after weakening the Western economies, helped
   destabilise the Eastern ones too.

   So, in the short-run, many large corporations and financial companies
   solved their profit problems by expanding production into
   "underdeveloped" countries so as to take advantage of the cheap labour
   there (and the state repression which ensured that cheapness) along
   with weaker environmental laws and lower taxes. Yet gradually they are
   running out of third-world populations to exploit. For the very process
   of "development" stimulated by the presence of Transnational
   Corporations in third-world nations increases competition and so,
   potentially, over-investment and, even more importantly, produces
   resistance in the form of unions, rebellions and so on, which tend to
   exert a downward pressure on the level of exploitation and profits (for
   example, in South Korea, labour' share in value-added increased from 23
   to 30 per cent, in stark contrast to the USA, Germany and Japan, simply
   because Korean workers had rebelled and won new political freedoms).

   This process reflects, in many ways, the rise of finance capital in the
   1970s. In the 1950s and 1960s, existing industrialised nations
   experienced increased competition from the ex-Axis powers (namely Japan
   and Germany). As these nations re-industrialised, they placed increased
   pressure on the USA and other nations, reducing the global "degree of
   monopoly" and forcing them to compete with lower cost producers (which,
   needless to say, reduced the existing companies profits). In addition,
   full employment produced increasing resistance on the shop floor and in
   society as a whole (see [9]section C.7.1), squeezing profits even more.
   Thus a combination of class struggle and global over-capacity resulted
   in the 1970s crisis. With the inability of the real economy, especially
   the manufacturing sector, to provide an adequate return, capital
   shifted into finance. In effect, it ran away from the success of
   working people asserting their rights at the point of production and
   elsewhere. This, combined with increased international competition from
   Japan and Germany, ensured the rise of finance capital, which in return
   ensured the current stagnationist tendencies in the economy (tendencies
   made worse by the rise of the Asian Tiger economies in the 1980s).

   From the contradictions between finance capital and the real economy,
   between capitalists' need for profit and human needs, between
   over-capacity and demand, and others, there has emerged what appears to
   be a long-term trend toward permanent stagnation of the capitalist
   economy. This trend has been apparent for several decades, as evidenced
   by the continuous upward adjustment of the rate of unemployment
   officially considered to be "normal" or "acceptable" during those
   decades, and by other symptoms as well such as falling growth, lower
   rates of profit and so on.

   This stagnation has recently become even more obvious by the
   development of crisis in many countries and the reactions of central
   banks trying to revive the real economies that have suffered under
   their rentier inspired policies. Whether this crisis will become worse
   is hard to say. The Western powers may act to protect the real economy
   by adopting the Keynesian policies they have tried to discredit over
   the last thirty years. However, whether such a bailout will succeed is
   difficult to tell and may just ensure continued stagnation rather than
   a real up-turn, if it has any effect at all.

   Of course, a deep depression may solve the problem of over-capacity and
   over-investment in the world and lay the foundations of an up-turn.
   Such a strategy is, however, very dangerous due to working class
   resistance it could provoke, the deepness of the slump and the length
   it could last for. However, this, perhaps, has been the case in the USA
   in 1997-9 where over 20 years of one-sided class war may have paid off
   in terms of higher profits and profit rate. However, this may have more
   to do with the problems elsewhere in the world than a real economic
   change, in addition to rising consumer debt (there is now negative
   personal savings rate in the US), a worsening trade deficit and a stock
   market bubble. In addition, rising productivity has combined with
   stagnant wages to increase the return to capital and the profit rate
   (wages fell over much of the 1990s recovery and finally regained their
   pre-recession 1989 peak in 1999! Despite 8 years of economic growth,
   the typical worker is back only where they started at the peak of the
   last business cycle). This drop and slow growth of wages essentially
   accounts for the rising US profit rate, with the recent growth in real
   wages being hardly enough to make much of an impact (although it has
   made the US Federal Reserve increase interest rates to slow down even
   this increase, which re-enforces our argument that capitalist profits
   require unemployment and insecurity to maintain capitalist power at the
   point of production).

   Such a situation reflects 1920s America (see [10]section C.7.3 for
   details) which was also marked by rising inequality, a labour surplus
   and rising profits and suggests that the new US economy faces the same
   potential for a slump. This means that the US economy must face the
   danger of over-investment (relative to demand, of course) sooner or
   later, perhaps sooner due to the problems elsewhere in the world as a
   profits-lead growth economy is fragile as it is dependent on
   investment, luxury spending and working class debt to survive -- all of
   which are more unstable and vulnerable to shocks than workers'
   consumption.

   Given the difficulties in predicting the future (and the fact that
   those who try are usually proven totally wrong!), we will not pretend
   to know it and leave our discussion at highlighting a few
   possibilities. One thing is true, however, and that is the working
   class will pay the price of any "solution" -- unless they organise and
   get rid of capitalism and the state. Ultimately, capitalism need
   profits to survive and such profits came from the fact that workers do
   not have economic liberty. Thus any "solution" within a capitalist
   framework means the increased oppression and exploitation of working
   people.

   Faced with negative balance sheets during recessions, the upper strata
   occasionally panic and agree to some reforms, some distribution of
   wealth, which temporarily solves the short-run problem of stagnation by
   increasing demand and thus permits renewed expansion. However, this
   short-run solution means that the working class gradually makes
   economic and political gains, so that exploitation and oppresion, and
   hence the rate of profit, tends to fall (as happened during the
   post-war Keynesian "Golden Age"). Faced with the dangers of, on the one
   hand, economic collapse and, on the other, increased working class
   power, the ruling class may not act until it is too late. So, on the
   basis that the current crisis may get worse and stagnation turn into
   depression, we will discuss why the "economic structural crisis"
   we have lived through for the later quarter of the 20th century (and
   its potential crisis) is important to social struggle in the [11]next
   section.

J.4.5 Why is this "economic structural crisis" important to social struggle?

   The "economic structural crisis"
   we out-lined in the [12]last section has certain implications for
   anarchists and social struggle. Essentially, as C. George Benello
   argues, "[i]f economic conditions worsen. . . then we are likely to
   find an openness to alternatives which have not been thought of since
   the depression of the 1930s. . . It is important to plan for a possible
   economic crisis, since it is not only practical, but also can serve as
   a method of mobilising a community in creative ways." [From the Ground
   Up, p. 149]

   In the face of economic stagnation and depression, attempts to improve
   the rate of exploitation (i.e. increase profits) by increasing the
   authority of the boss grow. In addition, more people find it harder to
   make ends meet, running up debts to survive, face homelessness if they
   are made unemployed, and so on. Such effects make exploitation ever
   more visible and tend to push oppressed strata together in movements
   that seek to mitigate, and even remove, their oppression. As the
   capitalist era has worn on, these strata have become increasingly able
   to rebel and gain substantial political and economic improvements,
   which have, in addition, lead to an increasingly willing to do so
   because of rising expectations (about what is possible) and frustration
   (about what actually is). This is why, since 1945, the world-wide
   "family" of progressive movements has grown "ever stronger, ever
   bolder, ever more diverse, ever more difficult to contain." [Immanuel
   Wallerstein, Geopolitics and Geoculture, p. 110] It is true that
   libertarians, the left and labour have suffered a temporary setback
   during the past few decades, but with increasing misery of the working
   class due to neo-liberal policies (and the "economic structural crisis"
   they create), it is only a matter of time before there is a resurgence
   of radicalism.

   Anarchists will be in the forefront of this resurgence. For, with the
   discrediting of authoritarian state capitalism ("Communism") in the
   Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the anti-authoritarian faction of the
   left will increasingly be seen as its only credible one. Thus the
   ongoing structural crisis of the global capitalist economy, combined
   with the other developments springing from what Takis Fotopoulos calls
   (in his book Towards and Inclusive Democracy) a "multidimensional
   crisis" (which included economic, political, social, ecological and
   ideological aspects), could (potentially) lead over the next decade or
   two to a new international anti-authoritarian alliance linking together
   the new (and not so new) social movements in the West (feminism, the
   Green movement, rank-and-file labour militancy, etc.) with
   non-authoritarian liberation movements in the Third World and new
   anti-bureaucracy movements in formerly "communist" countries. However,
   this is only likely to happen if anarchists take the lead in promoting
   alternatives and working with the mass of the population. Ways in which
   anarchist can do this are discussed in some detail in [13]section J.5.

   Thus the "economic structural crisis" can aid social struggle by
   placing the contrast of "what is" with what "could be" in a clear
   light. Any crisis brings forth the contradictions in capitalism,
   between the production of use values (things people need) and of
   exchange value (capitalist profits), between capitalism's claims of
   being based on liberty and the authoritarianism associated with wage
   labour ("[t]he general evidence of repression poses an ancient
   contradiction for capitalism: while it claims to promote human freedom,
   it profits concretely from the denial of freedom, most especially
   freedom for the workers employed by capitalist enterprise" [William
   Greider, One World, Ready or Not, p. 388]) and so on. It shakes to the
   bone popular faith in capitalism's ability to "deliver the goods" and
   gets more and more people thinking about alternatives to a system that
   places profit above and before people and planet. The crisis also, by
   its very nature, encourages workers and other oppressed sections of the
   population to resist and fight back, which in turn generates collective
   organisation (such as unions or workplace-based assemblies and
   councils), solidarity and direct action -- in other words, collective
   self-help and the awareness that the problems of working class people
   can only be solved by themselves, by their own actions and
   organisations. The 1930s in the USA is a classic example of this
   process, with very militant struggles taking place in very difficult
   situations (see Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States
   or Jeremy Brecher's Strike! for details).

   In other words, the "economic structural crisis" gives radicals a lot
   potential to get their message across, even if the overall environment
   may make success seem difficult in the extreme at times!

   As well as encouraging workplace organisation due to the
   intensification of exploitation and authority provoked by the economic
   stagnant/depression, the "economic structural crisis" can encourage
   other forms of libertarian alternatives. For example, "the practical
   effect of finance capital's hegemony was to lock the advanced economies
   and their governments in a malignant spiral, restricting them to bad
   choices. Like bondholders in general, the new governing consensus
   explicitly assumed that faster economic growth was dangerous --
   threatening to the stable financial order -- so nations were
   effectively blocked from measures that might reduce permanent
   unemployment or ameliorate the decline in wages. . . The reality of
   slow growth, in turn, drove the governments into their deepening
   indebtedness, since the disappointing growth inevitably undermined tax
   revenues while it expanded the public welfare costs. The rentier regime
   repeatedly instructed governments to reform their spending priorities
   -- that is, withdraw benefits from dependent citizens. . . " [Op. Cit.,
   pp. 297-8]

   Thus the "economic structural crisis" has resulted in the erosion of
   the welfare state (at least for the working class, for the elite, state
   aid is never far away). This development as potential libertarian
   possibilities. "The decline of the state," argues L. Gambone, "makes
   necessary a revitalisation of the notions of direct action and mutual
   aid. Without Mama State to do it for us, we must create our own social
   services through mutual aid societies." [Syndicalism in Myth and
   Reality, p. 12] As we argue in more depth in [14]section J.5.16, such a
   movement of mutual aid has a long history in the working class and, as
   it is under our control, it cannot be withdrawn from us to enrich and
   empower the ruling class as state run systems have been. Thus the
   decline of state run social services could, potentially, see the rise
   of a network of self-managed, working class alternatives (equally, of
   course, it could see the end of all services to the most weak sections
   of our society -- which possibility comes about depends on what we do
   in the here and now. see [15]section J.5.15 for an anarchist analysis
   of the welfare state).

   Food Not Bombs! is an excellent example of practical libertarian
   alternatives being generated by the economic crisis we are facing. Food
   Not Bombs helps the homeless through the direct action of its members.
   It also involves the homeless in helping themselves. It is a
   community-based group which helps other people in the community who are
   needy by providing free food to those in need. FNB! also helps other
   Anarchist political projects and activities.

   Food Not Bombs! serves free food in public places to dramatise the
   plight of the homeless, the callousness of the system and our capacity
   to solve social problems through our own actions without government or
   capitalism. The constant harassment of FNB! by the cops, middle classes
   and the government illustrates their callousness to the plight of the
   poor and the failure of their institutions to build a society which
   cares for people more than money and property (and arms, cops and
   prisons to protect them). The fact is that in the US many working and
   unemployed people have no feeling that they are entitled to basic human
   needs such as medicine, clothes, shelter, and food. Food Not Bombs!
   does encourage poor people to make these demands, does provide a space
   in which these demands can be voiced, and does help to breakdown the
   wall between hungry and not-hungry. The repression directed towards
   FNB! by local police forces and governments also demonstrates the
   effectiveness of their activity and the possibility that it may
   radicalise those who get involved with the organisation. Charity is
   obviously one thing, mutual aid is something else. FNB! as it is a
   politicised movement from below, based on solidarity, is not charity,
   because, in Kropotkin's words, charity "bears a character of
   inspiration from above, and, accordingly, implies a certain superiority
   of the giver upon the receiver" and hardly libertarian [Mutual Aid, p.
   222].

   The last example of how economic stagnation can generate libertarian
   tendencies can be seen from the fact that, "[h]istorically, at times of
   severe inflation or capital shortages, communities have been forced to
   rely on their own resources. During the Great Depression, many cities
   printed their own currency; this works to the extent that a community
   is able to maintain a viable internal economy which provides the
   necessities of life, independent of transactions with the outside." [C.
   George Benello, Op. Cit., p. 150]

   These local currencies and economies can be used as the basis of a
   libertarian socialist economy. The currencies would be the basis of a
   mutual bank (see sections [16]J.5.5 and [17]J.5.6), providing
   interest-free loans to workers to form co-operatives and so build
   libertarian alternatives to capitalist firms. In addition, these local
   currencies could be labour-time based, eliminating the profits of
   capitalists by allowing workers to exchange the product of their labour
   with other workers. Moreover, "local exchange systems strength local
   communities by increasing their self-reliance, empowering community
   members, and helping to protect them from the excesses of the global
   market." [Frank Lindenfield, "Economics for Anarchists," Social
   Anarchism, no. 23, p. 24] In this way local self-managing communes
   could be created, communes that replace hierarchical, top-down,
   government with collective decision making of community affairs based
   on directly democratic community assemblies (see [18]section J.5.1).
   These self-governing communities and economies could federate together
   to co-operate on a wider scale and so create a counter-power to that of
   state and capitalism.

   This confederal system of self-managing communities could also protect
   jobs as the "globalisation of capital threatens local industries. A way
   has to be found to keep capital at home and so preserve the jobs and
   the communities that depend upon them. Protectionism is both
   undesirable and unworkable. But worker-ownership or workers'
   co-operatives are alternatives." [L. Gambone, Syndicalism in Myth and
   Reality, pp.12-13] Local communities could provide the necessary
   support structures which could protect co-operatives from the
   corrupting effects of working in the capitalist market (see [19]section
   J.5.11). In this way, economic liberty (self-management) could replace
   capitalism (wage slavery) and show that anarchism is a practical
   alternative to the chaos and authoritarianism of capitalism, even if
   these examples are fragmentally and limited in nature.

   However, these developments should not be taken in isolation of
   collective struggle in the workplace or community. It is in the class
   struggle that the real potential for anarchy is created. The work of
   such organisations as Food Not Bombs! and the creation of local
   currencies and co-operatives are supplementary to the important task of
   creating workplace and community organisations that can create
   effective resistance to both state and capitalists, resistance that can
   overthrow both (see sections [20]J.5.2 and [21]J.5.1 respectively).
   "Volunteer and service credit systems and alternative currencies by
   themselves may not be enough to replace the corporate capitalist
   system. Nevertheless, they can help build the economic strength of
   local currencies, empower local residents, and mitigate some of the
   consequences of poverty and unemployment. . . By the time a majority
   [of a community are involved it] will be well on its way to becoming a
   living embodiment of many anarchist ideals." [Frank Lindenfield, Op.
   Cit., p. 28] And such a community would be a great aid in any strike or
   other social struggle which is going on!

   Therefore, the general economic crisis which we are facing has
   implications for social struggle and anarchist activism. It could be
   the basic of libertarian alternatives in our workplaces and
   communities, alternatives based on direct action, solidarity and
   self-management. These alternatives could include workplace and
   community unionism, co-operatives, mutual banks and other forms of
   anarchistic resistance to capitalism and the state. We discuss such
   alternatives in more detail in [22]section J.5, and so do not do so
   here.

   Before moving on to the [23]next section, we must stress that we are
   not arguing that working class people need an economic crisis to force
   them into struggle. Such "objectivism" (i.e. the placing of tendencies
   towards socialism in the development of capitalism, of objective
   factors, rather than in the class struggle, i.e. subjective factors) is
   best left to orthodox Marxists and Leninists as it has authoritarian
   underpinnings (see [24]section H). Rather we are aware that the class
   struggle, the subjective pressure on capitalism, is not independent of
   the conditions within which it takes place (and helped to create, we
   must add). Subjective revolt is always present under capitalism and, in
   the case of the 1970s crisis, played a role in creating it. Faced with
   an economic crisis we are indicating what we can do in response to it
   and how it could, potentially, generate libertarian tendencies within
   society. Economic crisis could, in other words, provoke social
   struggle, collective action and generate anarchic tendencies in
   society. Equally, it could cause apathy, rejection of collective
   struggle and, perhaps, the embracing of false "solutions" such as
   right-wing populism, Leninism, Fascism or right-wing "libertarianism."
   We cannot predict how the future will develop, but it is true that if
   we do nothing then, obviously, libertarian tendencies will not grow and
   develope.

J.4.6 What are implications of anti-government and anti-big business feelings?

   According to a report in Newsweek ("The Good Life and its Discontents"
   Jan. 8, 1996), feelings of disappointment have devastated faith in
   government and big business. Here are the results of a survey in which
   which people were asked whether they had a "great deal of confidence"
   in various institutions:

                                     1966 1975 1985 1994
                        Congress     42%  13%
                    16%              8%
                    Executive Branch 41%  13%  15%  12%
                       The press     29%  26%  16%  13%
                    Major Companies  55%  19%  17%  19%

   As can be seen, the public's faith in major companies plunged 36% over
   a 28-year period in the survey, an even worse vote of "no confidence"
   than that given to Congress (34%).

   Some of the feelings of disappointment with government can be blamed on
   the anti-big-government rhetoric of conservatives and right-wing
   populists. But such rhetoric is of potential benefit to anarchists as
   well. Of course the Right would never dream of really dismantling the
   state, as is evident from the fact that government grew more
   bureaucratic and expensive under "conservative" administrations than
   ever before.

   Needless to say, this "decentralist" element of right-wing rhetoric is
   a con. When a politician, economist or business "leader" argues that
   the government is too big, he is rarely thinking of the same government
   functions you are. You may be thinking of subsidies for tobacco farmers
   or defence firms and they are thinking about pollution controls. You
   may be thinking of reforming welfare for the better, while their idea
   is to dismantle the welfare state totally. Moreover, with their support
   for "family values", "wholesome" television, bans on abortion, and so
   on their victory would see an increased level of government intrusion
   in many personal spheres (as well as increased state support for the
   power of the boss over the worker, the landlord over the tenant and so
   on).

   If you look at what the Right has done and is doing, rather than what
   it is saying, you quickly see the ridiculous of claims of right-wing
   "libertarianism" (as well as who is really in charge). Obstructing
   pollution and health regulations; defunding product safety laws;
   opening national parks to logging and mining, or closing them entirely;
   reducing taxes for the rich; eliminating the capital gains tax;
   allowing companies to fire striking workers; making it easier for big
   telecommunications companies to make money; limiting companies'
   liability for unsafe products-- the program here is obviously to help
   big business do what it wants without government interference, and to
   help the rich get richer. In other words, increased "freedom" for
   private power combined with a state whose role is to protect that
   "liberty."

   Yet along with the pro-business, pro-private tyranny, racist,
   anti-feminist, and homophobic hogwash disseminated by right-wing radio
   propagandists and the business-backed media, important decentralist and
   anti-statist ideas are also being implanted in mass consciousness.
   These ideas, if consistently pursued and applied in all areas of life
   (the home, the community, the workplace), could lead to a revival of
   anarchism in the US -- but only if radicals take advantage of this
   opportunity to spread the message that capitalism is not genuinely
   anti-authoritarian (nor could it ever be), as a social system based on
   liberty must entail.

   This does not mean that right-wing tendencies have anarchistic
   elements. Of course not. Nor does it mean that anarchist fortunes are
   somehow linked to the success of the right. Far from it (the reverse is
   actually the case). Similarly, the anti-big government propaganda of
   big business is hardly anarchistic. But it does have the advantage of
   placing certain ideas on the agenda, such as decentralisation. What
   anarchists try to do is point out the totally contradictory nature of
   such right-wing rhetoric. After all, the arguments against big
   government are equally applicable to big business and wage slavery. If
   people are capable of making their own decisions, then why should this
   capability be denied in the workplace? As Noam Chomsky points out,
   while there is a "leave it alone" and "do your own thing" current
   within society, it in fact "tells you that the propaganda system is
   working full-time, because there is no such ideology in the U.S.
   Business, for example, doesn't believe it. It has always insisted upon
   a powerful interventionist state to support its interests -- still does
   and always has -- back to the origins of American society. There's
   nothing individualistic about corporations. Those are big conglomerate
   institutions, essentially totalitarian in character, but hardly
   individualistic. Within them you're a cog in a big machine. There are
   few institutions in human society that have such strict hierarchy and
   top-down control as a business organisation. Nothing there about 'Don't
   tread on me.' You're being tread on all the time. The point of the
   ideology is to try to get other people, outside of the sectors of
   co-ordinated power, to fail to associate and enter into decision-making
   in the political arena themselves. The point is to atomise everyone
   else while leaving powerful sectors integrated and highly organised and
   of course dominating resources." He goes on to note that:

     "There is a streak of independence and individuality in American
     culture which I think is a very good thing. This 'Don't tread on me'
     feeling is in many respects a healthy one. It's healthy up to the
     point where it atomises and keeps you from working together with
     other people. So it's got its healthy side and its negative side.
     It's the negative side that's emphasised naturally in the propaganda
     and indoctrination." [Keeping the Rabble in Line, pp. 279-80]

   As the opinion polls above show, must people direct their dislike and
   distrust of institutions equally to Big Business, which shows that
   people are not stupid. However, the slight decrease in distrust for big
   business even after a period of massive business-lead class war,
   down-sizing and so on, is somewhat worrying. Unfortunately, as Gobbels
   was well aware, tell a lie often enough and people start to believe it.
   And given the funds available to big business, its influence in the
   media, its backing of "think-tanks," the use of Public Relations
   companies, the support of economic "science," its extensive advertising
   and so on, it says a lot for the common sense of people that so many
   people see big business for what it is. You simply cannot fool all the
   people all of the time!

   However, these feelings can easily be turned into cynicism and a
   hopelessness that things can change for the better and than the
   individual can help change society. Or, even worse, they can be twisted
   into support for the right, authoritarian, populist or (so-called)
   "Libertarian"-Right. The job for anarchists is to combat this and help
   point the healthy distrust people have for government and business
   towards a real solution to societies problems, namely a decentralised,
   self-managed anarchist society.

J.4.7 What about the communications revolution?

   Another important factor working in favour of anarchists is the
   existence of a sophisticated global communications network and a high
   degree of education and literacy among the populations of the core
   industrialised nations. Together these two developments make possible
   nearly instantaneous sharing and public dissemination of information by
   members of various progressive and radical movements all over the globe
   -- a phenomenon that tends to reduce the effectiveness of repression by
   central authorities. The electronic-media and personal-computer
   revolutions also make it more difficult for elitist groups to maintain
   their previous monopolies of knowledge. In short, the advent of the
   Information Age is potentially one of the most subversive variables in
   the modern equation.

   Indeed the very existence of the Internet provides anarchists with a
   powerful argument that decentralised structures can function
   effectively in today's highly complex world. For the net has no
   centralised headquarters and is not subject to regulation by any
   centralised regulatory agency, yet it still manages to function quite
   effectively. Moreover, the net is also an effective way of anarchists
   and other radicals to communicate their ideas to others, share
   knowledge and work on common projects (such as this FAQ, for example)
   and co-ordinate activities and social struggle. By using the Internet,
   radicals can make their ideas accessible to people who otherwise would
   not come across anarchist ideas (obviously we are aware that the vast
   majority of people in the world do not have access to telephones, never
   mind computers, but computer access is increasing in many countries,
   making it available, via work, libraries, schools, universities, and so
   on to more and more working people). In addition, and far more
   important than anarchists putting their ideas across, the fact is that
   the net allows everyone with access to express themselves freely, to
   communicate with others and get access (by visiting webpages and
   joining mailing lists and newsgroups) and give access (by creating
   webpages and joining in with on-line arguments) to new ideas and
   viewpoints. This is very anarchistic as it allows people to express
   themselves and start to consider new ideas, ideas which may change how
   they think and act. Of course most people on the planet do not have a
   telephone, let alone a computer, but that does not undermine the fact
   that the internet is a medium in which people can communicate freely
   (at least until it is totally privatised, then it may prove to be more
   difficult as the net could become a giant shopping centre).

   Of course there is no denying that the implications of improved
   communications and information technology are ambiguous, implying Big
   Brother as well the ability of progressive and radical movements to
   organise. However, the point is only that the information revolution in
   combination with the other new social developments we are considering
   could (but will not necessarily) contribute to a social paradigm shift.
   Obviously such a shift will not happen automatically. Indeed, it will
   not happen at all unless there is strong resistance to governmental
   attempts to limit public access to information technology (e.g.
   encryption programs) and censor citizens' communications.

   How anarchists are very effectively using the Internet to co-ordinate
   struggles and spread information is discussed in [25]section J.4.9.

   This use of the Internet and computers to spread the anarchist message
   is ironic. The rapid improvement in price-performance ratios of
   computers, software, and other technology today seems to validate the
   faith in free markets. But to say that the information revolution
   proves the inevitable superiority of markets requires a monumental
   failure of short-term historical memory. After all, not just the
   Internet, but the computer sciences and computer industry represent a
   spectacular success of public investment. As late as the 1970s and
   early 1980s, according to Kenneth Flamm's 1988 book Creating the
   Computer, the federal government was paying for 40 percent of all
   computer-related research and probably 60 to 75 percent of basic
   research. Even such modern-seeming gadgets as video terminals, the
   light pen, the drawing tablet, and the mouse evolved from
   Pentagon-sponsored research in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Even
   software was not without state influence, with database software having
   its roots in US Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission projects,
   artificial intelligence in military contracts back in the 1950s and
   airline reservation systems in 1950s air-defence systems. More than
   half of IBM's Research and Development budget came from government
   contracts in the 1950s and 1960s.

   The motivation was national security, but the result has been the
   creation of comparative advantage in information technology for the
   United States that private firms have happily exploited and extended.
   When the returns were uncertain and difficult to capture, private firms
   were unwilling to invest, and government played the decisive role. And
   not for want of trying, for key players in the military first tried to
   convince businesses and investment bankers that a new and potentially
   profitable business opportunity was presenting itself, but they did not
   succeed and it was only when the market expanded and the returns were
   more definite that the government receded. While the risks and
   development costs were socialised, the gains were privatised. All of
   which make claims that the market would have done it anyway highly
   unlikely.

   Looking beyond state aid to the computer industry we discover a
   "do-it-yourself" (and so self-managed) culture which was essential to
   its development. The first personal computer, for example, was invented
   by amateurs who wanted to build their own cheap machines. The existence
   of a "gift" economy among these amateurs and hobbyists was a necessary
   precondition for the development of PCs. Without this free sharing of
   information and knowledge, the development of computers would have been
   hindered. In other words, socialistic relations between developers and
   within the working environment created the necessary conditions for the
   computer revolution. If this community had been marked by commercial
   relations, the chances are the necessary breakthroughs and knowledge
   would have remained monopolised by a few companies or individuals, so
   hindering the industry as a whole.

   The first 20 years of the Internet's development was almost completely
   dependent on state aid -- such as the US military or the universities
   -- plus an anti-capitalist "gift economy" between hobbyists. Thus a
   combination of public funding and community based sharing helped create
   the framework of the Internet, a framework which is now being claimed
   as one of capitalism's greatest successes!

   Encouragingly, this socialistic "gift economy" is still at the heart of
   computer/software development and the Internet. For example, the Free
   Software Foundation has developed the General Public Licence (GPL).
   GPL, also know as "copyleft"
   , uses copyright to ensure that software remains free. Copyleft ensures
   that a piece of software is made available to everyone to use and
   modify as they desire. The only restriction is that any used or
   modified copyleft material must remain under copyleft, ensuring that
   others have the same rights as you did when you used the original code.
   It creates a commons which anyone may add to, but no one may subtract
   from. Placing software under GPL means that every contributor is
   assured that she, and all other uses, will be able to run, modify and
   redistribute the code indefinitely. Unlike commercial software,
   copyleft code ensures an increasing knowledge base from which
   individuals can draw from and, equally as important, contribute to. In
   this way everyone benefits as code can be improved by everyone, unlike
   commercial code.

   Many will think that this essentially anarchistic system would be a
   failure. In fact, code developed in this way is far more reliable and
   sturdy than commercial software. Linux, for example, is a far superior
   operating system than DOS, for example, precisely because it draws on
   the collective experience, skill and knowledge of thousands of
   developers. Apache, the most popular web-server, is another freeware
   product and is acknowledged as the best available. While non-anarchists
   may be surprised, anarchists are not. Mutual aid and co-operation are
   beneficial in evolution of life, why not in the evolution of software?

   For anarchists, this "gift economy" at the heart of the communications
   revolution is an important development. It shows the superiority of
   common development and the walls to innovation and decent products
   generated by property systems. We hope that such an economy will spread
   increasingly into the "real" world.

J.4.8 What is the significance of the accelerating rate of change and the
information explosion?

   As Philip Slater points out in A Dream Deferred, the cumbersomeness of
   authoritarian structures becomes more and more glaring as the rate of
   change speeds up. This is because all relevant information in
   authoritarian systems must be relayed to a central command before any
   decisions can be made, in contrast to decentralised systems where
   important decisions can be made by individuals and small autonomous
   groups responding immediately to new information. This means that
   decision making is slower in authoritarian structures, putting them at
   a disadvantage relative to more decentralised and democratic
   structures.

   The failure of centrally planned state-capitalist ("Communist")
   economies due to overwhelming bureaucratic inertia provides an
   excellent illustration of the problem in question. Similarly, under
   private-property capitalism, small and relatively decentralised
   companies are generally more innovative and productive than large
   corporations with massive bureaucracies, which tend to be nearly as
   inflexible and inefficient as their "Communist" counterparts. In a
   world where the proliferation of information is accelerating at the
   same time that crucial economic and political decisions must be made
   ever more quickly, authoritarian structures are becoming increasingly
   maladaptive. As Slater notes, authoritarian systems simply cannot cope
   effectively with the information explosion, and for this reason more
   and more nations are realising they must either "democratise" or fall
   behind. He cites the epidemic of "democratisation" in Eastern Europe as
   well as popular pressure for democracy in Communist China as
   symptomatic of this phenomenon.

   Unfortunately, Slater fails to note that the type of "democracy" to
   which he refers is ultimately a fraud (though better than
   state-capitalist totalitarianism), since the representative type of
   government at which it aims is a disguised form of political domination
   by the corporate rich. Nevertheless, the cumbersomeness of
   authoritarian structures on which he bases his argument is real enough,
   and it will continue to lend credibility to the anarchist argument that
   "representative" political structures embedded in a corporate-state
   complex of authoritarian institutions is very far from being either
   true democracy or an efficient way of organising society. Moreover, the
   critique of authoritarian structures is equally applicable to the
   workplace as capitalist companies are organised as mini-centrally
   planned states, with (official) power concentrated in the hands of
   bosses and managers. Any struggle for increased participation will
   inevitably take place in the workplace as well (as it has continually
   done so as long as wage slavery has existed).

J.4.9 What are Netwars?

   Netwars refers to the use of the Internet by autonomous groups and
   social movements to co-ordinate action to influence and change society
   and fight government or business policy. This use of the Internet has
   steadily grown over the years, with a Rand corporation researcher,
   David Ronfeldt, arguing that this has become an important and powerful
   force (Rand is, and has been since it's creation in 1948, a private
   appendage of the military industrial complex). In other words, activism
   and activists power and influence has been fuelled by the advent of the
   information revolution. Through computer and communication networks,
   especially via the world-wide Internet, grassroots campaigns have
   flourished, and the most importantly, government elites have taken
   notice.

   Ronfeldt specialises in issues of national security, especially in the
   areas of Latin American and the impact of new informational
   technologies. Ronfeldt and another colleague coined the term "netwar"
   a couple years ago in a Rand document entitled "Cyberwar is Coming!".
   "Netwars" are actions by autonomous groups -- especially advocacy
   groups and social movements -- that use informational networks to
   co-ordinate action to influence, change or fight government policy.

   Ronfeldt's work became a flurry of discussion on the Internet in
   mid-March 1995 when Pacific News Service corespondent Joel Simon wrote
   an article about Ronfeldt's opinions on the influence of netwars on the
   political situation in Mexico after the Zapatista uprising. According
   to Simon, Ronfeldt holds that the work of social activists on the
   Internet has had a large influence -- helping to co-ordinate the large
   demonstrations in Mexico City in support of the Zapatistas and the
   proliferation of EZLN communiques across the world via computer
   networks. These actions, Ronfeldt argues, have allowed a network of
   groups that oppose the Mexican Government to muster an international
   response, often within hours of actions by it. In effect, this has
   forced the Mexican government to maintain the facade of nnegotiations
   with the EZLN and has on many occasions, actually stopped the army from
   just going in to Chiapas and brutally massacring the Zapatistas.

   Given that Ronfeldt is an employee of the Rand Corporation (described
   by Paul Dickson, author of the book "Think Tanks", as the "first
   military think tank. . . undoubtedly the most powerful research
   organisation associated with the American military") his comments
   indicate that the U.S. government and it's military and intelligence
   wings are very interested in what the Left and anarchists are doing on
   the Internet. Given that they would not be interested in this if it was
   not effective, we can say that this use of the "Information
   Super-Highway" is a positive example of the use of technology in ways
   un-planned of by those who initially developed it (let us not forget
   that the Internet was originally funded by the U.S. government and
   military). While the internet is being hyped as the next big
   marketplace, it is being subverted by activists -- an example of
   anarchistic trends within society worrying the powers that be.

   Ronfeldt argues that "the information revolution. . . disrupts and
   erodes the hierarchies around which institutions are normally designed.
   It diffuses and redistributes power, often to the benefit of what may
   be considered weaker, smaller actors." He continues,
   "multi-organisational networks consist of (often small) organisations
   or parts of institutions that have linked together to act jointly...
   making it possible for diverse, dispersed actors to communicate,
   consult, co-ordinate, and operate together across greater distances,
   and on the basis of more and better information than ever." He
   emphasises that "some of the heaviest users of the new communications
   networks and technologies are progressive, centre-left, and social
   activists... [who work on] human rights, peace, environmental,
   consumer, labour, immigration, racial and gender-based issues." In
   other words, social activists are on the cutting edge of the new and
   powerful "network" system of organising.

   All governments, especially the U.S. government, have been extremely
   antagonistic to this idea of effective use of information, especially
   by the political Left and anarchists. The use of the Internet may
   facilitate another "crisis in democracy" (i.e. the development of real
   democracy rather than the phoney elite kind favoured by capitalism). To
   fight this possible use of the internet to combat the elite, Ronfeldt
   maintains that the lesson is clear: "institutions can be defeated by
   networks, and it may take networks to counter networks." He argues that
   if the U.S. government and/or military is to fight this ideological war
   properly with the intend of winning -- and he does specifically mention
   ideology -- it must completely reorganise itself, scrapping
   hierarchical organisation for a more autonomous and decentralised
   system: a network. In this way, he states, "we expect that. . . netwar
   may be uniquely suited to fighting non-state actors".

   Ronfeldt's research and opinion should be flattering for the political
   Left. He is basically arguing that the efforts of activists on
   computers not only has been very effective or at least has the
   potential, but more importantly, argues that the only way to counter
   this work is to follow the lead of social activists. Ronfeldt
   emphasised in a personal correspondence that the "information
   revolution is also strengthening civil-society actors in many positive
   ways, and moreover that netwar is not necessarily a 'bad' thing that
   necessarily is a 'threat' to U.S. or other interests. It depends." At
   the same time, anarchists and other activists should understand the
   important implications of Ronfeldt's work: government elites are not
   only watching these actions (big surprise), but are also attempting to
   work against them.

   This can be seen in many countries. For example, in 1995 a number of
   computer networks, so far confined to Europe, have been attacked or
   completely shut down. In Italy, members of the Carabinieri Anti-Crime
   Special Operations Group raided the homes of a number of activists --
   many active in the anarchist movement. They confiscated journals,
   magazines, pamphlets, diaries, and video tapes. They also took their
   personal computers, one of which hosted "BITS Against the Empire", a
   node of Cybernet and Fidonet networks. The warrant ridiculously charged
   them for "association with intent to subvert the democratic order",
   carrying a penalty of 7 to 15 years imprisonment for a conviction.

   In Britain, Terminal Boredom bulletin board system (BBS) in Scotland
   was shutdown by police in 1995 after the arrest of a hacker who was
   affiliated with the BBS. In the same year Spunk Press, the largest
   anarchist archive of published material catalogued on computer networks
   faced a media barrage in the UK press which has falsely accused them of
   working with known terrorists like the Red Army Faction of Germany, of
   providing recipes for making bombs and of co-ordinating the "disruption
   of schools, looting of shops and attacks on multinational firms."
   Articles by the computer trade magazine, Computing, and the Sunday
   Times, entitled "Anarchism Runs Riot on the Superhighway" and
   "Anarchists Use Computer Highway For Subversion" respectively, nearly
   lead one of the organisers of Spunk Press loosing his job after the
   firm he works for received bad publicity. According to the book Turning
   up the Heat: MI5 after that cold war by Lara O'Hara, one of the
   journalists who wrote the Sunday Times article has contacts with MI5
   (the British equivalent of the FBI).

   It is not coincidence that this attack has started first against
   anarchists and libertarian-socialists. They are currently one of the
   most organised political grouping on the Internet. Even Simon Hill,
   editor of Computing magazine, admits that "we have been amazed at the
   level of organisation of these... groups who have appeared on the
   Internet in a short amount of time". According to Ronfeldt's thesis,
   this makes perfect sense. Who best can exploit a system that "erodes
   hierarchy" and requires the co-ordination of decentralised, autonomous
   groups in co-operative actions than anarchists and
   libertarian-socialists?

   These attacks may not be confined to anarchists for long. Indeed, many
   countries have attempted to control the internet, using a number of
   issues as a means to do so (such as "terrorism", pornography and so
   on). Government is not the only institution to notice the power of the
   Internet in the hands of activists. In America, the Washington Post
   ("Mexican Rebels Using a High-Tech Weapon; Internet Helps Rally
   Support", by Tod Robberson), Newsweek ("When Words are the Best Weapon:
   How the Rebels Use the Internet and Satellite TV", by Russell Watson)
   and even CNN have done stories about the importance of the Internet and
   network communication organisation with respect to the Zapatistas.

   It is important to point out that the mainstream media is not
   interested in the information that circulates across the Internet. No,
   they are interested in sensationalising the activity, even demonising
   it. They correctly see that the "rebels" possess an incredibly powerful
   tool, but the media does not report on what they either are missing or
   omitting.

   A good example of this powerful tool is the incredible speed and range
   at which information travels the Internet about events concerning
   Mexico and the Zapatistas. When Alexander Cockburn wrote an article
   exposing a Chase Manhattan Bank memo about Chiapas and the Zapatistas
   in Counterpunch, only a small number of people read it because it is
   only a newsletter with a limited readership. The memo, written by
   Riordan Roett, was very important because it argued that "the [Mexican]
   government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their
   effective control of the national territory and of security policy". In
   other words, if the Mexican government wants investment from Chase, it
   will have to crush the Zapatistas. This information was relatively
   ineffective when just confined to print. But when it was uploaded to
   the Internet (via a large number of List-servers and the USENET), it
   suddenly reached a very large number of people. These people in turn
   co-ordinated protests against the U.S and Mexican governments and
   especially Chase Manhattan. Chase was eventually forced to attempt to
   distance itself from the Roett memo that it commissioned.

   Anarchists and the Zapatistas is just the tip of the proverbial
   iceberg. Currently there are a myriad of social activist campaigns on
   the Internet. From local issues like the anti-Proposition 187 movement
   in California to a progressive college network campaign against the
   Republican "Contract [on] America," the network system of activism is
   not only working -- and working well as Ronfeldt admits -- but is
   growing. It is growing rapidly in numbers of people involved and
   growing in political and social effectiveness. There are many parallels
   between the current situation in Chiapas and the drawn out civil war in
   Guatemala, yet the Guatemalan military has been able to nearly kill
   without impunity while the Mexican military received a co-ordinated,
   international attack literally hours after they mobilise their troops.
   The reason is netwars are effective as Ronfeldt concedes, and when they
   are used they have been very influential.

   It is clear than Rand, and possibly other wings of the establishment,
   are not only interested in what activists are doing on the Internet,
   but they think it is working. It is also clear that they are studying
   our activities and analysing our potential power. We should do the
   same, but obviously not from the perspective of inhibiting our work,
   but the opposite: how to further facilitate it. Also, we should turn
   the tables as it were. They are studying our behaviour and actions --
   we should study theirs. As was outlined above, we should analyse their
   movements and attempt to anticipate attacks as much as possible.

   As Ronfeldt argues repeatedly, the potential is there for us to be more
   effective. Information is getting out as is abundantly clear. But we
   can do better than just a co-ordination of raw information, which has
   been the majority of the "networking" so far on the Internet. To
   improve on the work that is being done, we should attempt to provide
   more -- especially in the area of in-depth analysis. Not just what we
   are doing and what the establishment is doing, but more to the point,
   we should attempt to co-ordinate the dissemination of solid analysis of
   important events. In this way members of the activist network will not
   only have the advantage of up-to-date information of events, but also a
   good background analysis of what each event means, politically,
   socially and/or economically as the case may be.

   Thus Netwars are a good example of anarchistic trends within society,
   the use of communications technology (developed for the state and used
   by capitalism as a means to aid the selling process) has become a means
   of co-ordinating activity across the world in a libertarian fashion.

   (This section of the FAQ is based on an article by Jason Wehling called
   "'NetWars' and Activists' Power on the Internet" which has appeared in
   issue 2 of Scottish Anarchist magazine as well as Z Magazine)

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ1.html
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ2.html
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC10.html
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secCcon.html
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secCcon.html
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC7.html
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC7.html#secc72
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  10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC7.html#secc73
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  16. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj55
  17. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj56
  18. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj51
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  20. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj52
  21. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html#secj51
  22. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ5.html
  23. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ4.html#secj46
  24. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secHcon.html
  25. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ4.html#secj49
