Postmodern Anarchism
Besides some of the typical forms of anarchism such as those previously discussed, another has emerged over the past few decades. Known as postmodern anarchism, this school of thought provides an analysis different from traditional anarchism’s conventional critique of the illegitimacy of government. Postmodern anarchism now identifies capitalism as the driving force behind the illegitimacy and tyrannical nature of government and the state.
Postmodern anarchism, as described by Zygmunt Bauman and Lewis Call, not only critiques industrial and post-Fordist capitalism, it also provides a critique of what has become known as postmodern capitalism. In turn it is Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard who argue that the expansionistic nature of capitalism has now “colonized” the subconscious for the purposes of conditioning the mind to habituate consumers into constant state of consumption. Market propaganda (advertising) seeks to manipulate and control the human subconsciousness to the point at which habituated consumption eventually leads to what Thornstein Veblin describes as “conspicuous consumption”.
Self-restraint in consumer spending is anathema to bourgeois capitalism; it has become a form of cult-like activity to the benefit of capitalists and international capital. In so doing the citizenry is propagandized by the state and it institutions into believing unquestionably that capitalism is absolute in nature and that anti-capitalist dissent is tantamount to economic heresy. For the masses the subconscious registers anti-capitalist dissent as a form of betrayal. Its first principle on the absolute nature of the market takes on an almost spiritual dimension is if ordained by God and reinforced by the state in the form of education, media, politics, art as a civil religion.
But postmodern anarchism argues that postmodern capitalism will most assuredly, destroy itself and others with it.
Follow the Money
On the other hand, postmodern anarchism seeks to deconstruct hegemonies of power.
Postmodern anarchism dissents from Western “liberalism”, specifically 21st Century neoliberalism. Postmodern anarchists such as Frederic Jameson and Michel Foucault argue that the state and its economic apparatus, as it manifests itself today in neoliberal and neo-imperialist capitalism, has created a society destructive of social solidarity. It has colonized the human psyche and holds captive the subconscious by supporting pathological archetypes such as: (1) radical individualism; (2) toxic narcissism; and (3) emotional indifference to human suffering.
Postmodern anarchism seeks to counter, ultimately, these societal pathologies. It embraces the inclusion of the “other” while advocating for the marginalized as a form of resistance through grass roots organizing in “communities of meaning”. It invites persons to participate in a lifestyle of social cohesion and interdependence, countering the effects of isolation as a result of neoliberal indifference. It attempts to counter the underlying foundation of Western capitalism, which is based on the unquestioned dogma of neoliberalism.
Christopher Hedges in America: The Farewell Tour, 2019, provides this example: “The disastrous economic and political experiment that attempted to organize human behavior around the dictates of the global marketplace has failed. The promised prosperity that was to have raised the living standards of workers through trickle-down economics has been exposed as a lie. Today’s economic stagnation, accompanied by a steady stripping away of civil liberties and the creation of a monstrous security and surveillance system of internal control, has followed the kind of roller-coaster pattern of rising and then declining hopes that presage revolt.”
The state and government legitimize, according to the postmodern anarchists, the accumulation of unlimited wealth, based on delusions of self-aggrandizement and the utilization of humans and the planet for purposes of economic gain. For the postmodern anarchists this is definitive proof of state and government illegitimacy. This strategy is inherent within capitalist state organizations and perpetuated by C. Wright Mills’ description of the “power elite”.
Their sharpest postmodern attack is leveled heavily against bourgeois liberalism and its manifestation in “late capitalism,” or as Thorstein Veblen describes, the culture of “conspicuous consumption.” The postmodern anarchists argue that capitalism will not survive as an economic means of allocating scarce resources if it does not compete for scarce resources based on the three self-destructive postmodern critiques identified above. Nevertheless, the postmodern anarchists argue that delegitimizing liberal bourgeois capitalist relations must necessarily translate into being fundamentally opposed to hierarchical (paternalistic) social relations inherent in capitalist modes of production.
This also holds equally true for command economies and state socialist regimes, past and present. It therefore rejects state socialism and its use of force to implement and maintain authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. But the next practical step toward social justice is to revitalize the union movement in the United States.
“Abolition of the Wage System”
Such anarchism envisions a strictly voluntary, community organizing, nonprofit, NGO (and typically small-scale) form of organization. This must also include union action on behalf of labor. Anarchist organizing must be careful to avoid, or be devoid of, any reliance on modernism’s devotion to modernist rationality, e.g., Woodrow Wilson and Frederick Taylor methods of strategic management, as an organizing principle typified by Western liberal culture. In this sense, postmodern anarchists argue that liberal democracies in their present form, are oppressive hegemonies controlled by a dominating, and in some cases, dictatorial power-elite precisely “to prevent radical change.”
Postmodern anarchists such as Lewis Call argue that while humanistic liberalism has claimed an important role in the promotion of freedom and equality, i.e., from the French Revolution onward, it imposes a disturbing silence upon radical thinking. Call actually argues that liberalism serves as a conduit for injustice in its attempts to prioritize individual liberties. In spite of the efforts of liberals, such as Richard Rorty, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin, etc., liberalism as applied to a democratic society still functions to defend existing institutions and to prevent radical change in the defense of the status quo.
The task ahead demands a new vision of peace and justice and a formation of policies centered on human rights, economic justice, the priority of labor over capital, and the transformation of liberalism into a guiding theory of social solidarity and human compassion. Postmodern anarchism is inviting others to see a new way of peaceful interaction with nature and humanity.
Postmodern anarchism provides a venue for analysis of capitalism today as it manifests itself in postmodern capitalism.
Ed Martin
Tubac, Arizona
Long Beach, California
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