Anarchism in America is a 75-min.1983 documentary that follows the small crew around the country in search of the ways that anarchistic tendencies manifest in America. In their own words, one of the things they’re interested in is the implicit anarchism in the American traits of “distrust in government, suspicion of authority, and a plain old do it yourself attitude”. It’s been put up on YouTube (first part here, or see below).
As far as a documentary goes, it’s not too enlightening. There are very rarely captions or voice-overs to let you know who or what you’re seeing. Historical explanations are interesting, but brief. However, it has a lot of good things going for it too. For one, the footage is awesome, ranging over interviews with people on the street about what their idea of anarchism is, to punk bands (including the Dead Kennedys), to Emma Goldman, to protests and riots, to long shots of driving on a highway, to interviews with people viewing rodeos, truckers, a worker at a worker-owned and -operated sewing company, and a collective self-sufficient community, among others. They also portray the schism between today’s libertarians and anarcho-collectivists in a fairly objective light, talking with people on both sides and finding common ground stemming from American individualism.
The gem of the show is the interview with Murray Bookchin, founder of social ecology, a school of thought that holds that ecological problems are rooted in the social entrenchment of hierarchy. I’d rather leave a more detailed talk of his works and influence for later (though the Wiki links certainly offer a lot to chew on too) and instead quote him at length from the documentary. I found him particularly articulate, with great descriptions of anarchism as a peaceful, humanitarian, and above all, ethical movement.
Almost anyone, I suppose, could call himself or herself an anarchist, if he or she believed that the society could be managed without the state. And by the state, I don’t mean the absence of any institutions, the absence of any form of social organization. The state really refers to a professional apparatus of people who are set aside to manage society. To pre-empt the control of society from the people. So that would include the military, judges, politicians, representatives who are paid for the express purpose of legislating, and theexecutive body that is also set aside from society. So anarchists generally believe that whether as groups or as individuals, people should directly run society.
My background and how I have become an anarchist is a long long story. . . . I had gone through a period of Marxism which is almost unknown today to many American radicals. A period when Marxism was a worker’s movement to a very great extent and when it was a movement in the streets, in which hundreds of thousands of people at times could be brought out in massive demonstrations throughout the country under red flags, whether it be communist or socialist. And by the end of the second World War, and particularly by the end of the 1940s, I literally saw this movement disappear – and disappear from history – at least as far as the United States was concerned. And I have no belief whatever that it will come back again. Namely what I’m saying is I saw the end of the classical workers’ movement.
And I had to ask myself why had this come about. What did this mean? And the conclusion I came to is this: that the workers’ movement never really had a revolutionary potential. That the factories (and I had worked in factories for ten years, and had worked in factories partly as a labor organizer in the old CIO before it united with the AFFL, when it was still in a very militant, you know what I mean, stage in its development) that this workers’ movement had never really had the revolutionary potentialities that Marx attributed to it. That in point of fact the factory, which is supposed to organize the workers in Marx’ language, mobilize them, and instill in them the class consciousness that is to stem out of a conflict between wage labor and capital, in fact had created habits of mind in the worker that served to regiment the worker, that served in fact to assimilate the worker to the work ethic, to the industrial routine, to hierarchical forms of organization. And that no matter how compellingly Marx had argued that such a movement could have revolutionary consequences, in fact such a movement could have nothing but a purely adaptive function, an adjunct to the capitalist system itself.
And I began to try to explore what were movements and ideologies if you like, that were really liberatory, that really freed people of this hierarchical sensibility and mentality, of this authoritarian outlook, of this complete assimilation by the work ethic. And I now began to turn, very consciously, toward anarchistic views. Because anarchism posed the question not simply of a struggle between classes based upon economic exploitation. Anarchism really was posing a much broader historical question that even goes beyond our industrial civilization. Not just classes, but hierarchy. Hierarchy as it exists in the family, hierarchy as it exists in the school, hierarchy as it exists in sexual relationships, hierarchy as it exists between ethnic groups. Not only class divisions based upon economic exploitation. And it was concerned not only with economic exploitation, it was concerned with domination. Domination which may not even have any economic meaning at all. The domination of women by men, in which women are not economically exploited. The domination of ordinary people by bureaucrats, in which you may even have a welfare, so-called socialist type of state. Domination as it exists today in China, even when you’re supposed to have a classless society. Domination, even as it exists in Russia, where you are supposed to have a classless society. See, so these are the kinds of things I noted in anarchism and increasingly i came to the conclusion, that if we were to avoid, or if we are to avoid, the mistakes that were made over one hundred years of proletarian socialism, if we are to really achieve a liberatory movement, not simply in terms of economic questions, but in terms of every aspect of life, we would have to turn to anarchism. Because it alone posed the problem not merely of class domination but hierarchical domination. And it alone posed the question not simply of economic explotiation, but exploitation in every sphere of life. And it was that growing awareness that we have to go beyond classes under hierarchy and beyond exploitation into domination that led me into anarchism and to a commitment to an anarchist outlook.
I don’t believe that one can practice anarchism in this society. I believe it would be utterly illusory to contend, say, that a food co-op can replace General, aha, you know what I mean, Grand Junior. Nor that a so-called People’s Bank, to use a concept of Phu Dong(?), who is supposed to have been an anarchist, could replace Chase Manhatten. Nor do I think that one can go around living a holier-than-thou ethical life, you know, that essentially amounts to an on-going guilt trip against other people. I find that it is basically impossible to live a thoroughly anarchist life within a capitalist society, but I do believe this: that one can try to maintain a high ethical standard. And that is one of the beautiful things about anarchism – that it brings ethics into socialism instead of mere science into socialism, such as Marx does. That one can live an ethical life. One can concern oneself personally with what is humane, and what I would prefer to call libertarian behavior. One can protest, and one can try to work with projects in which people learn how to take control of their lives even if in fact they can’t do so until there are fundamental social changes. Those are the commitments I believe that anarchism seriously poses to the individual. And it raises a very high standard. It is demanding in that respect. It demands that you search into what is a humanistic sensibility and what is a humanistic ethic.
Posted by grassideas 
