Linking online war to real war

For me, blogging and getting interested in politics came about the same time. My ideas and outrage at the way the world was going seemed to find an outlet in a blog that was originally meant to be a news source for my writer’s website. And as such, I have a soft spot for online activism.

The Internet is a rapidly growing medium and the media is seeing a shift in the way we read news. Slowly, the profit-hungry media corporations are losing a grip on the monopoly of news and knowledge that they hold so important to keeping the political current flowing in their direction. Blogs and independent online journalists seem to be gaining a hearing amongst those looking for alternative sources of news and increasingly, online gaming has even been tapped into by a dedicated band of activists looking to get their message heard.

One such activist is Joseph DeLappe, who has intervened into a multiplayer military simulator, America’s Army with the pseudonym ‘dead-in-iraq.’ America’s Army is an online multiplayer game funded by the U.S. Pentagon with the aim of recruiting gamers into the army to fight a war DeLappe is against.

As soon as he enters the game, he enters a command to drop his weapon and as an allusion to the cannon fodder that civilians are turned into in Iraq, he offers himself to be killed with no means of defence. Then, as the session continues, he begins to type names of the 3,500 American soldiers that have been killed in Iraq since Bush invaded on the basis of lies. He has taken screen shots and posted them to his website to record his protest.

The unique intervention manages to piss off a lot of right-wing gamers as they’re confronted with the names of people who’ve been economically drafted to die for their fucked cause. But it also confronts those who’ve been sucked into the idea that this is all just a game and sucked into going into the real deal, killing real people and risking their real life.

It’s the ability of reaching people online and making a connection to the real world that makes DeLappe’s intervention so powerful. Also, for other anti-war activists and those against the war, it’s inspiring to hear that activism can find outlets in so many creative ways and that it might inspire others to get active.

Anarchism versus Marxism

Although anarchism and Marxism are both socialist political theories, and they share the view that a communal, participatory, voluntary, de-centralised society is an end goal worth pursuing, they differ in many respects, and should not be confused. Of course they are far from internally homogeneous theories themselves, but I’ll leave that issue to another entry. They tend to differ more when in comes to means, rather than ends. So they both criticise capitalist economy, bourgeois society, and the liberal democratic state, and they have both looked to the working class movement to bring their respective visions into fruition. But there differences are not trivial: for example, one of the most basic distinctions between Marxism and anarchism is that Marxists generally do not have an issue with organising themselves into hierarchies, whilst anarchists cannot countenance hierarchical structure within their organisations, they must always be based on equality and pure democracy.

In this entry I will discuss (in as few words as possible) the anarchist and Marxist views on: capitalism, class, the state, history, parliamentary reform, revolution and culture. I am an anarchist so I will not promise to be impartial or objective, but merely tell it how I see it.

Capitalism

Both anarchists and Marxists criticise capitalism as a cause of alienation and exploitation. This criticism of capitalism is probably where the two theories have most in common. Consumer society, the rise of the corporation, and the military-industrial complex are all considered intensely undesirable by both theories. Capitalism, anarchists and Marxists contend, causes an ugly cheapening of human life where many people are subject to wage slavery at the hands of dictator-like CEOs and management. Wants are created in capitalism by the huge power of the corporate media, which greatly influences today’s culture. Institutions such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund (along with the UN more covertly) hold down developing nations with the hypocritical myth of globalisation and free trade, to maintain the hegemony of the world’s superpowers.

Anarchists and Marxists believe that private property, profit, interest, rent and all other tools of the capitalist class should all be abolished, and the means of production taken over by the workers. The main difference between the two theories’ analysis of capitalism is that Marxists see it as an inevitable stage in the progression towards communism, while anarchists believe that anarchism can – and should – be achieved in any society, in other words, capitalism is not a necessary stage of the development of a society.

Myths of Anarchism

Anarchy = chaos

In common usage, the word ‘anarchy’ can have the meaning ‘chaos’ or ‘disorder’. This is not what anarchists refer to in the slightest. The word anarchy comes from the Ancient Greek root anarchos, which literally means the absence (an) of a ruler or leader (archos). This concept includes the absence of government, and, taking it further, the absence of hierarchical structure: in other words, an equal society. Anarchists believe that unquestioned and unchallenged authority is illegitimate: accepting authority just for the sake of authority, is a silly and dangerous way to organise a society.

‘The Anarchy’, a period of civil war in England in the 12^th century, could have something to do with the negative connotation the word has. There is also a much more recent influence. The anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated the American President, William McKinley in 1901 and gave anarchists an even worse reputation than they already had at the time. Obviously, the powers that be do not look kindly on those who espouse anarchy, as it is a direct threat to their authority, and this has also has an influence on the common perception of the word.

 

Anarchists are unrealistic/utopian

Utopians, as I see it, believe the world can be changed to one which is flawless, and in which the ‘lion lies down with the lamb’ and such nonsense. Anarchists don’t believe that a perfect society will ever exist where there is no exploitation of any sort. What they do believe, is that anarchism will form the basis of a society which does not hold as its core principle, essentially, ‘exploit or be exploited’. We believe that exploitation can be reduced to almost negligible levels, where the only crimes committed are personal ones, crimes of passion. There will be no institutionalised crimes. We do not say that there will be no difficulty, no hard work; certainly there will be, but it will be done for the benefit of the society, shared out fairly, not for the benefit of one particular sector of society.

I do not believe anarchism is an unrealistic possibility. Although I can not deal with this in detail here, revolutions have obviously occurred in the past: the world is not static, it can change and it can change in many different directions. For anarchism to come about all it would take is a reasonably large number of people taking back their power in a number of ways (such as occupying factories and workplaces, refraining from voting, and generally dismantling hierarchical structures wherever they exist), and not necessarily all at the same time, as it can certainly be a gradual process. All we have to do is stop thinking that the world as it is, is the world as it will always be. Capitalism can (and should) have its downfall. The main reason I’m writing anything about anarchism is because I hope it will convince people to join the cause and eventually revolt, and the more people the better.

All anarchists are violent or espouse violence

I’m not sure if anyone actually believes this myth, but it certainly is one. Personally, I don’t believe that any anarchist that believes in physically hurting others is consistent. We can certainly take back what’s ours (our liberty) but we can’t take what’s not ours, which is another person’s right not to be violated in any way. We should be past thinking in ‘eye for an eye’ terms.

There is, however, the issue of property damage. Most anarchists, myself included, believe that this is legitimate if it is done carefully and furthers the cause of the reduction of exploitation and positive revolution. I don’t see how destroying property could be considered violence, except perhaps psychologically. (I am not talking about wanton destruction of people’s possessions, or smashing windows because it feels good: this is unnecessary and wasteful.) Obviously if the property can be put to the use of those who were exploited, all the better. And expropriating the expropriators (sorry if this sounds too Marxist) is perfectly justifiable. To hurt, economically, the perpetrators of injustice, as long as they know why, can be a good way to stop them from committing these injustices.

 

Anarchists don’t believe in progress/ are luddites

Some anarcho-primitivists don’t believe in technological progress, and desire to ‘turn back the clock’ to a hunter-gatherer society in a sustainable manner. Most anarchists, however, think technology is an incredibly useful tool, in the right hands. It can be used as a tool to cut the costs of labour, improve communication and generally enhance people’s lives, or it can be used by capitalists to extract more and more out of the environment and manipulate consumers for their own benefit.

Progress and change are precisely what anarchists want. It is probably the most progressive political ideology there is, in terms of what is envisioned and what must occur for it to be brought about.

Anarchists don’t believe in having possessions

In an anarchist society it is true that all production will be collectivised and therefore all property will be collective property. But this mainly refers to what would be considered ‘capital’ today, such as land, machinery, equipment etc. It is imagined that there would be no reason to restrict possessions – different people want and use different things, and as long as they were not wasting collective and scarce resources, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have these things, and others wouldn’t just be able to take them away. Once people have enough of the necessities of life (and then some) thievery would not occur, except in negligible and resolvable ways.

Anarchists are communists

Anarchism is a different political ideology and has a different historical tradition to that of communism. But nevertheless, they have many similarities. The truth is, there are many different types of anarchists. I am an anarcho-communist, so I believe that something like communism is the end goal. However, I disagree with communists in that I do not believe a communal society can be achieved through the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ (where the working class takes control of all means of production through revolution). I believe that this would simply lead to domination by the workers over the rest of society, or, more accurately, the workers would stop being workers and start being rulers. I also disagree with communists who believe that large-scale violence is the only way to revolution (such as Lenin). Anarchism also focuses more on personal liberty and freedom from all forms of coercion, while communism (especially Marxism) focuses on the activities of a particular class against another and does not have such a problem with coercion as long as its for the right reasons (i.e. they are more likely to accept states as legitimate whereas anarchists are fundamentally opposed to all states).

There are many other minor differences as well, but I will discuss these at a later time.

If anyone has any more suggestions for myths to (attempt to) debunk, please suggest them! Obviously this is not a complete list.

Please visit my site http://anarchism.tk/blog/ for more information.