THERE’S an old and largely forgotten anarchist slogan which goes something along the lines of “Tear it down! It doesn’t need rebuilding!” That has a pleasingly nihilistic ring to it: the old anarchist idea of destruction for its own sake, which was typified by their strategy in the 19th century of what was called “propaganda by the deed”. This would entail a vanguard of anarchists (in the public imagination wearing wide-brimmed fedoras and capacious cloaks, carrying spherical black bombs with the word “bomb” written on them) undertaking symbolic acts of terrorism in the belief that, by example, they would inspire the masses to rise up and overthrow their oppressors.
You know, like blowing up the Archbishop of Zaragoza or someone. Indeed, pursuing this policy, anarchists succeeded in murdering not just archbishops, but also tsars, kings, capitalists and American presidents, as well as a depressingly large number of bystanders, although at the end of the day they had little to show for it.
Nonetheless, for about 100 years, from the failed revolutions of 1848 to the Spanish Civil War, anarchism was a potent political force – and a far more effectively terrifying spectre haunting both Europe and America than communism, which languished for the most part in sectarian bickering until Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized the main chance and staged the coup d’etat which history refers to as the October Revolution. After that, the anarchists in Russia were consigned, in Trotsky’s memorable phrase, to the “scrapheap of history” – although in practice, in both Russia and, later, in Spain this meant that they were liquidated by the Bolsheviks.
History is a fickle old tart at the best of times, and these days we prefer not to remember the passionate hope millions of people placed in anarchism to liberate them from the tyranny of kings, churches and the violence inherent in the state. We forget about the thousands of anarchists who attended the Russian anarchist Prince Kropotkin’s funeral in 1921, or the 250,000 mourners for the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti in Barcelona in 1936, after he was killed by a stray bullet following his anarchist militia’s relief of Madrid, which had been besieged by fascists prior to the arrival of the eponymous “Durruti column”.
Indeed, Tribune readers of a certain age may only recognise “Durutti column” as the name of a Mancunian post-punk band cobbled together by the late Tony Wilson, who called themselves – mis-spelling it as “Durutti column” – not after the anarchist militia leader, but from a slogan on a 1967 poster produced by the slightly preposterous groupuscle of exhibitionists who formed the Situationist International and who spelled the name wrong in the first place.
Which, in itself, is highly emblematic of the fate of failed political movements: revolutions repeat themselves not, like history, as farce, but as brand names, pacified spectacle or a knee-jerk signifier of cool. Just consider how Franz Ferdinand expropriated the iconography of Soviet futurism for the cover of their first album, or how Joe Strummer, signed up to CBS, used to ponce around in a Red Brigades T-shirt.
And so it is with anarchism – or at least those who style themselves anarchists these days. For me, the most telling image from last week’s G20 meeting was of the crusty young man smashing a window of RBS, surrounded by what looked like hundreds of photographers. This was “propaganda by the photo-opportunity”, a weird kind of symbiosis between the media and people who claim to want to change the world, but seek to do so by parading themselves as a media-friendly freak-show.
I suppose this tactic has certain merits, although there’s always a danger that the host body will eventually be completely engulfed by its parasites and the demonstrators will all be snappers and hacks, a bit like those cells of the American Communist Party in the 1950s where the cadres finally realised that every single one of them was an FBI agent provocateur. That said, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t all be actively seeking to tear it down, or that it needs rebuilding.
Remember, what the G20 achieved was merely the recharging of the batteries of the life-support machines keeping global capitalism just about alive – albeit currently in what looks like a permanent vegetative state. What none of the world’s “leaders” have embraced for a moment is the idea of grabbing this golden opportunity to forge something new from the self-inflicted wreckage: something, for instance, which might halt or even reverse our suicidal addiction to carbon, institutionalised inequality or, for that matter, permanent economic growth.
Then again, the G20 was, in reality, not much more than just another spectacle, although in the long term it might prove infinitely more destructive than the capering antics of the cosy mob who think a friendly punch-up in Threadneedle Street constitutes “tearing it down”.
About The Author
