"Trully it is not a failing in you that you stiffen yourself
against me and
assert your distinctness or peculiarity: you need
not give way or renounce
yourself" - Max Stirner
Whenever more than a few anarchists get together, there
are arguments. This
is no surprise, since the word "anarchist"
is used to describe a broad
range of often contradictory
ideas and practices. The only common
denominator is the desire to be rid of authority,
and anarchists do not
even agree on what authority is, let alone the question
of what methods are
appropriate for eliminating it. These questions
raise many others, and so
arguments are inevitable.
The arguments do not bother me. What bothers me
is the focus on trying to
come to an agreement. It is assumed that "because
we are all anarchists",
we must all really want the same thing; our apparent
conflicts must merely
be misunderstandings which we can talk out, finding
a common ground. When
someone refuses to talk things out
and insists on maintaining their
distinctness, they are considered dogmatic. This
insistence on finding a
common ground may be one of the most significant
sources of the endless
dialogue that so frequently takes place of acting
to create our lives on
our own terms. This attempt to find a common ground
involves a denial very real conflicts.
One strategy frequently used to deny conflict is
to claim that an argument
is merely a disagreeement over words and their
meanings. As if the words
one uses and how one chooses to use them have no connection
to one's ideas,
dreams and desires. I am convinced that there are
very few arguments that
are merely about words and their meanings.
These few could be easily
resolved if the individuals involved would clearly
and precisely explain
what they mean. When individuals cannot even come
to an agreement about
what words to use and how to use them, it
indicates that their dreams,
desires and ways of thinking are so far apart
that even within a single
language, they cannot find a common tongue. The
attempt to reduce such an
immense chasm to mere semantics is an attempt to
deny a very real conflict
and the singularity of the individuals involved.
The denial of conflict and of the singularity of
individuals may reflect a
fetish for unity that stems from residual leftism
or collectivism. Unity
has always been highly valued by the left. Since
most anarchists, despite
their attempts to seperate themselves from the
left, are merely anti-state
leftists, they are convinced that only a
united front can destroy this
society which perpetually forces us into unities
not of our choosing, and
that we must, therefore, overcome our differences
and join together to
support the "common cause". But when we give give
ourselves to the
"common cause", we are forced to accept the lowest common
denominator of
understanding and struggle. The unities that are
created in this way are
false unities which thrive only by suppressing
the unique desires and
passions of the individuals involved, tranforming
them into a mass. Such
unities are no different from the forming of labor
that keeps a factory
functioning or the unity of social consensus which keeps
the authorities in
power and people in line. Mass unity, because it
is based on the reduction
of the individual to a unit in a generality, can
never be a basis for the
destruction of authority, only for its support
in one form or another.
Since we want to destroy authority, we must start
from a different basis.
For me, that basis is myself -- my
life with all of its passions and
dreams, its desires, projects and encounters.
From this basis, I make
"common cause" with no one, but may frequently
encounter individuals with
whom I have an affinity. It may well be that your
desires and passions,
your dreams and projects coincide with mine. Accompanied
by an insistence
upon realizing these in opposition
to every form of authority, such
affinity is a basis for a genuine
unity between singular, insurgent
individuals which lasts only
as long as these individuals desire.
Certainly, the desire for the destruction of authority
and society can move
us to strive for an insurrectional unity
that becomes large-scale, but
never as a mass movement; instead it would
need to be a coinciding of
affinities between individuals who insist on making
their lives their own.
This sort of insurrection cannot come about
through a reduction of our
ideas to a lowest common denominator with which
everyone can agree, but
only through the recognition of the singularity
of each individual, a
recognition which embraces the
actual conflicts that exist between
individuals, regardless of how ferocious
they may be, as part of the
amazing wealth of interactions that the world has
to offer us once we rid
ourselves of the social system
which has stolen our lives and our
interactions from us.
From Willfull Disobedience #2