A review by rebecavleal
The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism by Ruth Kinna

• Não é propriamente um trabalho de opinião mas sim de apresentação da história, influencies e ramificações do anarquismo.
• “the government of no one”: the problem with this nomenclature is that it situated anarchism in a framework of government that uses the rejection of anarchy for its justification. So anarchy immediately becomes a condition of disorder. The prevailing view in political thought is that human beings want to escape from the inconvenience or violence of anarchy and, because they have the wit to do so (uniquely, we are told), they submit to government.
• Anarchists reject pinpointing the origin of the ideology, its boundaries, and major/relevant thinkers. They want to avoid attributing the power of anarchist invention to a collection of individuals of particular genius - characteristically, white men - who cleverly articulated a great idea, parceled it up and exported it across the world.
• IWA: the International Working men’s Association was broken up in 1872 and could be said it was roughly split into two groups/ideologies: marxists and anarchists. Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin were two proeminent figures of both movements within the IWA and had a long-lasting ideological discussion.
• -Anarchy means no domination or authority of one man over another, yet you call that “disorder”. A system which advocates no such “order” as shall require the services of rogues and thieves to defend it you call “disorder”.
• Conceito de wage slavery
• The practical implementation of law removes the power of rule-making from the majority of the people it manages. People know what law is, they know that it commands obedience and that transgression will result in punishment. However, most people have little knowledge of the content and scope of the law and lack the technical ability to participate meaningfully in making, interpreting or enforcing law. Sigmund Engländer attacked law because it facilitated exploitation and dependency and because he thought lawmakers assumed they knew what was best for everyone. Law was inherently dominating.
• Communal property and living in indigenous communities: the woods, the waters, and the lands are held in common. All were free to take what they needed to build cabins and irrigate crops. Tillable lands were allotted by mutual agreement before sowing, and reverted to the tribe after harvesting, for re-allotment. Pasture, the right to collect fuel, we’re for all. Neighbor assisted neighbor to build his cabin, ploughing his ground, to gather and store his crop. Os colonizadores criaram espaços “privados” e atribuíram-nos a si próprios, uma vez que consideravam que as comunidades indígenas não sendo “book-educated” não eram inteligentes o suficiente e nem a arma da educação resolveria isso.
• Dúvida minha: o anarquismo parece defender que a educação controlada pelo estado é uma opressão e (o estado define o currículo e a sua apresentação e segrega aquelas que não são “bons” o suficiente no seu sistema) que educa para a produtividade. O anarquismo sugere uma educação gerida pela comunidade e focada na experiência (aprender nas fábricas, etc), e diz que esta educação tem como objectivo a formação de um membro crítico da sociedade. Como é que educação tao foçada na experiência laboral prática e com pouca academia permite abstração suficiente para tal pensamento crítico?
• Accompaniment and skill-sharing: an invitation to newly trained lawyers, doctors, engineers, poets, artists and teachers - professionals of all stripes - to set aside personal career ambitions to benefit the least well off and for the sake of social transformation. (Using specialist skills or status to support disadvantaged people). Accompaniment is linked to protection work, that is, standing with vulnerable groups or un-newsworthy people to prevent state attacks against them. (Disseminating research findings to expose repressive practices, providing translation, contesting phoney science, helping to prevent deportation and advancing or protecting land claims against settler governments and corporate exploitation).
• Evolutionist and revolutionist movements within anarchism: evolutionists defendem uma mudança gradual e pacífica; os revolutionists consideram ingénua acreditar que a mudança necessária acontecerá sem resistência da classe governadora e por isso afirmam que violência será necessária.
• Outra divisão de movimentos dentro anarquismo é communist vs. individualist (a criação de comunidades, por vezes forçada, e ação em conjunto e a ação individual, respectivamente).
• Evolutionists & organizationalists: Proudhonist federalists; Evolutionists & anti-organizationalists: Proudhonist individualists & Stirnerite amoralists; Revolutionists & organizationalists: Anarchist-syndicalists & Platformists & Insurrectionists; Revolutionists & anti-organizationalists: Revolutionary individualists.
• Class-struggle anarchism: usually feminist, anti-racist, and green, but first and foremost anti-capitalism egalitarians who struggle against bourgeois privilege and state power. Engage more readily with other leftist movements outside of anarchism. Tend to be revolutionist and organizationalists.
• Post-left anarchism: “anarchy is chaos and chaos is anarchy”. Seeks to be anti-political, hedonistic, and proudly individualist. Positioned against anarchy-leftist fundamentalisms (such as class-struggle anarchism and anarchy-syndicalism), which for this current are organizations that promise social transformation but negate its possibility.
• Small “a” anarchism and social anarchism are evolutionist and organizationalist currents but seem to me a bit vague in their positioning to other topics (feminism, racism, etc). Small “a” anarchism mobilizes networked groups and associations in mass demonstrations, using self-organization, direct action, revolutionary union strike tactics and consensual participatory democracy as tools to contest capitalism. O social anarchism parece-me mais “uma forma de estar”, como as pequenas comunidades criadas aqui e ali que se focam no seu projeto apenas.
• Marx believed only the industrial workers could lead the revolution, agrarian workers were dismissed by him (calling it “the idiocy of rural live”). He and Engles also created the concept of lumpenproletariat (usually vaganbonds and prostitutes) which they considered an “underclass” and “social scum”.
• Statement from the UK Anarchidt Federation Women’s Caucus: “to talk about privilege reveals what is normal to those without the oppression, yet cannot be taken for granted by those with it. To talk about homophobia alone reveals the existence of prejudices, stereotypes about how gay men and lesbian women behave, perhaps, or violence targeted against people of their sexuality. (…) To talk about straight privilege, however, shows the other side of the system, the invisible side: what behavior is considered ‘typical’ for straight people? There isn’t one, straight isn’t treated like a sexual category, it is treated like the absence of ‘gay’. You don’t have to worry about whether you come across as ‘too straight’ when you’re going to a job interview or whether your straight friends will think you’re denying your straightness if you don’t dress or talk straight enough, or whether your gay friends will be uncomfortable if you take them to a straight club (…). This analysis goes beyond worries of what we consider normal and neutral, what we consider different and other, what needs explaining, what’s taken as read, the prejudices in favour of being straight aren’t recognizable as prejudices, because they’re built into our very perceptions of what is the default way to be.”
• Se o anarquismo fosse sempre fiel a ele próprio e contra todo o domínio (incluído o do homem), não seria necessário haver um ou mais movimentos anarquismo feministas.
• Questão em aberto do livro: como se evita a opressão/domínio se uma comunidade se regime por decisão em maioria? Não passam A e B se se juntarem a ter poder sobre C? Um teórico anarquista defende que não será opressão pois numa comunidade anarquista qualquer sujeito se pode remover a qualquer momento e o “governo” e as regras podem ser repensadas em qualquer altura. (Eu própria não estou convencida até que ponto é que isto resolve o problem da opressão em maiorias, pois apenas isola as minorias do grupo).
• Democracy lauds ‘freedom of speech, of the press, of the association, as well as equality before the law’s but it ‘leaves the principle of capitalist private property untouched’. It thereby ‘leaves the bourgeoisie it’s entitlement to hold within its hands the entire economy of the country, all of the press, education, science and art’. Democracy ‘isn’t merely one of the facets of bourgeois dictatorship, concealed behind the camouflage of notional political freedoms and democratic assurances’. Noam Chomsky defends that democracy is a powerful force of the people for self-government which has been co-opted and corrupted by the elites in order to maintain minority rule. Rebecca Solnit argues, real democracy means ‘that everyone has a voice, that no one gets away with things just because of their wealth, power, race or gender’.
• Sugestões de guidelines para o método de discussão “consensus” são muito interessantes.
• The amenities that the states provide (e.g. police or homens do lixo) only mitigate the worst excesses that they perpetuate (e.g. o crime existe maioritariamente devido a desigualdades sociais, inacessibilidade de apoio psicológico, etc).
• Chomsky: Freedom of speech is a right more protected in the US than any other country I know, but it functions in a political culture marked by colossal inequality and the repression of independent thought.
• The surprising logic of crisis morality is that the behaviors that statists observe when disaster strikes are the same that anarchists promote for ‘normal’ times: when states break down, the anarchy that reigns is often more like the condition anarchists describe than the chaos that statists warn against.
• The capacity to withdraw consent and/or to assert autonomy is universal but voluntary submission is far more common than disobedience and insubordination. From this point of view the expectation that anarchists can anarchize by correcting slurs about anarchism, entering into dialogue about ethics or even forging solidarity through action seems hopelessly optimistic. Disobedience is not routine for most people most of the time. And where disobedience occurs, it is often partial. Even rebels tend to focus on the opportunities that exist to extend the benefits that privileged groups enjoy. They rarely question the worth of privileges themselves or the institutional mechanisms that are required for their delivery. As Goldman might have argued, when women fight to enter the boardrooms they reinforce the status of the corporations and stock markets.
• Convergence vs Disjuncture approaches to spreading Anarchist ideologies (the first is inclusive, solidaristic, and believes habit and complaisance are the barriers. The second is exclusive, discordant, and believes internalized norms, social hypnosis, and complicance are the barriers).