Doing it Yourself: Direct-action Currents in Contemporary Radical Activism

'I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet'

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, January 2003

As David Graeber has pointed out in a recent article in New Left Review, many of today's activists are rejecting 'a politics which appeals to governments to modify their behaviour, in favour of physical intervention against state power in a form that itself prefigures an alternative' (2002: 62). This politics is radical in the sense I outlined in the Introduction, that is, it is less concerned with affecting the content of current forms of domination and exploitation than it is with creating alternatives to the forms themselves. In this chapter I look at a wide range of activist practices, with the intention of understanding both how they intervene against state and corporate power and how they prefigure, or in some cases create, alternatives to the existing order. For purposes of discussion I will consider an array of non-hegemonic tactics under a handful of analytic headings, arranged in increasing order of their efficacy in addressing forms rather than contents. These include: dropping out of existing institutions; subversion of existing institutions, through parody; impeding existing institutions, via property destruction, 'direct action case work', blockades, and so on; prefiguring alternatives to existing institutions, often via modes of activity that otherwise fall within the purview of a hegemonic politics, for example protests; and finally, construction of alternatives to existing forms that render redundant, and thereby take power from, the neoliberal project.

Some of these approaches have, of course, been used in the past under other circumstances, and none of them can be thought of as 'purely' non-hegemonic. What is at issue here is a matter of nuances, not of totalities. One particularly interesting aspect of contemporary practice is that many of the most effective tactics are non-branded, that is, they tend to spread in a viral way, with no one taking ownership or attempting to exercise control over how they are implemented. Unlike, say, the dictates of the Communist International in the heyday of the Soviet Union, they easily morph into new forms appropriate to different times and places, and thus are beginning to display the kind of diversity and differentiation that is required for 'survival' in the hostile environment of neoliberal societies of control.

Another important nuance is the linkage of these tactics to anarchism, which ranges from implicitly adopting traditionally anarchist methods without an awareness of their origin, to explicit display of the circle-A — which, of course, hardly makes things clear, since this emblem has been appropriated by everyone from suburban consumer rebels to software companies. I will use the term 'anarchistic' to describe (what I see as) implicitly anarchist elements in a group or tactic, reserving the term 'anarchist' for situations where there is an explicit self-identification.

Finally, I should note that in researching this chapter I, along with others involved in the Affinity Project, sometimes felt as though we were working on a report for a counter-intelligence bureau. So, to minimize the chance that our work will compromise the security of any group or network, we have ensured that all of the information presented here or on our website is publicly available, or comes from interviews where the desire for anonymity has been respected.

ZERO-PARTICIPATION: CRUSTY PUNKS AND LIFESTYLE ANARCHISTS

The first current I will address is the zero-work or drop-out tactic, which is associated with surrealism, the Situationist International (SI), and, most recently, anarcho-primitivism. Bob Black's (1985) essay 'The Abolition of Work' is a strong influence here. Black criticizes feminists, liberals, marxists and most brands of anarchism for 'quibbling over the details' of work without questioning the meaning and effects of work itself. 'Almost any evil you'd care to name', he suggests, 'comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.' Although his argument is highly polemical and more than a little reductive, Black makes interesting links between the ideology of work and centralization, surveillance and authoritarianism. Classical marxists and anarchists, of course, were aware of the deadening and dangerous effects of labour under the capitalist system, but Black refuses the assumption that non-capitalist labour will be any more enjoyable. Rather, following the surrealists and situationists, he generalizes the classical socialist critique to include work in the home and school as well as the factory and office. In the background of this primitivist challenge, of course, there lurks the assumption that life need not be this way, that it has not always been this way. Thus John Zerzan argues that work as we know it is a product of civilization, an imposition upon a non-Hobbesian prehistory 'characterized more by intelligence, egalitarianism and sharing, leisure time, a great deal of sexual equality, robusticity and health, with no evidence at all of organized violence' (Zerzan 2002: 49).

Anarcho-primitivist influences figure prominently within the dropout culture that is burgeoning all over the world, but is particularly strong in inner-city areas of the United States. In an interview for the Affinity Project, Dave Battistuzzi, an organizer for the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC), notes that there are 'two anarchisms' at work in cities like Baltimore, where the flight to the suburbs has left behind deeply impoverished, primarily Black neighbourhoods with low housing costs and many abandoned buildings. Since the 1980s, these areas have been attractive to White-punk-DIY squatters whom Battistuzzi identifies with what Murray Bookchin (1995) has called 'lifestyle anarchism'— that is, with a 'middle-class, escapist, feel-good' sub-culture (Battistuzzi 2003). They often have no strong links to the surrounding community, and are therefore seen more as first-stage gentrifiers than as a potential source of progressive alliances. In recent years, however, a new kind of drop-out politics has emerged, which is driven more by necessity than choice, and is trying to reach out across the boundaries created by race, class and anarchist subcultures. Rather than simply capitalizing upon impoverishment and strife to acquire cheap or free housing, these squatters contribute to their neighbourhoods by providing much-needed community services. Eleanor, who calls herself 'a White anarchist kid', has lived in a number of squats in inner-city Black areas of Philadelphia. She has...