Category Archives: Political Theory

A wide shot of the Niagara Falls horseshoe waterfall. The sun is shining and the water is as blue as the sky.

Anarchist Unionism: A Forgotten but Glorious History

(An abbreviated pamphlet version of this post is available for download and printing here.)

Why should we think about anarchist unionism?

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the push towards capitalist reforms in China, self-proclaimed Communist movements the world over have lost their main sponsors and sources of political inspiration and legitimacy. Subsequently, since the early 1990s anarchism has seen a resurgence within social movements in the US. Some movements, like the early anti-globalization movement and Occupy Wall Street, have more foregrounded anarchist ideas, while all social movements have been touched by an increased number of anarchists within them, such as the abolitionist wing of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

The labor movement has long been a central part of social movements in the US, sometimes radical and sometimes not, but always touching the lives of millions of people and putting them into varying degrees of action for reform and occasionally towards revolution. While the US labor movement is at a historical nadir in terms of union membership density, the last decade has seen a broad uptick in strike activity and public support.

With this modest resurgence of both anarchism and union organizing, it’s strange that there’s very little overlap between the anarchist movement and the labor movement in the US today. There are very few anarchist-led organizations or prominent anarchists working within the labor movement, and the labor movement has very few prominent leaders or groupings of its own that identify with anarchism. 

From a historical vantage point this is unusual. In the early 20th century anarchism was at times the dominant leftist pole within the international labor movement, with anarchist-led labor federations claiming tens or hundreds of thousands of members and leading large strikes in countries on five continents. However, the repression and precipitous decline of anarchism as an international social movement from the 1930s – 1980s overlapped considerably with the successful assault on the labor movement in the US (and to a lesser degree in other countries) from the late 1940s – 2000s. These movements shriveled up and became increasingly isolated from each other over the second half of the 20th century. 

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A black silouette of a dozen birds sitting on power lines against a dark grey sky.

Baseline Anarchism

I was hanging out in the woods with a few old friends over a long weekend recently and we got to debating about our usual political topics. One friend is a Silicon Valley brand of conservative libertarian, another is a progressive liberal, and I am the resident leftist anarchist. The progressive is more willing to consider other viewpoints and finds some aspects of both the libertarian and the anarchist perspective appealing, whereas the libertarian and myself are much more rigid and uncompromising in our contrasting and long-standing convictions. As such, the libertarian and myself end up trying to win over the progressive on various points. Our hours-long debates are mostly cordial but sometimes get heated. Nonetheless, we all seem to enjoy these skirmishes.

During this sojourn in the woods, I came up with a way of framing anarchist politics that captured better than any other phrasing I’ve come across the distilled essence of my commitment to anarchism. The progressive asked me what about anarchist politics was appealing. In response I posed the following question, “Would you ever want to have less influence over the things in your life that you care about most?” 

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The Contested Politics of Racial Capitalism in Táíwò and Kendi

(Táíwò photo credit to Jared Rodriguez. Kendi photo credit to Stephen Voss.)

With the recent publication of his book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else), Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò is becoming a leading thinker of the theory of racial capitalism. Since the publication of his two best-selling and award winning books, Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi has become the most prominent thinker on race in the US today. Kendi has also recently adopted the concept of racial capitalism to frame his social analysis.

Táíwò and Kendi share a commitment to careful investigation of the dynamics and interrelations of race and class, but in other ways they have sharply contrasting and even opposing politics. Not for the sake of labeling theorists as good and bad nor for trying to draw sharp lines around who belongs in contested political spaces, but for the sake of clearly defining political positions that shape efforts towards liberation, the contours of these contrasting and opposing politics are worth inquiring into.

The hotly debated tradition of racial capitalism theory and the renewed attention to race and class in contemporary social movements provide ample impetus for undertaking an investigative journey through the class politics of Táíwò and Kendi. Táíwò provides analytical tools for discerning the kind of class divides that Kendi tries to harmonize. Táíwò also happens to discuss many of the same historical figures that Kendi does, which enables an ideal opportunity to clearly compare and contrast their diverging class analyses. After briefly reviewing Táíwò’s book and then situating Táíwò’s class politics within the current political landscape, I use his work to pivot towards Kendi and then launch into a textual analysis of Kendi’s class politics.

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The Unbearable Emptiness of Voting

[This essay of mine was originally published at The Hampton Institute.]

Election season makes me feel like the kid who doesn’t have a stuffed animal on “bring your teddy bear to school” day. Everyone else has a favorite who they can tell good stories about and cuddle with, but I don’t so I feel left out. But then I remember that there are good reasons to resist getting pulled down by the undertow of elections.

Like cute stuffed animals, politicians make people feel good while having a marginal effect on positive social change. The main differences between stuffed animals and politicians are that 1) stuffed animals are actually cuddly, and 2) people don’t invest vast amounts of political hope and agency in stuffed animals. I recognize that arguing against what many people hold dear makes me kind of a grump, but I at least aspire to be one who is not stuck in idle criticism but is offering alternative ideas. The particular variety of grumpiness that I espouse is one grounded in grassroots social movements that focus on direct action independent of party politics.

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Democracy as the Grounding Value of Radical Grassroots Politics

(Featured image: “File:Murmure d’étourneaux.jpg” by Anne Jea. is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The US isn’t a democracy, but it plays one on TV. When election year comes around, a lot of video cameras point at politicians making speeches about how they’re gonna fight for you and your grandma. A paradise is promised and all you have to do is vote for them as a show of your belief in democracy and freedom. Then after the election is over, politicians go back to playing golf with CEOs.

In a world like ours, one with so many horrors and so much duplicity, it’s not hard to see why some people tire of hearing about democracy. But is there any other way to dream of a better world and move toward it than to get with others and decide collectively what is needed and how to get it?

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