How Nonviolence Protects the Anarchists

There is an ongoing debate within the anarchist movement about violence and property destruction. I’m going to come out and say it: on many occasions these tactics can be meaningful. How Nonviolence Protects the Anarchists

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

-Mahatma Gandhi

There is an ongoing debate within the anarchist movement about violence and property destruction. I’m going to come out and say it: on many occasions these tactics can be meaningful.

If you don’t follow the global social justice movement, then perhaps you haven’t heard the call for a diversity of tactics. Logically, so as long as we’re not dogmatic pacifists, this seems to be the best solution. I know we envision that our actions are meaningful; otherwise we probably wouldn’t do them.

But how meaningful or effective is making a YouTube video, writing a letter to the editor, speaking publicly, or getting an essay published? We cannot qualify or quantify such acts, but I would argue that each has merit, as do self-defense and property destruction.

There could, in fact, be times, that a Molotov cocktail could be more meaningful than any essay, documentary, or other action. Would any anti-apartheid activist amongst us reject to a pipe bomb detonation of the wall surrounding Palestinian territory, so as long as no civilians were anywhere near? Of course property destruction and violence in self-defense could also be devastatingly stupid and kill innocent people; no one seems to be arguing this. But the zero-tolerance policy towards violence from some within the anarchist milieu is worrisome.

We know what they’re doing: they’re continuing the tired discussion of “Anarchists are not bomb-throwers.” Well, to be sure, some have been bomb-throwers.

A common ploy for “activists” is to strive to look like legitimate, productive members of society. “See? I identify as an anarchist, and I’m just like everyone else.” Herein lays the problem. We’re not like everyone else if we believe in social revolution. Talking to folks about capitalism, the State, and domination in general, is not in vain, but because of social circumstances under state capitalism it mostly falls on deaf ears. “Who’s gonna pay my car payment?” or “How the fuck can I earn a living?” are reasonable questions from fellow wage-slaves. After all, it is probably most important that we make money, first and foremost, under capitalism; otherwise we cannot survive. Hence they reject throwing bricks, clashes with cops, and rioting. They may merely envision a jail cell. And as someone who’s been in a jail cell, I can tell you: orange drink and bologna sandwiches are hardly sustenance.

There are certainly logical arguments one could make to dissuade others from throwing a Molotov cocktail through a Starbucks window, the archetypal target of ski-masked donned young radicals, assassination attempts, and other property destruction, but to say it is meaningless is a bit overstated. If someone destroys a multinational corporation that has set up shop in my community, I think it communicates a pretty clear-cut message: “You’re not wanted here.” And they may think twice before they reopen, especially if the property is destroyed again, and again, and again. See what I’m getting at here?

With this said, conditions are sometimes so dire that, perhaps, the ones who decide to take it to the streets with a "By Any Means Necessary" attitude are exhibiting the courage that those of us who write are lacking. Is it legitimate to believe since the social revolution may never come that all insurrections are meaningless? I’m highly doubtful in this regard.

Particularly interesting is the phenomenon of the reluctance to support the destruction of property. Can you say commodity fetishism? This to me is analogous to the folks who proclaim that the anarchists during the Spanish Revolution were “authoritarian” because they expropriated Catholic churches. Really? How could a deistic rationalization of fascism get any more authoritarian? This was the Catholic Church’s role: to enable the fascist takeover of Spain. Next thing you know, we’ll be hearing calls from anarchists telling people to knock it off with the boss-napping, taking over factories, or participating in general strikes because it hinders the ruling class’ ability to make a buck.

Some of us are better at being pencil pushers, whilst some people flourish in the streets, with a willing courage to throw objects at cops and endure pepper spray. To say writing a paper or participating in a march is more effective than destroying property, or clashing with the police, is mysticism. Unequivocally we can say there is no evidence of this. Are their idiots who show up at such events that know absolutely nothing about the conflict at hand and merely want to break shit? Of course. But this reluctance to acknowledge that sometimes clashes with the State (yes-cops are the State) are necessary strikes me as bourgeois morality at its worst.

Of course a mass movement is important. But we need to acknowledge something: we’re fighting something just as virulent and ominous as the CNT/FAI in Spain, and as the Kronstadt sailors with the strikers in Petrograd in the USSR. Remember capitalism? Do we really believe our rhetoric, that it destroys the human spirit, demolishes our finite ecosystems, and leads to imperialist wars of aggression that are responsible for the death of millions of innocent people? This is the real violence, the brand of which your average Black Blocer could never hold a candle to.

Nonviolence is, of course, the most logical conclusion, and most human beings strive for it. Violence is stupid, the lowest common denominator of human interaction. But let us remember: capitalism doesn’t give a shit. Capitalism is violence, deceit, tumult, and hell. When will we acknowledge that working class resistance is always self-defense? This system and its all-too-willing bureaucrats will not be reformed away. How on earth do we plan on countering this without the kind of grassroots resistance that figures like Makhno and Durruti used when they were left without a choice? They did things that weren’t as sexy as community gardens and infoshops and feeding people in public space (all great things I might add): they created people’s militias, and armed the working class communities. They created communities of resistance.

If we’re pushed into a corner, which certainly the working class is, should those who break store windows and throw bricks and Molotov cocktails and endure the jail cells and pepper spray and night sticks be worried about alienating folks?

Spare a thought for anyone who has every made a mockery of the spectacle of the commodity by defacing private property, or taken the State head-on in the streets across the globe. Are they alienated? Yes. Is it merely thoughtless vandalism? I doubt this is always the case. Their courage is to be admired.