Why Occupy? - Part Four: Anarchist Social Justice
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By Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel, Axis of Logic
Axis of Logic
Friday, May 29, 2015
[Fourth in a Four Part Series. Find Part One here. Find Part Two here. Find Part Three here.]
In
our last publication, we addressed some of the problems of the TPP. It
endangers the planet, threatens labor, violates human rights, and it
globalizes free trade into another form of neo-imperialism. This is
further proof that the 1 percent, both in the United States and around
the world, undermine democratic self-determination in the economic and
political realms. We argue that free markets, as they manifest
themselves today, destabilize the world economy, while fair markets
stabilize. Most importantly, the global economy needs to move away from
comparative advantage theory towards fair competitive advantage.
Although
it works for the plutocracy and its corporations, comparative advantage
is outdated, and it spells bad news for the rest of us. We argue for an
economy, a global economy, based on “common pool resource theory,” in
which the economy is understood as a natural resource to be protected
just like the environment. We borrow this idea from Elenor Ostrom.
Indeed, it is time to start thinking about the economy in the same way
that we (ought to) think about preserving the environment and protecting
it accordingly.
What follows is the final part of our analysis of oligarchy.
Community of Meaning, Popular Justice
As
a justifiable reaction to the problem of oligarchy in organizations and
liberal democratic institutions, some theorists and activists have
identified alternative political arrangements to liberal democratic
organizations and institutions. Such anarchist examples include
Chomsky’s recommendations of the Kibbutzim villages of Israel and the
worker-owned cooperatives of Spain’s Mondragon experiments. Other
anarchist examples are based on the New Social Movements (NSM) school,
which for the most part have become an activist alternative means of
self-governance through autonomous grass roots organizations (see Alan
Scott’s Ideology and New Social Movements). Leading NSM theorists
include Alain Touraine, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Claus Offe,
Immanueal Wallerstein, Michel Foucalut, and Jurgen Habermas. These
proponents base their anarchist tendencies on identity, politics,
culture, and ideology, which for all intents and purposes has emerged in
the women’s movement, ecological and environmental movements, LGBTQ
rights, peace movement, and more.
Currently, anarchist NSM
organizations have surfaced in the current culture through what can be
described as the “community of meaning” and “popular justice.” The goal
of these alternative methods of self-governance is to bypass the rigid
oligarchy of the state, and for that matter, even nonprofit
organizations that tend toward oligarchic structures. As such, the
community of meaning concept is based to a large degree on the
anarchist-environmentalist-feminist notion that human relationships in
society are primarily based upon a “conscience collective,” that is, the
fostering of diverse talents and skills within a local setting
(community, neighborhood, school, etc.). The strategy enables persons to
respond to various needs and cultivate unique talents while striving to
maintain sustainable development strategies and promote “socio-economic
justice.”
The community of meaning can also be understood within the
context of Marxist anarchist tendencies in which the state would
eventually give way to self-governing communities with the intention of
fostering both individual and collective solidarity “determined
precisely by the connection of individuals, a connection which consists
partly in the economic prerequisites and partly in the necessary
solidarity of the development of all … on the basis of existing
productive forces” (see Marx and Engels, The German Ideology).
Likewise,
individuals within a particular community are united, according to
Durkheim, not so much by what they have in common, but rather, by their
very differences, interdependence, and “organic solidarity.” The
community of meaning, as Hampson and Reddy assert, becomes and
indispensable condition for cooperation within society and is
subsequently grounded upon ensuring a sustainable planet based on the
fundamental human needs of local communities as the policy priority.
This approach necessarily commits local and global communities, as
Mittleman argues, to sustainable development strategies based upon
mutually interrelated human concerns.
Thus, if sustainability is to have
priority in local policy initiatives at both the local and global
community levels, and if public or nonprofit organizations are unable to
meet this criteria, then anarchist communities of meaning must bypass
these institutions and promote local and global strategies favorable to
environmental and socio-economic justice based on sustainable
development goals. The guidelines for a community of meaning, act as a
strategy in which concerned people seek to address the causes of poverty
and simultaneously prevent, and even reverse, environmental
degradation.
Moreover, the community of meaning, whether informal or
formal in nature, seeks to seeks to implement where possible, policies
based on what is known as “popular justice.” In fact, Engle Merry and
Milner argue that the anarchist combination of the community of meaning
and popular justice strategies “is part of a protest against the state
and its legal system by subordinate, disadvantaged, or marginalized
groups.”
The notion of popular justice for Engle Merry, “is a
process for making decisions and compelling compliance to a set of rules
that is relatively informal in ritual and decorum, nonprofessional in
language and personnel, local in scope, and limited in jurisdiction.”
Theoretically, popular justice governs the community of meaning and
simultaneously attempts to apply local standards and rules, that is
commonsense forms of reasoning to human relationships rather than state
laws. Forums of popular justice, in its original conception, are
specifically intended to resolve disputes that involve small sums of
money, aspects of family life, and interpersonal injury short of murder.
Nevertheless, popular justice forums can act, in similar capacity, as a
model by which environmental and socioeconomic justice concerns can be
addressed as a form of binding arbitration. According to Engel Merry and
Milner, these forums thus create a venue for the less powerful members
of society, such as, “the urban poor, rural peasants, the working class,
minorities, women,” to voice their concerns. In contrast, elites
utilize formal legal institutions through the state, since those same
elites have co-opted those very institutions and can thus control those
institutions for their own ends.
In the past, popular justice
has manifested itself in numerous venues. One form of popular justice
can be identified as “reformist.” In the reformist tradition popular
justice intends to develop adequate procedures for the varied
complexities the legal system facilitates; its goal is to make the
system work more efficiently, not to change its fundamental principles.
This is intended to increase popular participation in the functions of a
centralized judicial system. Reformist approaches to popular justice
usually appear in countries based on the principles of liberal democracy
and capitalist economies. Failures in the judicial system are generally
attributed to the burdens on the legal system rather than to the
underlying structures of capitalism and its relationship to law and the
state.
On the other hand, the socialist tradition of popular justice is
derived from Marxist-Leninist theories about the role of popular justice
“tribunals” to empower the masses to address violations of laws and
rules. The role of the tribunals is to also educate the masses in the
creation of the Marxist “new man” of the revolutionary socialist order.
According to Engle Merry, the masses are included when “socialist
popular justice promises to transform relations of power from the
domination of the bourgeoisie to that of the proletariat.” Yet popular
justice in this tradition tends to reinforce existing structures of
power in the same manner as that of the reformist. Both socialist and
reformist approaches promote a form of institutional justice closely
connected to, and controlled, by the state.
Another model of
popular justice, based on violent uprisings in the anarchic tradition,
is one that is associated with mass revolt against the state and the
existing social order. While anarchic uprisings certainly can be
nonviolent, they nevertheless tend to be violent and are derived from
popular unrest due to perceived social injustices. As a result of
anarchic uprisings, the masses generally intend to terminate their
oppression and punish or reeducate their enemies. In this case the
masses do not rely on an abstract idea of justice, but on their own
experience and extent of the injuries they have suffered. However, this
type of popular justice in its violent form is usually “quelled by the
state or brought under control of local communities.”
The
anarchic-environmentalist-feminist notion of popular justice associated
with the community of meaning, tends to be more closely connected to,
and controlled by indigenous people and grassroots movements. While this
version of popular justice does not necessarily rule out its use by
elites, it nevertheless attempts to function outside the state and
institutional mechanisms. A withdrawal from society, which is arguably
too rigid, hierarchical and bureaucratic to serve the needs of a popular
majority, is one of the goals of popular justice. The central
understanding of this form of justice, according to Rifkin, is
“decentralization … replacing centralized bureaucracy with small, local
forums on a more humane scale.” In this sense community norms govern
people in a more humanistic and democratic manner while simultaneously
maintaining local autonomy.
Conclusion
As Weber observes,
“How are freedom and democracy in the long run at all possible under
the domination of highly developed capitalism?” Some would argue that
the vast disparity of economic power and wealth that is increasing in
the United States, translates into greater inequality for the poor and
marginalized. The question remains pertinent today. As this crisis
deepens (the contradiction between the egalitarian expectations of
democracy and the rational utility of capital), the state and its
citizenry have the historical choice to address this conflict. Here,
Marcuse urges the human community to initiate “the radical
reconstruction of society … to find there the images and tones which may
break through the established universe of discourse and preserve the
future.”
If organizations and their policy outcomes are to have
greater meaning and democratic accountability for the twenty-first
century, and if in fact it is worthwhile to understand how organizations
tend to serve elites within these very organizations, and not the rank
and file members that comprise it, then the primary goal of a democratic
society would be to strengthen their democratic institutions and
restructure the allocation of power away from elite control. As such,
anarchist principles of social justice point the way for this
restructuring and renewal of democratic institutions.
The strengthening
of democratic institutions must therefore come from outside these very
institutions as a form of ongoing anarchist critique, agitation, and
even civil disobedience if needed. The continued challenge for committed
democrats is to be mindful that democratic institutions act on behalf
of an elite interest and, ipso facto, subvert democratic egalitarian
self-determining groups. Hence, providing resistance to the oligarchic
nature of democratic institutions in the United States and other
democracies through anarchic justice is vital to democracy and greater
democratic participation. Anarchic resistance to democratic institutions
is, in essence, the lifeblood of democracy.
Here is what we
prescribe. We argue for anarchy as a form of democratic governance. One
way to engender this in the United States is to move to a parliamentary
system. Secondly, we argue for a Marxist form of economics that prevents
exploitation. Additionally, Ostrom’s “common pool resource theory” is
part of the solution. Finally, we argue, along with C. Wright Mills’
thesis in his great work The Power Elite, that the state has been
coopted by the rich, or the 1 percent, and that the capitalist class
uses the state at the expense of everyone else. In our next series, we
want to take a look at liberalism and address some of the hidden aspects
of social justice hidden therein, specifically through John Locke and
Adam Smith.
Edward Martin is Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Long Beach, and co-author of Savage State: Welfare Capitalism and Inequality.
Mateo Pimentel is an Axis of Logic columnist, living on the US-Mexico border. Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist Mateo Pimentel.
© Copyright 2015 by AxisofLogic.com
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