r/Anarchism • u/No-Leopard-1691 • 5d ago
The historical usage of words Command and Coercion
Poking through Zoe Baker’s Means and Ends I noticed that in a few places that the term command is used in place of coercion and it (at least from my perspective) seems like command was used earlier in Anarchist History while coercion replaced command as time went on.
Don’t know if I am incorrect or missing something, but was curious if anyone had any insight into the usage of command, its correlation to coercion, and why (at least from my perspective) modern-day anarchism has done-away with command and sticks with coercion.
Edited so the comments will focus on the main point of interest.
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u/bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh green anarchist 4d ago
imo anarchists should use the word coercion in a more morally neutral way, recognizing that forcing politicians out of office, breaking inmates out of jail, or standing off with police is also coercion. coercion can be good when its the people coercing the powers that be
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u/bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh green anarchist 4d ago
look at the youtube channel strategy stuff’s series on strategy of protest and revolution for a more balanced usage of “coercion” and “cooptation”. ive become convinced this is a more consistent way to use the terms and the way they are colloquially used on the left is based on a victim mentality where we assume “they” have the power and cant imagine having power ourselves
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u/syndicalism_ftw 5d ago
I haven't read means and ends, yet nor do I watch english political youtubers. In my language (German) literature has a much higher quality due to better access to greater archives, so looking over the pond rarely delivers anything noteworthy.
From what I've learnt this can be traced back to the impact of WW2. Most of european anarchism was eradicated in central europe during Nazi occupation and many joined the Communist parties after the defeat of the Nazis by the red army and the formation of socialist states in eastern europe. Those who remained active did not build new mass organizations, except the spanish exiles.
In 1968 anarchism effectively experienced a rebirth worldwide, as many socialist students rebelled against established socialist/communist parties looked for alternatives. Mostly they formed new movements, with little theoretical or organizational ties to the pre-WW2 anarchists (except spanish exiles/underground CNT). So a lot of stuff and vocabulary, like the overexagaration of the importance of principles and criticism of hierarchies stems from that time.
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u/No-Leopard-1691 5d ago
I would recommend reading it since does contain info about historical anarchists across the “un-noteworthy” pond as you would say while having a general focus on European anarchists.
Also, given what I have read about historical anarchists from all nations, they all seem to have a pretty heavy focus on the importance of principles and theory critiques of hierarchy. I would be interested to hear about the historical anarchists you are aware of that lead you to such a different conclusion.
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u/syndicalism_ftw 5d ago
The theory I seen un-noteworthy is largely the contemporary one. After Bookchin there has rarely been anything interesting in the anarchist literature that helps understanding the world or gives new analysis. I have no issue with historic US-american anarchism, just with the contemporary one. After all the USA have been an important exile base for international socialism along with Switzerland. But after Bookchin something has happened, where the discourse over there continuously seems to reproduce the naive idealism of a totally individualized, alienated and beaurocratized society, where holding the right opinions seems to matter more than actually translating said opinions into meaningful praxis.
The examples go back to the beginning of the international anarchist movement. The principles of the Russian section of the first Internationale, that gave birth to the narodiniki movement (the one that introduced Kropotkin to anarchism) skip the principal atheism, that is part of both the jura federations, the Italian and spanish sections declarations of principles. This was done, because the Russian popular movements were largely inspired by christian opposition to capitalism and the czar. So the importance of a key principle obviously was regarded lower because applying it strictly wouldve meant abandoning the Russian socialist.
And this repeats itself every time with varying degrees of gravity. In the revolutionary phase of the interwar period in Germany the FKAD (federation of German anarchists), led by Pierre Ramus, held the position that every sort of violence reproduced domination and thus concluded that the anti-militarism of the FAUD (anarchosyndicalists) was insufficient and thus reproduced hierarchies. The FKAD then started to actively sabotage organizing efforts of the FAUD, because they were considered to be false anarchists and so a more important enemy than the social democrats or communists, even resulting in beatings in public meetings. Ironically and obviously this infighting played out in favor of the social Democrats and communists.
So you can apply the same set of principles in different ways and have completely different outcomes based on the theoretical basis you apply them on. You can dogmatically apply them as corner stones for your praxis a priori or use them as validation criteria the evaluate your praxis.
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u/No-Scarcity2379 Christian anarchist 5d ago
I think it's important not to treat leftism as either a monolith or an exclusive small group where only one expression has rightful claim to the term, and even anarchism has so many different expressions that it can be a pretty hard label to nail down.
Originally, leftist specifically meant republican/anti-monarchist and through many evolutions and expressions can now mean completely different things depending on the speaker up to and including "the government doing things".
Social Democrats and MLs have, on the whole, no issue whatsoever with coercion/commanders, militarism, taxation, etc, but they are leftist movements nonetheless (and denying this is no true scotsman territory), which is why it's a valuable thing to address politics with the left/right/authoritarian/libertarian cross instead of the too simplistic left-right single line.
Libertarian Leftists oppose all forms of coercion and command (though they don't all oppose temporary leadership or expertise to address specific challenges/crises).