A New Opportunity

by Jordi Berenguer

(From El Mostrador, July 22, 2007. English Translation by Chuck Morse)

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Life. The world. Society. Everything or at least almost everything offers new opportunities. Today there is an opportunity for ideas that were forgotten–poorly interpreted or obscured when the world was divided between two choices–to make their contribution to the possibility of a freer, more generous life. I refer to anarchist or libertarian ideas, which, though marginal, are significant for many adults and young people in this country and around the world.

I am not thinking of individuals who repeat anarchist slogans to be fashionable or who might look like anarchists because of their style, but those who genuinely embrace the vision. And it is necessary to demystify the word and dispense the negative charge attributed to it by those in power, by the media, and by all those who want to erase the very thought of a society built upon liberty and equality and in which mutual respect is a central foundation. Although the image of assassinations, robberies, and generalized disorder has always predominated, nothing is further from the anarchist spirit and idea.

If we were to select a quotation to sum up the primary conviction of this ideology, we could use a statement that Michael Bakunin made when he speaking of the Paris Commune. He described himself as a “fanatical lover of liberty . . . the only environment in which human intelligence, dignity, and happiness can thrive and develop. . . . I mean the only liberty worthy of the name, the liberty which implies the full development of all the material, intellectual, and moral capacities latent in every one of us; the liberty which knows no other restrictions but those set by the laws of our own nature. Consequently there are, properly speaking, no restrictions, since these laws are not imposed upon us by any legislator from outside, alongside, or above ourselves. These laws are subjective, inherent in ourselves; they constitute the very basis of our being. Instead of seeking to curtail them, we should see in them the real condition and the effective cause of our liberty.”

When noting that anarchist ideas have been forgotten, I think of the Spanish Civil War, a key event for the European anarchist movement and yet the moment when libertarian ideas went into hibernation (with the exception of May 1968). However, as radical thinker and linguist Noam Chomsky once explained, anarchism has broad shoulders and can support many things upon them, which is exactly why it has been able to reassert its relevance in recent years.

This is also true, in part, because of another issue underscored by Chomsky: “What I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism is the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.” Certainly the few times that we have demanded such proof from our authorities in the last century have only highlighted the importance of the criterion.

That is why today, as the historian Luis Vitale points out, “a new anarchism has emerged under neo-liberalism. . . that rescues from its ideological ancestors a libertarian sense of life as a response to the authoritarianism of the contemporary state apparatus and its assaults on the individual and collective freedom of the oppressed.”

Is anarchism only a beautiful utopia? An appealing but impractical idea? It would be easy to say so, given that it can seem to be the least practical of all the ideologies, even if one sees its precepts instituted in various historical moments. However, in the context of the present world, our survival demands that we search for new alternatives and exhume Josef Proudhon, Bakunin, and other thinkers that will help revive our faith in the future and demonstrate that there is more than just the ideology of the free market.