Class, Race and Corporate Power--FlU Digital Commons

Black Lives Matter or, How to Think Like an Anarchist

Author(s): Joaquin A. Pedroso
Source: Class, Race and Corporate Power , 2016, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2016)
Published by: Class, Race and Corporate Power--FlU Digital Commons

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Black Lives Matter or, How to Think Like an Anarchist

Abstract
Since February of 2012 a social movement clamoring for racial justice took the country by storm. Black
Lives Matter (BLM) evolved into a movement and a diffuse network of social justice activists who have
worked tirelessly to both reform the inherently discriminatory and abusive police practices endemic to the
American justice system and sought to build alternative forms of community that would immediately
improve the lives of black people in America. Members of the conservative establishment have called out
Black Lives matter as being "anarchist" in nature. Indeed, these conservative critics are right in more ways
than one. BLM approaches social justice from the parallel concerns of building community and
influencing policy. This twin approach seeks to capture, at least parts of, the state in order to combat
corporate power and abuses of the state security apparatus all the while building parallel and alternative
forms of community independent from these same structures. In doing so, BLM endeavors to both
maintain intellectual and political independence and transcend the state centric horizon of legibility and
legitimacy inherent in our politics as well as echoes the rich tradition of anarchism.

Keywords
Anarchism, Black Lives Matter, Social Justice

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 Donald Trump has recently made headlines by denouncing what he sees as the
electoral exploitation of black people by the Democratic Party. According to Trump,
Democrats feel no pressure to govern in ways that will benefit marginalized communities
of color because these communities are already stable constituencies of the Democratic
Party. Trump argues the Democratic Party is out of touch with African Americans and
their hegemony over minority majority districts alienates the very constituencies they
claim to represent. His argument is neither facile nor wrong.
Perhaps the most damning condemnation of both major political parties and the
U.S. political system is the treatment of African Americans. From the denial of
personhood at the founding, to the legacy of Jim Crow, to the recent police killings of
unarmed African Americans, black people in America have been under siege since day
one. The simmering tensions between African American communities and law
enforcement are always bubbling right near the surface.
In the wake of the assassination of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in
February of 2012 a social movement clamoring for racial justice took the country by
storm. Black Lives Matter (BLM) became both the message and the messenger. The
hashtag evolved into a movement and a diffuse network of social justice activists who
have worked tirelessly to both reform the inherently discriminatory and abusive police
practices endemic to the American justice system and sought to build alternative forms of
community that would immediately improve the lives of black people in America.i
Recently, Bill O’Reilly echoed a common conservative critique of BLM when he
accused the group of being anarchists. While condemning BLM’s “Gestapo tactics” it is
their radicalism, O’Reilly claims, that is a cause for concern for white people across
America.ii O’Reilly is more right than he knows.
Anarchists believe in self-organization and free association and trust people to run
their own lives in a decent manner without being compelled to do so by the state or other
hierarchical institutions like private capitalist firms. Anarchists generally consider laws,
governing everything from business transactions to interpersonal relations, as exercises of
arbitrary authority that usually serve power and privilege instead of justice and freedom.
While self-government is part and parcel of the anarchist tradition, the government of
some over others (representational or otherwise) is anathema to anarchists and anarchists
are keen to serve neither lord nor master. They embrace a healthy skepticism against all
concentrations of power, privilege, and authority. Likewise, anarchists are quick to point
to the pervasive political and economic alienation suffered under all shades of, what’s
disdainfully called, “parliamentary capitalism.”
To some degree, we all share this sense of alienation. In fact, many of us are
already anarchists and don’t even know it. How many times do we reflexively cringe as
politicians claim to be doing the “people’s work”? How many times do we feel our
neighbors and we would be able to tackle community issues much more effectively than
city and county government (much less the federal “authorities”)? How many of us
instinctively resent the authority certain investors or upper management exercise over a
company’s policies with little or no knowledge of what goes on in the office, on the shop
floor, or in the break room?

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 In short, anarchists trust the immediacy of free association, community relations,
and direct participation. They believe relationships in every sphere of life should be
consensual and not based on coercion. They embrace a healthy skepticism towards all
authority and encourage us to endeavor to take matters into our own hands (“direct
action” in anarchist lingo) instead of exclusively relying on the state or other hierarchical
institutions to provide for or protect us. That said, the anarchist reputation for nihilism,
chaos, and violence in the popular imagination is not surprising. It is a product of
ceaseless propaganda on the part of both private concentrations of power and the state as
well as the incriminating tendencies of some strains of anarchist activism. So-called
“propaganda by the deed,” (the idea that we should take the overthrow of the state to
justify our attempts to assassinate government officials or destroy public property) did
immense damage to anarchism’s reputation and helped to misrepresent anarchist goals
and ideals to the public.
When speaking with anarchists, chaotic would be the last adjective they would
use to describe their preferred mode of societal organization. Anarchism is far from
unorganized. In fact, an anarchist society requires a great measure of organization, along
informal and formal lines, to be able to operate outside the scope of the state. While an
authoritarian institution like the state can coerce people into complying with just about
anything, the lack of coercive means requires anarchists to rely on deliberation and
consensus to get things done. This necessitates an enthusiastic organizational spirit as
well as exceptional administrative effort.
BLM is indeed a radical movement inspired by tenants of the anarchist tradition
often demonized by state and corporate power. This has been shown most clearly in
BLM’s recently published “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power,
Freedom & Justice.”iii In it, they detail both concrete policy proposals and organizational
goals that reveal the movement’s profound radicalism. They center their struggle for
empowerment, freedom, and justice on liberating the most marginalized (“women, queer,
trans, femmes, gender non-conforming, Muslim, formerly and currently incarcerated,
cash poor and working class, differently-abled, undocumented, and immigrant”) members
of an already oppressed class and then turn their attention to the historical injustices
suffered by people of color and concrete policy and participatory solutions to persistent
inequities and injustices.
BLM aims to curb state violence against people of color, invest state resources
into education, health, and safety and divest from prisons and the military. They advocate
for a democratically controlled economy and social and political inclusion for black
people. The group is also militantly internationalist. They stand in solidarity with the
victims of militarism and imperialism, warn against the danger of human-made climate
change, and condemn what they see as the ravages of global capitalism.
They approach social justice from the parallel concerns of building community
and influencing policy. This twin approach seeks to capture, at least parts of, the state in
order to combat corporate power and abuses of the state security apparatus all the while
building parallel and alternative forms of community independent from these same
structures. In doing so, BLM endeavors to both maintain intellectual and political
independence and transcend the state centric horizon of legibility and legitimacy inherent
in our politics.iv

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 In desiring to end the prison system they echo Russian anarchist Peter
Kropotkin’s famed critique of prisons where he condemns their dehumanizing conditions
and advocates for their abolishment, education programs for ex-prisoners, and
reintegration of the prison population with the general society.v BLM’s anti-militarism
and solidarity with oppressed people around the world reflects the long history of
anarchist internationalism.vi By advocating the strengthening of the welfare state to
combat corporate exploitation BLM not only works for their vision of economic security
for exploited populations but also confronts existing injustices with the political tools at
their disposal. In line with the history of anarchist movements in state capitalist societies,
while empowering local communities to confront issues of marginalization and
exploitation they do not shy away from using state welfare measures to serve as bastions
against corporate power. Their engagement and coalitions with a loose network of
national and local groups across the United States as well as their desire to capture local
governments organizationally reflects the anarchist confederate ideal.vii
BLM details an extensive policy platform ranging from cultural and economic
reparations and universal healthcare to guaranteed income and a democratically
controlled economy. Perhaps most importantly, they echo anarchist ideals when they call
for thoroughly democratizing most spheres of life. They not only hope to redirect social
spending for the benefit of historically marginalized groups, they also seek to change
social, political, and economic structures themselves. By advocating for economic
models based on community control, free association, collective ownership, participatory
budgeting, support for cooperatives, and other policies based on “human needs and
community participation rather than market principles,” BLM prioritizes worker self-
determination over corporate and state control of human lives.viii
By subverting the hierarchical state centric, corporate, and surveillance models of
political governance, economics, and policing and replacing them with horizontal
participatory visions, BLM aspires to radicalize existing institutions and create spaces for
new organizing possibilities that would deepen and expand democratic, indeed
anarchistic, practice. Moreover, while setting these ambitious policy and participatory
goals, BLM endeavors to expose the plight of particularly marginalized groups within
historically exploited and oppressed peoples by protecting and fully harnessing their
creative and participatory energies. In addition to these overarching aims, BLM’s guiding
philosophy is laced with a thorough concern for individuality reflective of Emma
Goldman’s proclamation that she did not want a revolution she could not dance to.ix
Bill O’Reilly claims the “radical left” and “fringe nuts” only support BLM. I
would argue most of us would fall under these categories once we understand how to
think like anarchists. Once we recognize the egregious concentrations of power endemic
to corporate capitalism as well as reject the profound political and economic alienation
bred of its political and institutional manifestations, we are able to easily embrace BLM’s
message.
This approach to politics and community building is based on principles familiar
to any fellow traveler and “fanatic lover of liberty.”x By rejecting the hegemony of the
Two Party system and attempting to simultaneously capture and circumvent existing
political institutions, Black Lives Matter has echoed Donald Trump’s stinging critique of
the Democratic Party and has prioritized the “right of self-determination” by fostering
“organic agreement of all on the basis of like interests and common convictions” through

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“free combination from below upward.”xi Between chants of “No Justice, No Peace”
there exists a shared sense of spontaneous belonging that transcends Party loyalty. It
obviates the electoral engineering so pervasive to our algorithmic data driven partisan
echo chambers. It transcends the persistent identity politics of an ostensibly “post-racial”
American political landscape. Most importantly, Black Lives Matter gives us an
opportunity to think like anarchists.

i
For a compelling account of the persistent discrimination and inequity inherent to the American justice
system see Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
(New York: The New Press, 2012).
ii
Sophia Duffy. “O’Reilly Scolds Black Lives Matter for ‘Gestapo Tactics,’ ‘Condemning White Society.’
Filmed [August 2015]. YouTube video, 5:45. Posted [August 2015].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13jI7LCKqDI. See also Ben King. “Bill O’Reilly Confronts NAACP
Official on Black Lives Matter – ‘White American Despise this Crew.’” Filmed [July 2016]. YouTube
video, 4:45. Posted [July 2016]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJtouRmlSmw.
iii
“A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice,” Black Lives Matter,
accessed October 15, 2016, https://policy.m4bl.org.
iv
See James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
v
Peter Kropotkin, “”Prisons and Their Moral Influence on Prisoners” in Anarchism: A Collection of
Revolutionary Writings (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2002), 219-235.
vi
See George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2009).
vii
See “The Meaning of Confederalism,” Murray Bookchin, accessed October 14, 2016,
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-the-meaning-of-confederalism.
viii
Robin D.G. Kelly, “What Does Black Lives Matter Want,” Counterpunch, September 2, 2016,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/02/what-does-black-lives-matter-want.
ix
Though this saying is often attributed to Goldman, there is no textual evidence she actually uttered these
words. It is remembered she said something to this effect while in a discussion over the propriety of
dancing at a party with some fellow activists. In their “Vision for Black Lives,” Black Lives Matter makes
clear their concern over the homogenization of black struggle and the need to make their struggle
multifaceted and attuned to the struggle for human identities across a wide spectrum.
x
Mikhail Bakunin is quoted in Noam Chomsky, Chomsky on Anarchism, ed. Barry Pateman (Edinburgh:
AK Press, 2005), 121.
xi
Rudolph Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2004), 60.

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