Anarchism as Everyday Democracy

Anarchism has a rich tradition of thought that was once, pre-Marxism, at the center of left-utopianism, and it could become relevant again. In this conversation with podcaster Sean Illing, anarchist political philosopher Sophie Scott-Brown suggests that anarchism is uniquely poised to deal with the uncertainty of the modern world.

Anarchy’s philosophical commitment to an absence of permanent authority means that “what anarchism really is, is something like, the conceptual breadth of liberalism taken to its fullest extent, to its most logical conclusion. What anarchism is, for some people, is radical democracy. … Conflict, I think, is a feature of life, the challenge for us is not to make that conflict catastrophic. If you accept that conflict is going to be a ubiquitous feature of life, you say to yourself … how can we live in a world where our conflicts, our differences, our collisions between one another actually prove to be very creative. And that to me is actually the essence of a what full and most radical democratic culture would look like.”

Arguing against notions of exceptionalism especially as it pertains to Islam, this essay explores the intersection of Islamic political thought, specifically the ideas of Abul Aʿla Maududi, with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Maududi, a scholar born under British rule in India and later a prominent figure in Pakistan, is best known for his opposition to the political order imposed by British colonialists and his critical stance on democracy.

“Reflecting upon Maududi is also pertinent when voices like Shadi Hamid deploy the idea of Islamic exceptionalism, i.e., Islam is unique in its incompatibility with democracy. The argument for Islamic exceptionalism is accentuated by the ‘democratic dilemma’ where western democracies desire the triumph of democracy inside Muslim states but are hesitant in accepting a ‘bad outcome,’ for example, when an Islamist party wins an election. But Islamism is not as exceptional as imagined. In fact, comparative projects demonstrate that vastly different societies can arrive at similar conclusions even if the vocabulary they employ and the routes they take differ. Thinkers in ‘modern’ and ‘free’ societies, like the Frankfurt school critical theorists might correspond to comparable ideas inside postcolonial Muslim societies.”

In this discussion with podcaster Lorena Drakula, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser discusses the historical context, ideological characteristics, and consequential impact of the recent far-right advances in Latin America. Although the issues the Latin American far-right emphasizes are different from those of their European counterparts, Kaltwasser identifies common denominators:

“From an ideological point of view, the key issues being politicized are moral conservatism, taking very harsh stances on issues related, for example, to gay rights and abortion, and a mano dura, having iron fist policies against crime.”

Voters are not getting more conservative; rather the far-right’s advance “has to do with the capability of these far-right politicians to politicize certain issues that are, I would say, relevant to niche sections of society. If you are getting very harsh, for example, on sexual politics, it might be that you mobilize evangelical communities, but this is not necessarily a huge chunk of the population. At the same time, they are articulating other ideological components, for example, the demand for iron fist politics on crime—and a lot of people in Latin America are worried about crime—or issues of corruption. Through that, they can sell an ideological package that is interesting for different chunks of the population.”

British-American influencer Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist who emerged as an internet sensation over the past year, has sparked international concern given his influence in the so-called “manosphere”—“the ecosystem of websites, blogs, and forums that promote a supposedly beleaguered masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism.” However, Tate’s vision is built on dubious evolutionary psychology and reflects an empty, neoliberal view of freedom.

If “conceptions of biological determinism are so inadequate as an explanation of the social world, why are they so popular? Simply put, such narratives are intrinsically attractive to conservative forces, since their logical corollary is that the powerful should be unimpeded in the exercise of their power. In this understanding, existing social hierarchy is not simply desirable but natural, so any contestation of it is not simply mistaken but pathological.”

Though the many contradictory interpretations of neoliberalism raise doubts about the value of the concept, a “minimum common core” warrants its preservation. Laruffa argues that “neoliberalism entails an ideology and a political practice that aim to subordinate the state and all social domains to the market—to its logic and to the economic powers within it—thereby undermining democracy.” This vision serves as a “common lowest denominator” across diverse scholarly definitions and sheds light on key features of contemporary neoliberal society.

“In particular, the concept of neoliberalism allows theorizing the dynamic by which both states and societies tend to be subordinated to capitalist markets—and to economic powers within them—as well as to market logics, establishing a kind of “market totalitarianism.” On the one hand, neoliberal globalization compels states to compete for internationally mobile capital so that they tend to be governed by international (financial) markets: the “neo-liberal citizenship” thus implies that the economic constitution overrides the political constitution. On the other hand, neoliberalism also involves a project of society: it is a “market civilization” in which market logics dominate society and shape individuals’ identities and values. Through the discourse of competitiveness, both states and entire societies are reframed as corporations that compete to attract globally mobile capital—whereas individuals within neoliberal societies also become “enterprising selves.”

The U.S. Congressional hearings on antisemitism in elite universities in which three Ivy League presidents got tripped up on legalese are a sideshow to the catastrophe in Israel/Palestine. But the tempest in a teacup is “evidence of the revolution in mores that has occurred since Trump’s election in 2016,” argues Siegel.

“The true significance of the congressional hearing lies beyond the ships-passing-in-the-night myopias of either the three presidents or their inquisitor. It lies in the perpetual scrimmage among America’s social groups for status and power, of which the woke revolution is the latest iteration.”

The hearings kerfuffle is part of a broader struggle over “moral clarity,” a term that was lobbed by the left against the right in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in 2020, and now is deployed by the right against the left in the context of the Hamas conflict. “The congressional hearing seemed to highlight not only the reassertion of moral clarity on the right and center but also the retreat of the left from those prior attempts to lay claim to it,” according to Shullenberger.

But the shifting “political valence” of the congressional hearing is not “the reassertion of moral clarity on the right and center … the left hasn’t entirely retreated from its attempt to seize the moral high ground. On the contrary, when protesters denounce what is happening in Gaza as a ‘genocide,’ they are adopting precisely the stance of ‘moral clarity’ that was demanded of the college presidents. Indeed, the left’s moral rhetoric since October 7 has often resembled an inverted mirror image of its right-wing antagonists’. For many progressives, it seems, America and its allies are simply the bad guys, which means anyone who opposes them—Hamas included—must be good. Atrocities are understandable if committed by the good guys, condemnable when done by the bad guys. The positions are opposed, but the simplistic moral accountancy is the same.”