Which Way To — OR ,

A Short History OF

Anarchist Theories

AND Practices OF SpaceThe act of hoping is not illusory.

—Benoît Malon.

Prologue:

Present Miseries Explained.

Rural Space. “The famous 'open field system' ... Carried to the village level ... fostered free peasant assemblies, a lively sense of reciprocity, and the reinforcement of archaic communal traditions such as the use of uncultivable land for 'commons' to pasture animals and collect wood for fuel and construction materials. The manorial economy of the territorial lords by no means dominated this increasingly libertarian village society; rather, it retained only a loosening hold over the artisan and commercial towns nearby.”

— Murray Bookchin,The Ecology of Freedom.

The Commons

Rural Space Enclosed. “In order to raise larger cash crops, [the landed aristocracy] began to ‘enclose’ the pasture which had previously been deemed ‘common land’ … By dispossessing the peasant, it ‘created’ a new kind of labor force – landless, without traditional sources of income, however meagre, impelled to find work for wages wherever it might be available … [i.e.,] the urban proletariat …”

— Robert Heilbroner,The Making of Economic Society.

The CommonsAfter the Enclosure

Urban Space.

“Esthetically, a medieval town is like a medieval tapestry: the eye, challenged by the rich intricacy of the design, roams back and forth over the entire fabric, captivated by a flower, an animal, a head, lingering where it pleases, retracing its path, taking in the whole only by assimilating the parts, not commanding the design at a single glance.”

— Lewis Mumford,The City in History.

Medieval ConstantinopleMedieval Tapestry

Urban Space Rationalized.

“States and city planners have striven, as one might expect, to overcome this spatial unintelligibility and to make urban geography transparently legible from without…”

— James C. Scott,Seeing Like A State.

Medieval London

Dominated Space.

“From an administrator's vantage point, the ground plan of Chicago is nearly utopian. It offers a quick appreciation of the ensemble, since the entirety is made up of straight lines, right angles, and repetitions ...“For an outsider – or a

policeman – finding an address is a comparatively simple matter; no local guides are required.”

— James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State. Industrial Chicago, 1901

Dominated Space.

“The order [of the modern city] ... is most evident, not at street level, but rather from above and from outside. Like a marcher in a parade or like a single riveter in a long assembly line, a pedestrian in the middle of this grid cannot instantly perceive the larger design of the city. The symmetry is [apparent from] ... a God's-eye view, or the view of an absolute ruler.”

— James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State.

Dominated Space.

“[In rural Iowa,] the land looks stitched ... [like] a sheet of lined paper, or a bolt of cloth, but not anything earthlike …” “ I almost never see

anyone who is not inside an automobile or a farm machine – and why should I? There is no place to walk ... A walk would take you nowhere – things look the same from every point of view.”

— Jane Smiley, “Farming and the

Landscape.”

Which Way to Utopia?

How have we conceptualized and built “autonomous” spaces?

How do we navigate through dominated spaces? How can our “autonomous”

spaces coexist with dominated spaces?

How do we imagine and reclaim the “commons”?

1.a.) Anarchist Spaces: Theory.

Paris 1968

Paris 1871

Paris 1848

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

(1809-1865)

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Since the Revolution, the café and the tavern have entered increasingly into the lifeways of the peasant . . . I would argue that these venues have done more for the progress of civilization than the house of prayer.

It is true that one learns there less adoration than freedom: that is why the church, the aristocracy, and power hate them. Their security requires that citizens live alone in their homes, kept in solitary confinement. For thirty years, I have frequented

cafés, taverns, diners, pubs, restaurants . . . When I was single, I had no salon other than the café; as a married man, from time to time, I find there a distraction that is always pleasant with a company that I encounter nowhere else.

Parisian café, ca. 1870

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Thus, instead of arming power with the force of the whole at the expense of the parts, it arms the part with the force of the whole so that it may withstand the abuse of power.

Proudhon’s organizational idea: the FEDERATION.

What I call federation, instead of absorbing the federated entities within a central authority, reduces the role of the center to one of coordination and consultation. All members retain the right to withdraw from the federation at any time.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.In anarchy, society is organized, like any other living being, such that its center is everywhere, its circumference nowhere.

the effect of the railroads, by the constancy and the regularity of their service, further aided by telegraphic correspondence, is to place the producer and the consumer in direct relation with one another, whatever the distance which separates them, and consequently, to remove intermediaries.

This decentered world is foreshadowed by the potential of modern transportation and communication technologies.

Under the irresistible pressure of the development of railroads, society’s center of gravity is displaced.

However . . .

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Thus, in place of a federative and levelling network, a monarchical and centralizing network of railroads is superimposed, subordinating the provinces to the capital, making a great nation, hitherto free, into a people of functionaries and serfs.

Capitalism and the State distort technological development by subjecting it to the logic of profit and privilege.

All our railroads, like so many rays, address the center of government . . .

French Railway system

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

There are still among us the chauvinists who maintain absolutely that France must recapture her natural frontiers. They ask too much or too little. France is everywhere that her language is spoken, her Revolution followed, her manners, her arts, her literature adopted…

Against territorialism:

The oppression of peoples and their mutual hatred are two correlative, inseparable facts... No more control of one people by another, one State by another!

What was formerly the nation becomes an agglomeration of free and independent nationalities, united only by identity of language, resemblance of occupations, and territorial conditions. Under such conditions conquest is meaningless.

Non-Territorial National Identities.

“[A nation] is everywhere that her language is spoken, her Revolution followed, her manners, her arts, her literature adopted…”

Bernard Lazare

Gustav Landauer

I believe that one day humanity will be a confederation of free groupings and not organized in keeping with the capitalist system; free groupings ... These groups must be allowed to be constituted, to form themselves. Why wouldn’t Jews form one?

My language and the language of my children is German ... [yet] Judaism is alive in everything that I do. I accept my complexity and hope to be an even more multifarious unity than I am now aware of.

Joseph Déjacque.

(1821-1864)

The Humanisphere.

The harrow has ploughed over all the national borders. Railroads, bridges thrown over the straits and underwater tunnels, submarines and airships driven by electricity, have made the entire globe into a single city that one can circle in less than a day.

Electricity carries humankind on its wings and makes it walk the clouds on aerial steamboats. It lets us traverse in a few seconds spaces that today would cost entire months to cross by boat ...

Continents are but the districts or neighborhoods of the universal city … The globe is like a park, the oceans its ponds; a child can span them as lightly as a brook while playing with a balloon.

In Déjacque’s utopian vision of the future ...

The Humanisphere.I went up by airship with my guide; we sailed in the air for a minute and soon lighted on the steps of one of the public gardens of the universal city. It is something like a phalanstery, but without any hierarchy, without any authority, where all, on the contrary, testifies to freedom and equality, to the most complete anarchy. The form of this

one is about that of a star, but its rectangular faces are not at all symmetrical, each having its own particular type …

In Déjacque’s utopian vision of the future ...

The Humanisphere.

This recalls, but in much more grandiose proportions, the salons and cabins of the splendid American steamboats.

The apartments of the children are large salons in rows, lit from above, with a line of rooms on each side.

The watchers of day and night, men and women, occupy cabinets of vigilance in which couches are placed. These watchers contemplate with solicitude the movements and the sleep of all these young human growths, and provide for all their desires, all their needs.

This is a voluntary guard, freely assembled, of those who have the strongest feeling of paternity or maternity.

In Déjacque’s utopian vision of the future ...

The Humanisphere.

The popular ocean shall leap from its gulfs … and make of the fragmented and proprietarized soil a collective unity.

It will no longer be a question of a little French Republic, nor of a little American Union, nor even of a little United States of Europe, but of the true, the grand, the social, human Republic, one and indivisible … the Republic of the united individualities of the globe.

The monstrous American Union, the fossil Republic, will disappear in this cataclysm. Then the Republic of the social United States of Europe will span the Ocean and will take possession of this new conquest. Blacks and whites, Creoles and red-skins shall then fraternize and form a single race.

In Déjacque’s utopian vision of the future ...

Elisée Reclus.

(1830-1905)

Elisée Reclus.

A hidden harmony exists between the Earth and the people it supports, and when imprudent societies strike a blow at what is beautiful in their domain, they have always been sorry for it.

Among the causes in human history that have led to the disappearance of many civilizations, we ought to mention the brutal violence with which the majority of people related to the land they lived on …Perhaps the climate has changed due to geological causes … but man has to a great extent contributed to the transformation of the fields into deserts.

Elisée Reclus.Growing by the day, or even by the hour, like octopuses extending their long tentacles into the countryside, these cities indeed seem to be monsters, gigantic vampires draining the blood from men.

Growth of Cities.

Paris, 1795

Growth of Cities.

Paris, 1860

Growth of Cities.

Paris, 1860

Growth of Cities.

Paris, 1860

Paris, ca. 2009

Elisée Reclus.But every phenomenon is complex …

… [those who] wish to learn, who seek opportunities to think, to improve themselves, to blossom into writers or artists, or even into the apostles of some truth … Are they not also immigrants to the cities, and is it not thanks to them that the chariot of civilization continues to move forward through the ages?

When the cities grow, humanity progresses, and when they shrink, the social body is threatened with regression into barbarism.

Indeed, cities also function as laboratories for social self-reinvention, sought out by…

The Garden City.

The Garden City.

The Garden City.

The Garden City.

Peter Kropotkin.

(1842-1921)

Oh, it’s you.

Peter Kropotkin.

But this great benefit will manifest itself by a steady and marked diminution of the food supplies pouring into the great cities of western Europe.

Since all our middle-class civilization is based on the exploitation of inferior races and countries with less advanced industrial systems, the Revolution will confer a boon at the very outset, by menacing that "civilization," and allowing the so-called inferior races to free themselves.

Peter Kropotkin.

The scattering of industries over the country … and the combination of industrialwith agricultural work are surely the next step to be made, as soon as a reorganisation of our present conditions is possible.

The two sister arts of Agriculture and Industry were not always soestranged from one another as they are now. There was a time, andthat time is not far off, when both were thoroughly combined …

Peter Kropotkin.

The large towns, as well as the villages, must undertake to till the soil. We must return to what biology calls the integration of functions... the taking up of it as a whole — this is the course followed throughout nature.

Peter Kropotkin.

Integration

— of —

Functions

The large towns, as well as the villages, must undertake to till the soil. We must return to what biology calls the integration of functions... the taking up of it as a whole — this is the course followed throughout nature.

Clifford Harper, “Visions” #1: Autonomous Terrace.

Clifford Harper, “Visions” #2: Collectivised Gardens.

Clifford Harper, “Visions” #3: Household Basement Workshop

Clifford Harper, “Visions” #4: Community Heavy-Workshop

Clifford Harper, “Visions” #5: Community Media Centre

Clifford Harper, “Visions” #6: Autonomous Housing Estate

Paul and Percival Goodman.

Paul Goodman

(1911-1972)

Percival Goodman

(1904-1989)

Paul and Percival Goodman.

New DelhiGreenbelt, Maryland

Works of engineering and architecture and town plan … and the foreground of human activity are profoundly and intimately dependent on one another.

If we look at the town plan of New Delhi we can immediately read off much of the history and social values of a late date of British imperialism.

And if we look at the Garden City plan of Greenbelt, Md., we can understand something very important about our present American era of “organization man.”

Paul Goodman on the Social Psychology of Space.

Any human function that an architect plans for is rich with cause and shape … with history and cultural meaning.

… Even the choice of seating arrangements.

Paul and Percival Goodman.

Public place, Athens

An Athenian’s domestic home was very simple; it was not an asylum for his personality. It did not have to be filled with furniture, mirrors, keepsakes, curiosa, and games.

An Athenian, if free and male, experienced in the public places, the market, the law court, the porticoes, the gymnasia, most of the feelings of ease, intimacy, and personal excitement that we reserve for home and private clubs. He lived in the city more than at home… [So] there was no sharp distinction between public and private affairs.

Paul and Percival Goodman.

Private place, Victorian England

The most curious examples of heavily furnished homes that are the insane asylums of the spirit frozen and rejected in the city square can be found among the middle classes at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Paul and Percival Goodman.

Greenbelt, Maryland

What a booby trap!

Paul and Percival Goodman.

Greenbelt, Maryland

The division of space into “public” and “private,” “working” and “domestic” life, is schizophrenic.

Paul and Percival Goodman.

[We propose] the elimination of the difference between production and consumption … merging the means in[to] the end.

A square in the town: integration of love, work, and

knowledge

Paul and Percival Goodman.

A square in the town: integration of love, work, and

knowledge

[We propose] the elimination of the difference between production and consumption … merging the means in[to] the end.

Paul Glover.Transportation is a waste product. [A modern city] has

become an army camped far from its sources of supply, using distant natural resources faster than these renew.

Accordingly, Glover proposes “recentralizing populations” while “decentralizing supports.”

Recentralizing Populations – Decentralizing Supports.

From dependence on distant sources of dwindling cropland controlled by distant corporations, toward local production in municipal gardens, community gardens, rooftop gardens, street orchards, and backyard gardens. From meat to vegetarian diets. Community storage. Land use for agriculture rather than manufacturing.

Food

Recentralizing Populations – Decentralizing Supports.

From centralized disposal of valuable sludge from water-wasting crappers, toward production of compost in waterless toilets for distribution on gardens.

Sewage

Recentralizing Populations – Decentralizing Supports.

From piecework production of resource-wasteful baubles exported from factories, toward essentials crafted in neighborhoods of local materials for local use. From corporate ownership and management toward community ownership and worker management.

Industry

Recentralizing Populations – Decentralizing Supports.

From bulk dumping in destroyed woodland, through resource separation and recycling, toward minimal use of resources.

Solid Waste

Recentralizing Populations – Decentralizing Supports.

From distant centralized suppliers of non-renewable fuels toward neigborhood networks of solar cells, wind, and hydro. Community woodlots. Heavy insulation.

Fuel

Recentralizing Populations – Decentralizing Supports.

From grid pattern to south-facing combination of single-family, multi-family, extended family, neofamily, and individual units. Comprised of conventional homes, connected homes, cabins, greenhouses, domes, yurts, treehouses, built of local materials. Many floral parks and celebratory areas. Dwellings owned by community, possessed by residents, with system of voluntary rotation of residence.

Housing

Recentralizing Populations – Decentralizing Supports.

From dangerous, wasteful, and poisonous automobiles, through mass transit and bikeways, toward reliance on foot mobility. Most physical and emotional needs met within walking distance. Most streets replaced by orchards (progressive street reclamation).

Transportation

Recentralizing Populations – Decentralizing Supports.

From passive consumption of electric commercial culture toward creative participatory celebration of beauty, abundance and life, by music, dance, art and story.

Culture

Ecolonies.

Ecolonization.

Ecolonization.

Ecolonization.

Ecolonization.

Ecolonization.

Ecolonization.

Ecolonization.

Ecolonization.

1.b.) Anarchist Spaces: Practice.

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

• 1850-1936: anarchism spreads to the Americas, Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa.

A sample of the international anarchist press, ca. 1931: 100

publications, 10 languages.

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

France — Russia 1840s

France — Italy, U.S. 1850s

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

Italy — Spain, Greece

Greece — Mexico 1860s

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

France — Oceania Italy — Egypt

1870s

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

Russia — Palestine, U.S., Britain;Italy — Argentina1880s

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

Spain — Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines 1890s

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

Palestine — U.S. — Turkey

France — China, BritainItaly — Brazil1890s

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

Russia — Argentina Britain — Japan 1900s

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

Japan — Korea 1910s

Globalization of the Anarchist Movement.

Union members represented by delegates to the anarcho-syndicalist International Workingmen’s

Association congress of 1923

Not present:

Spain — 1,000,000+ membersCuba — 80,000+ membersU.S. — 100,000 members

Argentina — 200,000 membersChile — 20,000 membersDenmark — 600 membersGermany — 120,000 membersHolland — 22,500 membersItaly — 500,000 members

Mexico — 30,000 membersNorway — 20,000 membersPortugal — 150,000 membersSweden — 32,000 membersFrance — 100,000 members

Le Trimardeur.

G. de Greef, “Le Chemineau”

(Almanach de la Question Sociale, 1898)

Colônia Cecília.

(1890-1894)

Milieux Libres.

Ateneos.

Façana del carrer Ample, 22 (1927)

Façana del Passeig Xifré (1926)

Infoshops.

Crossroads Infoshop and Radical Bookstore, Kansas City, Mo.

Autonomes Jugendzentrum.

AJZ Biel, Switzerland

Autonomes Jugendzentrum.

AJZ Rote Fabrik, Zürich, Switzerland

Autonomes Jugendzentrum.

AJZ Bahndamm, Wermelskirchen, Germany

Occupation.

Workers’ assembly in an occupied Fiat plant, Italy, 1920

Occupation.

Squatted building in “Wijers,” Amsterdam, 1980s

Occupation.

Squatted building, Amsterdam, 1999

Centro Social Okupado y Biblioteca Sacco y Vanzetti, Santiago, Chile

Occupation.

Anti-Borders Action.

San Diego, 2005

Anti-Borders Action.

Anarchists Against the Wall, Beit Mirsim, 2007

Reclaim The Streets.

RTS Street Party, Helsinki, Finland

Critical Mass.

Dublin, Ireland (photo: Workers Solidarity Movement )

The End.