Search for a film:

 

June 16, 2006

Anarchism in America

Travels on the Anti-State Highway

By Andrew

Anarchism has always been too busy being born to be busy dying. Shorn of authority on principle, as a political philosophy anarchism has always been suited to adaptation through the ages. This has always been both a strength and a weakness, leaving it open to both vital new developments and strange, seemingly paradoxical strains of thought.

Back in the 1980s, filmmakers Joel Sucher and Steven Fischler captured these characteristics of anarchism exceptionally well in a pair of documentaries: Free Volice of Labor appearing in 1980; and Anarchism in America, the more ambitious of the two, following in 1982. After lingering for several decades on badly reproduced VHS tapes, AK Press has done us all a favor by reissuing them recently on DVD.

Viewing them from the perspectives of anarchism today, both documentaries prove rather dated, and the early 80s appear as something of a lull in the history of American anarchism. And yet, because they are dated, the films provide essential historical lessons. Free Voice of Labor, centered on interviews with the aging allegiants to the Jewish Anarchist movement of the early 20th century, concerns itself with an older generation passing away. Anarchism in America, the result of a cross-country expedition to find anarchism in America, provides a thread from the older generation to the renewed interest in anarchism today.

While it came later, as the broader and more ambitious effort of the two films, Anarchism in America deserves initial consideration. Its opening is all sound, fury and irony: footage of various politicians littering their speeches with the epithet of "anarchist" and "anarchy" vies with strange, unexplained shots of staged shootouts between hippies and cops, all to the tune of — what else? — the Sex Pistol's "Anarchy in the U.K." Then, a mom and select others are asked at a county fair, "What is anarchism?" to comedic, ill-informed effect.

The fun comes to an end as quickly as it has begun, as it must, and the film rushes to clue in the viewer who might be reacting in the same why as your average mom at the fair. What anarchism is, they explain, is not a mad desire for chaos, but a political philosophy with a long history of practical application. The filmmakers provide a short synopsis in the way of a classic example, the 1936 revolution in Spain, when thousands of anarchists ran significant bits of the country for months on end until Franco's fascist victory. Though an ocean away from Spain, Sucher and Fischler also posit that an anarchist streak runs deep within the American temperament, and hit the road to prove their hypothesis.

Sucher and Fischler's trip is nominally from East to West, taking them many places and to many faces. Remaining unacknowledged throughout their travels, however, are the two distinct directions the film takes on American anarchism: one going right and one going left. In one instance, they interview libertarian Karl Hess, a former speech-writer for Barry Goldwater who suggests anarchism is essentially what the Republican Party has always wanted to achieve, and that Emma Goldman encompasses the best of Ayn Rand. In another, they visit Mollie Steimer, a former comrade of Goldman and an anarchist communist living in exile in Mexico, having been deported from both the United States government and Bolshevik Russia in her long lifetime of resistance.

At the time they were interviewed, Steimer and Hess lived in two separate countries (both are now dead); their ideas are just as far apart. Whereas Steimer is an example of the older international anarchist movement that fought for revolution, Hess, as a lone intellectual and a strict individualist, is more an example of something unique to America. Unfortunately, Sucher and Fischler have a certain timidity towards all those they interview, and never summon the guts to address these potentially devisive issues. Speaking with old-time homesteader Mildred Loomis, the filmmakers broach the question: are you influenced by anarchism, Misses Loomis? "If what you mean by anarchism," Loomis replies, is the individualists. "Yes!" One of the filmmakers abruptly interjects, eargerly. "That's what we mean!" Adds Loomis, "And certainly not those collectivist bomb-throwers!"

We never do learn why Loomis is so upset about "collectivist bomb-throwers." Instead, Sucher and Fischler are eager to find anarchism by any stretch of the imagination, whether it calls itself anarchism or not. This leads them, oddly enough, to a Libertarian Party convention, where they baffle the Party's presidential canidate with questions about anarchism. A later sequence is equally baffling, suggesting that the American rodeo is somehow an example of anarchism (anarchists involved with animal liberation issues I'm sure would disagree). Perhaps due to their Libertarian experience, Sucher and Fischler appear afraid to even mention the "A" word to their interview subjects, lest they scare them off. At times, their definition of "anarchism" seems so broad any bronco with a belt-buckle and a distaste for taxes could fit their anarchist bill. Which certainly begs the question: if anarchism is as American as apple-pie, (or the Republican Party, as Hess suggests), how is that the American State is so darn strong today?

In trying to find a road leading from the anarchist movements of the past to the relative absence of anarchists in Reagan-era America, Sucher and Fischler blaze a rather messy trail. So perhaps it's a sign of their times — the 1980s — that Sucher and Fischler find only anarchist individuals, and not a movement as they portrayed in their earlier Free Voice of Labor. The film makes it seem that the East Coast anti-nuke movement and West Coast punk rock scene appear to be the only anarchist games in town — as might have arguably been the case for some young radicals in the early 1980s.

This makes a double-bill with Free Voice of Labor that much more important. Taken together, these documentaries provide hints of what makes anarchism so vital a history and tradition to study and consider (and even adopt). Through the 1900s and 1910s, Jewish anarchism blossomed in the United States, particularly in response to horrid sweatshop labor conditions faced by immigrants. These anarchists were not isolated individuals, but part of a collective movement — whom I suppose are Loomis' bete noir "bomb-throwers." The film is devoted largely to interviews with the aging adherents to that movement, most of whom are wholly unrepentant. While Free Voice of Labor's portrait of Jewish radicalism often approaches a formalism in the PBS/Ken Burns vein — and, I hate to admit, anarchist historian Paul Avrich's wardrobe suggests a young Fred Rogers — it does have undeniable charms. These are due in no small part to the film's interviewees, who are as charming as any elderly person, full of experience and memory, can possibly be.

Unfortunately, Anarchism in America lacks this charm. Its narrative crux — the cross-country road trip — drives past hinting historical moments with little notice, and instead finds the filmmakers too eager to read anarchism into places it doesn't exist. Had Sucher and Fischler chosen to delve deeper into anarchism's historical legacy, often erased but ever-present — like that eight-hour weekend many of us take for granted — they might have had better luck.

Many examples pass by in Anarchism in America just briefly, meaning little except to the viewer who understands their significance. A brief shot of Barre, Vermont, for instance, is never explained. And yet Barre, with its granite quarries, hidden labor history and anarchist gravestones, could very well have provided the foundation the film sorely lacks. A road sign pointing to Harper's Ferry — not necessarily anarchist, but still more intriguing than the likes of Karl Hess — vanishes in a similar fashion. In passing this legacy by, Anarchism in America suggests what Theodor Adorno said of the American landscape applies equally to history, that "what the hurrying eye has merely viewed from the car cannot be retained."

I can recall a contrived Coca-Cola ad from years back that would screen prior to features at the multiplex. Stringing together footage of too-hip young persons drinking soda and documenting "The Summer They Would Never Forgot" onto digital video, it was a commercial to forget. But by rolling independent culture and the DV revolution across the American landscape in order to pitch soda, it comes to my mind now.

From Huck Finn to Kerouac to Coca-cola, the road trip motif is quintessentially American, essentially individualistic - and ill considered. Pitching soda is often all it is good for. When the young man goes west, its best to consider what he's left behind (and it's almost inevitably a He, unless we're talking a revisionist take on the road trope like Thelma and Louise). It ain't all easy ridin' — true freedom is built through engagement with others, not in escaping them. And we wonder how the American State has become so strong. I gravely wish filmmakers Joel Sucher and Steven Fischler had considered this before taking to the road themselves.

Nevertheless, Anarchism in America and Free Voice of Labor are very important as documents, the least I suppose one can ask of any documentary, and thus wholly deserve the DVD reissue AK Press has just given them. Let's hope that other DVD releases, from AK Press and others, are not far behind. For instance, Jessica Lawless's 2002 Paint It Black: Anarchism, Urban Uprising And The Mainstream News Media is hardly flawless, but I recall that it asks pointed questions concerning race, the media and the modern anarchist movement that remain ever-present, even if the large protests the film features have somewhat waned. It remains on video, as do many other time-honored activist videos that deteriorate with each copy copied from a copy of a copy.

Let's also hope that, in the vein of Lawless, updates on Anarchisim in America continue, updates that are, unlike Sucher and Fischler, unafraid to ask tough questions and push in new directions. For surely interest in the theory and practice of anarchism has soared since Sucher and Fischler's road trip. Ecology, feminism, anti-racism, and prison abolition are just a few of the many renewed activities anarchists have taken up in decades past. Nor does the digital video revolution belong solely to soda-sippin' hipsters. Like those in Free Voice of Labor, we won't be young forever. Best to leave our experiences well documented so that later generations may learn from our mistakes, so that our summers are never truly forgotten, so that anarchism may remain open enough to continually assist in our struggles towards better futures, today, tomorrow, and always.

Back to Top