ian, following is the first part (of 2) of the AS WE SEE IT! statement by the
The Columbia Anarchist league is the now defunct group who originally publised
ANARCHY:  A Journal of Desire Armed.  

AS WE SEE IT! was conceived by the columbia anarchist league,columbia,
missouri, in the spring of 1985 and appeared in print later that winter.  the
transcription below was keyed in and sent to spunk press in summer, 1994, by
me, and any typos/errors were probably made by me.  

Winter 1985/86
Columbia, Missouri
Common Perspectives on Ourselves, Our World and Social Change
--columbia anarchist league

	This statement is a provisional draft of Columbia Anarchist League
positions adopted largely in the spring of 1985.  It is not meant to be a
finished or unalterable statement, but it is a good reflection of our minimal
common perspectives at this time.  Critical comments are welcome and will be
taken under consideration for future versions of this statement.

1.	Throughout the world the vast majority of people have no control over
the most basic social, economic and political decisions which profoundly and
directly affect their lives.  We are forced to live, work and die according to
the dictates of hierarchical organizations-- from schools, corporations and
unions, to their culmination in the nation-state.  We are indoctrinated in
government-run and religious schools.  We are forced to sell our lives and
labour in capitalist economies, while those who own and control the means of
production not only profit from our toil, but determine the shape and
disposition of ever larger areas of both the social and natural worlds.  And we
are regimented, taxed, and cowed by integrated systems of local, regional and
national governments.  They not only make laws regulating our work, culture and
social intercourse, but maintain vast propaganda apparatuses, police forces,
prision systems, armies, survelance networks, and to ensure our compliance,
even torture centers and death squads when necessary.

2.	The hierarchical and alienating organization of social life imposed
upon us by these dominant institutions creates continual crises in every
person's life, and in every realm of human activity.  These crises often appear
most intensely in the realm of production--in which most of us must each day
sell large portions of our lives for a wage that can never possibly repay us
for what is in turn taken from us.  We are forced to labor under a system
which allows us neither control of the content of our work, nor its conditions,
its organization, or its purpose and meaning.  And we do all this in exchange
for the "privilege" of buying a few mass-produced commodities and standardized
"services" that will always remain empty and unsatisfying substitutes for the
rich and joyful lives we all in actuality desire.  In fact, nearly every facet
of life in modern society has by now been colonized by hierarchy and
alienation--family life, sexuality, education, culture, knowledge,
communication, health care, transportation, etc.  Everywhere the dominant
social institutions impose on people an organization of their daily lives that
is external to them.  Everything is organized for ulterior purposes, without
the participation of those most directly concerned, and usually against
people's actual values, aspirations, and interests.  As a result of this, it
isn't very surprising that people experience many aspects of their lives and
bodies as being unreal, alien to them, or as being subject to irresistible
forces of mystifying origins.

3.	The poverty, the meaninglessness and the alienation of everyday live in
the modern world are not accidental by-products of an otherwise sound social
system.  They are the invevitable and primary products of a system which at its
core is not only disastrously counterproductive, but in its present nuclear
phase is increasingly suicidal.  This system consists of a relatively coherent
structure of self-reinforcing social relations of compulsion, hierarchical
authority, and commodity exchange whose common basis can possibly be most
easily understood using the concept of "alienation."  The word "alienation"
denotes the process by which people's acts can become estranged--and no longer
appear or be felt as their own.  The institution of human slavery for example
involves an obvious process of alienation of the slave's life-activity.  When
originally free people were first captured by slaveholding societies, it was
necessary to _forcibly_ enslave them since they naturally realized that the
work, deference and passivity required of them was absolutely alien to their
own desires and will.  The unity of their desires, will and activity was
completely broken, but they could easily feel and understand this alienation
because of (and also resulting in) the necessity of its imposition by force. 
However, once their slavery had been forced for a certain time, they would
consciously develop habits of self-repression to avoid being punished for
forgetting the role they were required to play.  They would adapt to the
expectations of the slaveholders by _learning how_ to be slaves and thinking of
themselves as slaves, albeit reluctant ones.  And finally, many of them would
over time (and especially with the passing of generations) come to really see
themselves as slaves, to believe that slavery was a natural institution, and
that it was their natural place to be slaves.  Their habits of self-repression
would become so internalized and unconscious that they would forget they were
originally only habits.  They became slaves _in fact_, and if the opportunity
would come for them to escape they would no longer even be able to _see_ the
opportunity because they would no longer realize that somewhere deep inside
they wanted to escape.  Their alienation was so complete that they could no
longer feel their desires as their own, or exercise their will outside of a
sharply circumscribed area of their lives.  The process of alienation involved
in the institution of slavery is analogous to the process of "socialization"
through which we all learn our "natural" places within contemporary
institutions of the nuclear family, compulsory (mis)education, wage-slavery,
representative "democracy," etc.

4.	According to the classical description of alienation in the realm of
work under capitalism, when people's labor-activity is sold to capitalists in
exchange for a wage, this labor-activity is alienated.  Since it is controlled
by the capitalist (whether the capitalist is a person or an institution such as
a corporation or the state) and not by the individual, the individual worker
finds her/himself acting according to the dictates of a logic that is
externally imposed.  S/he becomes a mere cog in the machinery of a productive
apparatus which has a purpose above and beyond those of all the workers
involved in it.  Each individual worker is isolated from the rest as much as
possible by the corporate or bureaucratic management of large businesses, while
the lines of hierarchical authority maintain discipline within a rigid division
of labor in an organizational system designed to make profits, accumulate
capital and reproduce the power of the managers.  The collective activity of
all the atomized working people thus continually reproduces an entire
organizational system which appears to take on an inertia and direction of its
own as even the actions of the managers become more and more rigidly determined
by the logic of organizational reproduction and expansion to which they too
must submit.

5.	Ironically, it is people's own alienated gestures and labor-activity
that make up the actual substance of the institutions which in turn oppress
them.  And the same process of alienation takes place not only in the realm of
production, but also in every other sphere of social activity.  This results in
an entire social world that always appears to be out of anyone's control,
moving inexorably along its own mystifying path according to its own
hierarchical and alien logic.  Thus the economy is said to regulate itself by
the influence of an "invisible hand" through which we become the victims of
depressions, inflation, unemployment, etc.  And in the political sphere the
organs of local, regional, and national government exhibit similar tendancies. 
The political parties become more and more the same, while none are ever
capable of controlling the crises which prompt their election, or their coups
d'etat.  All governments are forced to submit to the alien logic of the same
international system.  East and west, the results are basically the same though
the means be different.  And in all the other spheres of life that have become
dominated by hierarchical forms of organization the individual is subjected to
the same processes since by definition all hierarchical organization involves
compulsion, and compulsion always requires that the individual alienate his/her
own activity, in order to fit him/herself into the roles required.  Ultimately,
the more our lives are devoted to performing all the alienating roles of
hierarchical commodity society, the less we are able to live--the less our
lives are in any sense really our own.

6.	People are never merely the passive victims of an externally imposed
repression and manipulation.  Through our "socialization" (our "social
conditioning") into this society, we have each learned to participate to
different degrees in our own self-repression and self-manipulation.  Our
conformity is enforced, not only  by the bosses' orders and the policeman's
gun, but by the internalized boss and policeman of our own behavior that each
of us carries within us, and which we call "character."  Character is the form
taken by alienation in the individual.  It is like a layer of deadened psychic
scar tissue or an armoring which each of us has been forced to develop in order
to cope with a hierarchical and alienating society.  By developing this
unconscious layer of armoring (this habitual layer of compulsive
self-repression) we protect ourselves from some of the harsher effects of
hierarchy and alienation, but only at the great cost of both isolating and
inhibiting ourselves, as well as deforming our activities and thoughts. 
Character can be variously manifested as:  compulsive inhibitions, chronic
muscular tensions and anxieties, chronic feelings of guilt, perceptual blocks
or a chronic narrowing of the perceptual field, exagerated respect for
authority figures, adhearence to dogmas and inability to think for oneself,
compulsive fears or paranoia, chronic feelings of insecurity, compulsive
role-playing and inability to drop pretenses and "be oneself," religious
_beliefs_ and beliefs in other types of absolutes, racism, sexism, ad nauseum. 
Character is the integrated organization of all the internalized and habitual
incapacities which serve to adapt individuals to the demands of an irrational
society.  It is the means by which hierarchical and alienating social
structures have invaded and colonized our very bodies and experience.  We have
all been crippled by it.  Many people have been so mutilated that they now
identify more with repressive and exploitative institutions than with their own
spontaneous impulses, desires and feelings.  Character is a mechanism created
by the interaction of social conditioning and our responses to it.  It enables
us above all to treat others and ourselves (and be treated by others) as
commodities on the market to be bought and sold, and as objects within
hierarchies to be ordered and manipulated.  Hierarchical capitalist society
demands that human beings be treated everywhere as if they are really only
objects.  The development of character is our way of becoming those objects and
forgetting that we were once something more.  (For a more detailed description
of the concept of character from our perspedctive, see "Beyond character and
morality," available from the C.A.L.--send an SASE--or in an abridged version
in _Reinventing Anarchy; What are the anarchists thinking these days?_, edited
by Ehrlich, Ehrlich, DeLeon & Morris, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1979.  Or see the classic text by Wilhelm Reich, _Character Analysis_,
published by Noonday Press.)
*****************************               ***********************************
                             END PART 1 OF 2


AS WE SEE IT! (part 2 of 2)

7.	Ideology is the manifestation of character in the realm of logic,
language and symbols.  It is the means by which alienation and hierarchies
(and thus character) are all rationalized and justified through the deformation
of human thought and communication.  All ideology in essence involves the
substitution of alien concepts or images for human subjectivity.  Ideologies
are systems of false consciousness in which people no longer see themselves as
subjects in their relation to their world.  Instead they see themselves in some
manner as though they are objects which are subordinated to some type or other
of abstract entities which become the "real" subjects or actors in their world. 
Whenever any system of ideas and duties is structured with an abstraction at
its center--assigning people roles or duties for its own sake--such a system is
always an ideology.  All the various forms of ideology are structured around
different abstractions, yet they all always serve the interests of hierarchical
and alienating social structures, since they _are_ hierarchy and alienation in
the realm of thought and communication.  Even if an ideology opposes hierarchy
or alienation in its _content_, its _form_ still remains consistent with what
is opposed, and this form will _always_ tend to undermine the apparent content
of the ideology.  Whether the abstraction is God, the State, Technology, the
Family, Humanity, Peace, Work, Love, or even Freedom; if it is conceived and
presented as if it is a subject with a being of its own which makes demands of
us, then it is the center of an ideology and it is a lie.  Capitalism,
Individualism, Communism, Socialism, and Pacifism are each ideological in some
respect as they are usually conceived.  Religion and Morality are always
ideological by definition.  Even resistance, revolution, and anarchism often
take on ideological dimensions when we are not careful to maintain a critical
awareness of how we are thinking and what the actual purposes of our thoughts
are.  Ideology is nearly ubiquitous.  From advertisements and commercials, to
academic treatises and scientific studies, almost every aspect of contemporary
thinking and communication is ideological, and its real meaning for human
subjects is lost under layers of mystification and confusion.
(For a more detailed description of ideological or positive theory, as well as
its contrast with critical theory, see "An introduction to critical theory,"
available from the C.A.L.--send an SASE.)

8.	At the epitome of ideological mystification lies the spetacle.  The
spectacle is the organization of appearances made possible through all the
modern media of communication.  The ease with which images can be detached from
their sources and reorganized for representation in these media in accord with
the ideologies of our dominant institutions forms the technical basis for the
manipulation of not just isolated images and ideologies, but of the appearance
of reality itself.  As the scope and power of the spectacular organization of
society increases, more and more of what was once directly lived has been
reduced to its re-presentation as images to be consumed.  For the organization
of spectacular activity is also the organization of the actual social passivity
of its spectators, which is its necessary counterpart.  Instead of living their
lives directly, people are increasingly seduced into becoming mere spectators
who consume the images of their own alienated lives that are unilaterally
presented to them by the dominant institutions of modern society.  The
spectacle is not a collection of images, but more importantly it is a social
relation among people mediated by images.  The major problem with contemporary
media is not just that they always present hierarchical perspectives as if no
others are possible (although this ideological narrowness of content obviously
exists).  It is a far deeper problem of the very form or structure of the mass
media.  In the end content is less important than the hierarchical and
alienating structure of the media which present it.  Whatever the overt
messages, the ubiquitous, but covert message produced is that each of us is
only a powerless spectator in a world over which we can have no control.  Our
only choice is to select between the options allowed us by the invisible powers
which determine everything else.

9.	If our institutions, culture, and social relations were really direct
expressions  of our own collective desires and needs they would rarely be
questioned.  There would be little opposition to them since they would be
fulfilling their purposes.  But whenever a system of alienating social
relationships is imposed upon people as ours is, it inevitably engenders
widespread resistance.  Such engendered resistance is the natural result of
forcing people to accept an alien way of life as if it were really their own. 
Whenever people are forced to repress and to act against their own impulses,
perceptions, judgement and values, they tend to rebel--sometimes directly,
openly and consciously, but often covertly, or even unconsciously.  Even when
such an alien system exists for generations, and people are so "socialized" and
indoctrinated that it comes to seem more real than their own selves, even then
there is inevitably widespread resistance, though it may express itself only
sporadically and largely remain confined to subterranean undercurrents of
rebellion or negativity.  The institutionalization of repression and alienation
is always followed by a return of the repressed drives, desires, and wishes are
seen as never being annihilated outright, but instead always return to people's
experience _expressed_ in other forms (such as in their dreams or unconscious
slips).  Similarly, institutional repression never entirely annihilates
people's ultimately ineradicable desire to live and control their own lives. 
Rather, people's resistance to the imposition of the artificial constraints of
fundamentally irrational and authoritarian social systems will always continue
to be expressed in thousands of ways in each day of each person's life.  This
engendered resistance within the heart of our everyday lives is a natural and
spontaneous response to the imposition of authoritarian social relationships. 
It is a generalized, yet usually unconscious movement of negation which
contains within itself the seeds of all potentially conscious movements for
libertarian social change.  And in fact, most other radical political, social
and religious movements also have their roots here.  From a vague and ambiguous
urge to "do something" or "change things", to minimal acts like high-school
vandalism, on-the-job theft, and ridicule of authority figures, to major acts
like the decision to participate in a riot or wildcat strike; spontaneous
expressions of negativity may be the unexplored and uncharted pivotal points
which hold the most promise for genuine social radicalism in the near future. 
At the least we must realize that the exclusion of all but conscious and
coherent activities from one's perception ofpolitical "reality" can only be
self-defeating where radical perspectives are concerned.

10.	It might seem intuitively obvious that any act of resistance to a
repressive and alienating social system is a step (no matter how small) in the
direction of creating a new society.  However, such an assumption is far from
the truth.  In practice, it becomes obvious that many acts which superficially
appear opposed to hierarchy and capital, are in actuality quite compatible with
them.  These acts of _partial_ opposition always begin with a basic acceptance
of the necessity for hierarchical power and social alienation, and only resist
specific "abuses" or "injustices" within the overall system.  Because partial
opposition has such a narrow focus on reforming only certain aspects of the
social structure, it has the paradoxical effect of strengthening the social
system it appears to fight by legitimizing the overall system at the same time
as it helps it depressurize and adapt to demands for social change.  This
depressurization of social forces demanding change is sometimes called
"recuperation."  By recuperating impulses toward genuine social change, and
channelling these impulses toward the real or imagined reform of the existing
social system, the system not only eliminates a threat to its continued
existence, but it also strengthens its hold on people by giving the impression
that fundamental reforms may be possible by a piecemeal process, and that any
more radical opposition might threaten reforms already made.  Partial
opposition is always contrary to any genuinely radical opposition because it
always accepts the ground rules of hierarchical commodity society as its own. 
Liberal reformists, "radical" moralists, and social democrats would all prefer
that we fought for "realistic" reforms on our knees than for radical change on
our feet.
	_False opposition_ is a special case of partial opposition.  It is an
attempt to _appear_ total or radical, while remaining only partial in actual
practice.  This type of opposition is especially typical of Marxist-Lenninist
groups.  They claim to be revolutionary, but their actual practice reproduces
all the hierarchical and bureaucratic tendencies of the society they criticize. 
Despite their radical pretensions, they ultimately maintain only a coup d'etat
mentaility and seek to install themselves in power as a new and "enlightened"
ruling class.  A further special case of partial opposition can be called
_spectacular_ opposition.  Spectacular opposition involves the manufacture of
an image of revolt which has few or no roots in any real social existence.  In
this type of imaginary opposition, celluiod images of revolt are created by
"media radicals," or by the media itself, whose content is minimal or absent.
	_Radical opposition_ on the other hand attempts to subvert hierarchy
and alienation at their roots.  It is always a conscious opposition to the
totality of the existing social system since it is based on an understanding of
how that systecAm operates in an integrated fashion _as a whole_.  This holistic
perspective reveals that when only one aspect of the system is challenged, the
system as a whole will compensate and recuperate the challenge until it has
been sufficiently defused and reintegrated, at which time the system is then
able to begin reversing any reforms which no longer serve its purposes.  The
only type of movement which can ever hope for real change is one which
challenges the social system as a whole at all times, even when it is
concentrating on particular aspects of that system.

11.	The absolute elimination of all social alienation is probably an
impossibility, and those who demand the attainment of such abstract absolutes
are most likely dogmatic fanatics to be avoided.  They are the would-be
Robespierres of future reigns of terror.  However, between the Scylla of
fanaticism and the Charybdis of an unprincipled and opportunistic reformism,
lies what we believe to be a realizable and viable conception of a
qualitatively more free, equitable and enjoyable social system.  Such a system
would not be "pure" or "perfect," but it could involve a genuinely radical
restructuring of society that would change the _balance_ of social
relations--ending the current historical dominance of hierarchical and
authoritarian social relationships, and replacing that dominance with a
self-reinforcing system of non-hierarchical social relationships which can be
called a type of anarchy.

12.	Anarchy literally means "no ruler."  In its best sense it signifies a
social system in which political hierarchies and authoritarianism are not
tolerated.  Instead of hierarchical rule by monolithic institutions over the
general public, anarchy in this sense demands the most complete, widespread and
effectively direct control possible by all those who are involved.  This does
not just mean that anarchists have some sort of vague or abstract belief in
"democracy," or "consensus," or "individualism."  This means that anarchists
demand explicitly direct and concrete popular participation within and control
of every significant social institution by those who are affected by them--not
just control over institutional organization and management, but also and just
as importantly, over their direction, ends and very existence.  This can only
be achieved through widespread and conscious commitment to libertarian social
and institutional values and practices (self-management, spontaneity, autonomy,
cooperation, human-scale organization, direct
responsibility/accountability/action, and maximum flexibility) within a
reorganized institutional framework centered around very specific, workable and
effective means of liberatarian communication and decision-making.

13.	Any genuine resistance and opposition to hierarchical society--any
movement which seeks to make a real and significant qualitative change in the
way society is organized--must be a self-consciously and critically radical
social movement.  And any such movement must involve as its central feature a
prefiguring of the type of society which it seeks to create, both in its own
organization and in the quality of the everyday social realationships which it
fosters.  The concept of prefigurement is another way of saying that the
_means_ of social transformation largely determine the _end_ which is produced. 
Thus a traditionally Marxist-Lenninist movement will almost invariably
translate the dictatorial style of its typical means (hierarchical political
party organization, ideological and dogmatic thinking, "democratic centralism,"
a vanguardist mentality, and generally conservative social values) into the
actual monolithic bureaucratic dictatorships we have come to expect as its end
(Russia, China,Cuba, Vietnam, etc.).  While on the contrary, libertarian
revolutionary movements attempt to create alternative organizations and
counter-institutions (directly and democratically controlled) as means toward
the end of creating a genuinely self-managed society.  In practice these
organizations can be (and have been) as diverse as anarchist affinity groups
and federations; rank-and-file workers groups, anarcho-syndicalist unions, and
factory committees or coundils; libertarian community groups, neighborhood
groups and municipal movements; collectives and cooperatives of all types; a
multitude of cultural institutions from workers centers, study circles, free
schools, radical libraries and documentation centers to cafes and punk clubs;
as well as guerilla groups and factory or community self-defense groups and
militias when necessary.

14.	We understand that the conditions of our lives and our experiences in
the dominant social institutions constantly drive us to question, resist, and
find the methods of organization which challenge the established social order
and established patterns of thought.  On the other hand, we recognize that we
are fragmented, dispossessed of the means of communication, and we are all at
different levels of awareness and consciousness.  The Columbia Anarchist League
is one small self-organized groupp within a worldwide movement of people who
are committed to challenging their lives and transforming their world.  We do
not see ourselves as yet another leadership looking for followers, but as a
group of like-minded people working toward a more libertarian society.  We seek
to help demystify all the ideological pretensions which paralyze people and
leave them powerless to act outside of established institutions.  We seek to
challenge every instance of hierarchy, exploitation, alienation and
mystification, to stimulate, encourage and help people who are involved in
libertarian struggles, and to generalize our experiences, to make a total
critique of our condition and its causes, and to help develop the widespread
revolutionary consciousness and activity necessary for the total transformation
of life.

Columbia Anarchist League
P. O. Box 1446
Columbia, MO. 65205

winter 1985/86

