Democracy as a Verb: New Meditations on the Yugoslav Praxis Philosophy

Democracy as a Verb: NewMeditations on the Yugoslav PraxisPhilosophyZiga Vodovnik

The paper discusses the intellectual legacy of praxis philosophy which, with its newreading of Marx, spread its range beyond the narrow parameters established in the fourthchapter of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Thepaper addresses the question of the state and the perspective of democracy through thecategories and concepts of praxis philosophy and concludes that understandingdemocracy in terms of praxis—as a free and creative activity in everyday life—and notas a prefabricated institutional design, leads to the negation of the present thesis on thecrisis of democracy.

‘Je ne suis pas Marxiste!’ (Karl Marx, 1882)

The second half of the 20th century was a turbulent era for Yugoslavia not only in apolitical but also in an ideational sense. Even before the fallout with Cominform in1948, ‘a promising strain of humanist thought emerging from the University ofZagreb and the University of Belgrade’, as Laura Sector described the Praxis group,started to cause cracks in the ideological edifice erected after the Yugoslav Revolution(1941–45).1 A group of young Yugoslav philosophers and sociologists had startedwith a new reading of Marx that led them to reject the dogmas of dialecticalmaterialism and to discover the humanist dimension of Marx’s thought, therebyspreading it beyond the narrow parameters established in the fourth chapter of theHistory of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). The battle against thesediments of Stalinism was therefore not only fought in the political arena but also,and in fact primarily, in the realm of philosophy where these young Yugoslavintellectuals tried to show that Marx’s (meta)philosophy is, above all, denoted bypraxis or, according to Gajo Petrovic, a ‘universal, free, creative and self-creativeactivity’.2

The radical reinterpretation of Marx on the basis of his early work, mostly theEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, resulted in a movement beyond thehistorical determinism and economic reductionism which still marked thehegemonic position of Diamat Marxism in the form elaborated by Soviet

ISSN 1944-8953 (print)/ISSN 1944-8961 (online)/12/040433-20 q 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2012.736236

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern StudiesVol. 14, No. 4, December 2012, pp. 433–452

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philosophers. This in turn reduced Marx’s thought to an ossified system of absolutetruths or ideology in Engels’ understanding of the term—that is, as falseconsciousness ( falsches Bewusstsein). Due to the hegemonic position of the Engelsianunderstanding of Marx, a conviction has predominated in orthodox Marxism thatthe two main currents within Marx’s thought are: the theory of historical materialismand the theory of surplus value. Unfortunately, the Engelsian reading of Marxcompletely overlooks the humanistic element of Marx’s (meta)philosophy and/orphilosophical dimension of his economic and political theories.

Gerson Sher hence ascertains in his study of the Praxis group that the redefinitionof Marxism, as first and foremost a philosophy of man, put forward by the mentionedyoung Yugoslav theorists and, above all, their identification of praxis as the centralcategory of Marx’s (meta)philosophy, returned ‘philosophy back to Marx and Marxback to philosophy’.3 Yet we should emphasize that their ‘new’ reading of Marxshould not be understood as a total break from all previous (re)interpretations ofMarxism. As Oskar Gruenwald points out, praxis-philosophy was part of a largercontext ‘seeking to bridge ideological gaps . . . to build a safer and more humaneword’.4

When articulating a new theory of human existence in society, restoring man as thesubject of revolutionary action, and revealing the myopia of both Bolshevik andSocial Democratic orthodoxy, their analyses closely resemble ideas of Gyorgy Lukacs,Ernst Bloch, Karl Korsch and also Antonio Gramsci.5 Bearing in mind also campaignsof defamation that their theories—unifying critical theory with revolutionarypraxis—triggered, the parallelism between praksikovci and the culprits of the SecondInternational is almost uncanny. However, it would be a gross oversimplification,prout Sher, ‘to characterize Praxis Marxism as a whole as a mere imitation or a directdevelopment of the idea of Lukacs, Bloch or indeed any single school of thought’.6 Itis worth noting that the Praxis school has been the only group in the region allowedto ‘reach maturity and become the predominant cultural orientation in the socialsciences’.7 ‘New’ reading that they offered is therefore as much a thing of the past as itis of the future, as much a thing of continuity as it is of discontinuity.

With the philosophy of praxis, man was once again treated as a historical subjectand a moral–ethical dimension of the political as an important determinant ofpolitical action. Praxis was not understood in the narrow sense of economic orpolitical functioning but as an ideal, specifically human activity, whereby man realizesthe optimal potentialities of his being, which is therefore an end in itself.8 However,praxis-philosophy is not merely a radical ontological, epistemological and not leastmethodological deviation from dogmatist Marxism, but its reinterpretation of Marxalso defines the vital repositioning of philosophy in relation towards society and thecentres of political power. This new reference point, which has been exposed by thephilosophy of praxis as the only constant within its fluid and eclectic research, can befound in a letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge:

We do not anticipate the world dogmatically, but rather wish to find thenew world through criticism of the old. [ . . . ] Even though theconstruction of the future and its completion for all times is not our

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task, what we have to accomplish at this time is all the more clear: relentlesscriticism of all existing conditions, relentless in the sense that the criticism isnot afraid of its findings and just as little afraid of the conflict with thepowers that be.9

Praksisovci understood that the task of the intellectual should not be the totalconstruction of the future and the invention of new phantasms which paralysehuman creativity and freedom, but should instead be the unyielding criticism of allexisting reality and at the same time a prefigurative experimentation with newpolitical practices and institutions which are open to modification and change. Fromthis perspective, praxis-philosophy follows an anarchist idea which states that theseed of a future society must be sown within the already existing system.

In response to the question ‘Why Praxis?’ appearing in the editorial of the very firstissue of the Praxis journal in September 1964, Gajo Petrovic openly stated that thegoal of the new journal would be the ‘relentless critique of all existing conditions’ andhence a radical examination of the current problems facing Yugoslav socialism,the contemporary world and man. The aim of the new project was to become‘a philosophical journal in the sense in which philosophy is the thought of revolution:the merciless critique of all existing conditions, the humanist vision of a truly humanworld, and the force that inspires revolutionary action’. According to Petrovic, thecontemporary world was still a ‘world of economic exploitation, nationalinequalities, political non-freedom, spiritual emptiness, a world of misery, hunger,hatred, war and fear’. Even more, the old problems were being joined by new onesand, besides, it should also not be overlooked that also in those countries ‘where thereare efforts to realize a genuinely human society, the inherited forms of inhumanityaren’t defeated and deformations emerge that didn’t exist earlier’. That is why, inPetrovic’s view,

(t)he philosopher cannot observe all these occurrences indifferently, notbecause in hard times everybody should help, and among others thephilosopher too, but because in the roots of all that hardship lie problemswhose solution is impossible without the participation of philosophy.10

Unlike Petrovic, who in explaining the role and purpose of the journal posed thequestion using the capital ‘P’, we will ask a much broader question using praxis with asmall ‘p’. Hence, what follows is an attempt to address the question of the state andperspective of democracy through the categories and concepts of praxis-philosophy.Yet we should emphasize that praxis-philosophy cannot be understood and discussedas a monolithic and homogeneous school since it consists of individuals who not onlydiffered in their research foci but also profoundly differed in their understandings ofcertain basic conceptions with which they operated. Warnings about thesediscrepancies are included in the works of practically all the protagonists of praxis-philosophy—for example, Jaksic (2007), Kangrga (2001), Markovic (1975), Petrovic(1989), Popov (2003)—who argue that they are bound more by the collectiverenunciation of the Stalinist version of Marxism than by any theoretical doctrine.

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We will nevertheless attempt to cast the basic contours of their democratic vision andmodes of existence through works of Gajo Petrovic and Mihailo Markovic, perhapsthe two most prominent authors to emerge out of praksisovci.

The paper has two key purposes. First, it attempts to contribute to our perceptionsand conceptions of democracy a radically new understanding of democracy—aspraxis or as a free and creative activity in everyday life. In this paper, we suggest thatpraxis-philosophy does not solely equate democracy with a particular constitutionalsystem, nor with a particular constellation of centres of power within a society, butinstead that it understands democracy only as praxis. Or, in Westian terms, it definesdemocracy as a verb, and never as a noun.11 Moreover, the understanding ofdemocracy as a verb is not just limited to the sphere of politics (an achievement of the18th century), but logically includes all social and economic life. Accordingly,this paper tries to ‘democratize democracy’ (Santos) and, while doing so, also refutesthe myriad theses on the crisis of democracy.

Second, the paper seeks to overcome the limitations of mainstream theories andanalyses which equate democracy with a legal concept that can only be achieved andmaintained with adequate institutional architecture. We therefore strive to refutetheories and analyses that have—despite the rise and strengthening of (participative)democracy that we have witnessed in the last few decades—mistakenly defined thecrisis of the current economic project as a crisis of democracy itself. Finally, we try tohighlight the myopia of our (mis)understanding of the essence of democracy and whywe still search for it in places where the possibility of finding it is negligible.

What is Praxis?

Although the word praxis is commonly used in everyday language and appears to berelatively clear and understandable—it is primarily used as a synonym for activity,creation, work, habit, experience, training, etc., its meaning within philosophy,especially praxis-philosophy, is considerably more profound and specific. Marxdeveloped the concept of praxis in his early works, mostly in the Economic andPhilosophic Manuscripts of 1844, which were only ‘discovered’ by modernphilosophy in the 1930s through the work of David Rjazanov. In the ManuscriptsMarx divides his ideas of man as a free and creative being in a positive sense as wellas and chiefly in a negative sense through a definition and criticism of human self-alienation.12 The chapter ‘Alienated Work’ states that ‘a free, conscious humanactivity is a generic characteristic’, as it differs from other animal species which onlyfend for themselves and their own physical needs, whereas man also provides in theabsence of such physical needs and only by doing so is actually freed from physicalneed itself:

(The animal( fends only for itself, whilst Man reproduces the whole ofnature; its product belongs only to its physical body, whilst Man, by hisown volition, resists his product. An animal only creates what is typical forthe species it belongs to, while Man is capable of producing things typicalfor any species and is capable of attributing an inherent dimension to any

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object; it is by these means that Man also creates within the rules ofbeauty.13

Marx equates praxis only with free, universal and creative activity with which mancreates and transforms his world and consequently himself. Such an understanding ofpraxis differs considerably from the epistemological category of practice which can,however, mean the changing of an object, whereas this activity still remains entirelyalienated. The key characteristic of praxis as a normative concept therefore lies in thefact that this activity represents a goal and purpose in itself. It is an activity that issupposed to be unique to mankind and through which man obtains his maindistinctiveness from other living beings. Of course, freedom in this case should not beunderstood in a negative sense as an absence of external obstacles and limitations, butrather in its positive sense whereby the creative moment of this action is emphasized.In theManuscriptsMarx also demarcates praxis from labour since praxis as a free andcreative activity differs fundamentally from labour (die Arbeit) as an act of thealienation of a human activity.14 If praxis is a product of an individual’s wish, self-realization and the ‘kingdom of freedom’, then labour is a matter of urgency,alienation and the ‘kingdom of necessity’.

Perhaps the most elaborated taxonomy of individual activities can be found inMihailo Markovic’s book—although this is not the place to consider his subsequentinglorious political transformation—entitled From Affluence to Praxis, where hedivides human activity into: (a) estranged labour; (b) labour; and (c) praxis.15 Ifestranged labour is an activity which does not allow the individual to realize hispotential and meets his demands, it is then that labour is a neutral concept whichcorrelates with instrumental activities that are essential for man’s survival anddevelopment. According to Markovic, labour can turn into praxis—meaning anideal activity which allows the individual to realize his optimal potential and istherefore a goal in itself—yet this is only true in cases where it is chosen freely andoffers the individual self-realization and the maximization of his creativepotential.16

On the Development of Praxis-Philosophy

ACopernican revolution of Marxism, as Oskar Gruenwald described reinterpretationof Marxism by praxis-philosophy, led to the recuperation of his humanisticphilosophy which had been ignored or dismissed as an unimportant (Hegelian)deviation of the immature Marx, that is, as abstract humanism. Namely, it was seen asa deviation before he arrived at his ‘real’ conclusions—such as the theory of surplusvalue and historical materialism. Here Petrovic stressed that it is impossible to acceptan artificial division of Marx’s corpus into the young and the old Marx since it isnecessary to interpret his thought only as a whole because it is very difficult tounderstand Marx’s later works without knowing his early works.17 That prevents aproper understanding of Marx since humanism is not only the central theme of hisearly texts, but also of all his later works, albeit implicitly. Further, the thesis that theyoung Marx is the only ‘right one’ is, according to Petrovic, a badly formulated

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negation of Stalinism which, paradoxically, simultaneously generously attributes theold Marx to Stalinism.18

The protagonists of Diamat had renounced these attempts to reinterpret Marx as aform of ‘abstract’ humanism since they, instead of focusing their efforts on the keyproblems of the modern world and humanity, engage in obscure topics such asalienation, practice and self-realization. However, the reinterpretation made by thementioned young Yugoslav theorists did not end with Marx, nor even with theclassics of Marxism.

The new political climate in the 1960s and the country’s direction onlystrengthened this trend of philosophical revisionism and gave a guarantee for themore successful completion of the process of abolishing ideological monism.Therefore, space for the elaboration of Marxism had been opened on the one handand for the denunciation of Diamat on the other.19 Petrovic and Markovicascertained that the fall of the ‘fourth classic’ (Stalin) could not occur without effectson the preceding three as their works and ideas were no longer perceived as eternaltruths which could only be interpreted, commentated on or reconfirmed with newevidence, but which had instead merely become more or less convenient guides fornew research and creating.20 We could state that the opening of political space has ledto a final acceptance of the upgraded version of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbachwhich, according to Maurice Brinton, states that philosophers have only interpretedMarx, in various ways; the point, however, is to change him.21

It was the different readings of Marx on the basis and through the necessities of hishumanistic philosophy that helped unravel all the deficiencies and unclear sides of his(meta)philosophy along with the orthodox Marxism per se. With the reinterpretationof Marx, praxis-philosophy once again warned that it is impossible to reduce Marx’sthoughts to a single dimension for, apart from its main constancies, it is full ofinternal contradictions, self-criticism and consequently redefinitions of standpoints.According to Petrovic, Marx’s legacy is not a coherent and conclusive system butsimply a mass of ideas which pose important questions, yet keeps a lot of them open,thereby being merely a collection of inquiries and researches without final results.22

If we add Erich Fromm’s cynical remark here, with similar reinterpretations Marxceases to be a long dead saint and becomes a still living thinker.23 This is alsounderstandable as the revolutionary theory should not act as a method for freezingthought and conceptions in new moulds, but should first construct the future on thebasis of extrapolating the past and thereby contribute its share to the construction ofa free and humane world.

The Conceptions and Perceptions of Democracy within the Philosophy of Praxis

During the time leading up to the famous and what many would say was the pivotalconference Problems of Object and Subject, Practice and the Theory of Reflection,organized by the Yugoslav Association for Philosophy and Sociology at Bled in 1960and which marked a final victory of the humanist orientation, many importanttransformations and breakthroughs contributed to developing the theoretical basisfor the new philosophical current.24 After the ideational victory of the new

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orientation and its theoretical consolidation, the first steps were made towardsconcrete activismwhich would reflect the realization that the role of the revolutionaryphilosophy must not simply be the elucidation of the world, but rather its changingthrough the abolition of its limits (Aufhebung) on the further propagation of praxis.

According to Markovic, this would only be possible by replacing the abstractcritical theory with concrete, practically oriented social criticism that would thus notbe limited solely to capitalist society.25 Namely, many other forms of alienation canalso be found in post-revolutionary society—for example, commodity fetishism,nationalism, appropriation of surplus value, division of labour which amplifies thedivision between the creative activity of the minority and the monotonous anddegrading labour of the majority. Therefore, the criticism of praxis-philosophy doesnot lead to ‘abstract negation’ whose goal is the absolute cancellation of the object ofcritique but to a ‘concrete negation’ as it anticipates the Aufhebung of only thosecharacteristics and elements of the object that represent its essential internallimitations.26

Accordingly, the ‘criticism of all that exists’ on which praxis-philosophy is basedalso cannot be understood as mere nihilism and the destruction of everything thatexists, but instead and only as its transcendence through social revolution which, forPetrovic, cannot be equated with the use of force, the overthrowing of a governmentor the economic collapse of a system, since a revolution

is not merely the passage from one form of Being to another, higher one, itis not only a peculiar break, jump, ‘hole’ in Being, it is the highest form ofBeing, the Being itself in its fullness. Revolution is the most developed formof creativity and the most authentic form of freedom, a field of openpossibilities and the realm of the truly new. It is the very ‘essence’ of Being,the Being in its essence.27

When discussing the value of praxis-philosophy its critics often objected that itsontological perspective is entirely ‘unrealistic’. At best, it is ‘normative’ or ‘prescriptive’for it has been servitude and non-creativity and not freedom and creative activity—ergo labour, not practice—which has throughout history characterized man and hisactivity.28 Petrovic stated that these kinds of objections were unjustified becausedefiningman as a being of practice, and practice as a free and creative activity, does notmean a ‘descriptive’ nor a merely ‘normative’ treatment, but rather an ‘expressive’ and‘potential’ one in the sense that they exposeman’s potential—something distinguishedfrom what it is, as well as from something it should be.29

Of course, the ontological position of praxis-philosophy is impossible tounderstand as a naive and simplified apotheosis of human nature, which only treatsan individual’s potential for good and creativity. Alongside the descriptive concept ofhuman nature, which can be affirmed by historical evidence, praxis-philosophy alsointroduces the normative concept which is based on contemplating the possibilitiesbeyond the present existence. The ontological position of praxis-philosophy means afurther digression from the reductionism of orthodox Marxism in which the questionof man’s freedom in the here and now is not relevant as man is only a tabula rasa or

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modelling clay, which is freely determined by the socio-economic formation ofsociety and its internal limitations. The theory of human nature and philosophicalanthropology, which can be found in the philosophy of praxis, is in this sensefundamentally more complex.

In contrast to orthodox Marxism, it detects and addresses the complex question ofa suitable form of a social, economic and political system which would enable manwith certain intrinsic potential to reach the highest level of self-realization andmaximization of his (internal) creative potential. Alternatively, if we pose the samequestion after applying the categorical apparatus of praxis-philosophy: ‘In whichsocial conditions, in what kind of social organization can human activity become anobjectification of the individual’s most creative capacities and a means of satisfyinggenuine individual and common needs?’30 The answer to this question can only beguessed. The political anthropology of praxis-philosophy only helps with thisguesswork by simply constantly reminding us of the influence of externalcircumstances, which can channel man’s potential in one direction or another.That is because human nature is structured out of clashing dispositions that developin time and can, given the right historical conditions, strengthen, be suppressed ormodified in a series of different ways.

In order to institutionalize and strengthen the open and free discussion of Marxisthumanism and the problems of the contemporary world and man, a summer schoolwas organized on the island of Korcula in 1963 whereas the philosophical journalPraxis, published in a Yugoslav and an international edition, was founded a year later.Both were truly remarkable projects that soon gained an international reputation andattracted the participation of internationally renowned figures such as, inter alia,Zygmunt Baumann, Ernst Bloch, Thomas Bottomore, Robert S. Cohen, ErichFromm, Lucien Goldmann, Andre Gorz, Jurgen Habermas, Leszek Kolakowski, HenriLefebvre, Gyorgy Lukacs, Ernest Mandel, Herbert Marcuse and Howard Zinn.

Together with the journal, the Korcula Summer School, an annual gathering on theAdriatic island of Korcula, represented one of the rare physical and ideational forumsthat enabled thinkers on both sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’ to exchange opinions andexperiences.31 Both projects soon became an important forum for particularlyfruitful and tumultuous philosophical debates. At that time, Yugoslav philosophy hadbecome a true social phenomenon as the once hermetically sealed and boringacademic lectures were being replaced with public debates attracting the widestpublic outside the narrow academic community. All social strata were now readingphilosophical books. Some issues of Praxis and other philosophical journals as well assome philosophical debates became first-rate cultural and political events.32 Theschool and the journal integrated academics and students from the region into thethen topical intellectual currents and political debates. It was also by virtue of theseexperiences that members of the Praxis group were able to offer lucid analyses thatconfirmed the previously mentioned hypothesized problems of post-revolutionarysocieties.

In the research on individual aspects of social and political life in Yugoslavia theyconcluded that it is possible to find forms of political and economic alienation evenwithin Yugoslav society; that exploitation of the proletariat by the owners of capital

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had been replaced by the exploitation by a new elite or what Milovan Djilas, anotherYugoslav dissident, described as the new class; that the introduction of mechanisms ofa market economy had reproduced the antagonism between labour and capital; thatself-management could only truly be found on the micro level—within companies,local communities and organizations—and was impossible to find at higher levels ofdecision-making.

That is why Markovic believed the revolution was never finalized in Yugoslavia,namely, because private ownership of the means of production was never transcendedby social ownership but only modified into state property; as the bourgeois state wasnot transcended by a web of self-managing organs of workers’ councils, but insteadgrew into a state run by bureaucracy and technocracy; as the political party, as atypical form of a bourgeois political organization, was not abolished but in somerespects had become even more authoritarian, and the ideological indoctrinationwithin it even more drastic. ‘The fact that there is only one such organization whichmonopolizes all political power is’, Markovic contended, ‘hardly an advantage overbourgeois pluralism.’ Hence, the

(r)eal suppression of political alienation will materialize only when allmonopolies are dismantled, when authoritarian and hierarchicalorganizations such as the state and Party gradually wither away and arereplaced by self-governing associations of producers and citizens at allsocial levels.33

The solution offered by praxis-philosophy demanded the total de-professionalizationof politics, the spreading of self-management to all levels and spheres of society, theintroduction of workers’ councils on the regional, republican and federal levels, andeven the introduction of participatory democracy through the abolition of the partyitself. These aspirations saw the Praxis group setting itself on a collision course withthe powers that be. Their demands were, obviously, too radical for Yugoslavia’spolitical authorities even their conception of man as a being of praxis, that is, free,creative and self-actualizing activity, informed Edvard Kardelj’s theory of self-management and, hence, formed the very basis for the wider Yugoslav Experiment,meaning a new social, economic and political model—in a way they were merelylogical interpretations of the 1958 programme of the League of Communists ofYugoslavia. Markovic ascertained that the biggest crime of the Praxis group—onethat led to an array of political pressures that intensified after the student protests of1968 and culminated in the abolition of the Korcula Summer School and the Praxisjournal in 1974, as well as the expulsion of eight of the journal’s collaborators (the so-called ‘Belgrade Eight’) from the Faculty of Arts in Belgrade years later—seems to bethat they took these ideas seriously.34

Sher reminds us that, to appreciate the significance of their accomplishments, it isnecessary to view them in the broader political and, above all, historical context:

Nowhere else in Eastern Europe has there arisen such a sustained, public,animated, unfettered, and candid dialogue concerning the founding

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principles of the society, the sociopolitical and cultural forms that haveevolved under communist rule, and the nature of political authority.Nowhere else has such debate, even when it has surfaced no matter howbriefly, been accorded the degree of acceptance and even legitimacy that itearned in Yugoslavia, and nowhere else did it attract such broadinternational interest.35

Sher concludes,

That all this occurred in Yugoslavia, moreover, testifies not only to theextraordinary elasticity and resilience of that remarkable country and itspolitical structure, but also, in the wake of the forceful termination of thePraxis experiment, to the gradual loss of some of those very qualities thathave hitherto made the Yugoslav experiment a unique and bold adventurein democratic socialism.36

Unfortunately, history was to prove that Sher’s remarks were right and it did so twiceover since the rest of the Yugoslav story in the late 1980s and early 1990s unfolded as asimultaneous tragedy and farce.

Democratizing Democracy

Since individual liberation is considered as a prerequisite to the liberation of society,‘humanistic reconstruction’ of Marxism offered by praxis-philosophy is no longerfocused on the collective, but rather on the individuum. With this radical ontologicaland epistemological shift, praxis-philosophy moved significantly closer to theanarchistic position. We should not forget that one of the most important membersof the group was Trivo Indjic who was explicitly encroaching on the field ofanarchistic political thought, while the French anarchist historian Daniel Guerin wasstill one of the more distinguished foreign collaborators of the Praxis journal.Consequently, praxis-philosophy was often renounced for not reflecting authenticMarxism, but in fact being an ‘anarcho-liberal’ anomaly.

To a certain extent, these remarks were justifiable for praxis-philosophy was nevercharacterized by the narrow economic reductionism, which had resulted in thefetishization of economic exploitation and class antagonism. In Bookchinite terms,the philosophy of praxis operated with the concept of domination whichconsequently detected and respectfully included exploitation that may not evenhave an economic meaning at all; for example, the domination of men over women,the domination of bureaucracy and technocracy over workers. Instead, praxis-philosophy raised a much broader and more important question—not only thequestion of class antagonism, but of hierarchy and domination as such.37 That is whythe evaluation of today’s situation through the praxis-philosophy prism is a great dealmore radical; today, it is impossible to speak of the economic crisis in a vacuum for atleast as much should be said about the political and general social crisis.

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The anarchist label on praxis-philosophy is also valid, since the idea of praxisclosely resembles the anarchist idea of prefigurative politics. Praxis is in a way atheoretical building block for the idea of prefiguration that claims that we shouldcreate the future in the present with political and economic organizing alone, or atleast foresee social changes and solutions for which we aspire. It is hence an attemptto overcome current limitations with the construction of alternatives from thebottom-up, and rejects total construction of the future as a new phantasm thatparalyses human creativity and freedom, but rather simply demands a search for newpolitical solutions that are open to modification.

The second conclusion which arises from readings of the existing dispositionthrough praxis-philosophy is an entirely different understanding of democracy itself.Democracy from within praxis-philosophy is impossible to comprehend assomething that is initiated with the new institutionalized set-up since it can onlybe understood as practice in our everyday life. It is thus incompatible withmajoritarian democracy, since praxis demands democracy that would build onconsensus decision-making, and never on majority rule that is ‘not only inherentlyoppressive but also paradoxically divisive and homogenizing at the same time’.38 Suchan understanding of democracy always leads to a negation of the thesis thatdemocracy is in a crisis, as the main ones in crisis are neo-liberal capitalism andstatism as such. The main reason for such false conclusions is our relentless search fordemocracy in places where it is least likely to be found. Too often we ignore numerousstudies commenced in past years within anthropology and history which suggest thatdemocracy and (centralized) authority are incompatible; that is why democracyconsequently cannot be found within etatistic frames and centres of power, but ratheron the periphery of the political map.

According to James C. Scott, another problem that results in our analytical myopiais that we understand as politics only open politics of liberal democracies. The resultof this myopia is that we overlook political praxis beyond the visible end of thespectrum. Scott describes ‘politics that doesn’t look like politics’ as ‘infrapolitics’, andwarns that it ‘provides much of the cultural and structural underpinning of the morevisible political action on which our attention has generally been focused’.39

Infrapolitics is as much a product of political necessity as of political choice, so weshould understand it not only as a form of political resistance under the conditions oftyranny, but also as ‘the silent partner of a loud form of public resistance’ of moderndemocracies. In praxis-philosophy we already find rudimentary thesis, laterdeveloped and refined by Scott, that although infrapolitics is not part of themainstream, and that many times it is hard to detect this ‘immense political terrainthat lies between quiescence and revolt’, it is still real politics, ‘in many respectsconducted in more earnest, for higher stakes, and against greater odds than politicallife in liberal democracies’.40

According to Scott, the infrapolitics of the seemingly non-political on the microlevel is recognized as the crucial precondition of democracy on the social level. Theseforms of struggle are, nevertheless, still marginalized and trivialized—from thepolitical Right and Left advocating real political action meaning action via politicalparties—as: (a) unorganized, unsystematic and individual; (b) opportunistic and

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self-indulgent; (c) with no revolutionary potential/consequences; and/or (d)implying accommodation with the system of domination.41 It is true that in caseof ‘the unwritten history of resistance’, the prosaic but constant, or even Brechtianforms of struggle often merely result in marginal gains that ease forms of theirexploitation. It is also true that instead of targeting the main source of exploitation orthe immediate source of exploitation, everyday forms of resistance, as Scott alsochooses to call them, rather follow the line of least resistance. Although we shouldnever overly romanticize the ‘weapons of the weak’, conversely, these forms ofinfrapolitical actions are also not trivial. Needless to say, the advantage of suchresistance is that it results in concrete and immediate advantages. Moreover, whenmultiplied by thousands and millions of people such individual acts of quietresistance ‘may in the end make an utter shambles of policies dreamed up by theirwould-be superiors’.42

It is ironic that in times of ‘fluid modernity’ (Bauman), infrapolitical action that inthe past characterized peasant resistance in settings where open political activity wasrestricted is once again becoming the most convenient form of struggle for ‘socialmovements with no formal organization, no formal leaders, no manifestoes, no dues,no name, and no banner’.43

Praxis and the Newest Social Movements

Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in the middle of a global financialand economic crisis, we are discovering a deeper crisis of politics per se, where thecrisis is not understood as the incompetence of politics to mitigate the contradictionsinherent to the current economic model, but as its incompetence to transcend thevery same economic model. We could also say that we are witnessing a triple crisis ofpolitics—crisis of participation, representation and legitimacy. Despite the severalundemocratic and even anti-democratic trends we have witnessed in recent years,a different reading of the same period is available to us that can paint a much moreoptimistic picture of the state and perspective of democracy. What follows is a shorthistory of the newest social movements (NSM), as Richard J. F. Day calls the post-Seattle movements,44 that should not be read as a new chapter in the development ofpraxis-philosophy, but rather as a confirmation that a different understanding ofpolitical action and democracy that could be found within praxis-philosophy leads usto the negation of the present thesis on the crisis of democracy.

Although many studies conclude that the NSM were born amid the tear gas andrain that accompanied the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, we rather argue thatthey were a direct outcome of the Zapatista uprising and the later encuentro againstneo-liberalism and for humanity (Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad ycontra el Neoliberalismo). The encuentro, organized in the Lacandon jungle in 1996 bythe Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional,EZLN), resulted in an appeal for an

intercontinental network of resistance, recognizing differences andacknowledging similarities, [that] will strive to find itself in other resistances

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around the world. This intercontinental network of resistance will be themedium in which distant resistances may support one another. Thisintercontinental network of resistance is not an organizing structure; it has nocentral head or decision maker; it has no central command or hierarchies. Weare the network, all of us who resist.45

A direct outcome of the Zapatista encuentro was a global network, the People’s GlobalAction (PGA), which ‘unites anarchist collectives in Europe and elsewhere withgroups ranging from Maori activists in New Zealand, fisherfolk in Indonesia, or theCanadian postal workers’ union’.46 The network includes many movements andcollectives that cannot be reduced to a single ideological platform but, as can be seenfrom its ‘Hallmarks’, the organizational principles of the PGA demand the‘actionization of political theory’, above all, through recuperation of the concept ofprefigurative politics or a prefiguration which claims we should create the future inthe present with political and economic organizing alone, or at least foresee socialchanges and solutions for which we aspire:

1. A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism; all tradeagreements, institutions and governments that promote destructive globalization;

2. We reject all forms and systems of domination and discrimination including, butnot limited to, patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism of all creeds. Weembrace the full dignity of all human beings;

3. A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a majorimpact in such biased and undemocratic organizations, in which transnationalcapital is the only real policy-maker;

4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements’struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximize respect for life andoppressed peoples’ rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to globalcapitalism;

5. An organizational philosophy based on decentralization and autonomy.47

Although the NSM are a diverse ‘coalition of coalitions’ and bring together variouscollectives and movements that were often oppositional in the past, the NSM stillmanaged to develop their own collective identity. However, the NSM’s diversity canbe viewed as both a fundamental strength and a fundamental weakness. Diversity cancome at a high cost, especially ‘[i]n a political culture that values unity, the . . .

diversity provides opportunities for its critics to disparage it and security forces toundermine it’.48 The NSM are indeed a colourful coalition of ecologists, indigenousactivists, farmers, feminists, trade unionists, non-governmental organizations(NGOs) and other initiatives that, according to Esteva, offer ‘one no, and many yeses’.

While we can clearly not define the NSM as anarchist movements only, we canconclude that the majority of their creative energy is nowadays coming exactly fromanarchist groups. On the other hand, anarchist principles are so widespreadthroughout the NSM that we could mark it as anarchist in places where it is withoutthis identity. According to Giorel Curran, we can speak about ‘post-ideological

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anarchism’ which is the only correct and the best response to the reconfiguredpolitical, economic and social landscape that, in a certain sense, renders traditionalcurrents of anarchism obsolete.49 ‘Post-ideological anarchism’ adopts ideas andprinciples from the heritage of classical anarchism very flexibly and non-doctrinally,and simultaneously rejects its traditional forms to construct genuinely newautonomous politics through eclectic collection and merging. The anarchistrenaissance within the movement of movements is not only inspired by anarchismbut is also dynamized by currents of ideas which in the past were its counterpoise.

This position was approached for the first time by Dave Neal in his essay‘Anarchism: Ideology or Methodology?’ where we find two basic perceptions andconceptions of anarchism: capital-A and small-a anarchism. If the former, accordingto Neal, can be equated with ideologically pure positions within the traditionalschools of anarchism and thus equates anarchism with an ideology or ‘a set of rulesand conventions to which you must abide’, the latter is characterized by non-dogmatism, eclecticism and fluidity and is understood as a methodology or ‘a way ofacting, or a historical tendency against illegitimate authority’.50

In his essay, written years before the global initiative Occupy had reached fullstride, Neal estimated that ‘within the anarchist movement we can still find a plethoraof Anarchists—ideologues—who focus endlessly on their dogma instead oforganizing solidarity among workers’. A decade later, David Graeber contemplatedthat what we might call capital-A anarchism still exists within the NSM, but it is thesmall-a anarchism that represents the real locus of creativity within thosemovements. In his reflection on new anarchism, he stresses that it still has anideology but for the first time it is an entirely new one—that is, a post-ideologyimmanent in the anti-authoritarian principles of its praxis:

A constant complaint about the globalization movement in the progressivepress is that, while tactically brilliant, it lacks any central theme or coherentideology . . . Yet this is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is notopposed to organization. It is about creating new forms of organization.It is not lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are itsideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead oftop-down structures like states, parties or corporations; networks based onprinciples of decentralized, non-hierarchical consensus democracy.Ultimately, it aspires to be much more than that, because ultimately itaspires to reinvent daily life as whole.51

Barbara Epstein also ascertains that anarchism represents the main inspiration for anew generation of activists.52 Their understanding of anarchism surpasses its narrowand dogmatic interpretation that reduces it to a set of prefabricated solutions or evento an eternal truth that can only be interpreted, commented upon or confirmed anewwith new data and evidence. Epstein argues that we can distinguish anarchism per se,thus capital-A anarchism or anarchism as an ideological tradition, and anarchistsensibilities that overlap with Curran’s conceptualization of ‘post-ideological’anarchism, or Neal’s conceptualization of ‘small-a’ anarchism. With this

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reinterpretation the NSM again warn that anarchist thought cannot be reduced toone single dimension as, despite the unshakeable basic premises, it is also full ofinternal contradictions, own criticism and, consequently, redefined positions. Theypoint out that anarchism is not a coherent and completed system but a set of ideaswhich addresses important questions but leaves many of them unanswered; it is onlya set of inquiries and researches without final results. According to Epstein forcontemporary young activists anarchism does not represent some abstract radicaltheory, but instead means

a decentralized organizational structure, based on affinity groups that worktogether on an ad hoc basis, and decision-making by consensus. It alsomeans egalitarianism; opposition to all hierarchies; suspicion of authority,especially that of the state; and commitment to living according to one’svalues . . . Many envision a stateless society based on small, egalitariancommunities. For some, however, the society of the future remains an openquestion. For them, anarchism is important mainly as an organizationalstructure and as a commitment to egalitarianism.53

As can be seen, in many recent reflections of the NSM we find the two main positionson anarchism—anarchism as an ideology and anarchism as praxis. If the formeremphasizes a conscious acceptance of anarchist ideology and the identification of thesubject as an anarchist, then the latter represents a sensibility or the ethical paradigmand understands anarchism rather as ‘a tendency in the history of human thoughtand practice, which cannot be encompassed by a general theory of ideology’, since itscontents and manifestations change over time.54 In this case, there is also no need forinterpellation of the individual into a self-conscious anarchist. By analogy withHoward Zinn’s understanding of Marxism, ‘post-ideology’ within the NSM

is not a fixed body of dogma, to be put into black books or little red books,and memorized, but a set of specific propositions about the modern worldwhich are both tough and tentative, plus a certain vague and yetexhilarating vision of the future, and, more fundamentally, an approach tolife, to people, to ourselves, a certain way of thinking about thinking as wellas about being. Most of all it is a way of thinking which is intended topromote action.55

At the centre of Zinn’s examination is the idea that anarchism should not be a theoryof the future, but ‘a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating newconditions, the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything that hindershuman growth’, as Emma Goldman claimed at the beginning of the 20th century.56

It goes without saying that many ‘hardline’ anarchists are as appalled by suchunorthodox understanding of anarchism, as diamatchiks have been by a ‘Copernicanrevolution of Marxism’ initiated by praxis-philosophy.

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Conclusions

In the past, a crisis—economic and political—has been perceived merely as ananomaly or rupture within the harmonious working of a self-regulatory system, as adysfunctional moment that will be overcome when the balance of the system isrestored. Such conception of crisis results in myopia that overlooks many crises thatare present, but are not perceived as such, because of their positive role inconsolidating and reproducing the status quo, despite their undemocratic and evenanti-democratic inclinations. On the other hand, such conception equates with acrisis various ruptures that are inherent to the hegemonic economic paradigm and donot represent a threat to its functioning since they are a permanent part of itsconsolidation and reproduction.57 The current crisis is therefore an economic andpolitical crisis in the proper meaning of the word, a ‘crisis of crisis’, since we face sucha concentration of contradictions inherent to the system that they now represent athreat to its stability and very survival. The solution therefore does not lie in thepartial solving of economic problems, but in new political structures and practicesthat would allow praxis to be feasible for man.

It would be reasonable to reiterate here that a detailed evaluation of the thesis ofthe crisis of democracy, as seen through the lens of praxis-philosophy, leads us to theconclusion that it is impossible to talk about a crisis of democracy, although we cantalk about a crisis of capitalism and statism. Similarly, Subcomandante Marcos—thevoice of the Zapatista movement—asserts that with the current processes ofeconomic globalization the nation-state and capitalism are being forced to redefinetheir position and purpose.58 Namely, the end of the cold war brought a newframework for international relations in which the new struggle for new markets andterritories produced a new world war, the Fourth World War and, like with all wars, aredefinition of the nation-state. The structure of the global economy, which has so farbeen leaning against the system of sovereign nation-states, is today namely in anirreversible crisis. In the ‘cabaret of economic globalization’ with the construction of ade-territorialized Empire, the nation-state is being reduced to the indispensableminimum.

[It] shows itself as a table dancer that strips off everything until it is left withonly the minimum indispensable garments: repressive force. With itsmaterial base destroyed, its possibilities of sovereignty annulled, its politicalclasses blurred, nation-states become nothing more than a securityapparatus of megacorporations.59

Politics as the organizer of nation-states in this ‘new world order’ ceases to exist.Today politics is nothing more than the economic organizer and politicians areadministrators of companies, while ‘national’ governments are only responsible foradministering business in different regions of the Empire. This type of politicalarchitecture is not a novum, but merely a continuation and perfection of thehegemonic logic which, in a changed environment, has consequently taken on a new

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form. According to Marcos, this is indeed a strange modernity that moves forward bygoing backward.60

Finally, we can agree with the thesis that a hegemonic notion of democracy onlyrecuperated the word, yet at the same time renounced its content. What thereforecomes as no surprise is the theoretical ‘radicalism’ which renounces the simplifiedtreatment of democracy as an invention and which, instead of a legal dimension,analyses the genealogical dimension or roots (lat. Radix) of democratic praxis. Theresult of this dualism and, above all, of this myopia that sees democracy comingthrough institutions alone includes, as stated by David Graeber, modern liberaldemocracies within which nothing remotely similar to the Athenian agora can befound, but are undoubtedly flooded with parallels to the Roman circus.61 Herearchitecture was certainly not the sole thing Graeber had in mind.

If we return to the closing words of the 1958 Program of the League of Communistsof Yugoslavia that the Praxis group took literally, ‘nothing that has been created can beso sacred to us that it cannot be transcended and superseded by something still freer,more progressive, and more human’.62 This is why the important task of theprefigurative adventure into new political structures and practices still lies ahead ofus. Here we must be guided by instructions offered by a coeval of the Yugoslavpraksisovci, the Martinique philosopher Frantz Fanon, who stressed that in our searchfor the new we should not pay tribute to the decadent past by creating new states,institutions and societies that still draw their inspiration from this past: ‘Humanityexpects other things from us than this grotesque and generally obscene emulation.[ . . . ] (I(f we want humanity to take one step forward, if we want to take it to anotherlevel [ . . . ], then we must innovate, we must be pioneers.’63

What is needed, therefore, is praxis.

Notes

[1] Laura Secor, ‘Testaments betrayed: Yugoslav intellectuals and the road to war’, in AlexanderStar (ed.), Quick Studies: The Best of Lingua Franca, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York,2002, p. 269.

[2] Gajo Petrovic, Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century: A Yugoslav Philosopher Reconsiders KarlMarx’s Writing, Anchor Books, Garden City, NY, 1967, p. 172.

[3] Gerson Sher, Praxis: Marxist Criticism and Dissent in Socialist Yugoslavia, Indiana UniversityPress, Bloomington, 1977, p. 22.

[4] Oskar Gruenwald, The Yugoslav Search for Man: Marxist Humanism in ContemporaryYugoslavia, J. F. Bergin, South Hadley, MA, 1982, p. 1.

[5] Cf. Gyorgy Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, Merlin Press, New York, 1971; KarlKorsch, Marxism and Philosophy, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1970; also Martin Jay,Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of the Concept from Lukacs to Habermas, University ofCalifornia Press, Berkeley, 1986.

[6] Sher, op. cit., p. 65.[7] Gruenwald, op. cit., p. 1.[8] Mihailo Markovic, From Affluence to Praxis: Philosophy and Social Criticism, The University of

Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1974, p. 64.[9] Marx in David A. Crocker, Praxis and Democratic Socialism, Humanities Press, Atlantic

Highlands, NJ, 1983, p. 13.[10] Gajo Petrovic, ‘Cemu Praxis?’, Praxis: filozofski casopis, I(1), September 1964, p. 3.

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[11] Cornel West, Democracy Matters, Penguin Books, New York, 2005, p. 68.[12] According to Marx, we can define alienation as a discrepancy between man’s current existence

and his potential essence; meaning a discrepancy between what man is and what he could be.Consequently, man is as much man of the future as man of the past, since he is not only whathe used to be but what he could become. Cf. Petrovic,Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century, op.cit., p. 80.

[13] Marx in Gajo Petrovic, Praksa/istina, Kulturno-prosvjetni sabor Hrvatske, Zagreb, 1986, p. 23.[14] It is here that we should point out that Marx himself, in spite of the clear demarcation

between practice and estranged labour, is inconsistent with this analytic division andterminology. As a result, there are occasional instances of equalizing the idea of practice withthe general concept of labour in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts themselves.Further obscurities appear in his later works where Marx drops use of the term practice andintroduces the concept of self-activity (Selbstbetatigung) as an opposite to labour. Petrovicremarks that the goal of Marx’s trans-philosophy and thought, notwithstanding all theinconsistencies and alterations of terminology, remained the same: changing labour into whathe calls ‘practice’ or ‘self-activity’ (der Verwandlung der Arbeit in Selbstbetatigung). SeePetrovic, Praksa/istina, op. cit., p. 25.

[15] Markovic, op. cit., p. 63.[16] According to Marx, the total abolition of labour is impossible for even on a higher level of

technological and social progress the production of material or routine labour within ‘thekingdom of necessity’ is compulsory. However, he also added that it can and must be reducedto a minimum so as to reach an optimal level of praxis. Ibid., pp. 63–64.

[17] Petrovic, Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century, op. cit., p. 13.[18] Ibid., pp. 31–32.[19] A similar trend of the denunciation of all dogmas can also be found in Yugoslav film, music,

art, architecture and literature. Markovic concludes that at that time socialist realism wasultimately denounced as a caricature of Marxists’ approach to art.

[20] Cf. Gajo Petrovic, Marx i maksisti, Odabrana djela, Vol. 3, Naprijed, Zagreb, 1986, pp. 150–151; Mihailo Markovic and Robert S. Cohen, Yugoslavia: The Rise and Fall of SocialistHumanism: A History of the Praxis Group, Spokesman Books, Nottingham, 1975, p. 16.

[21] Maurice Brinton, For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton, AK Press,Oakland, CA, 2004, p. 3.

[22] For more on the (dis)continuity of Marx’s thought, see Petrovic’s discussion ‘The continuityof Marx’s thought’, in Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century, op. cit., pp. 35–51.

[23] Fromm in Thomas B. Bottomore (ed.), Karl Marx: Early Writings, McGraw-Hill, New York,1963, p. i.

[24] According to Markovic the phase of theoretical development ends with the congress of theYugoslav Philosophical Association in Skopje in 1962 and with the publication of theanthology entitled Humanizam i socializam, which is the result of collaboration betweenZagreb and Belgrade philosophers. See Markovic and Cohen, op. cit., p. 24.

[25] Ibid., p. 23.[26] Cf. Gajo Petrovic, Cemu Praxis, Praxis, Zagreb, 1972, p. 162.[27] Gajo Petrovic, ‘The philosophical concept of revolution’, in Mihailo Markovic and Gajo

Petrovic (eds), Praxis: Yugoslav Essays in the Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences,D. Reidel, Boston, MA, 1979, pp. 152–153.

[28] For more on the ‘descriptive’ and ‘normative’ conceptions of human nature, see MihailoMarkovic, The Contemporary Marx: Essays on Humanist Communism, Spokesman Books,Nottingham, 1974, pp. 81–91.

[29] Petrovic, Praksa/istina, op. cit., p. 41. We could also note that praxis-philosophy renouncesthe concept of natura naturata (the comprehension of man in a historical sense of ‘things asthey now are or have become’), but instead assumes and sees it in terms of natura naturans(the comprehension of man in the philosophical sense of ‘things as they may become’).

[30] Markovic and Cohen, op. cit., p. 37.

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[31] The themes of the Korcula Summer School ranged from ‘Progress and Culture’ (1963), ‘TheMeaning and Perspectives of Socialism’ (1964), ‘What is History?’ (1965), ‘Creativity andReification’ (1967), ‘Marx and the Revolution’ (1968), ‘Power and Humanity’ (1969), ‘Hegeland the Contemporary Age; Lenin and the New Left’ (1970); ‘Utopia and Reality’ (1971),‘Freedom and Equality’ (1972), ‘The Bourgeois World and Socialism’ (1973) and ‘Art and theModern World’ (1974).

[32] Markovic and Cohen, op. cit., p. 11.[33] Ibid., pp. 39–40.[34] Ibid., p. 40.[35] Gerson Sher (ed.),Marxist Humanism and Praxis, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1978, p. 4.[36] Ibid.[37] Murray Bookchin, ‘Anarchism: past and present’, in Howard Ehrlich (ed.), Reinventing

Anarchy, Again, AK Press, Oakland, CA, 1996.[38] CrimethInc., Expect Resistance: A Crimethink Field Manual, CrimethInc., Salem, OR, 2007, p.

78.[39] James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcript, Yale University

Press, New Haven, CT, 1990, p. 184.[40] Ibid., p. 200.[41] James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale University

Press, New Haven, CT, 1985, p. 292.[42] Ibid., p. 36.[43] Ibid., p. 35.[44] Richard J. F. Day, Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements, Pluto

Press, London, 2005.[45] Subcomandante Marcos in Juana Ponce de Leon (ed.), Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected

Writings of Subcomandante Marcos, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2001, p. 125.[46] David Graeber and Andrej Grubacic, ‘Anarchism, or the revolutionary movement of the

twenty-first century’, ,http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/9258. (accessed12 July 2012).

[47] People’s Global Action (PGA), ‘Hallmarks’, ,http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/en/.(accessed 12 July 2012).

[48] Giorel Curran, 21st Century Dissent: Anarchism, Anti-Globalization and Environmentalism,Palgrave, New York, 2006, p. 64.

[49] Ibid., p. 2.[50] Dave Neal, ‘Anarchism: ideology or methodology?’, ,http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/

dave-neal-anarchism-ideology-or-methodology. (accessed 12 July 2012).[51] David Graeber, ‘The new anarchists’, in Tom Mertes (ed.), A Movement of Movements: Is

Another World Really Possible?, Verso, New York, 2004, p. 212.[52] Barbara Epstein, ‘Anarchism and the anti-globalisation movement’, Monthly Review, 53(4),

September 2001, pp. 1–14.[53] Ibid., p. 1.[54] Andrej Grubacic, ‘Towards another anarchism’, in Jai Sen et al. (eds), World Social Forum:

Challenging Empires, The Viveka Foundation, New Delhi, 2004, p. 35.[55] Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2009, p. 673.[56] Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, Dover, Mineola, NY, 1969 (1910), p. 63.[57] Cf. Nicos Poulantzas, ‘La crise politique, et la crise de l’etat’, in James Martin (ed.), The

Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law and the State, Verso, London, 2008, pp. 294–322.[58] For an English translation of the communique, see Subcomandante Marcos, ‘The seven loose

pieces of the global jigsaw puzzle’, in Ziga Vodovnik (ed.), Ya Basta!—Ten Years of theZapatista Uprising, AK Press, Oakland, CA, 2004, pp. 257–278.

[59] Ibid., p. 271.[60] Ibid., p. 258.[61] Ibid., p. 366.

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[62] In Sher, Praxis, op. cit., p. 3.[63] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Groove Press, New York, 2004, p. 239.

Ziga Vodovnik, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Faculty ofSocial Sciences, University of Ljubljana. His teaching and research focus on socialmovements in the Americas, contemporary political theories and praxes, and thehistory of political ideas.

Address for correspondence: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana,Kardeljeva Pl. 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Email: [email protected]

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