Mutual care and collective responsibility: anarcha-feminist dynamics to destroy intimate authoritarianism and capitalism

A lot has been written about how principles of anarchism are seen as alternatives to capitalism and all its mutations the last 200 years. Collective resistance has always existed in different forms throughout all geographies, but now it might seem the resistance is more atomized than ever.

There are many reasons behind the fact that individualistic atomization is harmful to our common resistance and to co-create new living alternatives outside capitalism. It is important to highlight though, that diversity of political strategies within anarchisms it is not the same as the neoliberal individualism where we are just consumers. Sadly we have been witnessing a neoliberalization of anarchist spaces where the goal is to increase consumption at the expense of creating anarchist communities based on mutual care and collective responsibility. The specific examples are too many to explain, but the common dynamic in some anarchist spaces is to prioritize quantity and production instead the co-creation of quality of knowledge and inclusive actions.

Some still deny the importance of mutual care as part of the Kropotkin’s well-known mutual aid principle. Apparently Kropotkin forgot to acknowledge in his observations of mutual aid among animals and different cultural groups outside and in Europe, that feelings and emotions are a common treat among human and non-human animals. In fact in his book Mutual Aid. A factor of evolution he writes about parental feelings in animals, sociable feelings, moral feelings such as friendship or solidarity, love and sympathy, but he made the mistake of labeling other feelings as being attached to some form of higher intelligence. In searching for other feelings such as anger, loneliness, sadness or fearful, his book lacks the depth to explain how it affects mutual aid from anarchist perspectives. How does this lack of acknowledgment of the layered human emotional experience affects anarchist spaces nowadays?

Toxic positivity to defend institutionalized groups and authoritarian systems can’t support mutual aid in anarchist groups and collectives

From my own perspective, and after many talks with others, it might seem that the historical invizibilization of the diversity of feelings and emotions we have navigating patriarchal oppression and capitalism’s mutations is one of many elephants in our anarchist rooms. We are supposed to deny certain feelings and emotions in awe for the greater good of letting certain abusive figures to stay despite their authoritarian and damaging ways, in order to maintain a false sense of peace and cohesion within our groups.

I think a lot of us are pretty clear that Kropotkin’s book, and many others after him, could be labelled today as toxic positive. Mutual aid is just not an instrumental process to build horizontal hierarchies without involvement of the commodification of our bodies and time, but it has to include mutual care at an interpersonal level to be a real alternative for support, acknowledgement, friendship and love. This must include the fact that we also can experience sadness, fear, anger and disgust when we are sharing spaces with certain comrades that ignore and dismiss feelings that are labeled as negative in neoliberal societies. As much as we should actively deny to be happy consumers praying to have full bank accounts, we should continue to actively deny the organized form of gaslighting in our movements. We are expected to be quiet and compliant in the face of internal abuse and oppressions, and we know that silence will not protect us. The problem that has a historical relevance now is that the same imposed silence and denial of our experiences, is the one atomizing our movements.

It is impossible to build mutual care in environments that have dynamics supported by toxic positivity, idolization and unnecessary hierarchies within the credibility economy in anarchism. When certain opinions of self-attributed figures and even exclusionary processes are the ones leading, then we have neither justice nor collective accountability to rely on.

Radical mutual care as core in mutual aid, the next anti-capitalist step towards collective liberation

Never before have we had the levels of mental health problems in our societies as we have in this historical period of time. Not only the disconnection between us to achieve this unrealistic and completely self-destructive fake idea of being free individuals, but also the weight of the reality living in an ecocide lead by tech-oligarchs arise our uncertainty and discouragement.

In this scenario we know that a lot of us are suffering, and unfortunately a lot of our anarchist spaces are far from being safe spaces where to rely on to other comrades and friends. It is certain that it might not be necessary to be close friends with every person we meet, but at least we should be determined to not abuse, oppress and exclude in any possible way. Unfortunately, many anarchist spaces and idolized figures hide their dreadful actions behind a pink-washing of good intentions tokenizing women and feminine people to hide the fact they just treat people as disposable workers as much as Amazon, Tesla, Nestlé or any other shitty corporation do. In words of Lee Cicuta, we have a real problem with intimate authoritarianism in our spaces that a lot of comrades blatantly deny and cover daily, especially because “The most successful abusers are those who can leverage interpersonal, ideological, systemic and communal factors to gain coercive control.” And they very much exist in our spaces.

We are not meant to disturb the fake patriarchal and abusive peace of certain collectives, and there is even individuals who have normalized this toxic positivity thinking they can change it from the inside. And the story just goes on without an substantial changes, because solidarity and mutual support are just buzzwords for those who see themselves as Messias of our groups and collectives. They even weaponize mental health language while they put themselves in a role of being unaware into the reasons behind people leaving our groups and movements. Apparently is great to bow to anarchist slogans and play tough, but then some are just thrilled of getting rid of individuals who dare to confront their harmful attitudes, patterns and abuse to continue the same spiteful neoliberal dynamics they so loudly criticize in their books, texts and in the streets.

Thankfully we can also find spaces and collectives where mutual care is the core of the groups. There is space and safety to open up on all the different paths in the co-creation of anarchist communities, creating both in person and digitally small communities we can rely on. There a difficult matter or individual experiences are always collectively acknowledged, and the level of safety is built in the collective affective and emotional responsibility when oppression, bigotry and abuse is politicized. This is not necessarily nothing new, but our demand is that this is how every single anarchist group, collective and movement should organize without giving the responsibility for this emotional work to the same people who are oppressed internally.

We understand well that the practices of mutual care might not have been written by a bearded cishet man, but if we anarchist do not unlearn our internalized patriarchal neoliberalism in order to embrace our human vulnerabilities, we are still going to accept abuse and bigotry in our spaces and we will be remain as atomized and incoherent alternatives to capitalism.

Anger and despair as construction tools

We need to embrace our uncomfortable feelings individually while we acknowledge that we have to seriously tidy up internally in our groups if we are going to co-create anarchist communities in the face of fascism and destruction. We will not accept more small tyrants and enablers in search of power. Our anger and sadness, as well as the despair are natural reactions to dishonesty, abuse and authoritarian clowns in our spaces. Our reactions are natural in the face of the double and triple threats we try to navigate in, and though a lot of people will deny them trying to hide them under the rug, our existence is the reminder that our anger is just a mirror of all the work we have to do to become strong and safe collectives.

A lot of us get pointed at as annoying when we dare to show feelings and contradict the toxic systems in anarchist spaces supporting abuse and harm, since they are clearly a huge hinder to focus on revolutionary direct actions and mutual care. Our anger should be used to destroy the internal systems in our spaces that uphold abuse and harm, while we continue building spaces based on mutual care.

Mutual care as inherent part of mutual aid is not debatable, it is just a necessary dynamic we need to practice everyday together and both people and systems that threaten and sabotage this in our own movements, should be expelled and changed drastically. Mutual aid can’t exist in toxic patriarchal neoliberalized environments, and with our anger we should make them obsolete.

Source:Morethanthisandthat.wordpress.com

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