No gods, no masters.
This is a sentence a lot of Western and Westernized anarchists stand hard for. A couple of decades ago I was myself a hard defender of that phrase based on my own experience as an involuntarily Catholic. This expression comes directly from Norwegian, and to me expresses exactly the position a lot of us are when our parents and communities decided to introduce us to certain religious institutions while we were children without our consent.
This involuntary membership and participation in certain religious activities where there was no room for critique of the hierarchical patriarchal approaches, the holly texts nor the space to make my own choices, I did developed a strong aversion to the Catholic institution. Its dogmas, its inherent violence, its love for power and capitalism, its lack of accountability. Still, I have noticed in the last decades that a growing paradox have been in my mind/heart, that paradox being how we navigate the complexity of freedom and spirituality in the same breath where we fight against all forms of oppression and violence.
I guess that continuing in the line of my own lived experiences, I understand now a bit more my profound hate towards the Catholic church after knowing the European history of proto-capitalism a bit more in detail. If any would mind reading about the birth of the institutionalization of the Catholic church, it is undeniable that it has strong ties to capitalism and later on to the nation-states until nowadays. The initial spiritual practices have been changing along with the possibility to own land and other possessions asking for servility for us peasants. Asking with blood from women, queer and children to achieve the erasure of the diversity of spiritual and political approaches tied to anarchist practices before feudal times in Europe. My animosity against institutionalized religion is then due to their ties to economic and political power, not necessarily against their spiritual principles by themselves.
We know also that Christian institutions in its different forms played a pivotal role in the European colonizing era, and yes, still nowadays. It was from moral Christian religious perspectives that all people from outside Europe were considered ungodly and therefore, unhuman. It was the Christian churches that laid the ground for racist and eugenicist thoughts that later were rationalized and organized through the Western scientific approach. We know also very well how Christianity has in modern times been linked to fascism, as its natural evolution from the early times tying their religious power to royal control. Here starts the big myriad of combined analysis that I will try to entangle now. This is not an easy task, and I hope it makes sense to clarify from the start that several realities can be true at the same time.
Anarchist metaphysics, or the right to revolutionary spirituality
At this particular time most of us should be aware that anarcho-christians or ancho-muslims, along with other spiritual anarchists like Indigenous anarchists, exist by their own right. It should be needless to say that people can be spiritual and anarchist (and much more) at the same time, but still I have seen internal attacks in how anarchist you are measured to be if you raise metaphysical questions to our political approach or even people defend their right to be spiritual. Why do some people create these false dichotomies between the right to be spiritual and the right to define ourselves and live as anarchists?
Here comes another bit of that paradox between metaphysics and anarchism. Should anarchism deny that there is something more that our physical reality? Or in any case, isn’t it a bit strange as anarchists to deny other people their right to believe and be spiritual just because some of us define ourselves as agnostics or even atheists? I guess a part of this reflexion is to make an explicit difference between metaphysics as a philosophical approach to understand the world in its complexity connected to the personal spiritual beliefs from institutionalized religions with a long history of violence and oppression against people around the world.
In the last decade I have tried to navigate this paradox landing in the wish to abolish the latter and at the same time acknowledging that some people are spiritual and they still can fight for and practice anarchist principles. My rage against the Catholic church cannot create the false dichotomy that other people cannot define themselves as anarchists if they believe or they practice their own spirituality. I guess the dangers of denying other people’s freedom to belief, makes us fall in places close to the same dominant approach that denies individual freedom and the diversity of world views inside and outside Europe. This is something anarchists should avoid at all costs, and one good step forward is to be able to be self-critical when we get feedbacks from our comrades.
Anarchism is not a set of closed rules that is equally applied and lived for everybody, we should be careful of not falling in the Ten Commandments line of practice that we so wholeheartedly criticize.
Another nuance of this paradox is the fact that anarchism relies heavily on rationalism. From our arguments to some of our political principles are based on this Cartesian idea that our thoughts are more important that our feelings or beliefs. We have to be extremely careful here again, and even remember that for centuries, is precisely rationality that has been used a main tool for racism and ableism to justify genocide, dispossession and liberalism. The critique against Western rationality is a topic anarchists must work with heavily, because is not rationalism that will make us a free, but our capacity to defend diversity through mutual aid and mutual care in creating alternatives outside capitalism. We shouldn’t accept this hardcore rationality that at the same time creates internal oppression in our movements, in fights for power and what way we should follow in our daily struggles.
Here then we should ask ourselves, is it possible and even desirable to open up for anarchist metaphysics? How could be fight against institutionalized religions while we support people’s right to their spirituality?
A “rational” fight against own own nature
It is important to highlight that this reflexion is not a monologue on a (ironically enough) Sunday morning.I have been wondering lately if it isn’t about time to speak about anarchismS. not anarchism. True enough through social media people tend to approach anarchist principles through certain classical sources with strong European ties. A lot of people believe that a person cannot practice anarchism if they haven’t read Bakunin, Kropotkin or Goldman. While it is wonderful to read or listen to our own classics, that doesn’t mean we can’t be critical to them and even more, that a lot of interesting anarchist voices live nowadays and we should all create dialogue and international mutual aid practices.
The case is that our anti-capitalist fights cannot be fought if we deny each others right to have a spiritual life. We can’t deny people’s spirituality relying in the statement that our freedom is just gained by our capacity of being rational. Some of us know very well the price we pay for relying too much on rationality as measurement for our right to be human and to be free. It might be true we are capable of thinking, but most importantly is our capacity of feeling, believing, being that makes us humans. In fact this is a part where we should acknowledge that our fight against rationality is the anarchist fight against colonialism, class and hierarchies. Though Marx stated that religion is the opium of the masses, I think we can agree that not only religion, but especially institutionalized religion is the controlling tool of the powerful. People have the right to be spiritual, but it can’t be coerced or controlled by any political, religious or economic institution. It is ironic that certain thinkers always treat people as a manipulated group not pointing at all the violence and control that throughout centuries Christian institutions used against people in Europe, for example with the Inquisition or the witch hunts.
It is not a coincidence to choose this quote from Marx, because other anarchist thinkers shared his critical view at a higher degree, like Emma Goldman shows in this quote Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion.But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. And yet, I still read it a strong critic of institutionalized religion as we know it in Europe, with all the history it bears with it, but still our spirituality is not an immovable truth nor inherently tyrannical by itself.
It is in the moment it gathers with hierarchical institutions of power that decide to use certain principles to control people, that spirituality turns into a dangerous religion.
That is why I find it important to open up for this paradox that should be analyzed and understood through dialogue. Unlike Goldman here, we shouldn’t be assuming that people become easily manipulated because they believe, because something completely different is engaging in spiritual practices without any own ethical and empathetic sense to others.
In fact, a lot of oppressed people find some comfort in their shared spiritual practices where they find collective strength to overcome and fight oppression together. As hard it has been for me to grasp and fully understand these realities, I have started to acknowledge that it is just another way of practicing mutual aid and mutual care linked to anti-colonial approaches. Through rituals, through shared food, through comforting songs. By no means I romanticize all spiritual practices because some of them are highly harmful and controlling, but the nuances are in front of our eyes and the important thing is to still fight together against interpersonal violence originated by certain religious believes as much as we fight against all forms of oppression. We have all the duty to be anti-colonial, and that means also accepting that the path to collective freedom is not just European atheist.
Are gods and religious institutions completely synonymous?
Back to the anarchist phrase, No gods, no masters. In the English language God has a very defined sense connected to Abrahamic figurative representation of a powerful higher male being. the thing is, every culture and language use other concepts to their spiritual believes and practices connected to one essence or essences beyond humans. Do gods necessarily mean the construction of institutionalized religions? The answer is no.
As much as rationality has wrongly been used to narrowly define us as humans, gods cannot directly be linked to institutionalized religions. This detail is not included in the famous anarchist phrase because once again, that understanding of god is pretty Ethnocentric and Christian. And by that, we erase other people’s realities around their believes and spiritual practices that in many cases have supported them against their resistance against European colonialism and later, Western neocolonialism.
Still, as powerful and controlling figures gods have been used to create social rules and routines to uphold certain political and cultural dynamics throughout history. So as anarchists we need to make space for the diversity of images of gods and be very aware that though some of us are strongly abolitionists of our own religious institutions, it might happen that for other people their gods can have a similar function of resistance against capitalism in all its forms. Should we ditch the phrase? Not necessarily, could be rephrase it to be more concrete and culture sensitive? That would be really nice.
Then again, perhaps is time to become much more precise in our critiques against religious institutions and still let people choose their spiritual paths if that is part of their liberatory journeys. It is about time to open up for anarchisms and to keep on holding each other accountable to be coherent and live lifes aligned with
our principles. We can all reflect and have some more metaphysical talks about this paradox some time.
More than this and that 