Here's some comments on the survey results from a Common Cause member in Toronto.
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Greetings:
I posted the comments below on Facebook to the release of a demographic survey of anarchists. A comrade highlighted the fact that anarchists in North America and Europe are largely white and over 40% hold university degrees.
Actual comment from the comrade on FB:
88.5% of respondents were white. Why is that? Why is anarchism in North America and Europe so white? 48% of people who completed the survey were white straight men between the ages of 16 and 45.
To the people who identified themselves as "anarcho-capitalists," I have bad news: there is no such thing.
General US: 52% college or more
Anarchists: 61.4% college or more
General US: 24% have a university degree
Anarchists: 43.6% have a university degree
My comments:
It is certainly a concern for anarchists that our movement is largely white and draws members largely from university-educated people. When we look at the latter feature that development is really regrettable when we consider the fact that ...19th and early 20th century anarchism attracted members of the industrial proletariat, craft workers, the Makhnovist peasant formation in the Ukraine and anarchist ideas had appeal to peasants in parts of the Spanish countryside. Put today, we are largely appealing to radical intellectuals, artists, youth alienated from from home and society and members of the working-class who are not necessarily the most alienated of workers.
I would suggest that the appeal of anarchism to university-educated people may come from the fact that they have the time, space and resources to explore the the farce and repressive nature of the ideals of bourgeois society. Many many have gone into the world of work armed with credentials and found work to be a very alienating experience.
During the current academic year, I had the opportunity, as a teaching assistant, to work with teachers who were pursuing studies toward a Masters degree. I remarked to the class on reading their journals about the lack of control over their worklife that some of the features that they highlighted are substantively in sync with Marx's comments on the elements that are a part his labour alienation concept. Yet many of these teachers, as professional workers, would identify themselves as members of the middle-class...false consciousness here?
I singled out that experience so as to point to the possibility that people with the opportunity to explore worklife in professional and managerial roles as well as within the ranks of privileged white collar workers, may be better situated to see and know the illusion of seeking freedom within the norms of current society. It is not unusual to have kins of those of us from the working-class remarking how they would be able to advance their material life in society, if they had the credentials come graduate degrees.
But the people with these degrees know that is not necessarily the case. Please bring out the precarious academic workers with advanced degrees and lack of job security as Exhibit "A" for the position that capitalism has reduced or is reducing many of them to the status of academic or white collar proletariats.
But, the above state of affairs (if it is a plausible part of the explanation for the subject under discussion) does not absolve anarchists of the responsibility of carrying political education within the labour movement and the wider society on our vision and practice of the good and just society. Of equal importance is the necessity of working with the working-class in their present organizational formations and through work and struggle introduce anarchist ideas and practices in these spaces. Anarchism, especially its anarchist communist expression, must become a mass movement, if it is going to be relevant to 21st century life.
On the question of race, White anarchists must demonstrate through action that they are committed in thought and practice to the elimination of white supremacy from organizations and all areas of society. Talking is not enough. We must act.
In solidarity,
Ajamu Nangwaya
