Disaster Anarchism (An Argument Against Insurrection)
It is at this point that we must discuss important two facts:
- It is easier to raise an insurrection to defend systems people want, than it is to build systems that people want during an insurrection.
- A sufficiently advanced disaster preparedness and response program is indistinguishable from a revolutionary counter-power.
The United States military is, first and foremost, a logistics machine. The combat capabilities of military forces universally relies on providing soldiers with what they need to continue fighting. This has been true for more than two thousand years since Sun Tzu said, “The line between disorder and order lies in logistics.”
The primary focus of wars between regular armies is logistic infrastructure. The primary focus of US forces during the Vietnam War was the destruction of the Ho Chi Mihn trail (not actually a trail, but a dynamic logistic network that included multiple trails where supplies were moved primarily by bicycle). Carpet bombing and defoliation was not able to destroy this network. Ultimately North Vietnamese soldiers were able to attack core US supply lines (also, heavily employing bicycles, interestingly enough), leading to the catastrophic collapse of US and US backed forces and a rapid withdrawal of US troops.
While logistics are the core of military strategy, the need for resources grows as oppositional pressure mounts. Revolutionary attacks are, by definition, illegal. Revolutionary forces must exist outside of the dominant system. This means that a counter-power system is immediately necessary after the very first confrontation with the dominant system. A revolutionary movement needs above ground (legal) and an underground (illegal) elements in order to fulfill it’s requirements. It is difficult or impossible to build above ground power while operating completely underground.
If, however, a revolutionary program can develop above ground viability first, then it can maintain above ground ties as parts of it fall in to legal gray areas (or completely in to the territory of illegal activity). This brings us to our second fact. Disaster preparedness means preparing for, at the very least, short term systemic collapse. A rural windstorm can knock out power for days or weeks. This temporarily disconnects a group of people from one element of the dominant system. In the interim, these people must rely on other systems: their own, or a local disaster prep network. Basic disaster preparedness means being prepared to replace the dominant system with an alternative system for (at least) a short period of time.
As a disaster preparedness program develops, it can consider more and more complex scenarios that require larger and longer term responses. A more advanced disaster preparedness program would look at the whole set of services offered by the operational units of the dominant system and identify more resilient replacement systems. These replacement systems can and should operate in parallel to those of the dominant system in order to develop and prove their resilience. An even more advanced disaster preparedness program still could identify opportunities to fulfill needs that are not currently fulfilled by the dominant system.
This is already developing in the US today as the illegalization of trans and reproductive healthcare eliminates the ability of the dominant system to fulfill those needs. Here, illegalism saves lives and demonstrates the viability of alternative systems. The failure of the state to regulate the housing market to fulfill the needs of the population has left multiple needs unmet for many people. People can be left without food, shelter, and sanitation. These mirror the needs of those impacted by natural disasters (some, in fact, are disaster refugees who are unserved by the dominant system). Systems that provide long-term support for houseless camps outside of the dominant system are necessarily building a system that works for those for whom the dominant system does not work.
A sufficiently advanced disaster preparedness and response program is prepared for the eventuality of the Neoliberal dismantling of the state, the collapse of capitalism itself, and the rise of fascism and tech feudalism. It must be prepared to provide for those who will be left behind, to protect those who will suffer, and also to defend, by any means necessary, those who are targeted. It must be able to do so in a sustainable way. It must be prepared to carry out revolution, if needed, because these eventualities all fall within the scope of disaster preparedness. The revolutionary capability simply extends naturally from the ability to maintain order (or create a better order) in the face of state withdrawal, as is common during all forms of disaster (natural and human created).
A disaster preparedness approach as a strategy of counter-power has a few added advantages for anarchists:
- It is prefigurative.
- It scales well.
- It is plausibly deniable (and therefore invisible, or, put another way, it is infrapolitical).
An insurrection-first approach immediately creates conflict. Even if it’s easy to argue that this conflict was already in existence and asymmetric, insurrection centers this symmetry and escalates. The resultant system is a conflict system. It’s purpose is destruction. If the conflict system somehow succeeds, it must then change it’s form and pivot to a creation system. It must pivot from destroying the old society to building the new one.
A disaster preparedness approach centers creation. It builds the new society “in the shell of the old.” Conflict is not the purpose of the system, but can be a subsystem that it develops to preserve the system’s primary function. The disaster preparedness system is a machine that produces and maintains systems to fulfill it’s purpose of creating a resilient society. (It just happens to be fortunately true that an egalitarian society is also a resilient one.)
In fact, a disaster preparedness system could, hypothetically, succeed without conflict and thus never need to develop a conflict subsystem at all. Not engaging in conflict is necessarily easier, allowing more resources to be devoted to creation. However, if conflict does become inevitable it’s already built to develop systems that manage threats. When threats to the system are neutralized, the disaster preparedness system doesn’t need to change it’s fundamental purpose and frantically reorganize itself in a power vacuum. Rather, the disaster preparedness system has always been built to fill a power vacuum and seamlessly transitions to being the dominant system.
Disaster preparedness can start at any scale and seamlessly scale up. Having water, food, and comrades in a disaster increases survivability and comfort over not having those things. Even the smallest and most basic system is helpful. Planet killing asteroids, power-grid destroying solar flares, global nuclear war, pandemics, and, of course, climate change, are all within the scope of disaster preparedness and response. These would, and do, require a global response. Climate change is a global disaster that can only be addressed by both the rapid disassembly of capitalism and a global effort to mitigate the massive damage that has already been done. Every step, every action, from the first to the last provides additional value to everyone involved. It is better to be prepared for disaster than not. It is better to be able to provide and receive mutual aid during a disaster than not. It is better to build systems to prevent disaster than not. Every step provides more value by working together than working alone.
In the age of polycrisis, even states promote (a specific type of) disaster preparedness. The right wing version of “the prepper movement” centers individualism and consumption: get a gun, buy this tool, build a bunker, etc. It overlaps almost entirely with the right wing militia movement for very similar reasons to those already described (and others that don’t need to be discussed). To right wing preppers, the concept of disaster prep is normal and therefore invisible. To the corporations, “preppers” are a market so disaster prep is a good thing. To statists, disaster prep means “sustaining society during crisis to hold space for the state to return.” No one imagines it as a threat. It’s difficult for the state to argue that disaster preparedness is bad when it is actively creating and mismanaging so many disasters. Rather, the state offloads the responsibility of disaster response to the individual. Therefore, disaster anarchism can take on the appearance of aligning with the interests of the state.
Even open threats, such as the stabilization and support of houseless camps, there are plausible deniable reasons why disaster prep would want to do such things. (“Houseless camps give us practice supporting displaced people, so the tactics we’re using here are really about preparing for other natural disasters… not helping marginalized people survive and build their own counter-power. Definitely not actually building a system to include people who are excluded by the existing one.”) Literally no one opposes disaster preparedness because it’s so obviously valuable. It is so tightly aligned with the interests of regular people, that even doing so would alienate the population and radicalize people further against any state that opposed it.