Anarchy 85/Utopian means they don't want to do it!
want to do it!
pg: Well, I’m not a utopian in any conventional sense of the term. Anyway, the people who use the word utopian generally use it as a curse word, don’t they? Utopian means that they don’t want to do it! You know, they’re not fundamentally interested, they’ve got some other line. If by utopian we mean that somebody has some large preconceived notion of how the world in a big way would look, and he wants to impose that on other people as their scene, I think that’s fascism. I’m not interested. That seems to me to be a complete burdening.
There are in fact very many things which could be done far better in the present situation, far cheaper, and much more simply. Generally that requires an act of will or political power. Now, how to get the political power to do even small things, like taking the money that is used for the New York public school system and dividing it up between a thousand little independent schools? Because that would be far better than what we’ve got right now. It wouldn’t cost more, it wouldn’t require more teachers, and so on. You see, there’s nothing “utopian” about this kind of scheme, except that they aren’t going to do it!
It’s a power question. Of course, it’s a question of political action too. Now, I happen to be terrible at politics. So instead, you say to the professional: Look, this is the way to do it, now go do it. Then he says: But that requires power. Of course it does. So go get the power!
There’s something else that I do as well. It’s a kind of trick. The Americans—Of course, this sometimes has consequences. Take, for example, Students for a Democratic Society. Their founding manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, was almost entirely taken from a couple of books of mine. But then there come in as well some decentralist ideas. And they’re not my ideas that they’re thinking of. Their ideas are specific to the situation, as they have to be. If you want to know how to do social welfare in some small American town, you don’t read theory and you don’t think about it a priori. You look at the people. And you know, you look at what’s needed. But the fact that you can do it decentrally, I apparently taught them. Now if you take many of my schemes literally, seriously, as something actually to do and make, then it would be “utopian”. But I’ve got no interest in that. In fact, I think it would be wicked to try to spell them out. to inflict them on people. Is that clear?
rb: Yes. In fact, it’s true then that you see yourself more as a kind of activating catalyst?
pg: That’s right. But then there are many other things that are really terribly simple, and you just do them. For instance, take our Off-Broadway Theatre in New York. You know, for a time, when the Becks were there, that was the best damn theatre there was. But we made all that up out of our heads. You know, Julian and I got together and said: OK, we can’t get a theatre, we’ll use something else. Julian’s very enterprising, and he found an old department store. OK, we’ll convert it. So we all went down there, and we laid the bricks and worked at it ourselves, and it got to be the Living Theatre. What’s “utopian” about that? Now, many people would have said: That’s impossible, you know, because of all the commercial pressures on the Broadway stage, and so forth. But that’s a lot of bullshit. It’s not the least bit impossible. If you talk about it, it’s Utopian. If you go and do it, it’s certainly not Utopian.
rb: What do you think of the idea that this kind of do-
But there’s another side to this. If you take something like the Vietnam war, for instance, where we’re actually going out there, tormenting and dementing people, then you have to devote yourself to stopping it. Which is a bore, but nevertheless it has to be done. We can’t just go on letting airmen drop bombs on some poor people’s heads. There’s absolutely nothing entertaining whatever about burning your draft card, or sitting in a jail, or getting your head busted on the picket line, or whatever. But you have no choice. You understand? These are different issues. That is, if you’re doing some enterprise, you do it for its own sake, and if it’s a good enterprise it will necessarily help lead to a better world. On the other hand, when something hellish is going on, like the Vietnam war, you’ve got to stop it. This is Malatesta’s great point. If only they’d let us alone, then we’re fine. But they won’t let us alone! By the way, Malatesta saw clearly this very fine balance where violence is concerned: if they’d let us alone, we’re not violent. But they won’t get off our backs. They insist on using our taxes, etc., for bombs. But we don’t want that. Therefore, don’t pay the taxes. I’m a tax refuser, but there’s not enough of us.
Power should always be very closely scaled to function. Where it gets very bad is when you have some abstract seat of power which then exercises itself in carrying on functions. The power should be very closely related to what is necessary to do the function. That is to say, if I want some space to carry on a theatre, activity, or a school meeting or something like that, I want as much power as allows me free access to that space when I’m using it, and no more. And when I’m not using it, then I shouldn’t have the power over it at all. I don’t think I can say it better than that.
cw: How about eroding the power of those who hold it?
pg: If they prevent natural function from going on, which in fact they do all the time, then you have to erode it. You have no choice. If they won’t let life go on, you have to stop them. But of course, this does not mean that you replace their power. It means getting rid of their power so that everybody has as little power as possible.
rb: This is the same as making inroads into their power with your own freedom, is it not, and extending spheres of free action till, hopefully, they make up the most of social life?
pg: Yes, that’s another way to look at it, but really I couldn’t give a damn, as long as they aren’t killing peasants.
