Throwing a brick through the storefront of a Starbucks is never going to hurt the people in power. Howard Schulz is never going to know, care, or be impacted in any way. However, that action does directly harm the marginalized people who will come into work the next day and need to sweep up the broken glass.
Capitalism is precisely structured in a way that the people on the bottom will always get hurt before the people on the top. That’s how it works. That’s on purpose.
You can acknowledge the harm done to the person who’s in just as shitty a situation as you are, or potentially worse, and still take the action and throw a brick through the window of Starbucks because violence is the language that gets listened to, no matter what peaceful protest advocates will say.
Breaking a window doesn’t do much. Just like missing a loan payment causes harm. And so does individually choosing not to work. But when people are breaking every window in 5th Avenue, or every window in Manhattan…. That’s different. That’s the whole building rent striking. That’s when people take notice.
It’s helpful to remember that pretty much all effective interventions have harms and recognize that it comes from the way the system is structured.
But how do you decide – does the good from breaking a window that outweigh the harm?
Is using the faming of “ends” and whether they “justify” the “means” an inherently capitalist stance on value?
How do you decide which harms are still “the right thing to do”?
Especially when, by throwing a brick, you’re making the choice for the worker, whereas other labor movements that cause harm to workers (like strikes) are chosen by the workers themselves.
Not only that – how do we distinguish harm from violence? Are they synonymous? Is economic harm on par with physical violence?
To answer that last question – one could say, yes, under capitalism. It’s not direct, but your physical body suffers when you can’t afford to eat.
So, should we bother to differentiate the two? Some would argue that it’s easy to use violence (systemic harms) to justify violence (physical attacks on individuals). When (if ever) can violence be justified.
And the more important anarchist question of who gets to make that call. Because violence, by definition, is non-consensual. It’s a power relationship. It’s a hierarchy. Violence against those in systemic power is inverting the power structure, not removing it. And sometimes that’s a valid choice. But we need to acknowledge that it’s not anarchist and is leveraging power. It’s bathing in the very thing our movement is meant to destroy.
At the end of the day, how the hell are we gonna change this system without violence. Peaceful protests are always accompanied by non-peaceful means that get results. Economic/property damage is harm. It’s not violence.
The State has a monopoly on legitimized violence, that’s what makes it the State. The state also does harm, but so do individuals, corporations, etc – and legally and within the parameters of the system. But within the parameters of the system, only the state is the one who can wield violence against people.
What do we learn from all this? Maybe nothing. But some theorists will say we should always act to reduce harm. Will that stay the hand of the brick-thrower? Will it compel the striking worker to cross the picket line? Is immediate or long-term harm a metric worth measuring actions on?
And really, who gets to make that call for others?
>kria