Before reaching the Stars By Wat Wanlyangkun

 

Before reaching the Stars

By Wat Wanlyangkun

Mother walked slowly away from the abbot’s residence, past the sandy courtyard and the shade of the pikun tree, towards the rear of the central shrine, One hand carefully supported a water-bowl, while the other held a rattan basket used for carrying the things needed for merit-making. A horned owl moaned softly from a dark corner of the shrine’s eaves. The sweet scent of frangipani blossoms drifted towards he with the breeze and the gentle waving of the flowering grass. Mother sank wearily down in front of the mortuary containing her dead son’s body¹. With its oblong shape it looked like a coffin, except that it was made of cement-- and the smell of fresh cement still lingered in the air. There were other, identical mortuaries stretched out in a long row. The empty ones looked like dark caverns. And adjacent to the mortuaries little memorial stupas ringed the central shrine, whose dingy white walls were crumbling away in places from sheer age.

Mother carefully laid down a tray, on which she’d placed white porcelain cups filled with rice, kaeng som phak krajiap, fried salted fish, chiffon- and sticky layer-cakes². The smell of the kaeng som wafting into her nostrils reminded her of him so much that the tears welled up in her eyes. Roy had loved it ever since he was a little boy, especially with fried salted fish, and he’d eat up rice like no one else. The soft, fluffy, pink chiffon-cake looked so tempting to the touch, while the sticky layer-cakes had the red of blood. So Roy used to tell her. Sobs formed a choking lump in her throat. She had never dreamed that her son’s life would come to a bloody end as two bullets pierced his tender flesh. Roy must have suffered, but her suffering was still worse. A pain not visible to the eye, but experienced in the heart, in the feeling, above all in the feeling of a mother. She didn’t understand how some people could be so cruel as to devour the flesh and blood of their fellow men… Softly Mother muttered his name… “Child, come and eat your food…”³ Then she pushed forward the engraved water-bowl, which still had a few grains of well-cooked rice stuck to it here and there, dipped her forefinger into the water, murmured prayers⁴. And, as she slowly closed her eyes, clear drops trickled from the corners down the wrinkles on her cheeks.

Before she’d rowed the boat away from the temple-jetty, the abbot had been kind enough to come and talk to her, and speak to her about her son. The words that still rang in her ears were: “Roy was a good boy, dear lady, well-behaved, quiet, and serious. Who could have had the heart to do him harm?… These days people have become so cruel…”

Mother had heard praise of this kind ever since Roy was a little boy. And when she heard it repeated now, she couldn’t help feeling proud and happy. When Roy had grown up to be a young man and had gone off to study in Bangkok, he remained her own adorable son, unchanged. When she said that students didn’t have to wear their hair long, he cut his short. It got to the point that she felt hesitant to scold him. If she wanted to give him some advice, she had to think it over very carefully before she brought it up: so much so that Ro, her youngest boy, used to tease her by saying that she had a saint for a son.

There was only one thing she couldn’t stop him doing-- when he broke the news to her that he probably wouldn’t be able to finish college in four years because he had to devote part of his time to “activities”. Mother later came to understand that these “activities” meant politics.

“Politics aren’t what I’m really after. I’m using my time to study and learn about the problems of the poor, who are so much poorer than we, who don’t eat three meals a day, and who have to do heavy work as manual laborers, hiring themselves out for low wages. When they demand fair pay, and appeal for help, how could you have me stand idly by, Mother? Or when the peasants demand justice, sometimes to the point of having to make demonstrations, I can’t possibly rest comfortably through it all. I’m concerned about our poor, not about politics. But politics concerns itself with me. So we can’t escape it…”

But no matter what reasons he gave, Mother loved him too devotedly to accept them. The very word “demonstration” pierced her to the quick. She couldn’t bear to look at the photos of the young men and women gunned down on the streets during October 1973⁵. Worse than that, her thoughts would fly ahead in so many directions: if there was a mass demonstration, and someone threw even a single bomb, rows of people would be killed or wounded. She urged him to hurry up and finish his studies, hurry and get a job and settled down like his older brothers and sisters, so she could stop worrying about him… Roy couldn’t explain and get his mother to accept his reasons; so he’d just keep silent, listening quietly to her advice. But as the days passed, she had to recognize with a sigh that he was not following that advice. After that, Roy gradually drew away from his mother. Only once in a long while would he come back to visit his riverside home, even though it was really not that far from Bangkok. The one thing that deeply pleased his mother, though, wast Roy finally graduated, even though he took longer than usual to complete his studies.

She’d written to congratulate him. Yet in the letter she’d used the words “obstinate child”. For, no matter what, she remained just as concerned as ever, and urged him to hurry up and find a job.

“It won’t be many years now before Ro finishes high-school, and we’d like him to continue his schooling in Bangkok. If you can get a job with a salary befitting your education, it’ll mean you’ll have got settled, and won’t have to go on being a burden to your uncle. Your little brother can depend on you from then on, and I won’t have to worry any more. Now that you’ve graduated, you won’t get involved with those demonstrations any more, will you? It was all well and good while you were still a student. I’m sure someone like you, Roy, won’t take more than a few years to get settled. It’ll be much better if you set your mind to establishing yourself first. I’ve never been disappointed in your elder brothers and sisters. They’ve all done well, every one of them. Just two weeks ago, in fact, your elder brother Rong bought me a radio-tape recorder set, boasting that he got it in Japan. I think his company must have sent him there-- his boss must like him a lot. I feel very happy for him. And it looks like your little brother’s crazy about this present. Ro listens to it day and night, and pays no attention to his books, so I’ve had to put my foot down”.

Mother tied the boat to the bridge and scooped up some water to rub her face clean of the dirt and dust of her grief. The samun-tree by the water’s edge was beginning to change its leaves to welcome the cool season. Little Ro, wearing nothing but a pair of khaki shorts, was lying prone on the floorboards reading a newspaper. By his side lay the brand new radio-tape recorder set, playing a song.

“Any news today?” Mother asked, picking up the betel-tray from inside the rattan offering-basket.

“They say Elder Brother’s case is still a mystery. They have to interview the people close to the case, but so far they haven’t been able to track them down. And the bullets taken from his body aren’t any use in solving the riddle. Another paper makes it out to be an affair with some woman. It also says he was an extremist and a troublemaker. So I didn’t buy that one. I was afraid you’d be upset”.

She was struck dumb. She sighed and shook her head without a word.

A moment later she told her youngest son to get the cassette, murmuring very softly “I’d like to hear it one more time. I miss him so much”.

She still remembered very well that after she’d sent the letter congratulating Roy on his graduation and urging him to hurry up and settle down, she’d heard nothing more from him. He seemed to have vanished as silently as a needle dropped into the sea, until one day he sent her two cassette tapes through the mail. The one with a dove on the outside was simply filled with songs; the other contained a recorded message for her from Roy.

“Dear respected Mother, I received your letter a long time ago. The reason I’ve been so long in answering isn’t because I don’t care about the family, but because I’ve been very busy with my work. Then, when I heard that Elder Brother Rong had bought you a radio-tape recorder, I waited till I had enough money to spare to buy a cassette. The other tape has songs on it that I want Ro to hear….

“I understand your love and concern, and I’ve been turning over in my mind for a long time how I could best express myself to you, so that we can really understand each other. Right now, I’m a reporter for a little newspaper. The salary isn’t very high, but I’m satisfied, because the paper takes its stand on the truth. It speaks for the poor and attacks those who take advantage of the great majority and sell out the country and the people. The truth is, I’ve been at this job since before I graduated. I didn’t dare tell you then. I was afraid you’d be upset. I hope you aren’t angry with me, Mother! If I’d waited till graduation to join the movement for justice, I’d have proved to be the kind who thinks first of himself-- and it would have been too late. So I joined in before I finished school. It was a golden opportunity for someone who believes danger for sure, especially for investigative reporters. I’ve seen poor, pitiful peasants murdered, one after the other, like fallen leaves. I’ve seen women workers bravely resisting the clique of savages. Sometimes they’ve been cruelly mowed down. If you’d met them, if you’d seen them, if you’d understood them, you wouldn’t be able to stand it either, Mother….

“Your love for your child may be so great that it prevents you from seeing things as they truly are. You’re afraid that your child will get hurt, get wounded by a fragment of an incendiary bomb, or be gunned down. I feel a deep warmth in my heart whenever I think of your loving concern. Yet I’d like to pass on to you something a friend of mine who works here with me once said. He said that death is a common thing and comes to everyone without fail. But before we die, we have three choices as to how to spend our lives. The first is just to drift along worthlessly, seeking only our own safety, and in the end dying in oblivion. The second way is to seek meaning in life, struggling against the oppression of the many by the few, working with a heart brimful of good intentions for our fellow-men, not as a sacrifice but as a duty. The last way is to live by seizing everything in sight for ourselves, to live without conscience, wallowing in selfish pleasures over the blood and tears of others, before dying to the sound of curses. Mother, which road would you want your son to take?….

“So it’s no wonder that sometimes we have to risk danger. Right now I’m investigating a case of some Thais who are conniving with the Americans to swindle our people out of a huge quantity of the nation’s priceless resources, destroying what ought to be for the people’s benefit. The accomplices of the farang are all bigshots with a lot of political and bureaucratic influence. The profits they’re making in this case are so enormous that we guess that any attempt to expose them will certainly be blocked. A modest step would be to shut down the markets to prevent the public reading the newspapers. The decisive step, though, could be shedding blood. Right now. We’re getting death threats on the telephone. But I won’t choose money or bullets, because I have my own right choice already. If such persecution develops, Mother, don’t be frightened; be proud that your son hasn’t lived in vain….

“Please tell Ro that the songs I’ve sent are songs with real substance and value, because they tell about the vast numbers of people who live in darkness and utter despair. I’m sure Ro will like the first song. The words are a kind of vow by someone who is ready to sacrifice even his life to help win peace and happiness for the mass of his fellowmen…

We ask to be corpses turn by turn,

piled on top of one another like a staircase,

high enough to reach the sky,

bringing the stars down to the earth.

If we make this world beautiful, and make the people in it happy and equal,

this world will be a star…

“Mother, in your life you’ve found some happiness. You’ve had enough over to give food to the monks every morning, while so many others have nothing, not even something to eat. They drown in the swelling flood of their debts. If you were ever really to experience all these things, I know that someone with your sense of justice wouldn’t be able to stand for it, and you’d see the need to join the struggle.

“I tried to communicate my thinking to the girl I used to love. I tried to get her to understand my work. But she left me. I’m sorry about it, of course, but it was unavoidable. We always went separate ways. She had no love to give to anyone else, not even to the pitiful and the starving. She saw only herself and me. She was trying to enter a framework from which I was escapiing. I’ve already lost one person that I loved. Don’t let me lose you too, Mother…”

The days passed smoothly by like the flow of water in a stream. Every evening, when her youngest son sprang up out of the outboard riverboat, she would poke out her head and ask right away whether there was any word of Roy. From this daily routine, she came to experience the sale of lies on the pages of newspapers. The more she insisted that Ro buy every newspaper that had any news of Roy, the more she was able to make comparisons, beginning with the investigating of Roy’s background. There were two papers which tried to show that Roy was a despicable character, with a deep inferiority complex. They also included an interview with a police officer to the effect that her son’s activities showed he was involved with the “ideology of the other side”. On the other hand, there was almost no interest in his unsolved murder-- to the point that the paper which had so often smeared Roy finally went so far as to say that his exposure of the giant mining swindle had sabotaged the national economy, made foreign countries afraid to invest their capital, increased unemployment, and led to chaos, following the blueprint of the “ideology of the other side”.

Mother put the ricebowl and the metal cooking-pot away in the rattan basket. She knelt respectfully before the abbot and then took her leave. She cast a glance at yesterday’s newspaper lying against the veranda of the abbot’s residence. The moment she could distinguish the color of the ink, she shuddered with disgust⁶. The abbot spoke up:

“Are you in a hurry to go and feed your boy”? She answered softly in the affirmative, and so he continued:

“When he was a boy your son seemed such a good lad. It’s only now I realize how mistaken I was. Who’d have thought that as he got older he’d turn into one of those extremists who are destroying the country. Too bad! Must have gone around with some fine friends, I suppose….” the abbot went on sarcastically. “That’s why these extremists don’t live long. Keep a close eye on little Ro; watch out or he’ll follow in his elder brother’s footsteps. Ah, the young people these days, they’re no good at all…” and he shook his head.

Mother’s face went burning red, her heart beat violently, and huge beads of sweat suddenly bathed her forehead. She quickly took her leave, unwilling to take any time to dip up water for the memorial libations. However, she didn’t want to blame the abbot either.

1Hollow cement structures for the storing of bodies prior to cremation. When “occupied,” their apertures are sealed with new cement.

2 Kaeng som phak krajiap a simple dish made of fish, okra, hot spices and tamarind. The sticky layer-cakes are made of flour, coconut cream, sugar, and coloring, usually constructed in alternate red and pink layers, and steamed before serving.

3It is a Thai custom to bring offerings to “feed” the deceased before cremation. Mother here is speaking to her dead son.

4She follows the traditional ritual for making offerings to the dead.

5A reference to the violent repression attempted against the mass demonstrations in Bangkok in early October 1973, which ultimately led to the fall of the Thanom-Praphat dictatorship on October 14^th.

6Thai dailies typically print their front pages with a particular brightly-colored ink, allowing easy identification from a distance.

The railway hamlet - Chatcharin Chaiwat

 

 

The Railway Hamlet by Chatcharin Chaiwat

The sky was an orange glare. The firewood, piled high as three men standing on top of one another, and stretched out in a long line, hid the living-quarters of the railway employees from sight, and let us see only one jagged half of the sun. when struck by its rays, the pile of rotting logs loomed like an ancient mountain. The children of the railway clerks and the other employees liked to run and play on it. Once in a while one heard that some railwayman’s baby boy had slipped and fallen off.

The sight of the orange April sun and the different colors of the children’s kites, swooping and darting through the grey smoke of the train hurtling in towards the station, was a delight to the eye. It meant that the railwayman’s wives would now be stepping out onto their porches and telling their older children to put away their kites and run to meet their fathers off the train. And the younger kids would be scrambling up onto the porches and peering out over the pile of firewood, watching their fathers waving from within the incoming coaches.

As the kites were put away and the sound of the train gradually died down, the children would run to take their fathers by the hand, put on their big railwaymen’s hats-which would flop loosely down, completely covering their eyes-hoot with laughter, pick up the fruit and toys, and race each other down the red-earth road.

“Peng” was the smallest of them all and rarely got the chance to do what all the others did. He’d been fatherless for a while now. Before that, he’d always raced us for his father to watch. His father had worked on the same train as mine. “Peng”, for all his tiny size, was a mischievous lad, every inch the son of his hard-drinking father.

He had two younger siblings, aged seven and three, and a mother whose hair was always a tangled mess. In those days we all smiled scornfully at “Peng”, because we knew he had no father any more. He’d stand there, picking the dried snot out of his nose, and watch us walk back from the train hand in hand with our fathers. Sometimes he’d run after us, cling to my father’s shirt and stare into his eyes for a long time. Sometimes he’d run to carry things for Father, and even have the nerve to call him “Daddy”.

That was why I got into a fight with “Peng” the day the railway put on a film-show down at the station. I was furious with him because he called my father “Daddy,” and Father in turn seemed so sorry for him. Sometimes, too, he’d make so bold as to carry the toys I should have been the one to get from Father and bring home. He could run faster than I and he’d always bring things to my mother before I could.

On the evening of the film-show at the station, we fought till I gave him a bloody nose. I called him names till a grown-up came to put a stop to it, and smacked me hard on the bottom. Everyone said how sorry they felt for him… “Damn him!” I’d say to myself, “I love my father too. He’s got no right to take him away from me”.

Everyone knew that the father of “Peng” was my father’s subordinate. His job was coupling the coaches to the locomotives.

He was also a ticket-collector and porter- what they call a ham lo¹.

We children remembered that day very well. The orange sky of the past few days had deepened into red. The train had come to a halt more quietly than usual, so quietly that even the children sensed something queer was up. There was an indescribable languor in the air. The kids were very tired that day, and were slow to run off to the station. “Peng” ran ahead of all the others, for today his father was coming home.

Not long after I’d brought Father’s things back to the house, to give him a bit of a rest, I realized something unusual had happened. All the people in the railwaymen’s quarters were clustered together, sitting and talking to one another, and staring at little “Peng”, who stood there picking his nose. Some muttered “How pitiful! His kids are still so young…” “Peng” came back to play with us as usual, but he seemed very quiet. Now, long afterwards, the word spread through the railway hamlet that as his father was coupling the coaches he’d been struck and dragged along the tracks through two stations, without anyone in the train noticing. I stood there staring at the corpse and “Peng”. It looked like meat chopped into jagged pieces. Most likely “Peng” couldn’t recognize his father either, for he didn’t cry, just stood there silent and impassive. My friends and I yelled at him that he was an ungrateful son for not crying when his father died.

The little kid had never been one to give in. Even though I was bigger than he, and taller by several spans, he fought me till my lips were split.

On the day of the funeral the whole railway hamlet seemed in a stupor. The children were all so scared that none of them dared to go out to take a bath that night. They were terrified that the ghost of the dead father would come to spook them. As soon as the drum began to thud, the sound of chanting monks could be heard throughout the hamlet. The children sat huddled in a group, all with their legs drawn up to their chests². It was even scarier at my house, for Father and Mother had gone to help with the funeral ceremonies. We kids wouldn’t let ourselves be separated from one another for a moment. We drew our legs up till our knees were stiff and sore. And when darkness fell, not a single streetlamp gleamed. All the roads had turned pitch-black. The sweet, sad music of the pi and so³ made several of us start crying in spite of ourselves. Not long afterwards there was a tap at the door, and the sound of a childish voice:

“Please open up! Mother’s sent me over with some curry”. Everyone immediately recognized the voice as that of “Peng”, but no one dared to open the door. Only one was brave enough to stretch out his hand and slide back the bolt. “Peng” poked his nose in the doorway, a mirthless smile on his lips. It made me see his father’s face in his.

“Put the curry down, and get out! Who knows, maybe your father’ll come after you to spook us!” I shouted at him. “Peng” smiled and left at once, with a firm step.

Not long afterwards my father moved to another province, and I came to grow up on Bangkok, climbing steadily through the school system. At the time we moved, “Peng” had become a young pushcart-vendor, selling water from door to door, at 5 baht a cartful. His mother sole khao yam⁴ at the railway station.

When I was full grown, with a deeper voice and a higher education, I went back to inspect the piece of land that Father had bought in the hamlet. Some of the older railway people I’d known were still around, though they’d aged. Some who where still young girls when I’d lived there, and attractive enough to have young men hanging round them all the time, now sold fried bananas or sticky rice along the footpath beside the railroad tracks. When I went back to visit them, some of the railway old-timers would greet me saying:

“Hey! When did you get back? You’re Old So-and-so’s boy, aren’t you? You’ve sure turned into a real Bangkok kid!”

I felt even more proud that my clothes were quite different from those of the other young men in the hamlet, and my accent, had completely changed from what it used to be. When I spoke, in fact, many of them had to cock their heads to catch what is was saying. They couldn’t stop expressing their admiration-- though actually it was nothing special. I looked different from them only because I’d had a chance to live in Bangkok for a while and had had a better education. Father had made some money by doing business from province to province, so my status immediately seemed far removed from theirs.

I walked farther and farther out along the road. Some women who’d been my playmates in the old days followed me on their bicycles in a straggly line. The stamp of a Bangkok kid must have been displayed conspicuously on my chest. The dust-choked red-earth road was exactly the same as it had always been. It was still a road I ought to tread on proudly: I’d had more opportunities than it, and that made me its “better”.

Soon afterwards I ran into my old friend “Peng”. There was no dried snot in his nose like there used to be. But he was still undersized, just as in the old days. His wife was very pretty, and they’d had two children. “Peng” now worked as a station employee, through the patronage of the new station-master for whom he’d worked as a houseboy earlier on. His hair was now smoothly combed. The minute I reached his house, “Peng” clutched my hand tightly, and held it for a long time without uttering a word. His manner was very deferential, not at all the way it had once been. When I settled into a chair, he lowered himself to sit down on the floor, even though it was his own house. “Tell me how long you’re staying, so I can make something for you to eat on the way back.” “Peng” spoke with a strong rural accent, and smiled so broadly that I could see all his black cigarette-stained teeth.

The truth is I felt pretty uncomfortable, for in the old days we had been equals. Our fathers had had almost the same rank at work. Even though his father had been no worse than mine. He’d often treated me-- and fought with me-- without any inhibitions. Inwardly puzzling how and why two people, who came from the same place, whose way of life had been so similar, could become so unequal, I leaned back, chatting casually. There was something that made me want to dash over and embrace him as a dear old friend; yet something else held me back –I couldn’t say exactly what. I only remember thinking that his sitting lower down made it difficult for me to jump up and hug him to my heart’s content.

I was staying at a hotel in town and had become a sort of local glamor-boy. All kinds of people cycled up and down by my hotel. Old friends came crowding in to visit. And the rich kids, who used to ignore me, now came to take me out. So I didn’t get a chance to follow up the invitation from “Peng” to go have a drink at his house.

The last time I saw “Peng” he spoke to me just as respectfully and deferentially as before. “Won’t you come and have a drink at my house? Please do, I’ve got everything prepared. And I’ve wrapped up some nam phrik⁵ for you to eat on your journey back.” I had stopped in once at his house. But when I saw the food he’d prepared, I lost interest. He’d set out a big gurami with some liquor, kung yam⁶, stir-fried leafy vegetables—and plain water. So this time I excused myself rather feebly, and went off to drink with some other friends at a restaurant on the beach.

That day, as I was walking home late in the afternoon, my face felt strained and an indescribable sensation flashed through my body, for once again the sky was an orange glare, deep almost to the point of red. The long bank of firewood was a dull grey. I rubbed my eyes, thinking maybe it was drink that made my face feel tight. Inside, a sudden pang knifed through my heart. The atmosphere in the hamlet revealed the pattern right away. The people on the platform sat in huddles, deathly silent. I saw his 5-year-old kid standing there stark naked, holding a piece of bamboo and scraping it back and forth through clots of blood…

Fragments of flesh were still stuck to the railway tracks. The smell of the blood, smeared about like the tears on the cheeks of his wife, was nauseating. Stiffened feet, streaked with crusted blood, protruded from under the stretch of the drab-white covering-sheet…. Another station old-timer was dead. He’d caught his leg in the coupling, and had been struck and hurled aside by the train. The white sheet, bulging according to the shape of the body underneath, looked ghastly, as ghastly as the day when “Peng” poked his nose in and set the curry down in front of the door of my house. It was the station-master who bought coffin into which the corpse was slowly lowered. The sky grew dark, crumpled horribly. The sound of the train’s whistle moaned like someone in his death throes. Many people couldn’t hold back their tears.

Once again the drum thudded insistently, just as on the day when the father of “Peng” had died. But this time it was “Peng” himself who was lying in the coffin. The so played in short, sharp beats, as before. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. My chest felt burning hot and suffocatingly tight. The long, towering pile of firewood looked like the wall of hell. And the jagged rim of the sun, which had almost vanished into the pile, seemed to be pointing out something over and over, as though it were a satanic spirit with the power to trample down and crush little people….

I stared at the sun so long that I felt dazed. And when it disappeared behind the firewood pile, my vision blurred. Everything I looked at turned red and purple. Not until someone brought me a handkerchief to wipe the tears from my eyes did I realize that I was crying, crying hard. My old friend’s eldest boy was still running about playing with his kite, as before. But when he ran close to the stroller of the station-master’s baby, he stopped still, stood looking at it and then stretched out his hand to touch it. Whereupon he was roughly shoved to the ground by the stationmaster’s servant, who grabbed the chubby, cuddly baby by the hand and hurried it into the house.

Watching this scene, I felt I had no tears left to weep. The long railway tracks extended into our little hamlet in parallel lines which never met, even at the station’s end. The little station-worker was never given the opportunities we had. All he could do was wait and scramble for any chance that might come by. No one had ever given “Peng” and his children any security in life. I felt certain that what had happened to “Peng” would be forgotten before long. There’d still be people selling sticky rice on the station platform. There’d be a new young worker in his place—who might well be his own son. And so it would go, on and on, over and over. People would always say: “Don’t brood over such a trifle. It’s not worth it.”

My friends were urging me to leave, when some said exactly these words, insisting that I not get too involved. After all, he said, everyone dies some day. It must have been because the sun had just disappeared that I was confused enough to say out loud: “You know, he’s not really dead at all. Do you see his two little kids? Do you see his wife? Do you see their future? That’s just it, no one sees. Where will those two kids end up? It’s not over yet. I know for sure that it’s not over yet. It’ll happen again, over and over, because no one gives a damn about these little people”.

I remember bursting into the most racking sobs at that funeral.

1An all-purpose term for unskilled railway laborers.

2In many parts of Siam, it is believed that ghosts like to seize children by their feet.

3The pi is a kind of oboe, the so a kind of vio.

4Khao yam is a Southern Thai dish made of rice, vegetables, and a spicy sauce.

5Nam phrik is a condiment made of shrimp paste, lime-juice, hot pepper, and garlic.

6Kung yam is a dish made of prawns, lemon-juice, and hot pepper.

Cutting through the Babble

 

The UK's branch of the Industrial Workers of the World has been stepping up its publications. One of the newest is a journal called Wobbly Times. The theme for the first issue which will be released soon was "Workers of the World United" a great choice, but at the time they were calling for submissions I could not think of anything to fit it.

Yesterday I attended an IWW writers workshop and this idea came to me.

You may recall that I used to work in a cold factory producing frozen foods. There's a stereotype of a factory proletarian being this salt of earth man full of muscles, the reality was that the workforce was the most diverse I've ever encountered. Many women, every age from "are you sure your 18?" To "Shouldn't you have retired already?" Workers with mental and physical disabilities including me, and workers from many ethnic backgrounds and many being immigrants.

The canteen and the outside corner where the smokers gathered and the bike shed were full of accents, slang and languages. 

The langauge barrier is a serious obstacle to international and even intranational co-operation, at the factory even though we were all polite and friendly to each other groups formed around first language for the most part. Revolutionary groups have struggled with how to overcome this obstacle, some invest heavily in translation departments, others promote a 'workers language' either Russian, Spanish, English or Esperanto etc.

I don't have a silver bullet for this problem, but I do have some observations. While outside of work the differences were obvious they largely disappeared on the factory floor. Lack of fluency in English or any other langauge didn't matter so much since it was simply too loud to talk in a meaningful way.

Conversations were short with only the most important words and punctuated with pointing and gestures. Body langauge was also heavily reduced since we were all covered in the same white overcoats and gloves and hair nets. If you were clean shaven you could still use your face to smile or look concerned but if you had any peach fuzz you had to cover your snout with a snood. 

In a strange way the tempo and organisation of the factory leveled the differences between us and we spoke a common langauge. There were of course limits to this language, there wasn't much room for abstraction and elaboration. But it was still a useful tool in building some links between us all. We gave warnings about bits of machine that liked to bite and grab, laughed at terrible supervisors who thought they were cool and tough, helped out the newbies or the ones who were having trouble.

I still think that communication is serious obstacle to building a movement capable of challenging the global capitalist order, but I am atleast confident that it is an obstacle that can be overcome with enough effort.

The Peer Review Issue 02: Ten Theses on Science and Radicalism

 

The source zine can be found on the Internet Archive.

Letter from the Editor

The anarchist response to the emergence of COVID-19 put divisions in the movement into stark relief. On the one hand, many recognized its severity and the resulting need for quarantine, social distancing, and vaccination. There was a strong moral imperative to protect those who were immunocompromised, elderly, or at heightened risk, even if it meant sacrificing some personal freedoms. On the other hand, many decried the state response to the pandemic as authoritarian, the enforcement of vaccine mandates as dictatorial, and the involvement of big pharmaceutical companies in producing and marketing the vaccine as encouraging the capitalist stranglehold on health. As the writer of Anathema put it, “In the name of ‘public health’ all sorts of security measures are coming together to create an authoritarian wet dream” (“COVID-19: A Fork in the Road,” 2020, p. 3).

In many cases these are valid critiques. In the Philippines, for example, soldiers with assault rifles patrolled quarantine checkpoints during the early days of the pandemic (Magsalin, 2020), and the steps the Chinese Communist Party took enforce lockdown orders can only be described as despotic. Despite this, though, the pandemic offered opportunities for anarchists to organize—especially in mutual aid networks, eviction protests, and rent strikes (Firth, 2020).

In the five years since the pandemic began, however, I fear these legitimate criticisms have morphed into a broader distrust of science and medicine in the anarchist space. An anonymous writer to Montreal Counter-Information feared that we as a society now demand that “experts tucked away in labs using esoteric methods act as the only voices in the room to generate one-size-fits-all policy declarations for entire nations” (Anonymous, 2021). Another anonymous writer to i giorni e le notti (reprinted in English in The Local Kids) accused the creators of the COVID-19 vaccine of being “eugenicists ––and sterilizers of poor women” (Anonymous, 2022, section iv). I’ve met anti-vax punks at shows, and I’ve heard rumors that others have encountered the same (three6666, 2023). And this is setting aside the existing critiques of science and technology posed by primitivists. All of this echoes the anti-science and anti-health sentiments that have engulfed the right wing.

Years before the pandemic, William Gillis noted, “It’s no secret that a good portion of the left today considers science profoundly uncool” (2015). As our title suggests, The Peer Review runs contrary to that assertion. This issue is devoted to exploring ten theses about science and public health, as seen through a radical anarchist lens.

1. Every Anarchist Should Be a Scientist…

In the article that provides the title for this thesis, Isis Lovecruft (2016) wrote, “We should never allow ourselves to become so rigid as to forget what makes us anarchists in the first place: childlike curiosity, incessant inquiry, and a radical love for taking things to their roots to further our understanding. We seek to dismantle the world around us, knowing that it does not function as well as it could. We want to understand ourselves, our environment, and each other. We want the blueprints for the social machine, so we can sledgehammer the fuck out of it, and build it back up from scratch” (p. 5). And, as she points out, that sounds quite a bit like science.

In describing science, A.R. Prasanna reminds us that it “is not just a collection and collation of known facts,” but “a philosophy derived out of experience, innovation, and verification or validation” (2022, p. 6). It is not simply sterile empiricism or institutional authority, but rather a restless pursuit of understanding. In this light, the anarchist drive to dismantle the social machine and rebuild it “from scratch” echoes the foundations of science—it’s not a dogma to follow blindly, but a process grounded in experience, exploration, and discovery. In that sense, it’s not that every anarchist should be a scientist—it’s that every anarchist is a scientist.

2. …and Every Scientist Should Be an Anarchist

As William Gillis (2016) wrote in the article that—similar to Lovecruft—gave this thesis its name, “Control can only be achieved through disengagement and rigidity. And so any successful power structure must involve mechanisms to punish and suppress habits of inquiry” (p. 1). It is no secret that science, both as an area of study and a community, has its problems. Overreliance on funding either from private industry or from the government places restrictions—both overt and subtle—on what can and can’t be studied. It is exorbitantly expensive to publish in some of the most prestigious journals, with Nature charging authors as much as €9,500 ($10,800 in April 2025) for review and publication (Brainard, 2020). Women, persons with disabilities, and ethnic and racial minorities are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM careers (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2021).

Far from stifling scientific innovation, an anarchist society could work to resolve many of these issues. Bureaucratic inefficiencies will be reduced by dismantling and collectivizing large research organizations. The abolition of social and material hierarchies will provide underrepresented individuals greater opportunity to study science. The embrace of a community model (see thesis #4) will prevent the accumulation of capital by the benefactors of scientific research and instead focus on what benefits specific communities the most. In short, anarchism has a plethora of solutions to offer any scientist interested in improving the existing system.

3. Science is Methodical, Not Political

Unlike what tech billionaires will have you believe, technocracy is not the logical or inevitable result of embracing science. In the worst-case scenario, “Those of higher knowledge, status, or authority—experts—take it upon themselves, justified by their epistemic monopoly, to both define and solve the problem for nonexperts” (Byland & Packard, as cited in Caplan, 2023, p. S107). Nonexperts, in this situation, are expected to simply accept what the experts decide. In response, Arthur Caplan points out that “correcting that problem hardly means rejecting the input of scientific experts…Science tells us what can be done; the political task is to decide what ought be done within the constraints and boundaries that science provides” (2023, p. S107). Technocracy is a failure of democracy—not of science—and good scientists can inform the public on important issues without claiming political authority over those topics.

In fact, scientists oftentimes rebel against contemporaneous political power. The Roman Inquisition burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600 for arguing that the universe contained other stars and planets. Apotex, a multinational pharmaceutical company, publicly attacked Nancy Olivieri in the 1990s after her research found that one The Roman Inquisition burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600 for arguing that the universe contained other stars and planets. Apotex, a multinational pharmaceutical company, publicly attacked Nancy Olivieri in the 1990s after her research found that one of their drugs, deferiprone, caused liver dysfunction. The German right wing was enraged by Albert Einstein’s work on relativity (as well as his pacifism), which led to Nazi officials stripping him of his academic positions and publicly burning his books. While scientists can sometimes assume positions of authority, science itself is only a method of uncovering empirical facts about the world. And sometimes those facts run contrary to existing power structures.

4. Science Should Be Done with Communities, Not to Communities

Science is most effective when it is the product of collaboration, especially with research subjects. Historically, scientists and researchers have often treated the communities they are working with purely as sources of data, ignoring the impact their research has on the rights and well-being of the participants. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment is one of the most notorious examples: the U.S. Public Health Service spent forty years studying the progression of syphilis in a group of impoverished black men, giving them sugar pills as “treatment” and, for some participants, failing to inform them that they had the disease at all (Jones, 2008). Luckily, we are beginning to see signs of change. There has been a concerted push in recent decades to see communities as partners in research rather than a means to an end.

Citing a long history of exploitation in research, especially among indigenous peoples, Emily Doerksen et al. noted in their 2024 paper “Community-led approaches to research governance” that the communities that are commonly studied have been increasingly “voicing their demands for authority in the governance of research involving them” (p. 2). They identify three strategies that have been employed:

1. The development of research guidelines by community representatives,

2. Community review boards to assess the ethics of proposed research initiatives in their jurisdictions

3. Community advisory boards that work in tandem with researchers to ensure that their cultural norms are being respected

Such governance helps to move science in a more participatory direction that ultimately has the potential to benefit both researchers and research subjects.

There is certainly still much to be done, and a number of scientists doggedly refuse to abide by these practices. However, Doerksen et al.’s work, as well as the work of other clinical ethicists, shows that there are possibilities to move beyond the quasi-colonial approaches of yesteryear.

5. Bring Down the Lab Elite, Not the Lab

Justin Podur (2014) distinguishes between three aspects of being a scientist: Science A, Science, B, and Science C. Science A (for Authority) is the authoritative stance that scientists can take when discussing matters of public interest. Science B (for Business) is the pragmatic, day-to-day routine of being a scientist: applying for grants, trying to publish in elite journals, etc. Science C (for Curiosity) is what science is supposed to be—it is the fundamental curiosity that drives scientists to try to understand the world. In his view, too much emphasis on Science B has turned science into an elitist, profit-driven enterprise that has moved scientists further from Science A and Science C. He writes, “Most of what scientists do is try to raise funds, generate publications in prestigious journals, find students to work on their projects, and keep up with other scientists according to these metrics. Science B operates like other sectors of capitalist society”​ (2014). Science must be liberated from the “dictates of profit” in order to return it to its intended purpose.

William Gillis (2015) sees the same elitism at work. He distinguishes the scientific method from “Science!” (with a capital S and an exclamation point), or the view that the world can be systematized, ordered, and ultimately dominated. The latter functions as a surrogate for corporate domination: “Science! is how our paymasters excuse the damage our widget causes in military or economic application” (2015). He, however, sees science (with a lowercase s) as fundamentally radical—rather than merely an empirical pursuit, it is a search for the “deepest roots” of the physical universe. Scientists must remember to keep “digging for the roots” in order to maintain the spirit of scientific inquiry.

What both writers mean, I believe, is that we can reject the parts of scientific culture that are laser-focused on attaining grant awards, abusing grad students, and kowtowing to the desires of big business. What will remain is the core characteristics of the scientific method: curiosity, hypothesis, and discovery. In short, there’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater—we can focus on moving science away from its dependence on corporate interests and back to its original spirit.

6. Nobody Knows Everything…

The belief that individuals can be wholly self-sufficient is a myth. In reality, each of us has only a scattering of the skills we need to thrive in the modern age (and the pre-modern age too, for that matter). We need to rely on others to help us with the remainder. Human beings are social animals—we have been grouping together for hundreds of thousands of years in order to survive, and that impulse will not be disappearing anytime soon. In fact, the drive to be entirely self-sufficient echoes a profoundly capitalist mindset. In “Against Self-Sufficiency,” Sever writes, “We never bear our own weight, and to speak truthfully, we never feed ourselves” (2017, p. 32). They argue that self-sufficiency—defined here as a complete lack of dependence on others—is in fact an illusion that arose from capitalism, colonialism, and bourgeois individualism. The desire to rely only on oneself for survival obscures an important truth: community is absolutely essential. (Yes, it’s ironic that I’m quoting an Anti-Civ publication in a zine about science. But while I disagree with much of primitivism, Sever still makes some good points).

Mutual aid frameworks begin with this understanding. Dean Spade defines mutual aid as “collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them” (2020, p. 11). Whether in the form of soup kitchens, legal assistance, or housing support, mutual aid is built on cooperation and interpersonal solidarity. No single person is a doctor, a mechanic, an elementary school teacher, and a librarian, but every community needs someone with each of these skills in order to run smoothly.

7. …but Everybody Knows Something

Science, when done correctly, can fit well into the concept of mutual aid. Scientists have developed a specific skillset and corpus of knowledge over lifetimes of study, and these particular competencies are useful not only in laboratories but in daily life. Prasanna, for example, writes that the scientific thought process begins with ordinary curiosity: “It is something we all see and experience in day-to-day routines if only we stop and question after the action as to why did I do it?” (2022, p. viii). Science—good science, at least—doesn’t require researchers to shut themselves in universities away from the world. Rather, science actually opens pathways to participate in community building.

Modern capitalist societies tend to emphasize the partitioning of both individuals and knowledge into tiny, self-sealing pieces. Mutual aid models, by contrast, are built on interdependence—epistemic as well as material. We should be thinking together, not simply living together. Contrary to assumptions connecting science and technocracy, scientists should not act as infallible authorities in a society, but as contributors—trusted, yes, but also embedded in a much larger network of thinking individuals. As Prasanna further notes, science is a “continuous process with a firm beginning but never-ending” (2022, p. x). The more voices that are added to the process, the better.

Thus, scientific expertise can a boon to anarchist societies rather than a detriment. Instead of seeing science as a monolithic authority, esoteric and isolated, we can see it as an essential piece for the survival of a mutually dependent community.

8. No One Is Healthy by Themselves

Health isn’t fully determined by behavior, genetic makeup, or random chance: it is profoundly shaped through our environments. The social determinants of health are well-established—working conditions, housing, social inclusion, access to medical services, and other situational factors all have a lasting effect on one’s health. Similarly, infectious disease control, air and water quality, and crisis management all require community-based solutions. Thus, health is not just a biomedical issue. It is a collective condition that requires collective approaches to address.

Public health, at its root, is about populations, not individuals. This community-centered orientation distinguishes it from clinical medicine, which is largely individualistic, and situates one’s health within the larger social fabric. As Mary-Jane Schneider (2020) puts it, “Whereas medicine is concerned with individual patients, public health regards the community as its patient” (p. 86). The COVID-19 pandemic brought this distinction to the forefront of the public’s consciousness—a person’s risk of becoming ill with the virus didn’t depend only on their choices, but on whether others wore masks, had paid sick leave, and got vaccinated. No single person had the power to stop its spread, and this highlighted the need for population-wide interventions.

9. Care Without Coercion is Possible

Marcus Hill (2009) connects public health with radical values in his pamphlet Fragments of an Anarchist Public Health. In his view, health politics should ultimately be driven by consensus, not structured around an authoritarian approach. Instead, a major aim of public health should be to “encourage individuals to become involved in collective efforts to improve the structural determinants of their health” (2009, p. 3). For Hill, a healthy society does depend on health services. However, equity and participation—values that have been emphasized in anarchist thought for almost two centuries—can and should be incorporated into a more inclusive public health approach.

Hill points to several concrete examples of decentralized public health in action. The Zapatistas organized community-level health services among the indigenous peoples of Chiapas after the Mexican government failed to provide support, eventually founding a hospital in 1991 that runs independently of the state. The Ithaca Health Alliance in Ithaca, NY provides interest-free loans for individuals to repay medical debt. The Gesundheit! Institute, founded by Patch Adams, seeks to entirely redesign the health system in the United States by opposing market-based models of healthcare delivery. These projects have sought to make systemic changes by reshaping institutions “along the lines of participatory social values” (Hill, 2009, p. 5). Along those lines, Hill advocates for the creation of a healthcare system built around anarcho-syndicalist concepts, in which federations of local health groups collaborate to address broad issues in health.

This is only one possible path to a public health that is anti-authoritarian. Ultimately, health is a commons—it is defined by whether our neighbors have care, whether our workplaces both equitable and effective. Though public health has had its failures (sometimes spectacular ones) and has been host to broad abuses of power, it is nonetheless necessary to maintain our collective well-being. The key is to promote non-capitalist and non-centralized forms of public health that can work within an anarchist system.

10. Understanding Comes from Participation

Science is often associated with detached geniuses, corporate research, and ivory towers. There are as many different approaches to science as there are scientists, however: there are curious physicists, auto-didactic engineers, radical biologists, and indigenous ecologists. It can be practiced in basements and squats just as well as it is practiced in laboratories and clinics. Rather than treating it as the enemy, I encourage anarchists to see the radical potential of science and become scientists themselves.

Sources

Anonymous. (2021, February). On the anarchist response to the global pandemic. Montreal Counter-Information. https://mtlcounterinfo.org/on-the-anarchist-response-to-the-global-pandemic/

Anonymous. (2022, Summer). Theses on COVID-1984. The Local Kids, 8, 8–23. https://thelocalkids.noblogs.org/files/2022/06/tlk08.pdf

Brainard, J. (2020, November 24). For €9500, Nature journals will now make your paper free to read. Science. https://www.science.org/content/article/9500-nature-journals-will-now-make-your-paper-free-read

Caplan, A. L. (2023). Regaining trust in public health and biomedical science following covid: The role of scientists. In L. A. Taylor, G. E. Kaebnick, & M. Z. Solomon (Eds.), Time to rebuild: Essays on trust in health care and science [Hastings Center special report, 53(5)] (pp. S105-S109). Hastings Center. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1531

COVID-19: A fork in the road. (2020, March/April). Anathema, 7(3), 1, 3. https://anathema.noblogs.org/files/2020/04/mar-apr_2020.pdf

Doerksen, E, Gunay, A. E., Neufeld, S. D., & Friesen, P. (2024). Community-led approaches to research governance: A scoping review of strategies. Research Ethics, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470161241269154

Firth, R. (2021). Mutual aid, anarchist preparedness and COVID-19. In J. Preston & R. Firth (Eds.), Coronavirus, class and mutual aid in the United Kingdom (pp. 57–111). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57714-8_4

Gillis, W. (2016). Every scientist should be an anarchist. Anarcho-transhuman, 2, 1–4. https://anarchotranshumanzine.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/h2.pdf

Gillis, W. (2018, August 18). Science as radicalism. Human Iterations. https://humaniterations.net/2015/08/18/science-as-radicalism/

Hill, M. A. (2009, July 8). Fragments of an anarchist public health. ZNetwork. Retrieved April 22, 2025 from https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fragments-of-an-anarchist-public-health-developing-visions-of-a-healthy-society-by-marcus-hill/

Jones, J. (2008). The Tuskegee syphilis experiment. In E. J. Emanuel, C. C. Grady, R. A. Crouch, R. K. Lie, F. G. Miller, & D. D. Wendler (Eds.), The Oxford textbook of clinical research ethics (pp. 86–96). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195168655.003.0009

Lovecruft, I. (2016). Every anarchist should be a scientist. Anarcho-transhuman, 2, 5–6. https://anarchotranshumanzine.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/h2.pdf

Magsalin, S. (2020, April 2). Against a quarantine with martial law characteristics. Bandilang Itim. https://bandilangitim.xyz/library/simoun-magsalin-against-a-quarantine-with-martial-law-characteristics-en

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2021). Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21321/report/

Podur, J. (2014). Science and Liberation. Anarcho-transhuman, 2, 19–27. https://anarchotranshumanzine.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/h2.pdf

Prasanna, A. R. (2022). How to learn and practice science. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14514-8

Schneider, M. J. (2022). Introduction to public health (6^th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Sever. (2017, Summer). Against self-sufficiency: The gift. Black Seed, 5, 32. https://archive.org/details/black_seed_5/

Spade, D. (2020). Mutual aid: Building solidarity during this crisis (and the next). Verso.

three6666. (2023, July 9). What’s the deal w anti-vax punks? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://web.archive.org/web/20241216142958/https://www.reddit.com/r/punk/comments/14v3gq8/whats_the_deal_w_antivax_punks/

LOR Aftermath

 

 Some more news regarding Lindsey Oil Refinery. Since the beginning of August there have been sporadic protests, the one in the photograph was held at the refinery, you may recognise it from photos of the wildcat strike. There was also a march down the seafront in Cleethorpes and a rally outside parliament. My stepdad attended the refinery protest, he said the turnout was low, but he was impressed with the calibre of the speakers. He didn't recognise any of them, those two facts mean they must've been UNITE bigwigs, none of the local reps are praised for their oratory. 

This hasn't moved the government, who are haemorrhaging support here. Officially, LOR is still open and running, though you'd be hard-pressed to tell. My friend who's an inspector has very little to inspect and has been polishing his CV and looking for other work. My cousin who is a firefighter at the refinery secured a job at the sister refinery Conoco only to be told that since LOR is still technically open they can't take any of the fire and safety staff on as LOR can't source any replacements. Which is very odd since LOR has already downsized and Conoco is next door and the two refineries already collaborate on safety and rescue operations. That's regulations for you! 

I have found out that regarding the full staff (not including contractors) will be made redundant in two waves, the first is rumoured to be in October, the second at the end of the year. I've also been told by several people that they're planning to do it via the two rooms method. Everyone gets called into one of two rooms, and then they find out if they've been let go or not. I hope that's just a rumour because that's brutally cold. 

There's also been an update on that training pledge. There is a commitment from the government to pay for retraining of redundant staff (contractors out of luck again) into new industries, renewables seems to be the one they're aiming for. This has been taken as insult on top of injury. It's not a bad choice all things considered, the renewable sector is a growing part of the local economy, travelling from Immingham to LOR you pass multiple warehouses, many of which are involved in recycling and batteries. Siemens is a big investor in the area as is Myenergy a company that makes batteries for electric cars and chargers. You may recognise Myenergy as it's the official sponsors of Grimsby Town Football Club replacing Young's Seafood, it expanded operations aggressively but had its own round of layoffs last year. 

Grimsby UNITE office, displaying photos from the rallies against LOR closure

 

While this is feeding into an anti-zero sentiment, the real issue is how's it been handle. Since the refinery is winding down and redundancies are coming, you might think it'd be a good idea to offer the retraining now, perhaps in stages, however it will only be available once you've been made redundant. The training will take months, if not a year, so the workers are faced with a choice to take any work they can find or go without for nearly a year and hope that a job will be available once it's completed. To make matters worse the training contract has not been given to the local industrial training providers it's been given to providers further afield, so transport will be an issue, and it's wasted an opportunity to invest in the local economy. The area has a well-developed apprenticeship and training system with multiple providers, covering engineering, manufacturing, electricians etc. And most importantly they have connections with the industrial employers including the renewables sector.

The response by the government seems tailor-made to piss off and alienate the entire population.  Every step they take or do not take indicates a gross ignorance of the region and a lack of interest. The only thing remotely approaching good news is that the people I know who work for LOR are "safe" relatively speaking. It's also been confirmed that there are buyers interested in the site, though who they are and what specifically they're interested in and willing to keep open and how many jobs they'll secure remain to be seen. A buyer might re-hire some experienced hands, but they may also decide to bring in their own employees. It's difficult to speculate, but LOR in its entirety probably won't disappear completely, but we won't know what will remain. 

The Peer Review Issue 01: The Anarchists Guide to Critical Thinking

 

The original pamphlet with more illustrations can be found on the internet archive.
 

Peer Review Issue 01 Transcript

What is critical thinking...

Some writers and philosophers have approach defining it broad strokes: Robert Ennis, who spent six decades writing about the topic, claimed that critical thinking is simply “reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.” (1991, p. 8). Similarly, Sharon Bailin and her colleagues identified only three characteristics that make thinking critical: (1) it is done to determine what to believe about something, (2) the thinker is trying to meet some standards of adequacy in their thinking; and (3) the thinker does meet those standards to an appropriate degree (1999).

Others have focused more specifically on critical thinking as applied to argumentation. Mark Battersby, for example, defines it as “the ability and inclination to assess claims and arguments” (2016, p. 7), and stresses the importance of evaluating evidence to expose false claims. Regardless of whether the definition is generic or specific, though, most writers agree that critical thinking is a habit that requires practice to master.

..and why should you

give a fuck?

Far from a bourgeois ideology, critical thinking is a necessary tool for anarchists. Anarchism demands that individuals be able to think accurately and effectively. From being able to spot exploitative power structures to understanding the minutiae of alternative economic theories, anarchism is far more than just tossing pipe bombs at cop cars. Even the most aware anarchist is in danger of falling for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and cults of personality— and before you think you're immune, remember that you have identical brain structures to the people who fall for it all the time. To avoid those traps, anarchists need to be able to think for themselves. When done right, critical thinking is a necessary step in the path to liberated, individual thinking.

Here’s the plan

There’s a longstanding debate about whether critical thinking skills are generalizable (in that there is a single skillset that applies to all areas of inquiry) or if it’s domain-specific (in that each discipline—math, science, history, philosophy, etc.—has its own set of critical thinking skills). I’m choosing to split the difference. In Part One, we'll address two generalizable skills: first, we'll discuss evidence gathering and assessment, and second, we’ll talk about heuristics, biases, and fallacies. In Part Two, I'll present a guide to critical thinking specifically designed for anarchists, based on Daniel Willingham’s 2019 paper “How to Teach Critical Thinking.” Willingham outlines four steps that should be taken when teaching critical thinking about any topic: first, identify what “critical thinking” means in that domain; second, identify the knowledge that is necessary for each understanding of critical thinking, third, create a sequence in which that knowledge should be learned; and fourth, revisit and relearn. With that, let’s get started.

PART ONE GENERALIZABLE SKILLS

1. EVIDENCE

When assessing any proposition, argument, or problem, a good thing to ask is: how good is the evidence? Every argument requires evidence: if someone were to claim that leprechauns are real, we shouldn’t take their claims at face value. Rather, we should ask for the proof. After that, we should assess if the evidence they provide is adequate.

In his book Is That a Fact? Mark Battersby divides the assessment process into two steps. First, ask if the evidence supports the determination. He uses the example of a letter to the editor published in 7ime, in which the author claims that her “85-year-old mother powerwalks two miles each day, drives her car (safely), climbs stairs, does crosswords, reads the daily paper and could probably beat [your columnist] at almost anything.” Thus, so the writer believes, people in this era must be “living to a healthy and ripe old age” (2016, p. 14). As Battersby points out, however, just because the writer’s grandmother does these things does not mean that all elderly people can do these things—the premise does nothing to support the conclusion. Whether or not the evidence is true, you should be skeptical of an argument if the evidence doesn’t provide any basis for the conclusion. Second, you should ask if the evidence is credible. If the above mentioned writer had cited a study instead of using her own grandmother as an example, you should ask if the sample size was adequate and if the study was funded by organizations that may have an interest in promoting its conclusion. Or if she had cited a poll conducted among senior citizens, you should pay attention to question bias (when the phrasing of the poll questions influences the responses) and context bias (when the context of the poll, such as a preliminary introduction by the researchers or the environment of the responder, influences the responses) (Battersby, 2016, pp. 29 & 52). Above all, you should seek to verify that the information being given to you is correct—if the premise is false it could point to an invalid or unfounded conclusion.

Philosophical razors are rules of thumb that can be used to metaphorically “shave off” unlikely premises and conclusions. The principle of parsimony, for example, holds that explanations should be as simple as possible. The most famous formulation of it, Occam’s Razor, states that we should only accept the more complicated theory if the simpler one cannot explain the event (Battersby 2016, p. 23). If you hear a crash, walk upstairs, and see a baseball, broken glass, and a group of kids with bats and mitts running away, the most likely explanation is that they were playing baseball and hit a ball through your window. The theory that aliens broke your window and planted the baseball there to frame the innocent kids should likely be rejected unless the first explanation doesn’t account for some aspect of the situation.

Similarly, the Sagan Standard, attributed to Carl Sagan in his book Broca’s Brain, holds that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (1979, p. 73). The claim that a new treatment will cure any type of cancer in less than twenty minutes requires much more proof than the claim that diet and exercise help you lose weight. There are many other philosophical razors in existence, but a word of caution: while razors provide good bases for ruling out bad arguments, they are not foolproof. Though it is overwhelmingly unlikely, perhaps aliens did plant that baseball, and that new treatment does cure cancer. So, while they may provide a quick-and-easy method of detecting bullshit, they are not infallible.

2.HEURISTICS BIASES AND FALLACIES

Heuristics

Human beings (yourself included) are prone to biases, fallacies, and unclear thinking. The work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974) showed that we tend to rely on quick rules of thumb, called heuristics, when making probability judgments. While useful when making quick decisions, heuristics are prone to error, as when one estimates the probability of a heart attack occurring among a certain age group based on how many people they know have had heart attacks. Who you know that has had a heart attack has no bearing on the actual percentage of people that do, similar to how Battersby’s writer assumed that all elderly people are fit and healthy because her grandmother is.

Cass Sunstein (2005) extended Tversky and Kahneman’s work to include moral judgments, identifying a list of heuristics that tend to guide us when making ethical decisions. He includes, for example, the Betrayal Heuristic (in which an offense that includes a betrayal of trust is often judged as more immoral than one that does not include treachery, such as a close friend stabbing someone in the back rather than a known rival) and the Outrage Heuristic (in which most people’s judgment of how harsh a punishment should be is related to how outraged they are by the offense). Like Tversky and Kahneman, he argues that these rules of thumb are prone to giving inconsistent or incorrect guidance. One thing to watch out for when assessing claims (especially your own claims!) is the underlying heuristics that the claimant is using.

Biases

A number of other cognitive biases exist, too. Confirmation bias is the tendency for individuals to unconsciously reject information that doesn’t align with their existing beliefs. As Margit Oswald and Stefan Grosjean put it, confirmation bias means that “information is searched for, interpreted, and remembered in such a way that it systematically impedes the possibility that the hypothesis can be rejected” (2004, p. 79).

Framing effects occur when individuals draw different conclusions from the same information depending on how that information is presented. People are more likely to buy yogurt that is advertised as “92% fat free” than they are yogurt that is advertised as “8% full fat” even though they are the same product. This is because the advertiser is “framing” the first with positive language and the second with negative. Problematically, this means that “people will choose inconsistently in the sense of making different and opposed choices in decision problems that are essentially identical” (Kamm, 2007, p. 424)—in other words, how a problem is framed will affect what people decide to do about it, even though the framing doesn’t actually have anything to do with the problem.

Finally, the illusory truth effect occurs when continued repetition of a claim causes it to seem truer than alternatives, even if it is false. First identified in a 1977 paper by Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino, they found that their test subjects rated a statement as more likely to be true if it was repeated to them rather than if they read it once. Importantly, this is a prominent reason why propaganda techniques such as the Big Lie (like Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election) and the firehose of falsehood (like Trump’s constant and endless lying) work.

Fallacies

Unlike heuristics and biases, which affect how people process claims, fallacies are mistakes made in the reasoning behind claims. There are hundreds, but below are some of the more common ones:

• Sweeping generalization — The arguer expands a specific case into a general principle that does not always apply. For example, claiming “People from that city are always rude” takes what may be true of some residents (rudeness) and generalizes it to all residents.

• Begging the question -The arguer leaves out an important premise to their argument, usually because they assume that it is settled and does not need to be addressed. The claim “Killing an innocent person is murder. Murder should be illegal. Therefore, abortion should be illegal” leaves out the controversial premise “abortion is murder.”

• Ad hominem – The arguer attacks the character of their opponent rather than discussing the issue at hand. For example, claiming, “You don’t know anything about climate change, you’re too young and inexperienced” avoids engaging with the hypothetical young person’s argument by dismissing it based on their youth.

• Straw man – The arguer takes another’s argument, extends it to an extreme, and then easily dismisses it. This makes it seem as if the arguer succeeded in defeating the original argument, but they have only torn down the extended version of it. For example, the claim “My opponent wants to reduce carbon emissions. Clearly, what he really wants is to ban all cars and shut down factories” takes a reasonable argument (reduce carbon emissions) and blows it up into an extreme not found in the original argument (banning all cars and shutting down factories).
  
  

PART TWO

DOMAIN-SPECIFIC SKILLS

1. APPLICATIONS

Now that we’ve covered some general critical thinking skills, let us turn to Willingham’s plan to teach domain-specific skills. The first step is to identify what critical thinking means for anarchists. So, what should anarchists be able to do with their thinking? While this list is by no means exhaustive, below are some ideas.

Power & Hierarchy

Key to an anarchist evaluation of the existing social norms is the identification of existing hierarchies. After all, one of the core axioms of anarchism is that people have no obligation to follow those in power (Crowder, 2005). This set of skills may include spotting classism/racism/sexism/ableism, identifying structural violence, and recognizing cults of personality. Bonus points for assessing the role of police, politicians, and judges in perpetuating injustice.

Economics

Economic theory is one of the cornerstones of anarchist thought. It is not only important to learn and understand anarchist models (anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, etc.) but also to study the captalist model that anarchism is working to overthrow. Skills in this area include the ability to discover and analyze labor exploitation and the basic knowledge required to understand the foundations of neoliberalism, communism, and socialism.

Media

Media can be both a tool of the state and a source of the truth. On the one hand is the corporate media that, as Peter Gelderloos has pointed out, exists only to “fatten the wallets of their executives and shareholders” and maintain social control (2004). On the other is, well, this zine! Skills in this area include identifying propaganda, discovering the sources behind specific information and narratives, and uncovering media bias in all of its forms (cf. Chomsky & Herman, 2002).

Organization

What’s the point of being an anarchist if you aren’t willing to act? Critical thinking skills in this area include identifying methods to engage with activists in other spheres, organizing protests, and advocating for alternative systems. Also included in this area are skills related to the history and praxis of anarchism, especially learning from past and present successes and failures.

2. CONTENT

Now that the goals of anarchist thinking have been identified, the second step in the process is to gather the knowledge necessary to reach those goals. Every problem requires the requisite background information in order to solve it. The example Willingham uses is a historical letter: to analyze a letter written by a sergeant before a battle, one needs to know the context in which the letter was written, the role of sergeants in the military, and knowledge of the war in general (2019).

There is quite a bit of knowledge that is necessary for anarchists to think critically. Existing anarchist theory provides a solid foundation: a working knowledge of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Zerzan, Marx, and others is _ indispensable. With this theory in hand, anarchists can learn to identify exploitation, material and social inequalities, and the class-based structures inherent to capitalism. An understanding of the ideological details of fascism and other ideologies opposed to anarchism can help with spotting propaganda as well, especially if that propaganda is particularly subtle (it doesn’t have to be the Two Minutes Hate to be propaganda).

Familiarity with politics, news, and world events is also essential. The world has seen a resurgence of right-wing populism recently that is threatening to undermine our collective rights. Any good anti-fascist should be able to discuss why it has arisen and how to address it. Knowledge about the struggles of our trans, gay, disabled, BIPOC, and marginalized brethren is likewise necessary to dismantle the barriers preventing us from full equality.

This list is not complete and is only meant to point critical thinkers in the right direction. Remember, knowledge is power, and power begins with knowledge.

3. SEQUENCE

Willingham’s third step is to identify the order in which skills should be learned. In most subjects, complex knowledge is built on a foundation of more basic information: musicians learn scales before they learn to improvise, artists learn to draw basic shapes before they draw hands, and math students learn algebra before they learn calculus. While this sequence can be flexible (as it should be— everyone learns information differently and at different rates), here is the sketch of a plan.

Phase I: Foundations

This includes learning about the core concepts of anarchism, such as anti-authoritarianism, liberty, solidarity, and direct action. One should practice spotting power structures in daily life, such as police presences and workplace managerial hierarchies. This stage should also include practice identifying common statist and capitalist arguments.

Phase II: Critique

This phase begins applying anarchist ideas from Phase I to real-life situations. It includes critiquing capitalism, the state, and the media, analyzing the successes and failures of historical examples of anarchism, and getting involved in collectives, unions, and other groups in the anarchist milieu.

Phase III: Praxis

This phase is advanced practice. It includes tackling complex debates within anarchism (such as violence vs. pacifism and individualism vs. collectivism), critically assessing both anarchist and non-anarchist movements, evaluating (and originating) tactics for organizing, and creating alternative and anarchist media such as zines, papers, and teachins.

4. REVISIT

Critical thinking is not something that one learns once and can simply use forever. Rather, it takes continual practice to cultivate. Willingham stresses that the fourth step is to revisit each critical thinking skill over time in order to master it. Often times the application of these skills will change, as new questions and problems arise in which they are put into use. It helps, however, to be deliberate about putting these skills into practice.

Engaging with fellow anarchists and others can help to keep critical thinking sharp. Start a reading group to discuss anarchist literature or regularly get together with non-anarchists to debate the merits of decentralized systems. Join a mutual aid organization in order to help others or plan a protest with other activists. The opportunities to interact with others are endless.

Critical thinking skills can be honed individually as well. Regularly challenge your own assumptions and thought processses when considering important questions or problems. Consider alternate scenarios to every solution you find and actively test your ideas in the real world. Resist accepting easy answers, and work to apply anarchist frameworks to daily life (like using prefigurative politics to imagine the world as it could be).

Anarchists often rally a round the slogan “No gods, no masters.” While a great phrase, it shouldn’t mean “no thought” as well. In fact, anarchism demands more thinking in order to work. Willingham may show how critical thinking can be taught, but anarchists must take those skills to go forth and build a world without domination. In order for this guide to be useful, it should be used—so please, go forward and practice these skills (for all of our sakes).

SOURCES

Bailin, 8., Case, R., Coombs, J. R., & Daniels, L. B. (1999). Conceptualizing critical thinking. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31(3), 285-302. https://doi.org/10.1080/002202799183133

Battersby, M. (2016). Js that a fact? (and ed.). Broadview Press.

Chomsky, N. & Herman, E. S. (2002). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media (and ed.). Random House, Inc.

Crowder, G. (2005). Anarchism. In E. Craig (ed.), he shorter Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy (pp. 14-15). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-s003-1

Ennis, R. (1991). Critical thinking: A streamlined conception. Teaching Philosophy, 14/1), 5-24. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378057_2

Gelderloos, P. (2004, October). Zhe patriarchal science of corporate media. The Anarchist Library. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloosthe-patriarchal-science-of-the-corporate-media

Hasher, L., Goldstein, D., & Toppino, T. (1977). Frequency and the conference of referential validity. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1&1), 107-112. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-5371(77)80012-1

Kamm, F. M. (2007). Jntricate ethics: Rights, responsibilities, and permissible harm. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:0so/9780195189698.001.0001

Oswald, M. E. & Grosjean, S. (2004). Confirmation bias. In R. F. Pohl (ed.), Cognitive illusions: A handbook on fallacies and biases in thinking judgement and Iemory (pp. 79-96). Psychology Press.

Sagan, C. (1979). Broca’s brain: Reflections on the romance of science. Ballantine Books.

Sunstein, C. (2005). Moral heuristics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2X4), 531542. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.387941

Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 18X4157), 1124-1131. https://doi.org/10.21236/ad0767426

Willingham, D. T. (2019). How to teach critical thinking. NSW Department of Education. https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/maineducation/teaching-and-learning/education-for-a-changingworld/media/documents/How-to-teach-critical-thinking-Willingham.pdf