martial arts in an anarchist society

The question of the martial art training and use in an anarchist society must be approached from multiple perspectives. Firstly, we must look at how martial arts are taught and used today. Secondly, it is important to examine what the relevant goals of the anarchist movement are. After that we must examine where the two intersect and whether or not they are complimentary to each other or are in conflict.

Martial arts

Types of martial arts

Origins

Martial arts schools can be looked at from the perspective of how militaristic they are. The distinction goes back to the origins and the question of who was the intended audience of the particular school of the training. Different martial arts were intended for the imperial army, defencive millitia, insurgent group, and peasant community.

Some martial arts could afford to have the participants hurt or during the training, which was the case of the imperial armies; and some (like SS) even assumed that there is a "reasonable" mortality rate for the peace time training. As such

Usage

Another very important distinction to consider between different martial arts is whether the are intended for sport or self defence. Besides the abvious difference, being why people train, there is still a question of approach, which is significantly different. Both sides have their positive aspects, sport-oriented martial arts usually have a great deal more physical fitness while the self-defence variety often provide a connection between real-life and training. Of course this distinction is not as clear-cut as the distinction by the origin, as most of the martial arts are a combination of both in different proportions.

The best distinction between the two would be the differentce between an art and a craft. Every martial art shares the underlying principles, after all the trainees are humans and the training can be seen as exploration of the possibilities of a human body. But in the art the form and the aesthetics of the performance are valued a great deal, in the craft the end result and its usefulness are the things that are evaluated.

Cooperation and competition

While competition is valued in all martial arts when the sport is not the primary goal there is a great deal of valued competition going on. The competition shows itself in many ways, students are encouraged to help each other as well as the teaching qualification becoming important through the progression in the internal ranking system. Some martial arts go far enough to force people to teach if they wish to progress beyond a certain point.

Community spirit is also encouraged in many martial arts. Of course often it is a cooperation within a form of a particular school or art in order to compete with the "outsiders".

Homophobia

Homo-, bi-, and trans- phobias are a very large problem in the many different martial arts. This particularly shows itself in martial arts that evolved from the millitary training, more sport oriented ones tend to be less homophobic, but they don't rid themselves of this form of discrimination either.

Sexism

Different martial arts and self-defence schools have different gender proportions attending. In some of them the ratio is traditional, in others it is artificially maintained. The healthiest environment exists in clubs and groups where the proportions are close to 1-to-1.

Nationalism

Sexism and homophobia are often coupled with the large degree of nationalism and patriotism in the martial arts. Some martial art school have been known to insist that the students show respect to their coutry by participating in the acts of expression of allegiance to the country. Flags, anthems, and other symbolisms are often used to prove one's worth for the country. In exchange some governments have addopted some martial arts as "prefferred". Sambo for example is openly advertised by the government of Russian Federation.

Racism

In the western contemporary martial arts there isn't much racism. This of course doesn't mean that there aren't any racist individuals, but just that there is no institutionalisation of this -ism.

Confidence

Perhaps the best part of the martial art training that already exists today is the achievement of confidence in oneself and one's own actions. Self defence is not representative or delegatory, one either can or cannot defend oneself. Of course community defence can and must be kept within the loop, but community defence will not work in the place where people aren't able to even take care of themselves... at least it cannot be done in the non-hierarchical voluntary manner.

Anarchist movement

Anarcho-pacifism

Anarcho-pacifism is not a homogenious movement, and even the definition of it differs. It can be argued that being able to defend oneself and the community is a step towards non-violence rather than away from it. Of course a violent situation can be made even more violent by knowledge of a martial art, and such a mutually assured destruction cannot be viewed in the positive light by a pacifist. However, much of self-defence is a psychological ability to evade a situation where violence can arrise or to diffuse with the least ammount of violence.

Black bloc

In many ways the tactics of black bloc can be seen as the antithesis of the anarcho-pacifist strategy.

Anarcha-feminism

The anti-protectionist argument of feminism, that women are not to be protected from the world fits very well in the self-defence approach. Ability to defent oneself from the assailant especially when that assailant is stronger, faster, etc. than you is the goal of many martial arts.

Class struggle anarchism

While liberal and reformist class struggle has no use for self defence or any form of martial arts, as soon as we get into any area remotely radical we are stuck with the need to defend ourselves and each other. This is something that most of the current martial arts are not geared towards, however. Even ones that assume that the assailant is stronger and more powerful often will not deal with the open insurgency. This is of course understandable, since in order to operate as an open organisation under the current government no martial art can ever come out as an insurgent one.

Anti-fascist resistance

The call for martial arts training has been voice by people in Anti-Racist Action, antifa, other anti-fascist groups, and members of black anarchist movement. This is mostly due to the fact that police cannot be viewed as protectors by these groups.

Other considereations

Spirituality

Martial arts and self defence can be either taught as the subject in its own manner or they are combined with some form of spirituality. While it is very healty to teach everybody self-defence all by itself, assuring that people will not be excuded because of their beliefs; spirituality can provide a reinforement of the goal for non-violent resolution.

Self-control

The martial art in an anarchist society would be a way to allow a person self-control, not to remove that self-control from another. The problem is that currently many martial arts are based around millitary and police training with the completely contradictory goals. This shows not only in the selection of techniques that are being taught but also in the approach to teaching. Only a limited number of martial arts look at the long term effects of an action, most talk about survival by any means.

As was already mentioned spirituality can be used to help with the self-control aspect of the training, however, it must not be the only approach. The stress on the long term concequences can be made without any spiritual connotation what-so-ever.

Specific proposals

Personal responsibility

While a person cannot chose to learn martial art if it is not available, seeking to learn to protect oneself through whatever means a person sees fit, is a responsibility of an individual. This can be seen as the struggle for the enforcement of the negative freedom (the freedom not to be oppressed). Ignoring the endless arguments of "can a person be free to be a slave?" it is clear that an anarchist individual must accept that responsibility not to be a hypocrite.

Communal action

Since the aspect of self-defence training is the way to achieve community defence we must view it as a community action. As such it is up to the whole community to decide how the member will be interacting during the training. Teacher-student relationship for example can be decided upon, or a more peer-taught strategy sought. This is not to say that individual creativity and enthusiasm must be punished or stopped in other ways, quite the opposite it is important to allow people who are willing to share to do so, however, meritocracy needs to be avoided.

Totality of training

As was already mentioned when talking about spirituality it is quite possible that teaching just martial arts will not be enough to achieve the goals that those martial arts have in mind. Separation and compartmentalising of teaching is a recent european concept, and although this fact doesn't automatically invalidate such an approach the groups engaging in martial art training must at very least consider the alternatives.

Equality

Every person must be able to defend oneself, but of course everybody has different needs and abilities. Body-type, gender, as well as mentality of the participant must be taken into the account. Of course it is up to an individual to seek the way to learn, but that doesn't mean that the community has a right to declare that it simply cannot fulfill the particular requirements of an individual, and send that person away.

Age question

A very interesting and important question is when should a person learn to defend oneself. It must be noted that if the whole martial art training becomes more of an act of exploration, and less of the "teaching and being taught", than the whole quiestion almost disappears. Exploring one's own possibilities is one of the intrinsic quality of a sentient being and actually children do it better than adults.