private pow er, domestic and foreign.
I met w ith a very lively anarchist movement in Buenos Aires, and
w ith other anarchist groups as far aw ay as northeastern Brazil,
w here nobody even knew they existed. We had a lot of discussions
about these matters. T hey recognize that they have to try to use
the state—even though they regard it as totally illegitimate.
T he reason is perfectly obvious: W hen you eliminate the one
institutional structure in w hich people can participate to some
extent—namely the government—you’re simply handing over pow er
to unaccountable private tyrannies that are much w orse. So you
have to make use of the state, all the time recognizing that you
ultimately w ant to eliminate it.
Some of the rural w orkers in Brazil have an interesting slogan.
T hey say their immediate task is “expanding the floor of the cage.”
T hey understand that they’re trapped inside a cage, but realize that
protecting it w hen it’s under attack from even w orse predators on
the outside, and extending the limits of w hat the cage w ill allow, are
both essential preliminaries to dismantling it. If they attack the cage
directly w hen they’re so vulnerable, they’ll get murdered.
T hat’s something anyone ought to be able to understand w ho can
keep tw o ideas in their head at once, but some people here in the
U S tend to be so rigid and doctrinaire that they don’t understand the
point. But unless the left here is w illing to tolerate that level of
complexity, w e’re not going to be of any use to people w ho are
suffering and need our help—or, for that matter, to ourselves.
In Brazil and Argentina, you can discuss these issues even w ith
people in the highest political echelons, and w ith elite journalists and
intellectuals. T hey may not agree w ith you, but at least they
understand w hat you’re talking about.
T here are now organizations of landless peasants in Brazil.
Brazil has an enormous agrarian problem. Land ow nership is
highly concentrated, incredibly unequal, and an enormous amount of
land is unused, typically because it’s being held as a hedge against
inflation or for investment purposes.
A very big and important organization, the Landless Workers’
Movement, has taken over a lot of land. It has close links to the
people in the favelas, w ho w ere mostly driven off their land too.