♦ What
is “anarchism”? What is “anarchy”? Who are “anarchists”?
Anarchism is an idea about the best way to live. Anarchy is
a way of living. Anarchism is the idea that government (the state) is
unnecessary and harmful. Anarchy is society without government. Anarchists are
people who believe in anarchism and desire to live in anarchy as all our
ancestors once did. People who believe in government (such as liberals,
conservatives, socialists and fascists) are known as “statists.”
It might sound like anarchism is purely negative — that it’s
just against something. Actually, anarchists have many positive ideas
about life in a stateless society. But, unlike Marxists, liberals and
conservatives, they don’t offer a blueprint.
♦ Aren’t
anarchists bomb-throwers?
No — at least not compared to, say the United States
Government, which drops more bombs every day on Iraq than anarchists have
thrown in the almost 150 years they have been a political movement. Why do we
never hear of “bomb-throwing Presidents”? Does it matter if bombs are delivered
horizontally by anarchists rather than vertically by the U.S. Government?
Anarchists have been active for many years and in many
countries, under autocratic as well as democratic governments. Sometimes,
especially under conditions of severe repression, some anarchists have thrown
bombs. But that has been the exception. The “bomb-throwing anarchist”
stereotype was concocted by politicians and journalists in the late 19th
century, and they still won’t let go of it, but even back then it was a gross
exaggeration.
♦ Has
there ever been an anarchist society that worked?
Yes, many thousands of them. For their first million years
or more, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers in small bands of equals, without
hierarchy or authority. These are our ancestors. Anarchist societies must have
been successful, otherwise none of us would be here. The state is only a few
thousand years old, and it has taken that long for it to subdue the last
anarchist societies, such as the San (Bushmen), the Pygmies and the Australian
aborigines.
♦ But
we can’t go back to that way of life.
Nearly all anarchists would agree. But it’s still an
eye-opener, even for anarchists, to study these societies, and perhaps to pick
up some ideas on how a completely voluntary, highly individualistic, yet
cooperative society might work. To take just one example, anarchist foragers
and tribesmen often have highly effective methods of conflict resolution
including mediation and nonbinding arbitration. Their methods work better than
our legal system because family, friends and neighbors of the disputants encourage
disputants to agree, helped by sympathetic and trustworthy go-betweens, to find
some reasonable resolution of the problem. In the 1970s and 1980s, academic
supposed experts tried to transplant some of these methods into the American
legal system. Naturally the transplants withered and died, because they only
live in a free society.
♦ Anarchists
are naïve: they think human nature is essentially good.
Not so. It’s true that anarchists reject ideas of innate
depravity or Original Sin. Those are religious ideas which most people no
longer believe in. But anarchists don’t usually believe that human nature is
essentially good either. They take people as they are. Human beings aren’t
“essentially” anything. We who live under capitalism and its ally, the state,
are just people who have never had a chance to be everything we can be.
Although anarchists often make moral appeals to the best in
people, just as often they appeal to enlightened self-interest. Anarchism is
not a doctrine of self-sacrifice, although anarchists have fought and died for
what they believe in. Anarchists believe that the carrying-out of their basic
idea would mean a better life for almost everyone.
♦ How
can you trust people not to victimize each other without the state to control
crime?
If you can’t trust ordinary people not to victimize each
other, how can you trust the state not to victimize us all? Are the people who
get into power so unselfish, so dedicated, so superior to the ones they rule?
The more you distrust your fellows, the more reason there is for you to become
an anarchist. Under anarchy, power is reduced and spread around. Everybody has
some, but nobody has very much. Under the state, power is concentrated, and
most people have none, really. Which kind of power would you like to go up
against?
♦ But
— let’s get real — what would happen if there were no police?
As anarchist Allen Thornton observes, “Police aren’t in the
protection business; they’re in the revenge business.” Forget about Batman
driving around interrupting crimes in progress. Police patrol does not prevent
crime or catch criminals. When police patrol was discontinued secretly and
selectively in Kansas City neighborhoods, the crime rate stayed the same. Other
research likewise finds that detective work, crime labs, etc. have no effect on
the crime rate. But when neighbors get together to watch over each other and
warn off would-be criminals, criminals try another neighborhood which is
protected only by the police. The criminals know that they are in little danger
there.
♦ But
the modern state is deeply involved in the regulation of everyday life. Almost
every activity has some sort of state connection.
That’s true — but when you think about it, everyday life is
almost entirely anarchist. Rarely does one encounter a policeman, unless he is
writing you a traffic ticket for speeding. Voluntary arrangements and
understandings prevail almost everywhere. As anarchist Rudolph Rocker wrote:
“The fact is that even under the worst despotism most of man’s personal
relations with his fellows are arranged by free agreement and solidaric
cooperation, without which social life would not be possible at all.”
Family life, buying and selling, friendship, worship, sex,
and leisure are anarchist. Even in the workplace, which many anarchists
consider to be as coercive as the state, workers notoriously cooperate,
independent of the boss, both to minimize work and to get it done. Some people
say anarchy doesn’t work. But it’s almost the only thing that does! The state
rests, uneasily, on a foundation of anarchy, and so does the economy.
♦ Culture?
Anarchism has always attracted generous and creative spirits
who have enriched our culture. Anarchist poets include Percy Bysshe Shelley,
William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. American anarchist
essayists include Henry David Thoreau and, in the 20th century, the Catholic
anarchist Dorothy Day, Paul Goodman, and Alex Comfort (author of The Joy
of Sex). Anarchist scholars include the linguist Noam Chomsky, the historian
Howard Zinn, and the anthropologists A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and Pierre Clastres.
Anarchist literary figures are way too numerous to list but include Leo
Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, and Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein). Anarchist
painters include Gustav Courbet, Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, and Jackson
Pollock. Other creative anarchists include such musicians as John Cage, John
Lennon, the band CRASS, etc.
♦ Supposing
you’re right, that anarchy is a better way to live than what we have now, how
can we possibly overthrow the state if it’s as powerful and oppressive as you
say it is?
Anarchists have always thought about this question. They
have no single, simple answer. In Spain, where there were one million
anarchists in 1936 when the military attempted a coup, they fought the Fascists
at the front at the same time that they supported workers in taking over the
factories, and the peasants in forming collectives on the land. Anarchists did
the same thing in the Ukraine in 1918-1920, where they had to fight both the
Czarists and the Communists. But that’s not how we will bring down the system
in the world of the 21st century.
Consider the revolutions that overthrew Communism in Eastern
Europe. There was some violence and death involved, more in some countries than
in others. But what brought down the politicians, bureaucrats and generals —
the same enemy we face — was most of the population just refusing to work or do
anything else to keep a rotten system going. What were the commissars in Moscow
or Warsaw to do, drop nuclear weapons on themselves? Exterminate the workers
that they were living off?
Most anarchists have long believed that what they call
a general strike could play a large part in crumbling the state. That
is, a collective refusal to work.
♦ If
you’re against all government, you must be against democracy.
If democracy means that people control their own lives, then
all anarchists would be, as American anarchist Benjamin Tucker called them,
“unterrified Jeffersonian democrats” — they would be the only true democrats.
But that’s not what democracy really is. In real life, a part of the people (in
America, almost always a minority of the people) elect a handful of politicians
who control our lives by passing laws and using unelected bureaucrats and
police to enforce them whether the majority want it or not.
As the French philosopher Rousseau (not an anarchist) once
wrote, in a democracy, people are only free at the moment they vote, the rest
of the time they are government slaves. The politicians in office and the
bureaucrats are usually under the powerful influence of big business and often
other special interest groups.
Everyone knows this. But some people keep silent
because they are getting benefits from the powerholders. Many others keep
silent because they know that protesting does no good and they might be called
“extremists” or even “anarchists” (!) if they tell it like it is. Some
democracy!
♦ Well,
if you don’t elect officials to make the decisions, who does make them? You
can’t tell me that everybody can do as he personally pleases without regard for
others.
Anarchists have many ideas about how decisions would be made
in a truly voluntary and cooperative society. Most anarchists believe that such
a society must be based on local communities small enough for people know each
other, or people at least would share ties of family, friendship, opinions or
interests with almost everybody else. And because this is a local community,
people also share common knowledge of their community and its environment. They
know that they will have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
Unlike politicians or bureaucrats, who decide for other people.
Anarchists believe that decisions should always be made at
the smallest possible level. Every decision which individuals can make for
themselves, without interfering with anybody else’s decisions for themselves,
they should make for themselves. Every decision made in small groups (such as
the family, religious congregations, co-workers, etc.) is again theirs to make
as far as it doesn’t interfere with others. Decisions with significant wider
impact, if anyone is concerned about them, would go to an occasional
face-to-face community assembly.
The community assembly, however, is not a legislature. No
one is elected. Anyone may attend. People speak for themselves. But as they
speak about specific issues, they are very aware that for them, winning is not,
as it was for football coach Vince Lombardi, “the only thing.” They want
everyone to win. They value fellowship with their neighbors. They try, first,
to reduce misunderstanding and clarify the issue. Often that’s enough to
produce agreement. If that’s not enough, they work for a compromise. Very often
they accomplish it. If not, the assembly may put off the issue, if it’s
something that doesn’t require an immediate decision, so the entire community
can reflect on and discuss the matter prior to another meeting. If that fails,
the community will explore whether there’s a way the majority and minority can
temporarily separate, each carrying out its preference.
If people still have irreconcilable differences about the
issue, the minority has two choices. It can go along with the majority this
time, because community harmony is more important than the issue. Maybe the
majority can conciliate the minority with a decision about something else. If all
else fails, and if the issue is so important to the minority, it may separate
to form a separate community, just as various American states (Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Vermont, Kentucky, Maine, Utah, West Virginia, etc.) have done.
If their secession isn’t an argument against statism, then it isn’t an argument
against anarchy. That’s not a failure for anarchy, because the new community
will recreate anarchy. Anarchy isn’t a perfect system — it’s just better than
all the others.
♦ We
can’t satisfy all our needs or wants at the local level.
Maybe not all of them, but there’s evidence from
archaeology of long-distance trade, over hundreds or even thousands of miles,
in anarchist, prehistoric Europe. Anarchist primitive societies visited by
anthropologists in the 20th century, such as the San (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers
and the tribal Trobriand Islanders, conducted such trade between individual
“trade-partners.” Practical anarchy has never depended on total local
self-sufficiency. But many modern anarchists have urged that communities, and
regions, should be as self-sufficient as possible, so as not to depend on
distant, impersonal outsiders for necessities. Even with modern technology,
which was often designed specifically to enlarge commercial markets by breaking
down self-sufficiency, much more local self-sufficiency is possible than
governments and corporations want us to know.
♦ One
definition of “anarchy” is chaos. Isn’t that what anarchy would be — chaos?
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first person to call himself an
anarchist, wrote that “liberty is the mother, not the daughter of order.”
Anarchist order is superior to state-enforced order because it is not a system
of coercive laws, it is simply how communities of people who know each other
decide how to live together. Anarchist order is based on common consent and
common sense.
♦ When
was the philosophy of anarchism formulated?
Some anarchists think that anarchist ideas were expressed by
Diogenes the Cynic in ancient Greece, by Lao Tse in ancient China, and by
certain medieval mystics and also during the 17th century English Civil War.
But modern anarchism began with William Godwin’s Political
Justice published in England in 1793. It was revived in France by Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon in the 1840s (What Is Property?). He inspired an anarchist movement
among French workers. Max Stirner in The Ego and His Own (1844)
defined the enlightened egoism which is a basic anarchist value. An American,
Josiah Warren, independently arrived at similar ideas at the same time and
influenced the large-scale movement at the time to found utopian communities.
Anarchist ideas were developed further by the great Russian revolutionary
Michael Bakunin and by the respected Russian scholar Peter Kropotkin.
Anarchists hope that their ideas continue to develop in a changing world.
♦ This
revolutionary stuff sounds a lot like Communism, which nobody wants.
Anarchists and Marxists have been enemies since the 1860s.
Although they have sometimes cooperated against common enemies like the
Czarists during the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Fascists during the
Spanish Civil War, the Communists have always betrayed the anarchists. From
Karl Marx to Joseph Stalin, Marxists have denounced anarchism.
Some anarchists, followers of Kropotkin, call themselves
“communists” — not Communists. But they contrast their free communism, arising
from below — the voluntary pooling of land, facilities and labor in local
communities where people know each other — to a Communism imposed by force by
the state, nationalizing land and productive facilities, denying all local
autonomy, and reducing workers to state employees. How could the two systems be
more different?
Anarchists welcomed and in fact participated in the fall of
European Communism. Some foreign anarchists had been assisting Eastern Bloc
dissidents — as the U.S. Government had not — for many years. Anarchists are
now active in all the former Communist countries.
The Communist collapse certainly did discredit much of the
American left, but not the anarchists, many of whom do not consider themselves
leftists anyway. Anarchists were around before Marxism and we are still around
after it.
♦ Don’t
anarchists advocate violence?
Anarchists aren’t nearly as violent as Democrats,
Republicans, liberals and conservatives. Those people only seem to be
nonviolent because they use the state to do their dirty work — to be violent
for them. But violence is violence. Wearing a uniform or waving a flag does not
change that. The state is violent by definition. Without violence against our
anarchist ancestors — hunter-gatherers and farmers — there would be no states
today. Some anarchists advocate violence — but allstates engage
in violence every day.
Some anarchists, in the tradition of Tolstoy, are pacifist
and nonviolent on principle. A relatively small number of anarchists believe in
going on the offensive against the state. Most anarchists believe in
self-defense and would accept some level of violence in a revolutionary situation.
The issue is not really violence vs. nonviolence. The issue
is direct action. Anarchists believe that people — all people — should
take their fate into their own hands, individually or collectively, whether
doing that is legal or illegal and whether it has to involve violence or it can
be accomplished nonviolently.
♦ What
exactly is the social structure of an anarchist society?
Most anarchists are not “exactly” sure. The world will be a
very different place after government has been abolished.
Anarchists don’t usually offer blueprints, but they propose
some guiding principles. They say that mutual aid — cooperation
rather than competition — is the soundest basis for social life. They
are individualists in the sense that they think society exists for
the benefit of the individual, not the other way around. They
favor decentralization, meaning that the foundations of society
should be local, face-to-face communities. These communities then federate — in
relations of mutual aid — but only to coordinate activities which can’t be
carried on by local communities. Anarchist decentralization turns the existing
hierarchy upside down. Right now, the higher the level of government, the more
power it has. Under anarchy, higher levels of association aren’t governments at
all. They have no coercive power, and the higher you go, the less
responsibility is delegated to them from below. Still, anarchists are aware of
the risk that these federations might become bureaucratic and statist. We are
utopians but we are also realists. We will have to monitor those federations
closely. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty.”
♦ Any
last words?
Winston Churchill, a deceased alcoholic English politician
and war criminal, once wrote that “democracy is the worst system of government,
except for all the others.” Anarchy is the worst system of society — except for
all the others. So far, all civilizations (state societies) have collapsed and
have been succeeded by anarchist societies. State societies are inherently
unstable. Sooner or later, ours will also collapse. It’s not too soon to start
thinking about what to put in its place. Anarchists have been thinking about
that for over 200 years. We have a head start. We invite you to explore our
ideas — and to join us in trying to make the world a better place.
(Source)
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