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Consent or Coercion
An anarchist case for social transformation
and answers to questions about anarchism
"The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a
mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships,
by behaving differently."
Gustav Landauer
Anarchism is the belief that people can voluntarily cooperate to
meet everyone's needs, without bosses or rulers, and without sacrificing
individual liberties. A common misunderstanding is that anarchism is the
total absence of order; that it is chaos, or nihilism. There are even
people who call themselves "anarchists" who have this misperception.
Anarchists are opposed to order arbitrarily imposed and maintained through
armed force or other forms of coercion. They struggle for the order that
results from the consensual interaction of individuals, from voluntary
association. If there is a need, anarchists believe that people are
capable of organizing themselves to see that it is met.
J. A. Andrews used the example of a group of friends going on a
camping trip. They plan their trip, and each person brings useful skills
and tools to share. They work together to set up tents, fish, cook, clean
up, with no one in a position of authority over anyone else. The group
organizes itself, chores are done, and everyone passes the time as they
please, alone or in groups with others. People discuss their concerns and
possible solutions are proposed. No one is bound to go along with the
group, but choosing to spend time together implies a willingness to at
least try to work out constructive solutions to the problems and frictions
that will inevitably arise. If no resolution is possible, the dissenting
individuals can form another grouping or leave without fear of persecution
by the rest of the group.
Compare this to the way most organizations function. A few
individuals make the important decisions, with or without the approval or
input of the rest of the group. Rules and bylaws are passed in the hope of
preventing undesirable activities on the part of members. The leadership
starts out by addressing legitimate concerns, but is soon corrupted by
power. It begins doing what it thinks is best, for itself and the
organization, even if it involves concealing its activities from the other
members or using deception. The elite attempts to entrench itself by
making it difficult for the members to oust it, and constantly works to
increase its power. The elite may ban criticism of its leadership and
policies, or it may attribute superhuman qualities to itself, far
surpassing those of "mere" members. Eventually the elite is no longer
under the control of the members, and cannot be challenged. It can run
amok with all of the power and resources of the organization, punishing
those who dare to defy it. Membership is no longer voluntary, but is
imposed on whoever falls within whatever the organization decides is its
jurisdiction. Laws and authority which were originally aimed at preventing
harm are turned into tools for inflicting harm on whoever is targeted by
the elite.
Another problem with laws and rules is that if you do not have
voluntary compliance, the unlawful behavior will still take place, whether
or not there is a law against it. The outlawed activity will be driven
underground or will be protected by the imprecise wording of the laws.
Having failed to win people's voluntary cooperation, through education or
persuasion, the government passes volumes and volumes of laws, in a
hopeless attempt to address and control every possible situation.
Sometimes the law is observed as if it were carved in stone, even when the
results are clearly ridiculous. An example is the case of the female
motorist who was stopped for speeding, and lectured by a police officer at
length as she sat there suffering labor pains. The officer thought she was
faking the pain of childbirth to escape a traffic ticket! Sometimes the
police fabricate charges against people they wish to punish, or they simply
beat people as an "attitude adjustment" (if you are not sufficiently
terrorized by the police, they consider it an attitude problem). It is
also not uncommon for the laws to be overly vague, or to be misapplied. In
my town, in obvious violation of their own laws, the police set up
roadblocks to stop all motorists, check their sobriety, and search their
vehicles for contraband if there is suspicion of any illegal activity after
questioning them. This is done under the guise of checking for valid
driver's licenses, which is clearly a ruse since there is no indication of
any wrongdoing when the people are stopped. But if anyone would refuse to
submit to such a search, they would likely be charged with interfering with
the duties of a police officer, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest,
plus whatever other charges the district attorney could dream up. If you
were to challenge the roadblocks in court, the judge would probably say
that the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, does not really mean
what it obviously says when it forbids unreasonable searches and seizures,
but that it has been interpreted to mean something entirely different. It
now means that the government has the power to decide what is or is not
reasonable, entirely voiding the purpose of the law. The law means
whatever those in power say it means. The courts have ruled, for example,
that conscription is not involuntary servitude, and that the government can
force you to choose between a military uniform and a prison uniform. And
the laws gradually become more and more restrictive, so that people
gradually become accustomed to having less and less freedom. Children are
assigned identification numbers at birth. Photos on driver's licenses are
stored electronically in computers, where they can be accessed at will by
law enforcement personnel. Employees must present specified forms of
identification to be eligible for employment. Residents of public housing
can have their apartments searched without a search warrant. What seems
outrageously intrusive today is tomorrow's legislation.
Anarchists do not wish to see traffic fatalities, rapes, or
murders. Quite the contrary. They feel the current combination of tyranny
and social chaos are responsible for much of the suffering in the world.
What anarchists fear is the corrupting influence of power and the
inevitable abuse of power. An individual can only do so much damage, but
the same person in a position of authority, or worse yet, an organized,
systematic application of corrupted power, can wreak horrible damage.
Governments have sent millions upon millions of people to their deaths,
through wars and persecutions, and have taken away the freedoms of billions
of others. And note that the police only prevent crimes in rare
situations, such as when a police officer just happens to be at the scene
of a crime in progress. The police almost always show up after the crime
has been committed. Most crimes go unsolved. Attempting to punish
offenders after they have committed their crimes is not a very effective
way to protect people. This false "cure" is just an attack on the symptoms
without treating the underlying problem - a society that is losing its
social consciousness. In other words, the individuals who make up the
society have stopped thinking of themselves as being members of a society.
If your neighbors are all strangers, and you feel powerless to improve
anything, you are not likely to feel that you have a relationship with
those around you. The police are not very effective against criminals, but
they are extremely effective at controlling the general public. A lone
individual has little hope of resisting the depredations of these heavily
armed paramilitary organizations. Even if a benign and uncorrupted
government was possible, many of us would prefer our freedom, with all of
its responsibilities, to being forced to live according to volumes of well
intentioned dictates written by others. Care to wear a crash helmet when
you drive your car? How about banning bare feet on beaches so no one steps
on a sharp rock? And absolutely no walking in remote areas or doing work
outside of your profession.
Fred Woodworth has pointed out that the claims of legitimacy made
by governments, the justifications used by those in power as to why they
have the right to order us about, would be laughable if the results were
not so tragic. Any claims to power made by a monarchy, constitutional
democracy, theocracy, nationalist fatherland or people's republic are
totally bogus since they govern without the consent of the governed. Any
constitution, contract or agreement that claims to bind everyone living in
the same geographic area, unborn generations, or anyone other that the
actual parties to it, are despicable falsehoods. Some governments rule
through fear and brute force, while others, as a result of intense pressure
from their subjects, have become dependent on winning the support of large
sectors of the public in elections in order to stay in power. Bourgeois
democracy, democracy controlled by the elite, is preferable to
dictatorship, but these republics also rely on coercion to achieve their
goals. The political party which wins, with the help of big money,
restrictive ballot access, and winner-take-all election laws, does not have
the right to inflict its will on those who do not support it. The state
machinery uses coercion to compel obedience from its subjects, regardless
of which party is at the controls. Democracy is often equated with
tolerance, but Hitler was a product of democracy, and slavery and apartheid
existed in the U.S. under democracy. Even in an ideal democracy, unwarped
by elite control, the majority may actually support the persecution of
people with unorthodox ideas.
The public is constantly bombarded with propaganda justifying the
existence of the government and explaining the necessity of the current
social system, in the schools, the media, and in its own propaganda. But
less than half of the eligible voters participate in elections in the U.S.
The government loudly proclaims its mandate anyway.
Most of the objections people have to anarchism as a social system
are based on the assumption that people are unreasonable and irresponsible.
If this were the case, no amount of police, judges and jails could conjure
order out of chaos. People would be routinely killing and robbing one
another, and taking advantage of any perceived weakness on the part of
others. We would all be certain we were much too clever to be caught. But
truly anti-social behavior on the part of individuals is the exception,
rather than the rule. Most of us are very well behaved. Much of the
destructive behavior we suffer from is committed by individuals who have
been raised in the most dire conditions, and who face very limited personal
choices due to the material and cultural poverty they were raised in. This
occurs across all ethnic groups and in all countries, but some societies
are wise enough to attack the conditions that foster destructive behavior
instead of merely punishing offenders after the acts have been committed.
This is a social problem which needs to be dealt with, not a given fact of
human nature. Human beings, and even animals, which are raised in an
environment of love, respect and security tend to be good natured and well
adjusted. But any creature raised in an environment of fear, cruelty or
deprivation will tend to exhibit anti-social behavior. Each society spawns
its own predatory individuals. In general, the more atomized and alienated
individuals are from their society, the more likely they are to engage in
destructive behavior, against others and against themselves. And people
cannot be blamed for not identifying with an unsympathetic, and even
predatory, society. Some anarchists argue that it is precisely because
people have become so maladjusted that no one can be trusted with power
over others.
A distinction must be made between socially destructive behavior
and behavior which is not coercive, but which is banned by the government
for other reasons. Besides the obvious examples of tax and draft evasion,
governments, by passing laws, create entire classes of criminals by
outlawing certain victimless or vice crimes. Certain activities may be
distasteful to some of us, but if they are not predatory or coercive in
nature then they are only crimes because the government says they are. But
once an activity is outlawed, professional criminals become involved
because these activities become highly profitable. This is why criminals
were active in the alcohol and gambling trades when they were outlawed, and
why they are still active in drugs, prostitution and immigration today. If
guns are outlawed, organized crime will have another lucrative trade to
pursue. The taxation of alcohol, cigarettes and gasoline has spawned
entire bootleg industries.
The for-profit nature of capitalism encourages other forms of
anti-social behavior, such as taking advantage of the disorganization of
workers by hiring them for as little as possible, working them as hard as
possible (sometimes until they break, physically or mentally), and making
them pay as much as possible for what they consume. Another example is
"externalization of costs", which means getting society to pay the costs
while private businesses get the profits, such as the education of workers
at public expense; mining, fishing, grazing and lumbering on public land
for token payments; government bailouts; strike breaking; and toxic waste
clean up. This officially protected form of destructive behavior, known as
corporate capitalism, creates a competitive, dog-eat-dog mentality that is
extremely disruptive to human solidarity. Some anarchists believe
capitalism is malignant by its very nature. Others argue that it is
government interference which has made capitalism malignant, by favoring
larger, established businesses and creating barriers for small businesses
and self-employed people.
Anarchists believe that people should be free to organize
themselves as they see fit, but are divided as to which methods are the
most just or desirable. Some anarchists claim that everyone has a right to
an equal share of the wealth, since it has been produced primarily by
generations of wage slaves living under the threat of dire poverty. They
see the functioning of society as a team effort. How could a small
fraction of the population have honestly gained such disproportion al
control of the existing assets while the majority has become so totally
dependent? They simply couldn't have. As the saying goes, "it takes money
to make money," and most of our families did not start us off with large
sums of money. What business owners had was money to invest, and/or a
willingness to go deeply into debt, while most of us make our living
selling our labor power. Employees are treated like just another input
into the production process: their labor is "bought" when needed, at the
market price, and no longer "purchased" when the need has passed. But
since employees need to provide for themselves and their families,
regardless of the condition of the labor market or the treatment they
receive at the hands of their employers, they live in constant insecurity.
This insecurity is why employees form labor unions, or turn to laws and
government for protection. So most socialist anarchists argue that the
most just way to organize an economy is to treat it like one huge
cooperative, shared and operated by all, in the interests of all.
Anarchists favor a confederal form of organization, so that each locality
or industry would be autonomous, but would be closely coordinated with the
other units which make up a society. They believe that each unit will act
responsibly in relation to the other units, because cooperation and good
faith are in everyone's interest.
The other general category includes anarchists who feel that people
should be able to be independent of any organization if they so choose,
including economic organizations. They fear socialization of the economy
for the same reason they fear the government, because it puts the
individual at the mercy of others. They also feel that some individuals
are willing to work harder to achieve a higher standard of living than
others might be willing to work, and that the more industrious should not
be dragged down to the same level as those who choose to work less
intensively and live at a more basic standard of living. They feel that
the use to which one puts one's earnings is not the business of the rest of
society, as long as it does not cause obvious harm to others, and that they
should be free to pass their wealth on to others if they so choose.
Individuals should be free to be self-employed, or to employ or be employed
by others, as long as the arrangement is voluntarily. These
anarcho-capitalists argue that the best way to organize the economy is
through voluntary economic transactions of whatever type that people choose
to make, with everyone taking responsibility for their own well-being.
They claim that in a truly free market system, consumers would be able to
control the socially destructive activities of business owners by
boycotting their products and by buying from more socially conscious
competitors.
As different as these views are, it is possible to have an economy
that includes both options, plus others not mentioned or even thought of,
and to leave people free to choose whichever type of organization they
prefer. The economy would function through the voluntary interaction of a
multitude of differently organized groupings, each working out for itself
the best methods of organization. The socialistically inclined groups
could produce goods for their own consumption, and avoid market
relationships to whatever extent they feel necessary. Gustav Landauer
wrote, "We can establish a great number of crafts and industries to produce
goods for our own consumption. We can go much further in this than the
cooperatives have gone until now, for they still cannot get rid of the idea
of competing with capitalist managed enterprise."1 What is important is
that people have a choice, which most of us currently do not have. The
various groupings could interact whenever they chose to do so. One serious
barrier to cooperation among anarchists is the issue of property rights.
At one extreme are those with an almost feudalistic attachment to private,
for-profit ownership of the necessities of life, while at the other extreme
even the ownership of personal property is seen to be anti-social and
elitist. There is quite a bit of room to maneuver between these two
extremes, but the question of expropriation of the workplace is the major
issue dividing the movement. A communitarian approach would sidestep this
issue entirely. These intentional, self-organized communities could not
replace the existing system overnight, but eventually they could greatly
reduce our dependence on it. Many of the goods currently produced are
either unnecessary or are produced in excessive quantities. The use of
automobiles, for example, could be greatly reduced through the use of mass
transit, bike paths and better urban planning (and this would be a partial
solution to the problem of traffic fatalities). And what would
anarcho-socialists do with an expropriated cash register factory or mink
ranch anyway? If we can't get people to choose to meet their needs
cooperatively, buy buying or using cooperatively produced goods, they are
probably not sufficiently interested in radical social change.
What about those who argue "abolish work"? Like a perpetual motion
machine, or cold fusion, there is no scheme currently known that can
provide everyone with what they need which does not require anyone to
perform tasks which they find unpleasant. If everyone does only what they
enjoy, we would have a huge oversupply of performing artists and athletes,
and a serious shortage of dental hygienists and plumbers. Through job
sharing and the elimination of unproductive activities, the amount of
unpleasant work can be fairly shared and reduced to a minimum. Those who
wish to abstain from the consumption of work enhanced products could not
reasonably be expected to work. But it seems just as reasonable for those
who do a share of the work to deny access to those who voluntarily choose
not to work, in the absence of barriers to productive activity such as
unemployment, or harsh or dangerous working conditions.
At the present time, since there is not widespread agreement that
anarchism is the best form of social organization, it is up to us to spread
these ideas and to implement them as best we can among ourselves. It would
be impossible to compel people to participate in an anarchist project,
since anarchism relies on voluntary cooperation and self discipline to make
it work. Once large numbers of people agree that this is the way things
should be organized, not even a tyrant can stop them from reorganizing
themselves. As Elisee Reclus wrote, "When the miserable and disinherited
of the earth shall unite in their own interest, trade with trade, nation
with nation, race with race; when they shall fully awake to their
sufferings and their purpose... powerful as may be the Master of those
days, he will be weak before the starving masses leagued against him." 2
Answers to frequently asked questions:
Q: How will people deal with crime, resolve disputes, reach agreements and
set standards if the government and laws are abolished?
A: The main purpose of governments and laws are to keep most of us under
control so that we can be efficiently milked, like a herd of cows. With
the exception of a small proportion of anti-social people, most of us are
able to avoid harming others and resolve our disputes without resorting to
the authorities. The legal system we have now puts the full force of the
state behind the party that manages to win its favor. Many disputes are
already resolved through arbitration and mediation, outside of the courts
and the legal system. The laws are written and enforced in such a way that
the poor are always held accountable for petty crimes such as writing bad
checks to pay for groceries, while the authorities can literally get away
with murder.
If allowed to, people will always act to protect themselves from
violent criminals. This is an involuntary reflex, like raising your hand
to deflect a blow. People may decide to form special, recallable groups
who are firmly under community control to perform that task as the need
arises, or they may choose to do it on a neighborhood by neighborhood
basis. But the police, courts and government we currently have are only
accountable to the people in the most roundabout way, and they have clearly
become a threat to our freedom. They are literally out of control. Self
perpetuating elites have appointed themselves to perform our civic duties
in our behalf. The amount of crime should drop sharply as soon as
productive activity becomes less difficult and oppressive, and people begin
to have a sense of belonging to a social unit. To protect the rights of
unpopular individuals who are guilty of no real crime, it would be
necessary for the community to agree that only acts that cause actual harm
to others are subject to the justice of the community. Each community can
debate the issue of "actual harm" for itself, and people can relocate
according to their preference. People would need to work out a fair and
open procedure for resolving disputes and for treating predatory
individuals. There is the danger of a community oppressing its members,
who would lack recourse to existing laws designed to protect them. We
would hope that communities would incorporate respect for the rights of
individuals into their processes; we do not expect this important value to
mysteriously vanish from social consciousness. On the contrary, personal
freedom should actually be respected even more than it presently is if we
are successful in spreading our ideas more widely. It is hard to imagine
an autonomous community expending the same level of resources on coercion
that current governments do. There is an unavoidable tension between the
good of the community and individual rights, but anarchists do not feel
that one must be sacrificed to increase the other.
If written contracts prevented fraud, we would not have "fine
print" or a legal profession. In a free society it is of the utmost
importance that people show real compassion and fairness in their dealings
with others, or else it won't last very long. Living together in peaceful
cooperation is a powerful form of protest against government and police.
Concerning technical standards, these are best agreed upon by the
people who do the work and who use the products involved, instead of being
decided by corporate officers or government bureaucrats. Many standards
are already set by professional associations. If you've ever tried to
repair an automobile or link computers you understand how necessary, and
how lacking, industry-wide standards are. If a product lacks a trusted
"seal of approval" from consumer organizations, consumers can avoid it.
Educated consumers can influence what is produced and how it is produced if
they act together in large numbers.
Q: How will we defend ourselves from invasion by foreign governments
without a government?
A: We could have a truly volunteer and community controlled military,
concerned strictly with defending our liberty and not with imposing our
will on people in foreign countries. If volunteers want to participate in
foreign wars, that would be up to them. We would soon find the world a
less dangerous place when other societies no longer fear being attacked by
our government and when we stop exporting arms for profit. The absence of
government does not mean the absence of organization. It means the absence
of coercion.
Q: The situations in places like Lebanon, Somalia, and the former
Yugoslavia have often been referred to as "anarchy". Is this accurate?
A: No, these are examples of competing elites struggling against one
another for power. The result is chaos. Anarchy is the absence of a
controlling elite. A government is the strongest gang of aggressors in a
particular area at a particular time. Civil war is what happens when the
dominant group is challenged. Anarchy has been a rare occurrence in recent
history, since there is usually an elite willing to impose itself whenever
it sees the opportunity. Emiliano Zapata, one of the major figures in the
Mexican Revolution of 1911-1918, was influenced by anarchist ideas,
especially those of the brothers Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magon. He
temporarily liberated large parts of Mexico with his army of indian
peasants. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, a mostly peasant,
anarchist army led by Nestor Makhno temporarily liberated various parts of
what is now Ukraine in battles against several different armies; White,
Red, Nationalist and foreign. Korean anarchists established an autonomous
zone in Shimin province in northern Manchuria between 1929 and 1931, but
were crushed by the Japanese army and Chinese/Russian Communists. During
the Spanish Civil War and Revolution of 1936, anarchists liberated areas of
Aragon, Catalonia and other parts of Spain. They entered into an uneasy,
anti-Nationalist alliance with the Republican government, but were
pressured and then forced to abandon their gains. They were then
persecuted by both Republicans and Nationalists.
Q: Are people really so good that they can live without government?
A: Are people really so good that they can be trusted to direct a
government? Governments have killed far more people than all the
criminals, bandit gangs and mass murderers in history, who look like
hobbyists in comparison. Anarchists consider governments to be a very
powerful form of organized crime. Some governments are worse than others,
of course, but they all have the potential for committing atrocities.
Q: Don't anarchists advocate the violent overthrow of the existing authorities?
A: Some anarchists do advocate this, in the hope that people will
spontaneously organize themselves once the power of the elite has been
broken. However, the contradiction between revolutionary social change and
the anarchist ideal of voluntary social relations has always been troubling
to some anarchists. In the absence of unanimous opposition to the elite,
revolutions always involve coercion against the supporters and sympathizers
of the elite, which may be a large proportion of a society. The most
coercion is required when a minority attempts to implement radical social
change on an unconvinced public. Not only does the old regime need to be
defeated without the support of the population, but the new elite must also
impose its program on society. The least coercion is required when a
revolution is the result of demands made by large sectors of the general
public. If the old elite resists, after a brief skirmish it can be pushed
aside. Even the government's own troops cannot be relied upon to suppress
a popular revolution, since the soldiers themselves come from the same
public. Revolutionary violence occurs when demands for change are ignored
or suppressed. But many elites are crafty enough to make concessions which
split the public and weaken people's resolve. Demands for change within
the structure of the existing system lead to compromise and ultimately to
broader political support for the system. Demands that the state reform
itself in a fundamental way are hopeless, because the very nature of the
state is to forever expand its power and its autonomy from its subjects.
Revolutionary anarchists argue that violence against tyranny is a
duty and that coercion in the name of a better world is justified. They
argue that it is very unlikely that many people, if given the choice, would
choose to remain slaves. But after the emancipation of the slaves in the
U.S. and of the peasants in Russia, many did just that, and instead of
fleeing their masters, remained employed on the same estates. This is why
some anarchists prefer a strategy of working to transform society
gradually, through education and self organization, so that people will be
less and less dependent on employers and the government, and more and more
able to organize themselves in non-coercive ways. This point of view sees
the current social system continuing mainly due to the absence of practical
alternatives and to the comfort of inertia. Most of us are compelled to
sell our labor to capitalist employers since workers' and consumers'
cooperatives aren't widely established. Likewise, if people hear someone
breaking into a neighbor's house, they call the police, since there are no
neighborhood based organizations to deal with crime. With an evolutionary
strategy, "the new society is built within the shell of the old," which
makes for a slow, but smooth, transition. The revolutionary strategy,
which promises quicker results, would leave a dangerous vacuum during the
period immediately following the revolution, when most revolutions are
defeated or else lapse back into a modified version of the old system.
Unless a large majority of the population actively supports anarchism,
coercion will likely be necessary to abolish the old social order, since
people would not yet be convinced that this is desirable. The political
struggle, convincing people of the need for change in an anarchist
direction, must be won before the old order can be successfully abolished.
Revolutionaries will argue that any significant gradual efforts
will be violently suppressed. Perhaps, but if the gradual efforts involve
no violence or coercion, it would be politically risky for the government
to suppress them. They would have to crack down on people's liberties to
such an extent that they would be illustrating to the public exactly the
point we are trying to make. We risk less by trying persuasion, including
our ideals. There are also practical reasons to avoid the use of violence
(with the possible exception of self-defense). The party that resorts to
violence first is almost always blamed by the public for causing the
conflict. A violent attack on the government would give it another excuse
to justify its own existence, the excuse it would need to eliminate us.
Armed struggle encourages the formation of a conspiratorial directing
elite, which may not be controlled by its supporters (as Fidel Castro said
recently, "Revolutionaries do not resign"). Successful armed struggle
relies on the use of treachery and violence, and these strategies may carry
over even after the original enemy is defeated. And victory does not go to
the most worthy, but to the most powerful. Some anarchists simply believe
that violence and coercion are morally wrong, and would not use these
means, even if there were hope of achieving the desired end.
Historically, violent revolution has achieved modest results at a
staggering cost in death and suffering. France, Mexico, the U.S., Russia,
China and Cuba have all experienced "successful" revolutions, yet these
societies are not substantially freer nor is the working class
substantially better off than in Great Britain, Sweden or Canada. But, you
may protest, these were not true social revolutions. Conceded. But true
social revolutions require the conscious, enthusiastic support of the
general public. This support can only be won on the political or
educational front and not on the military front. Once there is popular
support for anarchist ideas, the only force required will be to disband any
government forces which refuse to disperse. You can't win the public's
support militarily. You can only frighten people into passivity or rouse
them to lash out in a confused, unorganized manner. The case for
revolution directed by a vanguard group or party on behalf of the oppressed
requires us to argue that the public has either been brainwashed, that they
are too ignorant to understand their own self interest, or that they have
been beaten into passivity. If any combination of these are true, what
good will it do to use armed struggle on their behalf, if they do not
consciously support social change? They will either fight against us or
passively watch us die. Com plex, voluntary, and cooperative social
arrangements are unlikely to appear spontaneously. As the anarchists in
Spain discovered during the social revolution and civil war there in the
1930's, you cannot direct society and not direct society at the same time.
If people do not organize themselves, they will either flounder in chaos
and be unable to resist the forces of reaction, or they will allow
themselves to be led by politicians. Significant numbers of workers did
organize themselves in Spain, but the working class as a whole was not able
to achieve the level of self organization necessary for it to do away with
the leadership of the revolutionary parties. There can be no revolutionary
government that serves anarchist purposes or which can lead to anarchy.
The only way to avoid the creation of a new elite is if the mass of society
is consciously aware of what it is trying to accomplish.
As the anonymous authors of "You Can't Blow Up a Social
Relationship" pointed out, "The total collapse of this society would
provide no guarantee about what replaced it. Unless a majority of people
had the ideas and organization sufficient for the creation of an
alternative society, we would see the old world reassert itself because it
is what people would be used to, what they believed in, what existed
unchallenged in their own personalities."3 Alexander Berkman wrote, "As
[people's] minds broaden and develop, as they advance to new ideas and lose
faith in their former beliefs, institutions begin to change and are
ultimately done away with. The people grow to understand that their former
views were false, and that they were not truth, but prejudice and
superstition.... The social revolution, therefore, is not an accident, not
a sudden happening. There is nothing sudden about it, for ideas don't
change suddenly. They grow slowly, gradually, like the plant or flower....
It develops to the point when considerable numbers of people have embraced
the new ideas and are determined to put them into practice. When they
attempt to do so and meet with opposition, then the slow, quiet, and
peaceful social evolution becomes quick, militant, and violent. Evolution
becomes revolution. Bear in mind, then, that evolution and revolution are
not two separate and distinct things. Still less are they opposites as
some people wrongly believe. Revolution is merely the boiling point of
evolution. Because revolution is evolution at its boiling point you cannot
"make" a real revolution any more than you can hasten the boiling of a tea
kettle. It is the fire underneath that makes it boil: how quickly it will
come to the boiling point will depend on how strong the fire is. The
economic and political conditions of a country are the fire under the
evolutionary pot. The worse the oppression, the greater the
dissatisfaction of the people, the stronger the flame.... But pressure from
above, though hastening revolution, may also cause its failure, because
such a revolution is apt to break out before the evolutionary process has
been sufficiently advanced. Coming prematurely, as it were, it will fizzle
out in mere rebelling; that is, without clear, conscious aim and purpose."4
The recent riots in Los Angeles are an example of mere rebelling, without
a conscious aim beyond venting anger and looting. The uprising in Chiapas,
Mexico is an example of a much more developed, but still premature,
rebellion. Both of these rebellions were quickly isolated and contained in
the absence of widespread popular support. We must work to build the
functioning parts of a new society, while maintaining a clear vision of our
alternatives. We must not be co-opted by the State on the one hand, nor
recklessly overestimate our support on the other. Through education,
interaction, and example we can work to gradually rid humanity of statism,
nationalism, deprivation, racism, sexism, violence, child and animal abuse,
and all the other evils humanity is afflicted with. But we have to get our
own act together if we expect people to take us seriously.
In the event that the existing order collapses on its own, people
would be free to organize themselves into groups regardless of what the
majority is doing. As long as a group is large enough to be economically
viable and to defend its autonomy, even relatively small groups could set
up new social relations. The issue of violence only arises because of the
ruthless suppression of secessionist movements by the world's governments.
Q: What if some people really do prefer having a government?
A: As long as the relationships are strictly voluntary, and not enforced
by poverty or force, it would be hard for anarchists to justify suppressing
any voluntary association, just as it would be difficult to justify
suppressing religions, superstitions or vices. Under what conditions is
the use of force justified? Only in response to the prior use of force.
But governments, by definition, are institutions of coercion and control,
so only if a government supported itself through voluntary donations, or
enforced its will by merely asking for compliance, could it conceivably
function without coercion, in which case it would not really be a
government at all.
"Panarchy" is the name for a society made up of a multitude of
diverse but peacefully coexisting forms of social relations. The theory of
panarchy is that people have different ideas and preferences about how to
organize themselves. Instead of each group trying to achieve the power to
impose its ideas and preferences on everyone, each group organizes itself
and allows other groups to do likewise. One variant even has people
sharing the same geographic space, with each individual acting according to
his or her own conscience, in much the same way that different religions
coexist in societies that allow some religious freedom. The difference
would be the absence of a supreme authority setting rules that all must
obey. Of course this would require everyone to respect the choices of
others, and to refrain from using coercion or violence. Anarchists would
do their thing, and those who wanted to continue to voluntarily submit to a
particular type of government could do so. Why won't the statists allow us
this same freedom today? Panarchy should appeal to everyone, because as it
is now, no one really gets what they want. We all must live under a
mish-mash of strictly enforced rules that come out of battles fought on the
elite turf of the official political process. Panarchy is letting people
"do their own thing".
Q: How do you propose to achieve anarchist social relations?
A: We argue that the proper course for the anarchist movement is to
concentrate its efforts on two tasks: educating the public and organizing
our own social relations here and now as much as possible. Our objective
should not be to overthrow the existing social relations, because those
social relations are not viewed as intolerable by most of the public. We
need to inform people about our ideas and demonstrate to them that
anarchist social relations can actually function. Gustav Landauer
suggested that when people saw functioning villages based on voluntary
cooperation, the public's envy would result in more and more villages being
formed. These voluntary organizations will eventually render the old,
coercive institutions useless, and they will be done away with or rendered
powerless, like the monarchy and the Church have been in the past. By
combining our efforts with other non-statists in a panarchist federation,
we could greatly hasten the pace of non-coercive social change.
Q: Is anarchy a goal that can actually be reached, or is it only an ideal
to be approximated?
A: If you approximate your ideal well enough, eventually you reach your goal.
Footnotes
The quote on the cover is from "Paths in Utopia" by Martin Buber,
p.46, 1988 Collier Books reprint of a book written in 1945 and first
published in English in 1949 by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.
1. "For Socialism" by Gustav Landauer, p. 140, Telos Press, St.
Louis, 1978 (English translation). Originally published in 1911.
2. "Evolution and Revolution" by Elisee Reclus, p. 16, Kropotkin's
Lighthouse Publications reprint of the 7th edition published by William
Reeves. No dates of publication or reprint given.
3. "You Can't Blow Up a Social Relationship", p. 20, 1989 See
Sharp Press reprint of a pamphlet originally published by anonymous
Australian anarchists in 1979.
4. "ABC of Anarchism" also known as "What is Communist Anarchism"
by Alexander Berkman, p. 36-38, 1977 Freedom Press reprint of a book first
published by the Vanguard Press in 1929.
This pamphlet was published in early 1995. It was drafted by Ed
Stamm, with substantial help from Carl Bettis, Brendan Conley, Ed D'Angelo,
Greg Hall, David King, and Dick Martin, whose excellent suggestions were
usually, but not always, adopted. We borrowed extensively from the ideas
and expressions of many other anarchists and philosophers, living and dead.
Ed Stamm is ultimately responsible for the content and style of this
pamphlet. He would like to thank John Zube for broadening his perspective
by introducing him to the concept of panarchy.
We request that this pamphlet not be reproduced for commercial purposes.
This pamphlet is a project of the Affinity Group of Evolutionary
Anarchists, but does not presume to represent the personal opinions of its
members. More information about AGEA can be obtained by sending a
self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Ed Stamm, PO Box 1402, Lawrence KS,
66044 8402 USA.