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Title: Anarchism Without Hyphens Author: Karl Hess Date: Spring 1980 Language: en Topics: anarchism without adjectives Source: *the dandelion*, Spring 1980 by Karl Hess. [[http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Karl_Hess_forprint.pdf]]
There is only one kind of anarchist. Not two. Just one. An anarchist,
the only kind, as defined by the long tradition and literature of the
position itself, is a person on opposition to authority imposed through
the hierarchical power of the state. The only expansion of this that
seems to me reasonable is to say that an anarchist stands in opposition
to any imposed authority. An anarchist is a voluntarist.
Now, beyond that, anarchists also are people and, as such, contain the
billion-faceted varieties of human reference. Some are anarchists who
march, voluntarily, to the Cross of Christ. Some are anarchists who
flock, voluntarily, to the communes of beloved, inspirational father
figures. Some are anarchists who seek to establish the syndics of
voluntary industrial production. Some are anarchists who voluntary seek
to establish the rural production of the kibbutzim. Some are anarchists
who, voluntarily, seek to disestablish everything including their own
association with other people; the hermits. Some are anarchists who will
deal, voluntarily, only in gold, will never co-operate, and swirl their
capes. Some are anarchists who, voluntarily, worship the sun and its
energy, build domes, eat only vegetables, and play the dulcimer. Some
are anarchists who worship the power of algorithms, play strange games,
and infiltrate strange temples. Some are anarchists who see only the
stars. Some are anarchists who see only the mud.
They spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas.
The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed.
It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a
determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that
it’s all choice and chance.
Anarchism, liberty, does not tell you a thing about how free people will
behave or what arrangements they will make. It simply says that people
have the capacity to make the arrangements.
Anarchism is not normative. It does not say how to be free. It says only
that freedom, liberty, can exist.
Recently, in a libertarian journal, I read the statement that
libertarianism is an ideological movement. It may well be. In a concept
of freedom it, they, you, or we, anyone, has the liberty to engage in
ideology or anything else that does not coerce others, denying their
liberty. But anarchism is not an ideological movement. It is an
ideological statement. It says that all people have a capacity for
liberty. It says that all anarchists want liberty. And then it is
silent. After the pause of that silence, anarchists then mount the
stages of their own communities and history and proclaim their, not
anarchism’s, ideologies—they say how they, how they as anarchists, will
make arrangements, describe events, celebrate life, work.
Anarchism is the hammer-idea, smashing the chains. Liberty is what
results and, in liberty, everything else is up to people and their
ideologies. It is not up to THE ideology. Anarchism says, in effect,
there is no such upper case, dominating ideology. It says that people
who live in liberty make their own histories and their own deals with
and within it.
A person who describes a world in which everyone must or should behave
in a single way, marching to a single way, marching to a single drummer,
is simply not an anarchist. A person who says that they prefer this way,
even wishing that all would prefer that way, but who then says that all
must decide, may certainly be an anarchist. Probably is.
Liberty is liberty. Anarchism is anarchism. Neither is Swiss cheese or
anything else. They are not property. They are not copyrighted. They are
old, available ideas, part of human culture. They may be hyphenated but
they are not in fact hyphenated. They exist on their own. People add
hyphens, and supplemental ideologies.
I am an anarchist. I need to know that, and you should know it. After
that, I am a writer and a welder who lives in a certain place, by
certain lights, and with certain people. And that you may know also. But
there is no hyphen after the anarchist.
Liberty, finally, is not a box into which people are to be forced.
Liberty is a space in which people may live. It does not tell you how
they will live. It says, eternally, only that we can.