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Title: Frequently Asked Questions about Anarchism Author: CrimethInc. Date: September 28, 2016 Language: en Topics: FAQ, CrimethInc, questions, introductory,introduction Source: Retrieved on 2017.02.08 from https://crimethinc.com/2016/09/28/feature-the-secret-is-to-begin-getting-started-further-resources-frequently-asked-questions
authoritarian institutions to protect us from people with ill intent?
If human beings are not good enough to do without authority, why should
they be trusted with it?
Or, if human nature is changeable, why should we seek to make people
obedient rather than responsible, servile rather than independent,
craven rather than courageous?
Or, if the idea is that some people will always need to be ruled, how
can we be sure that it will be the right ones ruling, since the best
people are the most hesitant to hold power and the worst people are the
most eager for it?
The existence of government and other hierarchies does not protect us;
it enables those of ill intent to do more damage than they could
otherwise. The question itself is ahistorical: hierarchies were not
invented by egalitarian societies seeking to protect themselves against
evildoers. Rather, hierarchies are the result of evildoers seizing power
and formalizing it. (Where did you think kings came from?) Any
generalization we could make about “human nature” in the resulting
conditions is sure to be skewed.
who are willing to do anything to others for their own benefit?
What do we do with such people today? We offer them jobs as police,
executives, politicians. We reward the bribable, the greedy, and the
self-serving with positions of power and responsibility. Take away the
rewards for such behavior, and the few who persist in it will pose
considerably less harm.
terrorizing your community?
Some people insist that they need a gang to be safe from gangs. That’s
the logic of the protection racket. In fact, no one will be safe until
we are able to defend ourselves against gangs without forming them
ourselves. What we need instead are networks of mutual aid and
self-defense that do not concentrate power, but disperse it.
Camden, New Jersey, we often see incredible violence.
The state is not the only hierarchical force. When it collapses, all the
other hierarchies that developed under its protection erupt into
conflict, along with all the hierarchical groups that developed in the
conditions of competition and artificial scarcity that it imposed.
Without the state, you can still have sexism, racial privilege, local
warlords. And if there’s anything worse than being ruled by a single
government, it’s when multiple authoritarian organizations are
contending to dominate you.
Anarchists oppose all hierarchies, not just the state. Where statists
seek to suppress conflict by imposing a monopoly on violence, anarchists
seek to resolve conflict by undoing all monopolies in order that a
horizontal balance of power can emerge. The problem in the world’s
warzones is not too much anarchy, but too little.
Supposedly, the tragedy of the commons is that when things are shared,
selfish people destroy them or take them for themselves. That certainly
describes the behavior of colonizers and corporations! The question for
everyone else is not how to do away with commons, but how to defend
them. Privatization does not protect against the tragedy of losing the
things we share—it imposes it. The solution is not more
individualization, but better collectivity.
Abolishing hierarchy does not mean forcing uniformity on people. Only a
truly invasive state could compel everyone to be perfectly equal, as in
the story of Harrison Bergeron. Rather, the point is to do away with all
the artificial mechanisms that impose power imbalances. If power were
dispersed in many different forms, rather than concentrated in a few
universal currencies, a single asymmetry in abilities would not give
anyone a systematic advantage over anyone else.
As for equality before the law—so long as there are law books, courts,
and police officers, there will be no equality. All these institutions
create power imbalances: between the legislators and the governed,
between the judges and the judged, between the enforcers and their
victims. Giving some people power over other people is no way to make
anyone equal. Only voluntary relations between free beings can produce
anything like equality.
take its place, what’s to stop something really nasty from filling the
power vacuum?
That’s the mantra of those who are working up the nerve to be really
nasty themselves. The really ruthless usually tell you that they are
there to protect you from other ruthless people; often, they are telling
themselves the same thing.
If we were powerful enough to overthrow one government, we would be
powerful enough to prevent the ascendance of another, provided we
weren’t tricked into rallying around some new authority. What should
take the place of the government is not another formalized power
structure, but cooperative relationships that can meet our needs while
keeping new would-be rulers at bay.
From the vantage point of the present, no one can imagine creating a
stateless society, though many of the problems we face will not be
solved any other way. In the meantime, we can at least open spaces and
times and relations outside the control of the authorities.
live in a globalized world with a population of billions.
Let no one speak of a problem of scale without attempting to expand the
autonomous spaces and struggles that exist today. We will find out what
is possible in practice, not in idle speculation. There are horizontal
networks, such as peer-to-peer sharing, that span the whole globe; if
there are not more, it is because most of them have been deliberately
stamped out. The problem of scale is not that anarchy is impossible
outside small groups, but that we are taking on the most powerful
regimes in the history of the solar system.
people?
It is not enough just to say you are in favor of freedom. Even dictators
say as much. The same goes for saying you are against the state; there
are “libertarians” who claim they want to abolish government but
preserve the economic inequalities it imposes. Using the same language
as those who have a completely different agenda can reinforce the
effectiveness of their rhetoric while obscuring what sets your ideas
apart.
Words pose questions. We shouldn’t shrink from spelling out the
questions we most want to ask. The word “anarchist” makes certain
questions inescapable: What does it mean to live without rule? Which
kinds of power are liberating, and which are oppressive? How do we take
on the hierarchies of our day?
If we hesitate to use the word “anarchist,” the authorities will use it
as an accusation to delegitimize anyone who makes headway against them,
and we will have no answer except to distance ourselves from the very
things we want. It is better to legitimize the concept in advance, so
other people can understand what we want and what the stakes are. As
anathema as it may be to some, there is no shortcut when it comes to
challenging the values of a society.
At this point in history, anarchism is practically the only value system
without a genocide on its record. As obedience and competition produce
diminishing returns, many people are looking for another way to
understand the world and express what they want. Indeed, as previously
distinct power structures consolidate into a global web, resistance will
have to be anarchist if it is to exist at all.
anything violent.
From the perspective of a statist society, violence is simply illegal
force. Inside this framework, most actions that perpetuate the
prevailing hierarchies are not considered violent, while a wide range of
actions that threaten those in power qualify as violence. This explains
why it isn’t called violence when factories pump carcinogens into rivers
or prisons incarcerate millions of people, while sabotaging a factory or
resisting arrest are deemed violent. From this perspective, practically
anything that endangers the ruling order is sure to be seen as violent.
If the real problem with violence is that it is destructive, then what
about destructive acts that prevent greater destruction from taking
place? Or, if the problem with violence is that it is not consensual,
what about nonconsensual actions that prevent coercion from occurring?
Defending oneself against tyrants necessarily means violating their
wishes—we can’t wait for the entire human race to reach consensus before
we are entitled to act. Rather than letting the laws determine what
forms of action are legitimate, we have to make these decisions for
ourselves, using whatever power is at our disposal to maximize the
freedom and wellbeing of all who share this world.
It follows that the most important ethical and strategic question about
any action is not whether it is violent, or legal, or coercive, but
rather, how does it distribute power?
We can’t know in advance what effect our actions will have. We can only
find out by trying. That means we owe it to ourselves to hazard the
experiment.
Perhaps it appears that everyone around you is satisfied with the status
quo, or at least that they have decided it is not worth trying to change
it. But when you act, even if you act alone, you change the context in
which others make decisions. This is why individual actions can
sometimes set off massive chain reactions.
It’s true that the revolutionaries of previous generations did not
succeed in establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth, but imagine what
kind of world we would live in if not for them. (Shoplifting doesn’t
abolish property, either, but think how much poorer the poor of all
times would have been if not for it.) Spaces of freedom aren’t just
created by successful revolutions—they appear in every struggle against
tyranny. Freedom is not something that waits beyond the horizon of the
future; it is made up of all the moments throughout history when people
have acted according to their consciences.
We may never arrive at a condition of pure anarchy. But the real
significance of any utopia is in the way it enables us to act in the
present. Utopias take on flesh as the social currents they mobilize and
steer. The purpose of a vision of the future is to anchor and orient you
here and now. It is like a sextant you point towards the stars on the
horizon in order to navigate by them. You may never leave the surface of
the earth, but at least you know where you’re going.
As for what is practical, that depends on what you want. If you want the
current order to persist forever, or at least until it renders the
planet uninhabitable, you should meekly propose minor reforms that might
stabilize it. If you want to see fundamental changes, the only practical
approach is to be clear about what you want from the outset. Often, the
only way to make even a small change is to begin by aiming at a big one.