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Title: Anarchists Against Democracy
Author: Various Authors
Language: en
Topics: democracy, criticism and critique, Direct Democracy
Source: Retrieved on 2021-12-06 from https://raddle.me/wiki/anarchists_against_democracy

Various Authors

Anarchists Against Democracy

Malatesta

But if we do not for one moment recognize the right of majorities to

dominate minorities, we are even more opposed to domination of the

majority by a minority. It would be absurd to maintain that one is right

because one is in a minority. If at all times there have been advanced

and enlightened minorities, so too have there been minorities which were

backward and reactionary; if there are human beings who are exceptional,

and ahead of their times, there are also psychopaths, and especially are

there apathetic individuals who allow themselves to be unconsciously

carried on the tide of events.

In any case it is not a question of being right or wrong; it is a

question of freedom, freedom for all, freedom for each individual so

long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others. No one can

judge with certainty who is right and who is wrong, who is closer to the

truth and which is the best road to the greatest good for each and

everyone. Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at the

truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is not

the freedom to be wrong.

In our opinion, therefore, it is necessary that majority and minority

should succeed in living together peacefully and profitably by mutual

agreement and compromise, by the intelligent recognition of the

practical necessities of communal life and of the usefulness of

concessions which circumstances make necessary.

—

Majorities and Minorities

This is why we are neither for a majority nor for a minority government;

neither for democracy not for dictatorship. We are for the abolition of

the gendarme. We are for the freedom of all and for free agreement,

which will be there for all when no one has the means to force others,

and all are involved in the good running of society. We are for anarchy.

—

Neither Dictators, nor Democrats: Anarchists

We are not democrats for, among other reasons, democracy sooner or later

leads to war and dictatorship. Just as we are not supporters of

dictatorships, among other things, because dictatorship arouses a desire

for democracy, provokes a return to democracy, and thus tends to

perpetuate a vicious circle in which human society oscillates between

open and brutal tyranny and a lying freedom.

So, we declare war on dictatorship and war on democracy.

[...]

‘Government of the people’ no, because this presupposes what could never

happen – complete unanimity of will of all the individuals that make up

the people. It would be closer to the truth to say, ‘government of the

majority of the people.’ This implies a minority that must either rebel

or submit to the will of others.

But it is never the case that the representatives of the majority of

people are all of the same mind on all questions; it is therefore

necessary to have recourse again to the majority system and thus we will

get closer still to the truth with ‘government of the majority of the

elected by the majority of the electors.’

Which is already beginning to bear a strong resemblance to minority

government.

And if one then takes into account the way in which elections are held,

how the political parties and parliamentary groupings are formed and how

laws are drawn up and voted and applied, it is easy to understand what

has already been proved by universal historical experience: even in the

most democratic of democracies it is always a small minority that rules

and imposes its will and interests by force.

—

Democracy and Anarchy

It is well known that anarchists do not accept majority government

(democracy), any more than they accept government by the few

(aristocracy, oligarchy, or dictatorship by one class or party) nor that

of one individual (autocracy, monarchy or personal dictatorship).

—

A Project of Anarchist Organisation

Kropotkin

It is becoming understood that majority rule is as defective as any

other kind of rule; and humanity searches and finds new channels for

resolving the pending questions.

—

Process Under Socialism

After having tried all kinds of government, and endeavored to solve the

insoluble problem of having a government “which might compel the

individual to obedience, without escaping itself from obedience to

collectivity,” humanity is trying now to free itself from the bonds of

any government whatever, and to respond to its needs of organization by

the free understanding between individuals pursuing the same common

aims.

—

Anarchist Communism — Its Basis and Principles

It seems to me proved by evidence that, men being neither the angels nor

the slaves they are supposed to be by the authoritarian utopians —

Anarchist principles are the only ones under which a community has any

chances to succeed. In the hundreds of histories of communities which I

have had the opportunity to read, I always saw that the introduction of

any sort of elected authority has always been, without one single

exception, the point which the community stranded upon; while, on the

other side, those communities enjoyed a partial and sometimes very

substantial success, which accepted no authority besides the unanimous

decision of the folkmoot, and preferred, as a couple of hundred of

millions of Slavonian peasants do, and as the German Communists in

America did, to discuss every matter so long as a unanimous decision of

the folkmoot could be arrived at.

Communists, who are bound to live in a narrow circle of a few

individuals, in which circle the petty struggles for dominion are the

more acutely felt, ought decidedly to abandon the Utopias of elected

committees’ management and majority rule; they must bend before the

reality of practice which is at work for many hundreds of years in

hundreds of thousands of village communities — the folkmoot — and they

must remember that in these communities, majority rule and elected

government have always been synonymous and concomitant with

disintegration — never with consolidation.

—

Proposed Communist Settlement: A New Colony for Tyneside or Wearside

Tolstoy

When, among a hundred men one man dominates ninety-nine, it is iniquity,

it is despotism; when ten dominate ninety, it is injustice; it is

oligarchy; when fifty-one dominate forty-nine (and this only

theoretically, for, in reality, among these fifty-one there are ten or

twelve masters), then it is justice, then it is liberty.

Could one imagine anything more ridiculous, more absurd, then this

reasoning? However, this is the very one that serves as a basic

principle for every one who extolls better social conditions.

—

The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (unsigned epigraph)

A. Parsons

Whether government consists of one over a million or a million over one,

an anarchist is opposed to the rule of majority as well as minority.

—

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis

L. Parsons

It is better to have majority rule [...] than to have minority rule

which is only in the interest of the few [...]. But the principle of

rulership is in itself wrong; no man has any right to rule another man.

—

The Ballot Humbug

Dupont

Every time an anarchist says, “I believe in democracy,” there is a

little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

The guilt-ridden, double-checking tenets of democracy bother all

fragments of radical opinion like a haze of late summer midges but the

anarchist milieu seems especially prone to tolerating, even embracing,

this maddening visitation...

The cyclical return within the milieu to the tenets of democracy is

conducted by those who in other elements of their own analysis

understand that it has nothing to do with either Greek ideals or power

to the people and that in reality it consists of little more than a

parade of cattle-prodded common senselessness, more LA Arnie than

Athenian Socrates. These revolutionaries state explicitly in their most

lucid moments the determinate relationship between capital and its

political administration but it seems that even this is not enough and

the temptation to refer back to the democratic form as an ideal is

irresistible. [...]

The most radical democrats seek to establish what they call real or

direct democracy, which they say will bring all socially occurring

phenomena within the scope of the proposed popular assembly. In one

bound they forget, in that endless oscillation that is chronic to the

left, the objective influence of big money on the solutions they propose

even after their own efforts to point out the specifics of such

instances as examples of the problem of the present. [...]

Radical and direct democrats seem ever-doomed to forget that the form

society takes is not finally determined by public opinion, but by the

ownership of property. The surface of opinions and of subjective values,

even if regimented into a mass movement, are no opposition at all to the

force of property ownership. Such movements press the button marked

“have your say,” but it is connected to nothing, they are “making

themselves heard” down the phone but the line is cut, they are “standing

up for what’s right” but their feet are in quicksand. The petitions and

lobbyings and protests and pressurings are so many open doors to empty

rooms.

The labyrinth of participation turns out to be a fetish of alienated

consciousness, “getting involved” is specially designed to convince the

unwary that their concern is special, that this time they’re really

making headway against all precedence of the circumlocution office, and

that really, really change is very close now, ah but they aren’t and it

isn’t — and if, as the radicals have diagnosed, this democracy is one

sign of a fundamental economic alienation then it would be a strange

medicine indeed that recommended its treatment by means of a blanket

application of its symptom. [...]

So, if it is now established that democracy at its heart is a trick to

distract attention from economic domination of one class by another then

it is unlikely that any popular assembly in any imaginable circumstance

could defend itself against non-explicit manipulation from hidden

forces, factions, splinters and so on (the contrary: the more open and

honest the assembly is towards the citizenry the more responsive it is

to hidden influence). I also do not see how any given democratic

institution could prevent at least one degree of alienation opening up

between itself and the social body, and in that unspoken space who knows

what lurks?

Democracy cannot dismember capitalism. [...]

It is no miraculous feat of prophecy to predict that many if not all of

those involved in the current protest movement will end up as future

entrepreneurs and politicians of the establishment. Such is the history

of political protest. The French, American, and Russian revolutions, and

even the protests of the Sixties all disguised self-interested,

economically based, ambitions behind a Birnham wood of slogans for

universal emancipation.

Many energetic and independent souls have entered democratic politics

saying they were going to bring the practice of democracy into line with

its alleged ideals. All have ended instead by adapting themselves to

what existed before them. The English rebel MP Diane Abbott, famous only

for castigating her New Labour colleagues for sending their children to

private schools, ends by sending her kid to a private school. I don’t

criticise her, it’s inevitable, the political class are separate, her

kid would certainly be a target, and the nature of privilege is that you

can choose to escape what the rest of us have no choice in. Those who

attempt to reform privilege from within end up as its beneficiaries. So

it is no surprise when, for whatever reason, democratic ambitions are

proclaimed within the anarchist milieu and these

we-don’t-mean-it-in-the-same-way-they-do self-described anarchists

conclude their ignominious career by proposing anarchist intervention in

the electoral process (as the former editor of Green Anarchist did in

Freedom 9/08/03).

When anarchists declare themselves democrats for respectability’s sake,

so they can get on better at university research departments, so they

can tap into a shared and honourable left tradition,-so they can

participate in the global forum, when they crown their decomposition by

saying, “we’re democrats too, we’re true democrats, participatory

democrats” they ought not be surprised at how enthusiastic democracy is

to return the compliment, and of course to extract its price. Those who

sign their names soon find themselves falling silent on a spray of other

matters to which democracy and the force behind it are secretly hostile,

and of that invisible bouquet class is the big, bold, blousey one.

—

Democracy

Berkman

The essence of authority is invasion, the impostion of a superior will —

generally superior only in point of physical force. The menace of

man-made authority is not in its potential abuse. That may be guarded

against. The fundamental evil of authority is its use. The more paternal

its character or the more humanistic its symbols and mottoes, the

greater its danger. No slavery so deep-rooted and stable than the subtle

hypnotism of Democracy’s phraseology. It is mesmerizing to watch the

girations of a balloon labelled “Liberty.” The required optical

intensity only too often lulls to forgetfulness even those vaguely

conscious that the proudly soaring balloon holds nothing but gas -a

child’s toy with no substance.

The democratic authority of majority rule is the last pillar of tyranny.

The last, but the strongest. It is at the base of this pillar that the

Anarchist ax has been hewing.

—

Apropos (in The Mother Earth Bulletin )

Proudhon

What is democracy? The sovereignty of the nation, or, rather, of the

national majority… in reality there is no revolution in the government,

since the principle remains the same. Now, we have the proof to-day

that, with the most perfect democracy, we cannot be free.

—

What is Property?

“We may conclude without fear that the revolutionary formula cannot be

Direct Legislation, nor Direct Government, nor Simplified Government,

that it is No Government. Neither monarchy, nor aristocracy, nor even

democracy itself, in so far as it may imply any government at all, even

though acting in the name of the people, and calling itself the people.

No authority, no government, not even popular, that is the Revolution.

Direct legislation, direct government, simplified government, are

ancient lies, which they try in vain to rejuvenate. Direct or indirect,

simple or complex, governing the people will always be swindling the

people. It is always man giving orders to man, the fiction which makes

an end to liberty; brute force which cuts questions short, in the place

of justice, which alone can answer them; obstinate ambition, which makes

a stepping stone of devotion and credulity...”

—

The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century

Every idea is established or refuted by a series of terms that are, as

it were, its organism, the last term of which demonstrates irrevocably

its truth or error. If the development, instead of taking place simply

in the mind and through theory, is carried out at the same time in

institutions and acts, it constitutes history. This is the case with the

principle of authority or government.

The first form in which this principle is manifested is that of absolute

power. This is the purest, the most rational, the most dynamic, the most

straightforward, and, on the whole, the least immoral and the least

disagreeable form of government.

But absolutism, in its naïve expression, is odious to reason and to

liberty; the conscience of the people is always aroused against it.

After the conscience, revolt makes its protest heard. So the principle

of authority has been forced to withdraw: it retreats step by step,

through a series of concessions, each one more inadequate than the one

before, the last of which, pure democracy or direct government, results

in the impossible and the absurd. Thus, the first term of the series

being ABSOLUTISM, the final, fateful [fatidique] term is anarchy,

understood in all its senses.

—

The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century

Socialists should break completely with democratic ideas.

—

Selections from the Carnets

Thoreau

Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole

influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it

is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its

whole weight.

—

Civil Disobedience

Bakunin

In short, we reject all legislation, all authority and every privileged,

licensed, official, and legal influence, even that arising from

universal suffrage, convinced that it can only ever turn to the

advantage of a dominant, exploiting minority and against the interests

of the immense, subjugated majority. It is in this sense that we are

really Anarchists.

—

What is Authority

Spooner

The will, or the pretended will, of the majority, is the last lurking

place of tyranny at the present day. The dogma, that certain individuals

and families have a divine appointment to govern the rest of mankind, is

fast giving place to the one that the larger number have a right to

govern the smaller; a dogma, which may, or may not, be less oppressive

in its practical operation, but which certainly is no less false or

tyrannical in principle, than the one it is so rapidly supplanting.

Obviously there is nothing in the nature of majorities, that insures

justice at their hands. They have the same passions as minorities, and

they have no qualities whatever that should be expected to prevent them

from practising the same tyranny as minorities, if they think it will be

for their interest to do so.

There is no particle of truth in the notion that the majority have a

right to rule, or to exercise arbitrary power over, the minority, simply

because the former are more numerous than the latter. Two men have no

more natural right to rule one, than one has to rule two. Any single

man, or any body of men, many or few, have a natural right to maintain

justice for themselves, and for any others who may need their

assistance, against the injustice of any and all other men, without

regard to their numbers; and majorities have no right to do any more

than this.

The relative numbers of the opposing parties have nothing to do with the

question of right. And no more tyrannical principle was ever avowed,

than that the will of the majority ought to have the force of law,

without regard to its justice; or, what is the same thing, that the will

of the majority ought always to be presumed to be in accordance with

justice. Such a doctrine is only another form of the doctrine that might

makes right.

—

An Essay on the Trial by Jury

CrimethInc

But even if there were no Presidents or town councils, democracy as we

know it would still be an impediment to freedom. Corruption, privilege,

and hierarchy aside, majority rule is not only inherently oppressive but

also paradoxically divisive and homogenizing at the same time. [...]

It’s worth reflecting on what sort of utopia is implied by idealizing

direct democracy as a form of government. Imagine the kind of

totalitarianism it would take to produce enough cohesion to govern a

society via consensus process—to get everyone to agree. Talk about

reducing things to the lowest common denominator!

—

The Anarchist Critique of Democracy

Even as its partisans have trumpeted its supposed inclusivity, in

practice democracy has always demanded a way of distinguishing between

included and excluded. That could be status in the legislature, voting

rights, citizenship, membership, race, gender, age, or participation in

street assemblies; but in every form of democracy, for there to be

legitimate decisions, there have to be formal conditions of legitimacy,

and a defined group of people who meet them.

In this regard, democracy institutionalizes the provincial, chauvinist

character of its Greek origins, at the same time as it seemingly offers

a model that could involve all the world. This is why democracy has

proven so compatible with nationalism and the state; it presupposes the

Other, who is not accorded the same rights or political agency.

The focus on inclusion and exclusion is clear enough at the dawn of

modern democracy in Rousseau’s influential Of the Social Contract, in

which he emphasizes that there is no contradiction between democracy and

slavery. The more “evildoers” are in chains, he suggests, the more

perfect the freedom of the citizens. Freedom for the wolf is death for

the lamb, as Isaiah Berlin later put it. The zero-sum conception of

freedom expressed in this metaphor is the foundation of the discourse of

rights granted and protected by the state. In other words: for citizens

to be free, the state must possess ultimate authority and the capacity

to exercise total control. The state seeks to produce sheep, reserving

the position of wolf for itself. [...]

Those who promote democracy as an alternative to the state rarely draw a

meaningful distinction between the two. If you dispense with

representation, coercive enforcement, and the rule of law, yet keep all

the other hallmarks that make democracy a means of

governing—citizenship, voting, and the centralization of legitimacy in a

single decision-making structure—you end up retaining the procedures of

government without the mechanisms that make them effective. This

combines the worst of both worlds. It ensures that those who approach

anti-state democracy expecting it to perform the same function as the

state will inevitably be disappointed, while creating a situation in

which anti-state democracy tends to reproduce the dynamics associated

with state democracy on a smaller scale.

Finally, it’s a losing battle. If what you mean to denote by the word

democracy can only occur outside the framework of the state, it creates

considerable ambiguity to use a term that has been associated with state

politics for 2500 years. Most people will assume that what you mean by

democracy is reconcilable with the state after all. This sets the stage

for statist parties and strategies to regain legitimacy in the public

eye, even after having been completely discredited. The political

parties Podemos and Syriza gained traction in the occupied squares of

Barcelona and Athens thanks to their rhetoric about direct democracy,

only to make their way into the halls of government where they are now

behaving like any other political party. They’re still doing democracy,

just more efficiently and effectively. Without a language that

differentiates what they are doing in parliament from what people were

doing in the squares, this process will recur again and again.

When we identify what we are doing when we oppose the state as the

practice of democracy, we set the stage for our efforts to be reabsorbed

into larger representational structures. Democracy is not just a way of

managing the apparatus of government, but also of regenerating and

legitimizing it. Candidates, parties, regimes, and even the form of

government can be swapped out from time to time when it becomes clear

that they cannot solve the problems of their constituents. In this way,

government itself—the source of at least some of those problems—is able

to persist. Direct democracy is just the latest way to rebrand it.

Even without the familiar trappings of the state, any form of government

requires some way of determining who can participate in decision-making

and on what terms—once again, who counts as the demos. Such stipulations

may be vague at first, but they will get more concrete the older an

institution grows and the higher the stakes get. And if there is no way

of enforcing decisions—no kratos—the decision-making processes of

government will have no more weight than decisions people make

autonomously. This is the paradox of a project that seeks government

without the state.

These contradictions are stark enough in Murray Bookchin’s formulation

of libertarian municipalism as an alternative to state governance. In

libertarian municipalism, Bookchin explained, an exclusive and avowedly

vanguardist organization governed by laws and a Constitution would make

decisions by majority vote. They would run candidates in city council

elections, with the long-term goal of establishing a confederation that

could replace the state. Once such a confederation got underway,

membership was to be binding even if participating municipalities wanted

to withdraw. Those who try to retain government without the state are

likely to end up with something like the state by another name.

The important distinction is not between democracy and the state, then,

but between government and self-determination. Government is the

exercise of authority over a given space or polity: whether the process

is dictatorial or participatory, the end result is the imposition of

control. By contrast, self-determination means disposing of one’s

potential on one’s own terms: when people engage in it together, they

are not ruling each other, but fostering cumulative autonomy. Freely

made agreements require no enforcement; systems that concentrate

legitimacy in a single institution or decision-making process always do.

It is strange to use the word democracy for the idea that the state is

inherently undesirable. The proper word for that idea is anarchism.

Anarchism opposes all exclusion and domination in favor of the radical

decentralization of power structures, decision-making processes, and

notions of legitimacy. It is not a matter of governing in a completely

participatory manner, but of making it impossible to impose any form of

rule.

—

From Democracy To Freedom

Wilbur

It seems clear to me that nearly all of the arguments for attempting to

incorporate democracy into anarchy involve some confusion of principles,

or a confusion of principles and practices. And, unfortunately, those

confusions often look a lot like those used in the attempt to prove that

anarchy is itself impossible, such as Engels’ attempt to dismiss

anti-authoritarians by conflating authority and force. It is less clear

to me why so many people who presumably have some investment in the

notion of anarchism struggle so mightily to fully embrace anarchy, but

that’s not because the challenges inherent in anarchy are not absolutely

apparent. Instead, I’m just not sure why anyone would embrace anarchism

if they had serious doubts about the possibility or desirability of

anarchy.

—

Anarchy and Democracy: Examining the Divide

de Cleyre

The principle of majority rule itself, even granting it could ever be

practicalized — which it could not on any large scale: it is always a

real minority that governs in place of the nominal majority — but even

granting it realizable, the thing itself is essentially pernicious; that

the only desirable condition of society is one in which no one is

compelled to accept an arrangement to which he has not consented.

—

Why I am an Anarchist

[The Americans of the Revolutionary War] thus took their starting point

for deriving a minimum of government upon the same sociological ground

that the modern Anarchist derives the no-government theory; viz., that

equal liberty is the political ideal. The difference lies in the belief,

on the one hand, that the closest approximation to equal liberty might

be best secured by the rule of the majority in those matters involving

united action of any kind (which rule of the majority they thought it

possible to secure by a few simple arrangements for election), and, on

the other hand, the belief that majority rule is both impossible and

undesirable; that any government, no matter what its forms, will be

manipulated by a very small minority, as the development of the States

and United States governments has strikingly proved; that candidates

will loudly profess allegiance to platforms before elections, which as

officials in power they will openly disregard, to do as they please; and

that even if the majority will could be imposed, it would also be

subversive of equal liberty, which may be best secured by leaving to the

voluntary association of those interested in the management of matters

of common concern, without coercion of the uninterested or the opposed.

—

Anarchism and American Traditions

Robinson

Anarchy and democracy are incompatible, because anarchy is based on an

active politics of desire whereas democracy is necessarily reactive and

thus plays into the repressive logics of industrial society and

especially, of contemporary capitalism. I conceive of a politics of

desire as operating through the liberation of active desires — desires

that actively connect with the world — over and against reactive desires

— desires that are fueled by a primary desire to repress desire itself.

Conventional political ideologies depend deeply on reactive schemas, and

the point of anarchy is not simply to oppose the macro-social forms that

result from such schemas, but also to oppose the micro-social and

emotional/psychological formations on which such forms are built.

Democracy and the politics of desire may seem complementary, but in fact

they run contrary to each other. The reason for this is that, while the

politics of desire involves an immediacy of expression and an opposition

to discursive exclusions that operate repressively, democracy implies

the exclusion or repression of minorities as part of its basic logic.

That minorities be prevented from expressing themselves with wildness

and immediacy — that they remain always the “loyal opposition” within

the confines of a system in which the majority gets its way — is a

necessary part of the idea of democracy. For this reason, democracy goes

against the emancipation of desire, operating simply as a particularly

powerful ideology of recuperation with especially effective, and

therefore insidious, ways of excusing social repression.

Democracy has come to mean at least three different things in

contemporary political discourse. First of all, it means “rule by the

people” — the literal meaning. Secondly, it means more specifically,

rule by the majority — counterposed to minority rule (and also,

invisibly, to the refusal of rule, to anarchy, which is also a refusal

of minorities to be ruled by majorities, as well as a refusal to rule

over them). Thirdly, it is used to refer to a complex of institutions

typical of societies embracing aspects of liberalism. It is only in this

third sense that democracy can be taken to imply minority rights, and

only of the kind and in the context implied by the “rule of law” and the

power of the state. In all of these senses, democracy is a specific

instance of state power — and not, as implied by some anarchists, a

critique of state power or a form of anarchy. Unconditional rule by a

majority cannot be compatible with anarchy because it implies repression

on various levels.

—

Democracy vs Desire: Beyond the Politics of Measure

Landstreicher

“The Lesser Evil” by Dominique Misein exposes how the logic that is so

basic to a democratic system — the logic of compromise and negotiation,

mediocrity and making do — comes to permeate every aspect of life to the

point where dreams and desires fade, passion disappears (what passion

can one feel for a lesser evil?) and revolution loses all meaning. This

domination over all of life is the purpose of the participatory social

system the bourgeoisie imposed. This permeation into every aspect of

life makes the democratic order the most successful totalitarian social

system to ever exist. In “Who Is It?”, Adonide compares classical

dictatorships with the totalitarianism of the democratic system where

everyone can excuse himself because she is only a cog in this vast

social machine, and individual responsibility, which is the basis for

individual self-determination, seems to disappear. [...]

At present, capitalism and the socio-political system that best

corresponds with it — democracy — dominate the planet. They undermine

real choice, creativity and self-activity...all that is necessary for

individuals to be able to create their lives as they desire and for the

exploited to be able to rise up intelligently against their

exploitation. For this reason, it is necessary that those of us who want

to make our lives our own and live in a world where every individual has

access to all she needs to create his life as she sees fit stop

demanding that this system become more of what it claims to be and

instead start attacking it in all of its aspects including the

democratic system in order to destroy it. At this time such insurgence

is the truest expression of real choice, self-determination and

individual responsibility.

And what of those times when we need to act together with others and

need to decide what to do? In each instance, we will figure out how best

to make decisions without turning any such process into a system or an

ideal to strive for. A decision-making process is a tool to be taken up

as needed and laid down when not; democracy is a social system that

comes to dominate all of life.

What does democracy look like? The jackboot that you voted to have in

your face.

—

This is What Democracy Looks Like

The fact that democratic systems serve power becomes more obvious when

we examine the nature of democratic participation. Democracy starts with

the assumption that the “good of all” (or “the greatest good for the

greatest number”) takes precedence over the needs and desires of the

individual. This collectivist assumption dates back to the early days of

capitalism when it was worked out in the writings of utilitarian

philosophers such as John Stuart Mills and Jeremy Bentham. Thus,

apolitical decision-making process that separates decision from action

becomes necessary. Decision and execution of the decision must be

separated in order to guarantee that “the good of all” is, indeed what

is carried out.

But what is this “good of all”? In practise, it could just as readily be

called “the good of none”. Within the democratic system, the method for

finding the “common good” is to bring all sides or their representatives

together to negotiate and come to a compromise. But what really is the

nature of compromise? Each gives up a little of this, renounces a little

of that, sacrifices a bit of the other thing (leaving aside the fact

that a few are in a position to be able to sacrifice much less than

most), until whatever they may have first desired has disappeared in the

haze of the democratic “good of all”. Here then is democratic equality:

Each leaves the table of negotiation equally disappointed, equally

resentful, equally taking solace in the fact that, at least, the others

lost as much as oneself. In the end it is only the two-headed hydra of

power, the state and capital, that wins from this process. [...]

Opinion, the idea flattened and separated from real life, gives us the

illusion of freedom. After all, can’t I express my opinion? Can’t I have

my say? This is the supposed beauty of democracy. The entire process by

which opinion develops, this process of separating ideas from life and

flattening them into the basis for pub talk and opinion polls is the

basis for the general consensus by which democracy justifies itself. It

presents itself as the one political system that, unlike other political

systems, allows the free discussion about all political systems. That

such a construction determines the outcome of any such discussion in

advance should be obvious. What is less obvious is the option that is

left out: the refusal of every political system.

It should be clear from all this that there is an agenda behind

democracy. The “common good” that it works for is actually the good of

the present social order. What else do we really have in common beyond

the fact that we are all exploited and dominated by this order? So the

“common good”, in fact, means that which is good for the continuation of

exploitation and domination. By drawing us into the process of

fictitious participation outlined above, democracy becomes the most

truly totalitarian political system that has ever existed. Our lives

come to be defined in terms of its processes in ways that no other

political system could accomplish. This is why democracy is the state

structure best suited to the needs of capital. Capital needs to permeate

every moment of life, to define it terms of the economy. To do so

requires a transformation in the nature of human beings, the

transformation of living individuals into producer-consumers. Democracy,

by transforming the self-creating individual into a citizen of the

state, that is into a cog in the social machine, in fact helps capital

to accomplish this project.

So, in reality, this is what democracy looks: an empty existence devoid

of vitality, given to the endless repetition of the same activities not

of our choosing, compensated with the right to chatter on and on about

that on which we cannot act. To wed revolution to this pathetic ideal

would create a meager revolution. To wed anarchism to it would rain the

life from all our finest passions and leave a stunted caricature for the

amusement of academics and cultural theorists. Our revolution can’t grow

from such paltry ideals; it must spring from the great dreams of those

who will not compromise their lives.

—

Essays from Willful Disobedience

ziq

Democracy is the tyranny of the majority, however you try to

window-dress it. In practice, all forms of democracy have been used by a

majority group to control or otherwise dictate to a minority group. All

forms of democracy have been used to smother autonomy, to stifle

self-determination, and to absolve rulers of responsibility for their

actions. How can a ruler be responsible for their atrocities when “the

people” elected them and empowered them to commit those atrocities?

[...]

Fruitless attempts to get everyone to reach the same agreement is just

the latest form of the bureaucratic meandering that has long sabotaged

political action. After countless hours of heated debate, and a long

series of compromises, the consensus reached (if it’s ever reached at

all) will likely be very watered down from its initial form and be of

little benefit to anyone in the group. A plan for concrete action will

have been turned into a frustrating exercise in concession, tepid

half-measures, and ultimately; inaction. All because the people who made

the plan felt the need to gain the approval of a committee of naysayers

before pursuing it.

Anarchists always oppose monarchy; the rule of one. We always oppose

oligarchy; the rule of a few. So why wouldn’t we oppose democracy; the

rule of many? Why should the many get to decide how you or I live our

lives? A ruler is a ruler is a ruler. Democracy has been expertly

wielded as a weapon by the elites in society. By combining democracy

with meticulously-crafted propaganda, the powerful are able to control

voters and manipulate them into voting against their own interests.

—

Do Anarchists Support Democracy?

The whole point of democracy is to shift responsibility from the

individual to the intangible and indomitable system. The institutions of

democracy work hard to convince the individual they have no right to

self-determination beyond casting a vote for the system’s pre-approved

ruler A or pre-approved ruler B.

See, only the system can provide for you, citizen. Trust in the system.

The system is great. Don’t fight the system. You can’t defeat the

system. Just ask the system for freedom and maybe you’ll be granted some

— If the system is feeling generous anyway.

—

Do Anarchists Vote in State Elections?

Gillis

“Rulership by the populace” is clearly a concept irreconcilable with

“without rulership” unless one has atrophied to the point of accepting

the nihilism of liberalism and its mewling belief in the inescapability

of rulership. Or perhaps even going so far as to join with fascists and

other authoritarians who silence their conscience with the ideological

assertion that one cannot even limit power relations, only rearrange

them. [...]

Those claiming that democracy and anarchy can be reconciled seem to

either be rhetorical opportunists — gravely mistaken about what they can

and should leverage — or else they seem gravely out of alignment with

anarchism’s aspirations, treating “without rulership” not as a guiding

star but a noncommittal handwave. [...]

Let us be clear; if anarchy means anything of substance then many of

these people are not really anarchists. At least not yet! They do not

believe anarchy is achievable or even thinkable. And this is reflected

in their own frequent aversion and/or equivocation in relation to the

term “anarchy,” gravitating more to some positive associations they have

seen made with it than the underlying concept of a world truly without

rulership. Compared to our present society they want the things often

associated with anarchism without the core that draws them. I was — for

a time — hopeful that such individuals would move to the much more open

term “horizontalist.” In truth they’d be better described as minarchist

social democrats, who want a cuddlier, friendlier, flatter, more local

and responsive state that makes people feel like happy participants and

doesn’t engage in world historic atrocities. [...]

If anarchism is to mean anything of substance, it is surely not merely

an opening bid from which you are happy to settle. Anarchy doesn’t stand

for small amounts of domination: it stands for no domination. Although

our approach to that ideal will surely be asymptotic, the whole point of

anarchism is to actually pursue it rather than give up and settle for

some arbitrary “good enough” half-measure. Such tepid aspirations is

what has historically defined liberals and social democrats in contrast

to us.

But it’s important to go further, because “democracy” doesn’t solely

pose a danger of half-measures but also of a unique dimension of

authoritarianism. A pure expression of “the rule of all over all” could

be a hell of a lot worse than “Sweden with Neighborhood Assemblies.” The

etymology itself seems to best reflect a nightmare scenario in which

everyone constrains and dominates everyone else. If we seek to match

words to the most distinct and coherent concepts then perhaps the truest

expression of “demo-cracy” would be a world where everyone is chained

down by everyone else, tightening our grip on our neighbors just as they

in turn choke the freedom from our lungs.

—

The Abolition Of Rulership Or The Rule Of All Over All?

Marlinspike & Hart

Anarchists distinguish themselves by asserting a direct and unobstructed

link between thought and action, between desires and their free

fulfillment. We reject all societal processes that break that link—such

as private property, exchange relations, division of labor, and

democracy. We call that broken link alienation.

Passions and desires can only be a delight when they are real and

definite forces in our lives. In this condition of alienation, however,

they are inevitably muted by the knowledge that the conditions of our

existence are not under our control. In this context, dreams are only

for dreamers, because our desires are constantly faced with the

impossibility of action. In this sinister way, when we lose our

connection with the desires and passions that drive us forward, it is

impossible to wrest back control of our lives and we are left to linger

in a condition of passivity. Even the desire to change the material and

societal conditions that function on alienation is met with this

passivity and hopelessness, essentially leaving them intact.

Society thus ends up divided into the alienated, whose capacity to

create their lives as they see fit has been taken from them, and those

in control of these processes, who benefit from this separation by

accumulating and controlling alienated energy in order to reproduce the

current society and their own role as its rulers. [...]

So at heart, we are against democracy because its very existence

maintains this division that we’re seeking to abolish. Democracy does

nothing but maintain the existence of alienated power, since it requires

that our desires be separate from our power to act, and any attempts to

engage in that system will only serve to reproduce it. Democracies of

any type make decisions via elections, the very essence of which

transfers one’s will, thought, autonomy, and freedom to an outside

power. It makes no difference whether one transfers that power to an

elected representative or to an elusive majority. The point is that it’s

no longer your own. Democracy has given it to the majority. You have

been alienated from your capacity to determine the conditions of your

existence in free cooperation with those around you.

There is an important distinction here. Parties are political in their

claim to represent the interests of others. This is a claim to alienated

power, because when someone takes power with a claim to represent me, I

am separated from my own freedom to act. In this sense, anarchists are

anti-political. We are not interested in a different claim to alienated

power, in a different leadership, in another form of representation, in

a regime change, or in anything that merely shuffles around the makeup

of alienated power. Any time someone claims to represent you or to be

your liberatory force, that should be a definite red flag. We are

anti-political because we are interested in the self-organization of the

power of individuals. This tension towards self-organization is

completely orthogonal to democracy in any of its various forms.[...]

When democracy frames our discussion and forces us to argue in its

terms, all actions to change the socio-political environment must happen

via its means and achieve only those ends it will sanction. For these

reasons, democracy reproduces itself with little special effort from the

ruling class. A democratic system of “majority rule” encourages the

alienated and exploited class to feel like they have control while it

actually remains safely in the hands of the alienating and exploiting

class. Even the most obvious contradictions get overlooked because the

system has equated its existence with freedom and so places its

existence outside the realm of contestable ideas. By claiming itself as

a priori or the first principle of individual and social liberty,

democracy appears like a tolerant and pliable source of the public good

beyond all scrutiny.

—

An Anarchist Critique of Democracy

Anonymous

Democracy, the most widespread contemporary form of political domination

(as the primary and most sophisticated expression of the State),

constituting an authoritarian, buck-passing, submissive mentality, and

the ideal legal framework for the development of the capitalist economy,

which is the source of exploitation and poverty.

It is for these reasons, and faced with the disquieting demands for more

and better democracy from many sectors that have in recent years

increasingly begun to engage in protest and disobedience – demands that

almost always end up subsuming real and radical struggles – that for a

few years now we have been conducting a campaign against this dominating

and domesticating monstrosity referred to as democracy. [...]

Democracy justifies itself based on certain principles that are no less

false for having been repeated a thousand times as truths, and its

justification is so internalized that even its opponents believe in its

principles. Considering how ingrained and immobile the idea of this

system’s fundamental goodness is in the people’s thinking, change seems

impossible; nobody seems to be suggesting any other organizational forms

these days, or even other ways of life.

—

Against Democracy

Gelderloos

How absurd is it to talk about freedom and democracy to someone who was

born in a ghetto, or someone who just immigrated to escape poverty or

persecution, someone who never got the opportunity for a good education

and works eighty hours a week in grueling, dangerous job with no dignity

or respect just to afford payments on a cheap hovel and a meager diet?

[...]

It is easy, however, to dismiss these claims of powerlessness and

recurring injustice by simply blaming the victims for being too lazy to

drag themselves out of poverty, or to make the democratic process work

for them, through petitioning, voting, letter-writing, and all the other

readily available methods, to cure the alleged injustice. Of course, it

would be more than a little ludicrous for the privileged, white pundits

who guide the nation’s opinions from their talk shows and opinion

columns to blame people born in ghettos for not overcoming racism and

poverty if they didn’t have at least a few historical examples of how

democracy can actually work to help people in need. But our history

books are full of examples of oppressed groups of people winning their

equality through the democratic process. Everybody knows the story of

Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, and as any

grade-schooler can tell you, this story has a happy ending, because

black people won their rights. In the face of age-old prejudices, the

democratic process prevailed. Or did it?

In fact, the democratic process had already succeeded in officially

defeating racism way back in the 19^(th) century, when our government

granted full legal rights regardless of race, on paper at least. And in

1954, a full decade before the Civil Rights movement was at its

strongest, the Supreme Court ordered the recognition of those legal

rights, in response to the tireless work, within legal democratic

channels, of the NAACP and other organizations. But still, there was no

real change in the race relations of America. All the reforms won

through the democratic process were symbolic. It was not until black

people took to the streets, often illegally, outside the democratic

process, that what we now know as the Civil Rights movement came into

full form. The Civil Rights movement used illegal activism (“civil

disobedience”) in tandem with legal pressure on the democratic process

to bring about change, and even then it was not until race riots

occurred in nearly every major city and more militant black

organizations formed that the white political apparatus started

cooperating with pacifist, middle-class elements of the movement, like

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

And what was the outcome of that political compromise? People of color

in America still face higher unemployment, lower wages, less access to

good housing and health care, higher infant mortality, lower life

expectancy, higher rates of incarceration and police brutality,

disproportionately lower representation in government, corporate

leadership, and the media (except as villains in Hollywood or culprits

on the TV-show COPS). In fact, Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose work on the

psychological effects of segregation on black school children was

instrumental to the Brown v. Board of Education victory in 1954, stated

in 1994 that American schools were more segregated than they had been

forty years earlier. White supremacy still exists in every arena of

American life.

What exactly did the Civil Rights movement achieve? Advancement into the

white-dominated institutions has been opened up for a very small number

of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, particularly those who embrace the

conservative ideology of the white-supremacist status quo, like Supreme

Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who opposes affirmative action or other

legal measures that alleviate racial inequality, or General Colin

Powell, who is willing to bomb people of color in foreign countries with

a total disregard for their lives. So, Martin Luther King is dead, but

his dream lives on in the disproportionately small handful of black and

Latino congresspeople, the one or two CEOs of color in the Fortune 500,

and the occasional television show that depicts well-off, middle class

black families like the Cosby’s, untroubled by police brutality or

economic exploitation.

The government has retained its white supremacist character, and more

importantly, it is more powerful now than it was before the Civil Rights

movement, because it has largely removed the threat of racial strife and

oppression-motivated uprising; a few token people of color rise to

positions of power, providing the illusion of equality, but populations

of color on the whole remain a cheap pool of surplus labor to be used

and abused by the system as needed. So when we consider how the

government actually responded to the Civil Rights movement, and what

sorts of changes have occurred in our society as a result, it becomes

apparent that the democratic process was more effective at rescuing

those in power from a potential emergency than at granting any real

relief or meaningful liberation to an oppressed group of people. [...]

At its base, democracy is an authoritarian, elitist system of government

designed to craft an effective ruling coalition while creating the

illusion that the subjects are in fact equal members of society, thus in

control of, or at least benevolently represented by, government policy.

The fundamental purpose of a democracy, same as any other government, is

to maintain the wealth and power of the ruling class. Democracy is

innovative in that it allows a greater diversity of ruling class voices

to advocate various strategies of control, and “progressive” in that it

allows for adaptation to maintain control under changing circumstances.

The surest way to test this hypothesis is to observe historical examples

in which oppressed or underprivileged citizens of a democracy have

advocated their own interests, in contradiction to the interests of the

wealthy and powerful. If the liberal mythology concerning democracy is

correct, the oppressed will be fairly represented, political

representatives will advocate their cause, and some equitable compromise

will be reached between the privileged and the oppressed. If

progressives and other reformists are correct in their belief that the

system is fundamentally sound but corrupted through various causes that

can be solved with the appropriate legislation, then the wealthy and

powerful will receive unfair advantages in the legislative and judicial

processes set in motion to achieve justice. If our hypothesis positing

the authoritarian, elitist nature of democracy is correct, then the many

institutions of power will collaborate to divide the opposition, win

over reformist elements, and crush the remaining opposition to retain

control with whatever means necessary, including propaganda, slander,

harassment, assault, imprisonment on false charges, and assassination.

—

What is Democracy?

From the very origins of the democratic concept, “rule by the people”

has always been a way to increase participation in the project of

government, and “the people” have always excluded classes of slaves and

foreigners, whether inside or outside of national boundaries. The

question of freedom lies not in who rules, but whether anyone is ruled,

or whether all are self-organizing.

—

Reflections for the US Occupy Movement

People need to get it out of their heads that democracy is a good thing.

Real democracy does not preclude slavery. Real democracy means

capitalism. Real democracy means patriarchy and militarism. Democracy

has always involved these things. There is no accurate history of

democracy that can furnish us an example to the contrary.

—

Diagnostic of the Future

Gordon

Historically, democracy was not a word that anarchists tended to use in

reference to their own visions or practices. A survey of the writings of

the prominent anarchist activists and theorists of the 19^(th) and early

20^(th) century reveals that, on the rare occasions on which they even

employed the term, it was used in its conventional, statist sense to

refer to actually-existing democratic institutions and entitlements

within the bourgeois state. [...] The association between anarchism and

democracy makes its appearance only around the 1980s, through the

writings of Murray Bookchin.

Essentially, the association of anarchism with democracy is a

two-pronged rhetorical maneuver intended to increase the appeal of

anarchism for mainstream publics. The first component of the maneuver is

to latch onto the existing positive connotations that democracy carries

in established political language. Instead of the negative (and false)

image of anarchism as mindless and chaotic, a positive image is fostered

by riding on the coattails of “democracy” as a widely-endorsed term in

the mass media, educational system, and everyday speech. The appeal here

is not to any specific set of institutions or decision-making

procedures, but to the association of democracy with freedom, equality,

and solidarity—to the sentiments that go to work when democracy is

placed in binary opposition to dictatorship, and celebrated as what

distinguishes the “free countries” of the West from other regimes.

Yet the second component of the maneuver is subversive: it seeks to

portray current capitalist societies as not, in fact, democratic, since

they alienate decision-making power from the people and place it in the

hands of elites. This amounts to an argument that the institutions and

procedures that mainstream audiences associate with democracy—government

by representatives—are not in fact democratic, or at least a very pale

and limited fulfilment of the values they are said to embody. True

democracy, in this account, can only be local, direct, participatory,

and deliberative, and is ultimately achievable only in a stateless and

classless society. The rhetorical aim of the maneuver as a whole is to

generate in the audience a sense of indignation at having been deceived:

while the emotional attachment to “democracy” is confirmed, the belief

that it actually exists is denied.

Now there are two problems with this maneuver, one conceptual and one

more substantive. The conceptual problem is that it introduces a truly

idiosyncratic notion of democracy, so ambitious as to disqualify almost

all political experiences that fall under the common understanding of

the term—including all electoral systems in which representatives do not

have a strict mandate and are not immediately recallable. By claiming

that current “democratic” regimes are in fact not democratic at all and

that the only democracy worthy of the name is actually some version of

an anarchist society, anarchists are asking people to reconfigure their

understanding of democracy in a rather extreme way. While it is possible

to maintain this new usage with logical coherence, it is nevertheless so

rarefied and contrary to the common usage that its potential as a pivot

for mainstream opinion is highly questionable.

The second problem is graver. While the association with democracy may

seek to appeal only to its egalitarian and libertarian connotations, it

also entangles anarchism with the patriotic nature of the pride in

democracy which it seeks to subvert. The appeal is not simply to an

abstract design for participatory institutions, but to participatory

institutions recovered from the American revolutionary tradition.

Bookchin is quite explicit about this, when he calls on anarchists to

“start speaking in the vocabulary of the democratic revolutions” while

unearthing and enlarging their libertarian content.

The appeal to the consensus view of the American polity as founded in a

popular and democratic revolution, genuinely animated by freedom and

equality, is precisely intended to target existing patriotic sentiments,

even as it emphasises their subversive consequences. Milstein even

invokes Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address when she criticises

reformist agendas which “work with a circumscribed and neutralized

notion of democracy, where democracy is neither of the people, by the

people, nor for the people, but rather, only in the supposed name of the

people.” Yet this is a dangerous move, since it relies on a

self-limiting critique of the patriotic sentiment itself, and allows the

foundation myths to which it appeals to remain untouched by critiques of

manufactured collective identity and colonial exclusion. While noting

the need not to whitewash the racial, gendered, and other injustices

that were part of “the historic event that created this country,”

Milstein can only offer an unspecific exhortation to “grapple with the

relation between this oppression and the liberatory moments of the

American Revolution.”

Yet given that the appeal is targeted at non-anarchist participants,

there is little if any guarantee that such a grappling would actually

take place. The patriotic sentiment appealed to here is more often than

not a component of a larger nationalist narrative, one that hardly

partakes of a decolonial critique (which by itself would have many

questions about the Western enlightenment roots of notions of

citizenship and the public sphere). The celebration of democracy in

terms that directly invoke the early days of the American polity may end

up reinforcing rather than questioning loyalties to the nation-state.

[...]

Thus we return to the main point: for anarchists in the USA and Western

Europe, at least, the choice to use the language of democracy is based

on the desire to mobilize and subvert a form of patriotism that is

ultimately establishment-friendly; it risks cementing the nationalist

sentiments it seeks to undermine. Anarchists have always had a public

image problem. Trying to undo it through the connection to mainstream

democratic and nationalist sentiments is not worth this risk.

—

Democracy: The Patriotic Temptation

Sagris

Democracy keeps you afraid, afraid of the enemies of democracy that have

hidden within your tribe, your democratic community, your nation.

Democracy created borders in your life and now you have to protect these

borders with your own body. The borders are imaginary, social

inventions, but your dead body on the battleground is real. Democracy

excludes the rest of humanity from your community and it prepares an

army, including you, to kill all the excluded ones. The moment you

refuse to kill for the sake of democracy, you too are excluded. [...]

Democracy is a conservative tribal method by which certain ancient Greek

tribes reproduced themselves. It will never allow you to become

different until you escape from the tribe. And today, when the control

of the capitalist market and democratic state are absolute all around

the world, there is no other way to escape democracy except to destroy

it.

Even knowing all of this, some people defend democracy. They want to

find a form of democracy that doesn’t end up in oligarchy, just like the

21^(st) century communists who are searching for communist systems that

don’t lead to totalitarianism. But the Founding Fathers of all nations

stand over democrats of all kinds, looking on approvingly as normality

reasserts itself—the same conditions of exploitation, new faces in the

same old positions of authority.

This world will never change as long as we are afraid to cut the roots

of this order. Democracy is the final alternative for all who are afraid

to step into the unknown territory of their own desires, their own

power. Likewise, the demand for “real” democracy is the last way for

social movements to legitimize themselves in the supposed “social

sphere” (and to avoid criminalization). Just as it is the final step,

democracy is also the final obstacle to new possibilities arising in

social movements.[...]

Direct democracy offers us an alternative way to govern our lives. But

is this really what we need? Do we want to reproduce the limits of the

old world on a smaller scale? Do we want the “general assembly” to

decide about our lives? Or do we want to expand our lives into new forms

of self-determination and open sharing of creativity, to offer our power

freely for the benefit of all humanity, however we (and those with whom

we share our lives) see fit? [...]

There is no general assembly that could know better than we do how we

can make the most of our abilities to benefit the people around us. This

is the difference between an affinity group, which produces a collective

and expansive power, and a democratic assembly, which concentrates power

outside our lives and relationships, alienating us from ourselves and

each other.

Direct democracy is supposed to get rid of the apathy produced by

representation, since it appears as a “participatory” form of democracy.

But is the idea that we will have an assembly of millions of people?

Would such an assembly really be capable of offering us freedom and

equality? Each of us would just feel like a statistic in it as we waited

for days for our turn to speak. On the other hand, if we reduce that

form to the miniscule level of a neighborhood assembly, don’t we trap

ourselves in a microcosm like oversized ants?

Any kind of “direct democracy” reproduces the same conditions as

representative democracy, just on a smaller scale. The majority

suppresses the minority, driving them into apathy. Often, you don’t even

try to express your opinion, as you know you will have no chance to put

it into practice. Often, you are afraid to speak, as you know that you

will be humiliated by the majority. Homogeneity is the ultimate

imperative of any democratic procedure, “direct” or representational—a

homogeneity that ends up as two final opinions (the majority and

minority), losing the vast richness of human intelligence and

sensibility, erasing all the complexity and diversity of human needs and

desires.

This is why even directly democratic assemblies can end up deciding to

carry out inhuman genocides, like the one ancient Athens inflicted upon

Mylos in 416 BC. Excluded people have been enslaved and raped as a

result of direct democratic decisions. Direct democracy is “members

only.” Because it is smaller, it excludes even more people than

representative democracy—producing isolated bubbles that fight each

other like the city-states of ancient Greece. Everybody is an outsider,

a foreigner, a possible enemy; that’s why the community has to build

armies to defend itself and you have to die to protect the opinion of

the majority even if you disagree with it. Whoever will not go along

with the decision must be punished—like Socrates, the world-famous

victim of democracy, and thousands of others. The charismatic leaders

find the best possible direct connection with their followers, and the

democratic mechanisms for manipulating public opinion work directly

better than ever! Direct democracy will never liberate us from

democracy.

—

Destination Anarchy!

Goldman

The State, government with its functions and powers, is now the subject

of vital interest to every thinking man. Political developments in all

civilized countries have brought the questions home. Shall we have a

strong government? Are democracy and parliamentary government to be

preferred, or is Fascism of one kind or another, dictatorship —

monarchical, bourgeois or proletarian — the solution of the ills and

difficulties that beset society today?

In other words, shall we cure the evils of democracy by more democracy,

or shall we cut the Gordian knot of popular government with the sword of

dictatorship?

My answer is neither the one nor the other. I am against dictatorship

and Fascism as I am opposed to parliamentary regimes and so-called

political democracy. [...]

More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class; the

most terrible — the tyranny of a majority.

—

The Individual, Society and the State

Black

“There are no self-evident democratic voting rules — Majority or

plurality? Proxy voting? Quorums? Are supermajorities (three-fifths?

two-thirds?) required for all, some, or none of the decisions? Who sets

the agenda? Are motions from the floor entertained? Who decides who gets

to speak, and for how long, and who gets the first or last word? Who

schedules the meeting? Who adjourns it? And who decides, and by what

rules, the answers to all these questions? “If the participants disagree

on the voting rules, they may first have to vote on these rules. **But

they may disagree on how to vote on the voting rules, which may make

voting impossible as the decision on how to vote is pushed further and

further back.” [...]

As (among many others) Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Henry David Thoreau,

Mikhail Bakunin, Benjamin Tucker, Errico Malatesta, and Emma Goldman

said—and does anybody disagree?—democracy does not assure correct

decisions. “The only thing special about majorities is that they are not

minorities.” There is no strength in numbers, or rather, there is

nothing but strength in numbers. Parties, families, corporations,

unions, nearly all voluntary associations are, by choice, oligarchic.

Indeed, in assemblies whether direct or representative, in electorates

as in legislatures, the whole is less—even less—than the sum of its

parts. It is even mathematically demonstrable (but not by me) that

majority decision-making generates inefficient, socially wasteful, more

or less self-defeating decisions. [...]

Direct democracy, to an even greater degree than representative

democracy, encourages emotional, irrational decision making.

The face-to-face context of assembly politics engenders strong

interpersonal psychological influences which are, at best, extraneous to

decision making on the merits. The crowd is susceptible to orators and

stars, and intolerant of contradiction. The speakers, in the limited

time allotted to them, tend to sacrifice reasoning to persuasion

whenever they have to choose, if they want to win. As Hobbes wrote, the

speakers begin not from true principles but from “commonly accepted

opinions, which are for the most part usually false, and they do not try

to make their discourse correspond to the nature of things but to the

passions of men’s hearts. The result is that votes are cast not on the

basis of correct reasoning but on emotional impulse.” “Pure democracy,

like pure rum, easily produces intoxication, and with it a thousand mad

pranks and foolishness.” Dissenters feel intimidated, as they were, for

instance, when the Athenian assembly voted for the disastrous Sicilian

expedition: “The result of this excessive enthusiasm of the majority was

that the few who were actually opposed to the expedition were afraid of

being thought unpatriotic if they voted against it, and therefore kept

quiet.” [...]

Democracy in any form is irrational, unjust, inefficient, capricious,

divisive, and demeaning. Its direct and representative versions, as we

have seen, share many vices. Neither version exhibits any clear

advantage over the other. Each also has vices peculiar to itself. Indeed

the systems differ only in degree. Either way, the worst tyranny is the

tyranny of the majority.

—

Debunking Democracy

I came to the conclusion that the rejection of democracy is the most

important task for contemporary anarchists.

—

Nightmares of Reason

Noam Chomsky is an ardent believer in democracy, which, once again,

proves that he is a statist, not an anarchist. Democracy is a form of

government. Anarchy is society without government. [...]

...but that has not stopped some anarchists from trying to make

anarchism popular by identifying it with democracy, the regnant

political dogma of the 20^(th) century. Whereas what we need to do is,

as the Situationists put it, to leave the 20^(th) century. I don’t think

that democracy is popular. It’s just fashionable, and probably not even

fashionable, except among some professors and students. There is nothing

democratic about the governance of colleges and universities, which is

where the democratic theorists nest. There are no demands by anyone to

democratize them, as there were in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. I am not

aware that in his many decades as a professor at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology that Noam Chomsky has ever advocated campus

democracy. Democracy in factories, democracy in East Timor, sure, but

not democracy at MIT! NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard!

Whatever democracy might theoretically mean, in the real world,

“democracy is a euphemism for capitalism... [...]

All anarchists should get into their heads, those of them who have some

room for it there, the truth that democracy isn’t anarchy at all, it’s

the final stage of statism. It’s the last wall of the castle. It’s the

curtain with the man still behind it. [...]

Something not so obvious in the past, but obvious now, is that it’s

impossible to be both anti-capitalist and pro-democratic. And yet the

noisiest anarcho-leftists, such as the ones published by AK Press and PM

Press, are democrats.

Rudolf Rocker, who is one of the very few anarchists whom Chomsky has

read, and whom he has described as the last serious thinker, thought

that anarchism was the synthesis of liberalism and socialism. But Rocker

explicitly did not consider democracy to be any part of this synthesis.

He considered democracy to be inherently statist and anti-socialist and

anti-liberal. Rocker was right. Chomsky is wrong. Chomsky is always

wrong.

—

Chomsky on the nod

Voline

The achievement of the true emancipating revolution requires the active

participation, the strict collaboration, conscious and without

reservations, of millions of men of all social conditions, declassed,

unemployed, levelled, and thrown into the Revolution by the force of

events.

But, in order that these millions of men be driven into a place from

which there is no escape, it is necessary above everything else that

this force dislodge them from the beaten track of their daily existence.

And for this to happen, it is necessary that this existence, the

existing society itself, become impossible; that it be ruined from top

to bottom — its economy, its social regime, its politics, its manners,

customs, and prejudices.

—

The Unknown Revolution

Jarach

The Mythic Appeal of Democracy

A myth isn’t a lie-it is a story told by people with a particular

outlook to others with a similar outlook. It can contain truth and

falsehood in varying mixtures and ratios, but the important thing is

that it makes sense to its audience.

According to the believers in Democracy (rule of the people — however

“the people” is defined and narrowed to exclude particular segments from

participation in government), it is a system of decision-making that

enables the rule of the wisest and most capable and skillful, regardless

of hereditary class privilege; this is its republican (anti-monarchist)

heritage. Democrats (especially those who identify with the tradition of

Liberalism) believe that majority rule provides more voice in

decision-making for more people. They believe that more representation

means more fairness, that a more informed voting base increases the

wisdom of representatives, which furthers the responsiveness and

fairness of said representatives. For democrats, information is power.

These are some of the myths of Democracy and they are tirelessly

promoted by the State through public school indoctrination and fanciful

media images. [...]

The classical Liberal idea is that information equals power, or

information equals freedom. From this we get the silly political tactic

of “speaking truth to power” as if “power” were some creature with a

conscience, and/or a sense of guilt. The chanting of “Shame, Shame” at

demonstrations when the cops rough up lawbreakers or when a politician

shows his face is the result of this kind of mythological thinking. The

idea that exposure and/or embarrassment is enough to get those in power

to alter their policies is a legacy of the myth surrounding Gandhi

(especially the film version), who supposedly single-handedly

embarrassed the British Empire enough to get them to grant independence

to India. This pacifist and liberal nonsense continues to have a bad

influence on most anarchoid activists, evidenced by their calls for mass

mobilizations: more numbers equals more influence, equals more

responsiveness from representatives.

They have assimilated many democratic myths.

—

Democracy and Conspiracy: Overlaps, Parallels, and Standard Operating Procedures

Woodcock

The extreme concern for the sovereignty of individual choice not only

dominates anarchist ideas of revolutionary tactics and of the future

structure of society; it also explains the anarchist rejection of

democracy as well as autocracy. No conception of anarchism is farther

from the truth than that which regards it as an extreme form of

democracy.

Democracy advocates the sovereignty of the people. Anarchism advocates

the sovereignty of the person. This means that automatically the

anarchists deny many of the forms and viewpoints of democracy.

Parliamentary institutions are rejected because they mean that the

individual abdicates his sovereignty by handing it over to a

representative; once he has done this, decisions may be reached in his

name over which he has no longer any control. This is why anarchists

regard voting as an act that betrays freedom, both symbolically and

actually. ‘Universal Suffrage is the Counter-Revolution,’ cried

Proudhon, and none of his successors has contradicted him.

But the anarchist opposition to democracy goes deeper than a dispute

over forms. It involves a rejection of the idea of the people as an

entity distinct from the individuals who compose it; it also involves a

denial of popular government. On this point Wilde spoke for the

anarchists when he said: ‘There is no necessity to separate the monarchy

from the mob; all authority is equally bad.’ Particularly, the anarchist

rejects the right of the majority to inflict its will on the minority.

Right lies not in numbers, but in reason; justice is found not in the

counting of heads but in the freedom of men’s hearts. “There is but one

power,’ said Godwin, ‘to which I can yield a heart-fell obedience, the

decision of my own understanding, the dictate of my own conscience.’ And

Proudhon was thinking of democracies as well as of the Emperor Napoleon

III when he proudly declared: ‘Whoever puts his hand on me to govern me

is a usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy!’

In reality the ideal of anarchism, far from being democracy carried to

its logical end, is much nearer to aristocracy universalized and

purified. The spiral of history here has turned full circle, and where

aristocracy — at its highest point in the Rabelaisian vision of the

Abbey of Theleme — called for the freedom of noble men, anarchism has

always declared the nobility of free men. In the ultimate vision of

anarchy these free men stand godlike and kingly, a generation of

princes.

—

Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements

Wildcat

A lot of people will agree with a lot of what I’m saying (or will think

that they do!) but will say “Ah, Yes, but what you’re talking about is

bourgeois democracy. What I mean by democracy is something quite

different.” I want to suggest that when people talk about “real” or

“workers’” democracy in opposition to bourgeois democracy, in fact they

do mean the same thing that the bourgeoisie mean by democracy, despite

superficial differences. The fact that they chose to use the word

democracy is actually far more significant than they claim. This is why

it is important to say “Death to democracy!” [...]

I now want to talk about democracy “within our own ranks” — that is,

amongst proletarians in struggle. The usual “workers’ democracy”

argument, for example, will say “OK, we don’t have democratic relations

with the bourgeoisie but amongst ourselves there should be the most

perfect equality and respect for rights.” This is usually seen as a way

of avoiding bureaucratisation and domination by small cliques and

ensuring that as many people as possible are involved in a particular

struggle. The idea is that if people are allowed the right to speak, the

right to vote etc., then you can just go along to a meeting and

immediately be part of this democratic collectivity and so immediately

be involved.

What does democratising a struggle mean in practice? It means things

like:

• Majoritarianism — Nothing can be done unless a majority agree to it.

• Separation between decision making and action — Nothing can be done

until everybody has had a chance to discuss it. This can be seen as

analogous to the separation between the legislative and executive arms

of a democratic state. It’s no coincidence that discussions within

democratic organisations often resemble parliamentary debate!

• Embodiment of the view that no one can be trusted — Democratic

structures take the “war of all against all” for granted, and

institutionalise it. Delegates always have to be revocable so they won’t

pursue their own hidden agenda which, of course, everyone has.

All of these principles embody social atomisation. Majoritarianism

because everyone is equal and usually has one vote. The separation

between decision making and action because it’s only fair that you

should consult everyone before acting — if you don’t you are violating

their rights. A particularly obnoxious example of the third thing —

embodying the view that no one can be trusted — is the demand for

“Faction Rights” put forward by Trots. Usually they call for this when

some organisation is trying to throw them out. What this right amounts

to is the freedom to plot and conspire against other members of what is

supposedly a working class organisation. Obviously, no genuine communist

organisation could ever entertain any idea of faction rights.

It is probably the second of these principles which is the most

important and which needs to be stressed here.

These democratic principles can only stand in complete opposition to the

class struggle since, by definition, the class struggle implies a break

with social atomisation and the formation of some kind of community —

however narrow, transient or vague this may be.

Major events in the class struggle almost never begin with a vote or

with everybody being consulted. They almost always begin with action by

a determined minority who break from the passivity and isolation of the

majority of proletarians around them. They then try to spread this

action through example rather than through reasoned argument. In other

words, the division between decision making and action is always being

breached in practice. Right-wing populists (and a few anarchists)

complain that trouble-making activities are organised by self-appointed

cliques of activists who represent no one but themselves... and, of

course, they’re right!

The miners’ strike in the UK in 1984–5 provided many inspiring examples

of how the class struggle is anti-democratic in practice. The strike

itself did not start democratically — there was no ballot, no series of

mass meetings. It began with walk-outs at a few pits threatened with

closure, and was then spread by flying pickets. Throughout the strike

there was an unholy alliance of the right-wing of the Labour Party and

the RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party) saying that the miners should

hold a national ballot. The most militant miners consistently rejected

this, saying things like: “scabs don’t have the right to vote away

another man’s job” — which is a democratic form of words but I think you

will agree that the attitude behind it certainly isn’t. On occasions,

members of the RCP were quite rightly beaten up and called “Tories”

because of their support for a ballot.

There were also numerous examples of sabotage and destruction of Coal

Board property, often organised by semi-clandestine, so-called “hit

squads”. Obviously, such activities, by their very nature, cannot be

organised democratically — whether or not they are approved of by a

majority of the strikers.

—

Against Democracy

Anonymous #2

Democracy justifies itself based on certain principles that are no less

false for having been repeated a thousand times as truths, and its

justification is so internalized that even its opponents believe in its

principles. Considering how ingrained and immobile the idea of this

system’s fundamental goodness is in the people’s thinking, change seems

impossible; nobody seems to be suggesting any other organizational forms

these days, or even other ways of life.

We daughters of democracy have been told that this is the best of all

regimes; our parents and grandmothers lived under a system where

coercion and repression were more direct, and now that it has taken on a

softer form, we are expected to accept it from birth. Why is it that we

are going to be a poorer generation than the previous ones, without

there even having been a war in between? The blame lies with the

irreparable transformations imposed by their system. [...]

In democracy we leave the defense of our interests, the satisfaction of

our needs, and the organization of human relations and life in the hands

of others.[...]

It seems that, in the police searches, numerous copies of a book called

Contra la democracia were found. This book attempts to provide tools of

reflection and debate for those who oppose democracy, that mythicized

and deified system that we are all obligated to venerate and defend,

given that if we don’t, we run the risk of ending up with our bones in

the State’s dungeons. However, we know that democracy is precisely the

following, the same story once again: repression and incarceration of

all those who raise their heads and fight daily for the destruction of

all Authority and the construction of a new world that works based on

horizontality and mutual aid, in which all vestiges of Power have

disappeared.

Democracy is, necessarily, prison, the police, pistols and bombs, wage

labour, schools as centres of indoctrination and distortion,

psychiatrists, merchandise, the Parliament, government and domination as

a form of “organizing” society...; democracy is simply one more way that

the State and Capital, the dominant minority, have of administering

their system of oppression. It’s because of this that, as anarchists, we

declare war against democracy and any other system of domination and

Power; it’s because of this that we fight and will continue to fight the

“public peace” mentioned by the torturer Javier Gómez Bermúdez, the

public peace of jails, of wars, of unemployment, of wage and labour

exploitation, of hunger, of misery, of evictions, of consumerism, of

beaten and expelled migrants, of arrests and police torture, of the

hundreds of women killed at the hands of machismo and patriarchy, of the

representation of our lives in the hands of a minority by means of the

vote and parliamentarianism, of that false life of cardboard and money

whose goal is for us to forget and for us to accept our alienated,

submissive, and empty lives.

—

Against Democracy

Tucker

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a very clever man on its editorial

staff. His editorials are far above the ordinary literary level of the

journalist, are often sensible, and always show a decided inclination to

serious consideration of the subjects with which they deal, and to

independent and original thought. But occasionally his originality

carries him too far. Witness the following original discovery, which he

gave to the world unpatented in a recent editorial against woman

suffrage: "Nobody who is not an Anarchist in theory, if not in practice,

ever pretended that suffrage was a natural right; but from the Anarchist

point of view that suffrage is a natural right, you can just as easily

argue, as Anarchists do, that 'property is robbery.'" If this editor had

ever investigated Anarchism, of course he would know that most

Anarchists do not believe in natural rights at all; that not one of them

considers suffrage a natural right; that, on the other hand, they all

agree on the central proposition that rule is evil, and on the corollary

that it is none the better for being majority rule.

—

Liberty , August 29, 1891

Wilson

The special theory of democracy is that the general tendency of humanity

which becomes so apparent whenever men associate on anything like terms

of economic equality, should be made by men into an arbitrary law of

human conduct to be enforced not only in the ninety-nine cases where

nature enforces it, but by the arbitrary methods of coercion in the

hundredth where she doesn't. And for the sake of the hundredth case, for

the sake of enforcing this general natural tendency where nature does

not enforce it, democrats would have us retain in our political relation

that fatal principle of the authority of man over man which has been the

cause of confusion and disorder, of wrong and misery in human societies

since the dawn of history.

"Men are not social enough to do without it," it has been said. For our

part we do not know when they will be social enough to do with it.

Experience has not yet revealed the man who could be safely trusted with

power over his fellows; and majority rule is nothing else in practice

than putting into the hands of ambitious individuals the opportunity to

crush their fellows by the dead weight of the blind mass of which we

have spoken.

—

Democracy or Anarchy