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Title: Anarchy 101
Author: dot matrix
Date: 2012
Language: en
Topics: introductory, FAQ, Little Black Cart
Source: Retrieved 12/11/2021 from archive dot org
Notes: edited by Dot Matrix with help from participants at anarchy101.org | *Anarchy 101* was originally published by Little Black Cart and can be found in book form https://littleblackcart.com/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=101.

dot matrix

Anarchy 101

Thanks to my partners, and to anok, autumn leaf cascade, enkidu,

ingrate, rice boy, and taigarun, all long-term and thoughtful

contributors to anarchy101.org. Thanks also to the others on that site

(including many anonymous questionners). I truly appreciate getting to

have provocative conversations about things I care about with people who

I don’t even know.

And thanks to Jessica, the excellent beginner.

I hope I have done justice to us all.

In the following pages you will meet

AnarchicSaint: ast

Anok: ank

Apio: api

Asker: asr

Aragorn: a!

Aragorn23: a23

Autumn Leaf Cascade: alc

Blacque: blq

Dot: dot

Enkidu: enk

Frenzy: frz

Funkyanarchy: fnk

Iconoclast: ict

Ingrate: ing

Inpraiseofchaos: ipc

KatherineD: kd

Lawrence: law

Madlib: mdb

MrThisBody: mtb

MattThePrick: mtp

MollytheAnarchist: mta

Nothing Resonates: nnn

Rice Boy: rby

Sabotage: sab

Squee: squ

Taigarun: tgn

Vindico Vaco: vvo

Introduction

Anarchy is many things to different people: a vision, a plan, a

conversation, a process. It is my view (consistent with a whole raft of

contemporary anarchists, from Alfredo M. Bonanno to Voltairine de

Cleyre* and beyond) that anarchy is best understood, and is most

helpful, as a tension, a question, a rejection. This text operates from

that premise.

This book is composed of questions, answers, and comments (sometimes

lightly edited) taken from a website called anarchy101.org, in which

various anarchists answer questions posed by themselves and others. This

variety of voices (the answers and comments disagree with each other as

often as agree) is integral to any anarchist project that I want to be a

part of. There are many more questions there than could reasonably fit

into a book, so go, read, ask, and argue.

We welcome your engagement with these ideas, and look forward to hearing

your voice in the future.

How do people here feel about the use of this site’s questions and

answers in a book?

ing

I think that much of what has been explored on this website would be a

welcome counter-perspective to the similar publication of the Anarchist

FAQ, which has never addressed perspectives beyond those of the

author(s) in a really honest and balanced way. There have been some very

thoughtful things posted here, and it would be cool to see them put into

some sort of printed collection, which, in my opinion, is easier to

digest for beginners, as it is presented in a more linear fashion.

One of the particular strengths of using this sort of site as a jumping

off place is that many different perspectives might be represented.

Though this leads me to wonder who determines which answers are deemed

suitable for print, and what the process or criteria for that would be.

Other issues I could see coming up would be particular posters not

wanting their answers included in book form, or not wanting to have them

be attributed to them in print, though it doesn’t make much sense to be

concerned about that if you’ve created a profile for this site, which is

far easier to come across at random than a book. Maybe a few of the

regular posters have expressed thoughts that might lead them to wanting

to defend their intellectual property, but fuck that.

asr

Ingrate is right that it might be useful to have a book that addresses

perspectives that AFAQ does not, and I think that there have been some

pretty good/interesting questions and answers on this site.

My favorite aspect of this site is that there are usually several

answers to each question and this, I think, is part of what makes it

superior to AFAQ. I suppose that could be replicated in a book but on

the face of it it seems like something the internet is pretty well

suited for: I read the answers really differently than I would if they

were in a book simply because of my awareness that anyone can contest

everything that’s being said, and whatever we say will have just as much

weight as the original claims. Even if you read a book really critically

and take notes and write response papers and stuff, it’s not the same

thing.

Another thing is that I don’t write that carefully here, and I think

that is true for most people. I wouldn’t really feel comfortable seeing

anything I’ve written here in a book because I don’t feel the prose is

very good. One way around this might be to steal ideas but not use

anyone’s exact phrasings?

alc

I think a book of info from here using the format of Anarchy Works

(based on q&a under section headers such as “decisions” or “economy”)

could do well with a good editor who attempted to include diverse

perspectives, but it would make a really unorthodox and perhaps

incoherent book. It would have an advantage in diversity and a

disadvantage in the consistency. I’m fine with that though.

Most of my posts are meant as starting places for a larger collection of

more completed writings but feel free to use whatever you want.

Extremely Brief History

(including some names that you can research if so inclined)

Anarchism was initially coined as a term by Proudhon. It became more

defined and serious after Bakunin left the First International Working

Men’s Association because of disagreements on (among other things)

whether the dictatorship of the proletariat (a worker-controlled state)

would wither away (Marx’s claim), or be just another tactic for people

to maintain a hierarchy.

Classical anarchists—Mikael Bakunin, Pyotr Kropotkin, Emma Goldman,

Alexander Berkman, Voltairine de Cleyre, etc—tended to be pro-science

(since they were rebelling against domination by the christian church).

They also tended to be pro-communism (communism was the goal of

revolution, and would be a utopic time when workers would have power and

determine their own production, when there would be no bosses, when

people would be taken care of regardless of how much money they had).

The difference between anarchists and communists of this era was

primarily that a) anarchists did not believe that economics was the only

way that people were influenced (anarchists have almost always looked at

psychology, culture, education, etc, as ways that we are socialized and

coerced—not just work), b) that anarchists did not believe in creating a

state to get rid of states. (The anarchist perspective on

states-in-formation has been validated by the history of communists

killing former anarchist allies, including in Kronstadt and in the

Spanish Civil War.)

Contemporary with Marx and Bakunin there was also Max Stirner, who never

called himself an anarchist but who has been claimed by an anarchist

tendency because his polemic (badly translated into English as The Ego

and Its Own) rejects the idea that any of us should sacrifice ourselves

to anything. He held that causes (like Liberty, Freedom, even Anarchy)

are “spooks” (ie abstractions that only serve to alienate us from our

own lives and selves). Some of the most inspirational anarchists were

heavily influenced by egoism, including Renzo Novatore and Alfredo

Bonanno. Anarchists influenced by Nietzsche and/or Stirner (egoists,

post-left anarchists, and post-anarchists are the three main tendencies

so influenced) reject the idea that workers are the group that will

create a revolution, that work (as it is currently understood, ie as

tasks that you get paid for, but with no immediate benefit for your life

or your friends’ lives) would even continue to exist in the world we

want, or that revolution as a discrete event is something that we can,

or want to, aim for.

More recently, the Situationists, a radical group based in the art scene

in the 60s, particularly in Paris, created a new wave of more critical,

contemporary anarchist thinking; a wave that is continued today in

groups like Tiqqun in France and by unnamed window-smashers and

newspaper-box placement engineers everywhere.

Questions

Why are there so many definitions of anarchy?

dot

There is no single foundational voice for anarchist thought (and some of

the most influential thinkers said some apparently conflicting things,

like Bakunin), so there is a lot of flexibility left for people to find

and focus on the person, or the ideas, that most appeal to them. This is

aided by the ethic that anarchists promote people finding their own

answers, so that decentralization and a million different trajectories

are both desirable and inevitable.

This leads to people calling themselves anarchists who disagree

intensely (and sometimes widely) with each other, and to an inherent

weakness of the label “anarchist” (since calling one’s self that doesn’t

mean that anyone can make assumptions about what one thinks); this makes

the label not as pernicious as other labels (which in general act to

hide differences as much or more than to reveal similarities).

What are the main threads of anarchist thinking?

What do they disagree with each other about?

What do they agree on?

a23

Here’s how I break down what I consider the main trends in an Intro to

Anarchism talk I do.

Anarchist Communism

Anarchist communism proposes that the freest form of social organisation

would be a society composed of self-managing communes with collective

use of the means of production, organised democratically and using

consenus decision-making, and related to other communes through

federation. In anarchist communism there would be no money but everyone

would have free access to the resources and surplus of the commune.

Anarchist communism is thus said to operate on a gift economy.

Collectivism

Collectivist anarchism is similar to anarchist communism, except for the

fact that in collectivism workers would be compensated for their work on

the basis of the amount of time they contributed to production, rather

than goods being distributed “according to need” as in

anarcho-communism. Some collectivist anarchists do not oppose the use of

currency. Some support workers being paid based on the amount of time

they contributed to production. These salaries would be used to purchase

commodities in a communal market.

Anarcho-syndicalism

Syndicalism focuses on radical trade unions as a potential force for

revolutionary social change, seeking to replace capitalism and the state

with a new society that is democratically self-managed by the workers.

Important principles include workers’ solidarity, direct action (such as

general strikes and workplace recuperations) and workers’

self-management. Syndicalism is sometimes seen as simply a specific

strategic focus within communist or collectivist anarchism as opposed to

a distinct type of anarchism in itself.

Insurrectionary Anarchism

On the other hand, Insurrectionary Anarchism opposes formal

organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a

political programme and periodic congresses. Instead, insurrectionary

anarchists support informal organization and small affinity group-based

organization. Insurrectionary anarchists put value in attack, permanent

class conflict, and a refusal to negotiate or compromise with class

enemies.

Contemporary insurrectionary anarchism most often inherits the views and

tactics of anti-organizationalist anarcho-communism.

Anarcha-feminism

Anarcha-feminism is a form of anarchism that synthesizes radical

feminism and anarchism and views patriarchy (male domination over women)

as one of the (or the) primary dominations. Anarcha-feminism was

inspired in the late 19^(th) century by the writings of early feminist

anarchists such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre.

Anarcha-feminists, like other radical feminists, criticize and advocate

the abolition of traditional conceptions of family, education and gender

roles and believe that the feminist struggle against sexism and

patriarchy is an essential component of the anarchist struggle. Susan

Brown put it: “as anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all

relationships of power, it is inherently feminist”.

Green Anarchism

Green anarchism (or eco-anarchism) is a school of thought within

anarchism that puts an emphasis on environmental issues. Green

anarchists often criticize the main currents of anarchism for their

focus and debates about politics and economics instead of a focus on

ecosystems.

Anarcho-primitivism

Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress

of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from

hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social

stratification, coercion, and alienation. Anarcho-primitivists advocate

a return to non-civilized ways of life through deindustrialisation,

abolition of the division of labour or specialization, and abandonment

of large-scale organization technologies. There are other non-anarchist

forms of primitivism, and not all primitivists point to the same

phenomenon as the source of modern, civilized problems.

Primitivism is seem as extreme by some anarchists, but it does provide a

useful counterbalance to the cheerful Industrial Revolution optimism

expressed by the late 19^(th) and early 20^(th) Century anarchists like

Peter Kropotkin that technology and technological progress are

inherently liberatory and should be pursued by anarchists in a

post-revolutionary society.

Synthesism/Anarchism without Adjectives/Type 3 Anarchism

Anarchism without adjectives is an attitude that tolerates the

coexistence of different anarchist schools. It emphasizes harmony

between various anarchist factions and attempts to unite them around

their shared anti-authoritarian beliefs. Rudolf Rocker said that the

different types of anarchism presented “only different methods of

economy, the practical possibilities of which have yet to be tested, and

that the first objective is to secure the personal and social freedom of

men no matter upon which economics basis this is to be accomplished.”

It is important to note that a large number of self-defined anarchists

might use more than one of these labels to describe themselves depending

on what they were doing or what kinds of group structures they find

themselves operating in: some anarchists prefer durable, structured

groups where members commit to certain ideological and tactical

principles; others prefer more flexible, small-scale affinity groups

that come and go as needed. Often, members of these latter groups

express concerns about how formal organisation can tend towards

bureaucracy and the perpetuation of the life of the group for its own

sake. There are a number of other types of so-called anarchism that are

problematic. Perhaps the worst of these is anarcho-capitalism—an

oxy-moronic view stemming from the belief expressed by some, that

personal freedom entails being free to compete in a capitalist-type

market.

dot

and individualist anarchism: the idea that the individual is the real

base for all decisions (although society tries to hide that fact), and

that society (as understood through law, education, morality, religion,

ideology, etc) has either little use or no use (except as a hindrance to

the desires of individuals). Individualists de-emphasize the importance

of revolution (as a single event that radically changes everything for

the better), since revolutions tend to just install new leaders, and

recommend slow, experientially based change instead. This covers wide

territory, and many individualists disagree with each other.

Also, post-left anarchy and post-anarchy have real similarities, since

both are updating classical anarchist thinking using the work of

philosophers like Stirner, Nietzsche, the Frankfurt School, etc.

Is there an anarchist definition of class?

ank

I have broken this down by different ideas on this question among

anarchists, since they are many.

• Many anarchists accept Marx’s analysis of the classes into which

society is separated (even if they argue that class composition has

shifted since then) as being based on relations to the means of

production; they accept the argument for the proletariat as

revolutionary subject, and so on. This seems to be the predominant

definition, but only when one looks at the most official anarchists (who

are actually a minority of anarchists).

• Many anarchists accept the sociological definition of class, even if

they also accept the Marxist definition. This definition of class is the

stance of most of the government (its institutions, economists, the

educational system, etc). It is the idea of stratification on the basis

of relative income, completely ignoring the relations to means of

production (which according to Marxists are the basis for the common

class interests of people who earn vastly different incomes, and

antagonisms between individuals who earn relatively similar incomes).

This idea of class is problematic to most Marxists and many anarchists

because it turns the proletariat against itself and produces a false

understanding of the way capitalism functions. But for better or worse

many anarchists are very influenced by this definition of class.

• There are some new and interesting definitions or interpretations of

class (the developers of these being mostly more Marxist than

anarchist):Jacques Camatte, coming from a Marxist background, argues

that the class distinction is diffused in late capitalism through the

total domestication of humans and the establishment of a capitalist

human community. This does not mean there are not classes, but their

conflict is pacified and their relations are shifted. The relevant

conflict (if any) comes to be between humans and capital or individuals

and their own domestication, rather than between proletariat and

bourgeoisie.The Invisible Committee has said something similar to

Camatte but different. One way they put it is the conflict is now

between those who refuse work and those who want to work.The proletariat

defined as the dispossessed. This is the original definition of the term

and it is there in Marx but there’s a shift in significance from the

industrial proletariat (which in Marx’s context was the position most

former peasants dispossessed of their land found themselves in) to more

accurately reflect the context in “post-industrial” societies where

surplus populations have become much larger since technological progress

gradually displaces the need for human labor.

• Many anarchists accept the Marxist definition of class but not the

centrality of its importance.

• Some anarchists are not revolutionaries. Shocking I know, but

definitely true.

In sum, anarchists are too diverse in economic thought to be pigeonholed

in this, and for the most part have not developed economic theory

independent of Marxism, even if they feel free (a very common tendency

for anarchists) to adapt, reject, intersect, play with, or diminish the

importance of what they’ve inherited from the old man. Could any

anarchist definition of class be developed that escapes entirely from

Marxism (especially as this, whatever faults it may have, is based on

real situations that persist today even if in different forms)? I doubt

it—except, of course, in the very course of the abolition of the class

society that Marx set himself to describing. To actually realize this

abolition in practice so that new relations can flourish is, of course,

a worthwhile task which generations of anarchists have striven for—much

more so, I would argue, than Marxists as a whole.

All else being equal, isn’t violence inherently antithetical to

anarchy?

Generally things aren’t equal but if they were... Doesn’t violence by

one person against an equal imply power-over them and thus a basic kind

of hierarchical relationship?

a!

Violence is a pretty loaded word. The violence of me punching you in the

nose is different from the violence of dropping a bomb on a village or

starving an entire category of humans. One of those violences is not

antithetical to anarchy. The other clearly is. The family of ideas and

activities implied by the term “violence” makes it unusable during most

conversations that anarchists would want to have about a better world,

or about anarchist ideas.

Regarding the violence of punching each other in the nose, the instinct

to do so is a pretty strong one. Perhaps even a fundamental one. If (or

since) that is the case then violence is part of being a person. The

desire for violence, the belief that “something” is solved with

interpersonal violence, is probably part of the human project. If

violence is human AND the desire to live without coercion and “power

over” is human then the only thing that is antithetical to humans is

humans. Which is probably a fair assessment of our current condition.

One last note. bolo’bolo has a nice section about conflict in a

different world that may be worth quoting:

yaka: Every ibu (individual) can challenge any other ibu or a larger

community to a duel, according to those rules.

It may be possible to agree to terms by which conflict is human scale

and, perhaps, includes consensual violence. Scale is a huge factor in

these questions.

How do anarchists define violence?

dot

Violence is physical (sometimes emotional) pain inflicted on a living

being (or beings).

Property destruction is usually not considered violence.

Some people see a grey area when property destruction is committed

against people who are poor (more poor than usual?), As this could be

considered bad for people’s health (poverty is the biggest health risk,

as we all know).

This definition (violence is only against living beings) is ok as far as

it goes, but to me it seems to have humanist roots, which i disagree

with. But perhaps that is the beginning of another question.

Some anarchists define what anarchists (and other militants) do as self

defense, vs the violence of our daily lives inflicted by the state and

capitalism.

Where do anarchists place scientists in society?

It occurred to me that scientists don’t fit well into the proletarian or

bourgeoisie classes—because they don’t own the means of production.

Furthermore scientists don’t really produce anything except information,

so are they part of the service sector? I suppose what I am asking is:

since scientists take highly technical equipment and turn it into data

and theories, how do you envision scientists and scientific communities

working in an anarchist society.

enk

If I understand the main thrust of your question, you want to know how

anarchist class analysis categorizes scientists. There isn’t a single

answer. Many anarchists would take a marxian class analysis, in which

scientists would probably be considered petit-bourgeois. However,

anarchists are often critical of many aspects of marxist theory,

including its class analysis. Your example of scientists is one example

that in many cases there are economic classes that exist today that do

not easily fit into the bourgeois-proletariat model.

Instead of relying on an understanding of class that is a century and a

half-old, many anarchists analyze different economic classes in terms of

how they help to reproduce the state and capital. Scientific pursuits

are usually funded by the institutions we hate such as militaries or

pharmaceutical companies, and as such serve the interests of state and

capital. Some anarchists, especially animal liberationists, directly

intervene against scientific activity.

I will concede that it is possible that activities we call science could

exist in hypothetical anarchist societies. Some anarchists have

conjectured what science might be like in an anarchist society. One

conception is that scientists would cease to exist as a distinct class

as scientific knowledge and equipment become the domain of all people.

Kropotkin was a biologist, and a lot of contemporary anarchist ideas

about science originate with him. However, contemporary anarchists are

often far more critical of science than our 19^(th) century forbears. I

fall into this camp. I hope that contemporary anarchists who are

“pro-science” at least take these critical perspectives into account.

What about technology?

dot

Some of the answers to the question on scientists is also appropriate

here.

Some anarchists believe that technology is theoretically neutral, and

that appropriate societies will develop appropriate technology. this

definition of technology is basically no different from that for tools

(things that people use to solve problems).

Other people, including many green anarchists (and all primitivists) see

technology as one of the ways of formulating the problems that

technology is then supposed to solve... ie there is a deeper

philosophical challenge to the culture, a reciprocity between things and

processes and people...

(That said, i am obviously biased towards the latter position. so

perhaps someone who is not will also have a go at answering this.)

What is wrong with the concept of rights?

Do rights always and everywhere flow from the state? Don’t some rights

(ideally) protect one from the state? Human rights as opposed to legal

rights say? Isn’t it OK to have some basic standards for our treatment

of one another and can’t that be totally independent of the concept of

the state? And, finally, can’t new rights take political/social space

away from the state and capital? For example wouldn’t the concept of

housing as a basic human right take some space away from the idea that

property rights should be primary and form the foundation of the social

order?

Can the concept of desire replace the concept of rights? What are the

implications of this? If it doesn’t replace this concept what are some

of the consequences of eliminating a discourse of rights? How does one

talk about the importance of people’s access to basic resources or the

importance of eliminating torture (for example) outside of this

discourse.

ank

Rights always come from the state. The idea that rights should be

written into law was developed when people were so pissed about getting

stepped on and ruled over by sovereign powers that the governments had

to do something. So they made a tremendous shift into a system of

politics called liberalism (not the same as liberalism as in liberal vs.

conservative or liberal vs. maoist) in which the law recognizes the

rights of citizens. These laws serve to not only convince citizens that

they aren’t going to be stepped on as hard but also to ensure that

people will appeal for recognition of their rights to the state or for a

change in the rights written in law, rather than revolt when they have

grievances. It is a remarkably successful system, in which revolt now

tends to happen only when the system is clearly fucking people over and

clearly not going to change itself. Even then, revolt can be settled by

implementing some larger systematic change or having a revolutionary

government take over.

Anarchists do not want protection from the state. Or, to put it another

way, a truly anarchist life guarantees that one will not be promised

protection by the state, and instead punished by it. The state offers

protection to (certain normal, decent, law-abiding, good, productive,

etc) citizens in exchange for their preservation, reproduction, and

reformation of the status quo.

An alternative understanding would be that rights are first and foremost

inherent to our being human, and only secondly is this ‘real’ human

essence recognized by the state. I would reject this because no one can

point to the existence of these essential rights except in the writings

of law (whether international or national). There isn’t an inherent

human essence, or if there is it would be a highly paradoxical,

enigmatic “thing”. To appeal (to the state) for the establishment of

greater rights does not “take away space” from the state. It would seem

that only revolt can actually wrench spaces from state control, but even

then, state-forms manage to creep in through the back door (the

implementation of self-management among the insurgents).

As for alternative discourse, I don’t see the need for one. For anyone

to actually achieve the essence of what you are talking about—to live

free of the domination of state and capital in their lives—they would

have to live fighting against domination and not appeal to it to

recognize the importance of their needs or how cruel torture is. In

other words, they would have to become a non-subject. And only subjects

can have rights.

Anarchy vs. Anarchism?

Is there a difference? If so, what’s the difference? Can someone adhere

to anarchy but not anarchism, and vice versa?

mdb

Very simply, “anarchy” is descriptive of a human being, or a group of

humans, who live without hierarchy (social control & power). A way of

life most conducive to choices on behalf of life itself. Beyond that, I

don’t believe it could really be said to have any crystalline character

to what it is or could be.

Anarchism is a distinct array of political ideas, ideologies,

literature, and just generally intellectual or practical pursuits

composed by a diverse milieu, as well as tradition, of people who oppose

hierarchy on principle and have largely given themselves the task of

expounding, illustrating, as well as demonstrating the values (namely

anarchy) that result from those principles. Anarchism exists in a world

where it is truly unwelcome and this divorces anarchism from even the

horizon of anything like a way of life it envisions itself as belonging

to. And so anarchism is also definitely a conceit which often betrays

itself as such.

In the interest of relating the site’s content back to itself I’ll refer

to another answer given to a similar question:

“Anarchism is a political philosophy that aspires to a world without the

State and without exchange relations [relations dominated by the market

and economic value]. It is both the negative idea that there is a

laundry list of ideas, practices, and values in our current society to

be against and the positive idea that what is most “us” about us (as

living creatures) should be free to pursue its own ends without coercion

or constraint.

Anarchism is also a variable. It means many different things to

different people. This open nature serves as a counter-point to ideas

that are connected to specific thinkers or traditions in that, while

there is a tradition, and there are important thinkers, there is also a

lot of room for you to write your own page to the story. To apply the

variable to your own life.

Anarchism is also a constraint. For many, if not most, anarchists there

is a central concept that the ends do — not — justify the means, or put

more gently, that an anarchist practice must embed the values and ideas

of a future anarchist society. This means that anarchists are often

broken into parts. One part acts against the constraints of this world.

The other part constrains themselves by an ethical ruler the calibration

of which is in a foreign unit.”

How do you respond to people who think that Somalian society is

“anarchy”?

law

The problem is that technically they are correct; Somalia has been

without a functioning government and state for over a decade.

One response to that observation is that there are no anarchists in

Somalia (at least none that we’ve heard about), and that the state there

was deliberately destroyed not by anarchists, but by the US military,

and the US military is neither a humanitarian nor a progressive outfit.

Anarchists and other anti-state radicals would have destroyed the Somali

state in order to liberate the Somalis from government, all the while

encouraging Somalis to remember how to go about organizing themselves to

fulfill their own needs outside the realm of capitalism and statecraft.

The destruction of government in a situation where class domination

still exists means the nakedly oppressive rule of the most powerful

class without any pretense to legitimate authority (like parliamentary

democracy or something similarly goofy): in other words “warlords” and

“pirates.” The destruction of governments and states needs to include

the destruction of all institutionalized hierarchies (class-based,

gender-based, ethnicity-based, etc)—otherwise all you get is the brutal

chaos seen in Somalia, parts of Haiti, parts of Afghanistan...

What are the advantages of anarchy for a society over any form of

government?

dot

Governments are all about representation—they claim to work in the name

of, and to the benefit of, the people they govern. Aside from the

majority of the time when that is a lie (ie when the government is

motivated by corruption, incompetence, conflicting agendas, etc), even

in the best case scenarios, what representation does is to deny and

prohibit people’s agency, our willingness and capacity to act for

ourselves, based on our own understanding of what is the right thing to

do, and when, and to or with whom, etc.

The situation in Louisiana with Hurricane Katrina is a classic case in

point. Police and military did not act in the interest of the hurricane

survivors, and tried to stop people from helping each other.

Why does capitalism rely on the State?

api

Because, being based an an accumulation of capital (ie wealth) into the

hands of a few people at the expense of the rest, it requires the

accumulation of power into the hands of a few people operating through a

system of institutions of domination in order to protect the

accumulation of wealth. This system of institutions of domination is

what constitutes the state, and without it, the accumulation of capital

necessary to capitalism would be implausible, if not impossible, simply

because people wouldn’t be that likely to put up with it.

How can private property be abolished without any authority to

abolish it with?

ank

One simple answer: private property cannot be maintained without

authority to maintain it, because people would immediately appropriate

what they need, and the force of law, police, etc would not be there to

stop them. It is through these forms of state power that owners are

currently able to combat activities such as theft,

squatting/trespassing, etc, thereby keeping these activities relatively

in check, ie maintaining their property.

Of course there are privately-owned security forces, police, armies,

prisons, etc. “Anarcho”-capitalists feel entitled to call themselves

such because they don’t consider these to be forms of government. (They

also have a funny definition of capitalism.) To my mind these examples

just demonstrate a different form of governmental power in which it is

more transparent that the rich have hired mercenaries (a condition

somewhat obscured by the liberal form of government).

Private property itself functions as a form of authority in that there

is an authority held over individuals by the sanctity of property. In

this approach, one might view the forms taken by society to enforce

property as a social/material actuation of this ideological system. This

helps explain the existence of the moral systems in which people believe

it is wrong to infringe on property rights and so on—what we experience

is not simply a world full of private property that we cannot access

because it is protected by armed guards (as some anarchists portray it).

This is true, but it is also a world in which most people truly believe

in the existing system and in a whole lot of unquestioned abstractions

which they hold to be irreproachable, and without these beliefs the

armed guards would be nothing.

As for how private property can be abolished: The 1^(st) paragraph might

make it seems as if the abolition of the state would necessarily lead to

the abolition of private property through appropriation. However, just

as anarchists reject the idea of using authoritarian measures to abolish

private property, we also reject the idea that what we want is simply a

matter of abolishing the government, that “everything else” will follow

from there. Anarchists are, after all, opposed to all forms of

authority, and generally do not believe in confronting them in

separation from one another. Most anarchists would probably agree that

private property can be abolished through the insurrection of

self-actualized individuals and collectivities that organize without

authority between each other nor between themselves and any higher

powers (state, god, property, etc) to free their lives from the systems

that have dominated them. This effort of making our lives our own (of

appropriating them) is from a certain viewpoint the abolition of private

property, although it may be much more as well. It may involve a lot of

willpower, but by no means requires authority—in fact, I’d argue that

authority as I define it can only be a fetter to this effort.

What does Nietzsche have to do with anarchism?

I have seen anarchists talk about Nietzsche, and there seems to be a new

fad of anarcho-nihlism. Yet Nietzsche himself spoke quite negatively

about anarchists, and many of his ideas seem quite counter to anarchism

(as practiced in the US). So what does Nietzsche’s nihilism have in

common with anarchism, and what does he have to offer anarchist

practice?

kd

First: Nietzsche and nihilism... Nietzsche’s positions on nihilism were

complex, and it could be argued that he was a nihilist, or at least

aimed to be one.

Nietzsche saw nihilism as the most extreme form of pessimism, something

that comes from weariness and an alienation from values. When one can

recognize the existing value systems as meaningless and empty, and not

replace it with anything, they become nihilistic. He saw nihilism as

both positive and negative, as “...one of the greatest crises, a moment

of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from

it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his

strength!”

I think that it is helpful to first point out the two different types of

nihilism you find in his works, passive nihilism and active nihilism.

The passive nihilist is the one who could not recover from this crisis.

It is a state in which a person, having recognized that all external

values are empty, with no true authority, begins to find their own

internal values meaningless, giving up their own authority. With all

sense of authority gone one gives in to the spirit of hopelessness and

fatalism, ridding themselves of all responsibility. They withdraw from

the world, give up.

But it is possible (Nietzsche argues that it is entirely desirable) that

this recognition of external value systems as meaningless can give way

to a sense of rebelliousness and strength. This active nihilist seeks to

destroy any and all remaining traces of an empty value system. The

strength of one’s will is tested by whether or not it can recognize all

value systems as empty and meaningless, yet admit that these lies arise

out of the ego and serve a purpose; whether one can recognize that value

is necessary for life while denying the existence of any universal

truth.

Nietzsche saw this nihilism as a means to achieving an end, not an end

in and of itself. It is simply one step in the revaluation of values.

Nihilism is necessary to destroy what exists now in order to create a

place in which the ego/the will can truly take power and assert itself

fully.

As anarchists we are fighting to rid ourselves of the existing value

systems (the capitalist values of “money above all”, the Christian

values of “self-sacrifice, and god above all”, etc), and many of us

already feel that alienation from these values. What we can take from

his active nihilism is the deconstructive nature that gives way to

construction, a destruction that strengthens and empowers. The

realization that we need not only destroy what exists, but transcend it.

Nietzsche calls anarchists (and Christians) out on their apparent

inability to do this: “There is a perfect likeness between Christian and

anarchist: their object, their instinct, points only toward

destruction.... both are decadents; both are incapable of any act that

is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood sucking; both have

an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great,

and has durability, and promises life a future.” However, I don’t think

that this is permanent.

Second: What anarchists can learn from Nietzsche’s rejection of slave

morality.

Anarchists are some of the strongest adherents to the slave morality;

Nietzsche even said so outright. Our whole outlook on life, the way in

which we function within this world is based upon reaction, resentment.

We view people/events/etc through the eye of “good vs evil”. We look for

that which is “evil” (capitalism, police, etc) and define anything that

isn’t that as “good”. We do not spend much time focusing on that which

is “good”, but are obsessed with the “evil”, we revolve our

ideals/projects/lives around it. How is the US anarchist idea of “evil”

much different than Christian sin or devil; how different is the

anarchists’ end of capitalism from the Christian apocalypse, anarchist

ideals from heaven? We have become the perfect (pitiful) disciples of

our own slave morality.

And while Nietzsche argues that all morality is something to be

destroyed, if anarchists are going to have a morality we would have

something to learn from the master morality. Maybe we would get

somewhere constructive with our ideas if we began focusing on what was

“good” for us, what bettered us, our projects, our aims is certainly

more productive that focusing on what is not our enemies, labeling all

that is opposed to our enemies as “good”, spending our time dissecting

“evil”, learning about “evil” in order to learn what is not evil, to

better understand how we can be not “evil”. But we could strive to go

beyond morality entirely...

I think that Nietzsche’s critiques of anarchism can be taken as

constructive criticism, and can be learned from. I do not know much

about anarcho-nihilism, but I hope that it does not fall into the pit of

passivity.

fnk

I appreciate most of this response, KD, but this here got my goat:

Anarchists are some of the strongest adherents to the slave morality,

Nietzsche even said so outright. Our whole outlook on life, the way in

which we function within this world is based upon reaction, resentment.

We view people/events/etc through the eye of “good vs evil”.

Wow. first of all, you sound like you are speaking for (all) anarchists.

Then, as part of that, you state that (all) anarchists see things

through a moralistic lens of ‘good vs evil’. And I thought morals were a

concept placed above oneself, which one must (or at least should) defer

to. The very antithesis of what anarchy means to me.

Maybe I misunderstood something.

kd

You’re right, I make some sweeping generalizations in that answer. I did

lump all anarchists into that category.

I know that many individual anarchists actively do, or aim to, see the

world through a lens free of such morality. I find this to be totally

desirable and I appreciate that you are among those.

However, ‘anarchism’ as both an ‘ism’ and a culture does have a

morality, and a strong one at that.

Are there any critiques of capital that emphasize the individual?

It would be nice to have more familiarity with such critiques to be able

to easily dispense with anti-capitalism = collectivism arguments.

ict

European individualist anarchism tends to be highly influenced by

semi-aristocratic libertarian thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and

Max Stirner. One of the most important causes that those thinkers are

for is individual authenticity and sincerity. So this is why for example

Nietzsche has been influential in something like the marxist Frankfurt

School.

The Frankfurt School might base some of its economics in marxism (mainly

the critique of the commodity form) but it is not hard to find in it

highly individualistic citations relevant to our consumer society such

as this:

The man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer

him. Kant´s formalism still expected a contribution from the individual,

who was thought to relate the varied experiences of the senses to

fundamental concepts; but industry robs the individual of his function.

Its prime service to the customer is to do his schematizing for

him...There is nothing left for the consumer to classify.

Adorno and Horkheimer.

The dialectic of the enlightenment.

And another:

In the culture industry the individual is an illusion not merely because

of the standarization of the means of production. He is tolerated only

so long as his complete identification with the generality is

unquestioned. [ibid]

My thought is that as commercialism advances, the mediocrity and the

homogenizing grows. Even in small non-capitalist markets such as artisan

markets one has the constraint on personality and real emotions that

entails having to sell in order to make enough for survival. The famous

phrase “the customer is allways right” shows this. Now as we enter the

capitalist market space the prospective employee has to sell

herself/himself, dress a certain way in order to sell an image. At the

top of all this we have the marketing technologues who have to learn

some form of psychology in order to learn the art of selling things no

matter if they like something or agree with something as long as the pay

is good.

As far as anarchism specifically a good essay on these themes is “The

Soul of Man in Socialism” by Oscar Wilde. In it he puts forward this

kind of view:

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true,

beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in

accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live

is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Italian Individualist insurrectionist Renzo Novatore admired Wilde

highly and so went as far as to put him in his personal list of great

individuals:

Individualism is its own end. Minds atrophied by (Herbert) Spencer’s

positivism still go on believing that they are individualists without

noticing that their venerated teacher is the ultimate

anti-individualist, since he is nothing more than a radical monist, and,

as such, the passionate lover of unity and the sworn enemy of

particularity...But not because he has understood the anti-collectivist,

anti-social singularities capable of higher activities of the spirit, of

emotion and of heroic and uninhibited strength. He hates the state, but

does not penetrate or understand the mysterious, aristocratic, vagabond,

rebel individual!

And from this point of view, I don’t know why that flabby charlatan,

that failed anthropologist, bloated more and more with the sociology of

Darwin, Comte, Spencer and Marx, who has spread filth over the giants of

Art and Thought like Nietzsche, Stirner, Ibsen, Wilde, Zola, Huysman,

Verlaine, Mallarmé, etc., that charlatan called Max Nordau; I repeat, I

cannot explain to myself why he hasn’t also been called an

Individualist... since, like Spencer, Nordau also fights the state.

So it is clear there are strong reasons why individualists have been

againts markets and of course their more totalitarian form, capitalism.

I think also the Situationist International delved in an important way

in all of this. In a book of Michel Onfray called “La sculpture de soi:

la morale esthétique” (the sculpture of oneself) briefly in some part he

finds a relationship with some important aspects of Stirner philosophy

with what the Situationist International spoke about.

When (if ever) is coercion an appropriate choice for an anarchist?

In an ideal world, persuasion and discussion would settle all things,

but my ideal world has no room for ten hour consensus meeting more than

maybe once per lifetime. Lump that with the fact that my ideal world is

one of many, and they don’t all fit together like a nice jigsaw puzzle

of anarchyland.

If we are assuming that the dirty grit of the real world in the here and

now will be present in whatever other realities we create (meaning that

they are non-utopic), where does coercion come in to play? At what point

does it cross the line in to domination?

dot

I’m not sure that I wouldn’t put discussion outside of the category of

coercion. Depends on the situation.

The line between persuasion and coercion is a lot murkier than it seems

to be, once one starts questioning things like why some people’s skill

sets are more highly valued than others (talking over fist-fighting, for

example). I have seen plenty of verbal arguments finished where one

person was just more stubborn than the other, not that either had been

convinced (or convincing)...

To me, as a working premise, domination is a question of scale and

reification. If one person always argues circles around me without

taking my concerns into account and I don’t want to or can’t beat them

up, then I will just try to avoid them, or have someone else deal with

them. If I cannot do that because there is a whole apparatus in place

(like the police, to be simplistic), then I think that can be called

domination, especially if the apparatus is always composed of the same

people, or the same kind of people (whatever “kind” might mean in a

given situation).

Edit: to be clearer—I think 10 hour meetings are absolutely coercive.

You have to continue talking to people in a specific format (meeting

procedures) in order to make decisions that impact your life? Or risk

having things come up that effect you without having any input? No.

Does anarchy mean that I can’t try to coerce people or only that

they’re free to walk away if I do?

ing

Anarchy means you are welcome to try to coerce people, if that is what

you choose to do. It also means those people are welcome to walk away

without paying you any mind, or, should you be insistent in your

attempts to coerce, to punch you in the throat and then go on their way.

It might be unpopular to try to openly coerce others into acting against

their will, but that doesn’t mean that people will suddenly all stop

doing so, or that there will be some law prohibiting coercion. Rather,

if we believe the anthropologists, coercion would be countered with

shaming about such behavior through things like mild needling and

teasing, sarcasm, etc. To whit, coercion would likely be countered with

coercion. Problem? No, not necessarily. The issue is one of power.

Anarchy is a delicate balance of societal needs and individual wants,

and of individual needs and societal wants. Ideally things would be

settled by persuasion as opposed to coercion, but that is talking about

ideals, which hold very little when dealing in real lives and desires.

Perhaps as a counter argument, I would ask, why attempt to coerce as

opposed to persuade? There are times where both are appropriate, in my

mind, but I would much rather create a new question than authoritatively

circumscribe that exploration.

Why are anarchists against hierarchy?

Why exactly is hierarchy bad?

dot

To the extent that hierarchy is bad (there is a question of semantics

here—see below), it’s because it encourages (or forces) people into

situations where they feel (or are) not responsible for their own lives

and actions. The military is full of extreme examples of people doing

things that ruin the rest of their lives because they were ordered to

(not just by their commanding officer, but by an entire social system

that a) tells them they should be ordered, and b) forces them into

situations like the military to be able to survive).

Some people don’t put the issue in hierarchy, but in domination, and

argue that some amount of hierarchy is not a problem, as long as it’s

not institutionalized... Like, it’s ok if people pay more attention to

you when regarding something that you’re known to be good at. The

problem, for example, comes when you get to start making people do

things.

I think the valid critique that people bring to this ques- tion is that

of relationship, and the idea that we are all in some kind of

hierarchical relationship all the time (a la Foucault), that power flows

between people all the time, and that to resist hierarchy is to resist

relationships... So the issue becomes one of context and degree, rather

than simply a binary one.

law

If I may, I would alter your question to read: Why is hierarchy

considered to be detrimental to the positive principles of anarchism

like mutual aid, direct action, and voluntary cooperation? With a simple

understanding of what those principles are and what they look like, the

question almost answers itself.

I would wholeheartedly agree with dot that it’s a question of the

institutionalization of hierarchy rather than hierarchy itself that is

the problem, so a better way of discussing this issue is to call the

problem domination—or if you’re feeling philosophical, call it

Herrschaft, because all the really heavy philosophical shit sounds

especially heavy in German.

alc

I imagine a “hierarchy” in a simplified sense as a pyramid where each

individual exists as a block in the structure: the closer your block’s

position to the top, the less pressure you feel upon yourself and the

more pressure you put on others. The pressure symbolizes authority. So

this highly unequal distribution of force predictably breeds

institutionalized privilege, envy, and competition for dominance, at

bare minimum because of a want to escape the pressure. It seems like the

privilege and envy,

Now, beyond just intentions, and the way that power corrupts, we can

emphasize the consequences of structures of hierarchical control, how

they create incentives toward exploitation and obstacles toward

accountability, and how such systems by definition entail finite

positions of superior privilege and inferior classes held in

subordination. Power hierarchies mean that those most allowed to change

the status quo have the most investment in preserving it—their power,

prestige, profit, etc. rely upon the disempowered not taking back their

usurped initiative. Oftentimes even the mildest managerialism snowballs

away from accountability and toward authoritarianism through “emergency”

justifications that never roll back.

Systems that allow for and emphasize the role of hierarchical power have

totalitarian tendencies. They have pyramidal structures, stacked ranks,

centralized power, vertical organization. Their officials give commands

supported by threats. This creates a delicate stability through a shared

fear of repression.

In this spirit, their decision-making tends to utilize massive

restriction and coercion, representation, assimilation, and manipulation

by force or by fraud.

They develop impersonal bureaucracy, standardiza-tion, and conformity.

But other and contrary types of relations and organizing exist, such as

collaborative self-determination between peers, the kind that anarchists

propose.

Power hierarchies undermine communication. Hag-bard’s Law shows that in

a truly pyramidal structure, where authority figures create order

through threats, subordinates tend to tell their superiors merely what

hierarchy the superiors want to hear. This filtering multiplies to the

degree of verticality, by each level of mediation in that structure.

Those at the top therefore lose connection from the reality below them.

The (mis)information the authorities receive appeals to their

confirmation bias (the things they want to hear), resulting in misguided

intentions cloaked in truth, shielded by mistaken confidence, and armed

with monopoly, allowing for no opposition. And so, because of the

one-way decision-making and the filtered awareness, if those at the top

of the pyramid actually made a deliberate attempt to represent the

subordinates, they would tend toward a misrepresentation made invisible

to themselves.

If people possess the critical thinking and character assessment skills

to recognize in an authority the ways to lead competent, benevolent

lives, why must we have to delegate this capacity outside of ourselves?

Why do we need them to run our lives if we can tell how our lives should

be run? And however will the disempowered find freedom, if in each

instance where authoritarians act on behalf of the disempowered, to

shape or shield or crush them, the will of the disempowered continually

atrophies from lack of exercise? How else will the disempowered find

freedom, if not in seizing the direction of their own lives, the very

act that the authoritarians deny them? Stratification of power only

exacerbates the predicament. We alone experience the peculiar

circumstances of our situation. We alone bear the history of our

aspirations and sorrows, our passions and eccentricities, our capacities

and limitations.

Our lived experience grants us more qualification at determining our

path than any speculating manager could ever dream of. Further empowered

by collaboration with one’s peers, people can experience authentic

freedom, and not the sad farce of begging those in power for mercy.

People may voluntarily seek for themselves a leader to guide them, but

when they deny others the ability to live autonomously, it results in

nothing but tyranny, no matter how many smily faces the tyranny hides

behind. Those of us who by conscience refuse systems of hierarchical

power will not voluntarily choose hierarchy to opt-in and cannot opt-out

without severe punishment. Those in power promise us the world but by

design they must keep our lives out of our own hands, and regardless of

whether or not they make decisions I would endorse—which they don’t—I

find the method irreconcilable with my conscience and my aspirations.

And that is the inequality and the abusiveness of the “power” I refer

to, that is the mechanics intrinsic to hierarchal order.

What makes someone an anarchist?

If anarchists disagree with each other so much, how do you tell who is

one, and who isn’t?

rby

Rejection of capitalism and the state (among other things — but the core

points are being against political and economic hierarchies).

As long as there’s agreement on those two points, there’s anarchism.

frz

Some of those other things to consider frz are work and civilization.

rby

Yep! And opposition to forms of, ah, “social domination” I guess you

could say—institutional and individual racism, sexism, heterosexism, et

cetera...

But I think these things come as very slightly secondary to capitalism

and the state. If an anarchist happens to be kind of a sexist douche,

they wouldn’t necessarily be called “not an anarchist” but maybe “not an

anarchist I would like to be around”. On the other hand, if someone were

to defend the necessity or desirability of some level of capitalism or

statehood, then people would probably be pretty quick to say that that

person is not an anarchist at all.

ank

The following test is remarkably accurate:

• Does the person in question consider him or herself to be an

anarchist?

• If the person in question encounters another randomly-selected

anarchist, is the latter likely to want to attack the former if they

have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of their ideas and actions?

If the answers are “yes” to 1 and “no” to 2, the person in question is

an anarchist. Otherwise, they are not.

What’s the general attitude anarchists have of

neighborhood/community watch organizations?

In my experience, neighborhood watch programs are really nothing more

than narcs, off-duty police, superiority-complex-ridden people that try

to be police, and then the occa-sional person who just wants to make

sure no one is being harmed. It’s this last group of people that give me

hope for watches, and I think community watches can fit nicely with

anarchism; it’s volunteer, there are different watchers every night (or

week or whatever), and no one has authority over others. The Highway

Helpers in Iowa and other states are slightly reminiscent of this

organization (volunteers drive around the highways in trucks with

car-repair equipment and help anyone in need, free of charge). I can

easily see some anarchist societies having such organizations (people

patrolling to make sure no one is harming another or being harmed), and

I have heard Christiania has similar coordina-tion among residents,

although I can’t confirm this.

But with incidents like that of the recent Trayvon Martin shooting and

many others like it, there’s legitimate concern regarding these watches.

On top of the original question, what do all of you think?

blq

Don’t forget—a neighborhood might need a fire watch, a medical watch, a

kiddy watch... a garden watch in freezing weather if folks are away...

there are a lot of negative connota-tions because of the way it gets

used. That doesn’t keep us from using it for constructive purposes...

Old folk hasn’t been seen in a few days? Did s/he fall down and get

hurt?

rby

I mean, as of right now, the term “neighborhood watch” carries a lot of

baggage—usually that of property owners, middle-class professionals, and

small entrepreneurs banding together to keep certain elements out of

their neighborhood. This usually translates to harassing poor people,

young people, and people of color (and especially combinations of the

three).

But the organizational structure is plenty anarchistic in theory, sure.

It’s non-hierarchical and based on mutual aid. The problem is the

context in which it occurs.

To clarify, when I say that “the organizational structure is plenty

anarchistic”, I mean it in the sense that you could use a similar

organizational structure for wildly different things, such as the ones

illustrated in Asker’s comment—CopWatch, community defense vigilantes

committees, emergency response networks, etc.

The Neighborhood Watch, as it exists today, is obviously totally

incompatible with any kind of anarchist society or organizing, but that

much should be obvious since they’re basically amateur cops.

asr

To offer an alternative answer: I can’t really imagine how a

neighborhood asr watch could ever be anything but a threat to us, much

less a helpful aspect of an ‘anarchist society.’ It seems to me that

even if the form a neighborhood watch took were totally inclusive,

par-ticipatory, and whatever, that wouldn’t matter. There are plenty of

organizations that work like that, (rotary clubs, alcoholics anonymous,

even some workplaces) but I would never think to link those

organizations to the anarchist project. In each case their purpose is

opposed to mine or at least unrelated.

As far as I can tell, the purpose of a neighborhood watch is

surveillance: they try to make sure that any crime that occurs in a

certain area is observed, so that it will be easier for the police to

deal with it. The assumption is that the neighborhood watch somehow has

the ability to determine what behaviors are appropriate within a certain

area (a side note: what the fuck is a neighborhood?).

In a situation where there are police available, people who do this are

straight up snitches. In a situation without police, I guess they would

simply be nosy ass-holes. I certainly can’t think of any stateless group

I have read about where people thought that one of their biggest

problems is that people are committing crimes without being observed.

To complicate this, I can think of some situations where we might want

to organize in a somewhat analogous way, given the reality that right

now we live in a world with lots of enemies. For instance, copwatch,

neighborhood defense committees, barricades—things that might help us

keep police out of places...

Are anarchists egalitarians?

I read in an anarchist 101 type pamphlet that anarchists are

egalitarians who seek the creation (in a long term and immediate sense)

of egalitarian social relationships and equality between people. And yet

in other places, I have read critiques of “equality” as an abstracting,

limiting, and quantifying view of humanity tied to liberalism and

capitalism. I understand anarchism to be a critique of capitalism and

liberalism.

ing

Egalitarianism and equality are not necessarily the same things in the

way your are bring-ing them up. Egalitarianism as anarchists use it

normally refers to social relations lacking coercive or rigidly

hierarchical structures.

Often times when anarchists critique concepts of equality, they are

referring to legal definitions of equality—affirmative action programs,

state controlled redistribution of the wealth, and so forth. Often times

equality as used in contemporary north american politics is either a

code word for further state control or else is so detached of any real

meaning (pay attention, if you can stomach it, to how campaigning

politicians discuss equality for examples).

The critique of equality also extends to ideas that we should all have

exactly the same social standing, which is both impossible and not

really desirable. We are not all equal, but perhaps we can aim to live

in ways where we don’t dominate each other.

dot

I would just like to add to ingrate’s answer that while we could operate

on the understanding that the anarchists who promote “egalitarian

relationships” and “equality” are just using the words in a good way

(usually under the rationale that they want to be able to speak to

people who don’t think about the nuances that ingrate explains), it is

also reasonable to be suspicious of people who ignore the problems of

words and concepts that are appealing in a repressive society, and to

consider those people demagogues.

I think that perhaps the most important thing that anarchists do is to

encourage a deep questioning of the things that people take for granted,

especially things that people think of positively, like equality, love,

freedom, etc.

People who play on those assumptions are usually trying to manipulate

people, even/especially for “their own good.”

alc

I understand egalitarianism as either

(a) no one has a privilege that everyone else doesn’t also have,

(b) everyone has direct access to what they need,

(c) everyone has direct input in decisions that affect them,

(d) diversity exists without power hierarchies and exploitation of

labor.

Anthropologists distinguish between egalitarian societies, ranked

societies, and class-based societies, and I find these distinctions

useful. I don’t like the term “equality” because to me it can too easily

become a vehicle for authoritarian conformity.

Two texts I find useful here are “Egalitarian Societies” by James

Woodburn, and “How Hunter-gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways”

by Peter Gray, equality both available online.

The wikipedia entry for “egalitarianism” mentions one definition as “a

social philosophy advocating the removal of economic inequalities among

people or the decentralization of power”, so we can see obvious

parallels to anarchism.

What do anarchists mean by “equality”?

Usually when I hear people utter this term or see it on banners I

understand it to mean equality of legal rights. This struggle is

reformist by anarchist standards, as we oppose the state’s laws, equal

or not. Also, is this what the Circle E symbol is supposed to mean?

nnn

There are two broadly divergent tendencies in anarchist understandings

of equality. In the first perspective associated with class struggle

anarchism, equality is the utopian fantasy end-state that results from

the glorious revolution. Without equality, revolution has no utopian

dream to pursue, no raison d’etre. When the state and capital are

banished to history all people will magically be equal in the absence of

political and economic hierarchies and oppressions. We will thrive on

the fantastic bounty that utopian dreams bestow upon us.

For other anarchists the insistence on equality is a deplorable belief

in the weakness of humans, the drive to level everything and everyone to

protect us from ourselves and the world, to hedge against risk. It is an

abstraction that will occupy the vacant seat of the state, ensuring

freedom from harms. It is an abandonment and a betrayal of our greatest

abilities and dreams. It is settling for safety and repetition in the

place of our passions, our greatness, our in-domitable spirits, and a

real and dangerous world. Equality is the exaltation of the herd where

everyone stands on the same ground and where no one strays far from a

dull and unexceptional pack.

What’s the deal with feminism and anarchy?

What’s the correlation between the two? I’ve heard some a-feminists say

all anarchists are (or should be) feminists. Is patriarchy really that

prevalent or that big of a problem?

Feminism just seems like a whiny way of saying women need to be treated

equally, yet differently and even better than men.

dot

First—this question seems to be trolling, both in its language and in

its content. But since this topic hasn’t been fleshed out here much, I

will continue on the premise of good faith. This answer is not going to

be a tome, so it doesn’t go into sufficient detail about the

complexities around gender vs sex, etc...

• Patriarchy is in fact that big of a problem. Women (and

women-identified people, which includes tons of people, including

entirely straight men in certain contexts) are still attacked as women,

paid significantly less then men for the same type of work, devalued in

many levels of society (politics, etc), ignored, trivialized, etc.

That is just on the bare surface level. If you consider patriarchy to be

the thing that keeps us locked in a gender binary, which many feminists

(and anarchists) do, then the fact that most of us don’t get to have the

kinds of relationships that we want, or be the people we want to be,

regardless of our gender/sex, is based on patriarchy.

• There are at least as many kinds of feminists as there are of

anarchists (probably more).

• Since on one level feminists are saying that the standard way of doing

things is a problem because of inherited and recreated hierarchies that

don’t allow people our full expression, then yes, feminism and anarchy

can be seen as intimately related. On the other hand, some feminists

just want more women in government, so those feminists have nothing in

common with anarchists.

• Calling feminists whiny makes me want to hit you in the face.

• While identity politics (the idea that a particular identity is a

fundamental issue that is worth organizing around—and can be organized

around) has a lot of problems and weaknesses, it is one of the easiest

ways to (start to) look at many of the inequities of the system we live

in. Many people get to that stage and make a home there, replicating

power trips that mir-ror (as in reverse-image) the dynamics in the

larger society. Those people are particularly prone to contradictions in

what they are asking for (treat me the same and treat me differently).

But sometimes what appears to be a contradiction is actually someone

taking into account the different contexts of women and men. For

example, what self defense looks like for women vs what it looks like

for men can be significantly different, since women and men are mostly

socialized with diametrically opposed understandings of physical

violence.

fnk

“if you consider patriarchy to be the thing that keeps us locked in

gender binary...”

I see most feminist responses to patriarchy as absolutely perpetuating

the “gender” binary, just as patriarchy does. Some might see that as

inherently wrapped up in the bogeyman of feminism patriarchy, where

everything that “results” from patriarchy is somehow explainable (or

even jus-tifiable) as such. I see that perspective as a far-too-easy

avoidance of the complexities of power dynamics in every relationship.

This raises a few related questions in my head. Are patriarchy and

feminism, by definition, manifestations of binary thinking?

Is feminism merely a response to patriarchy? Or is it a separately

existing concept/ideology, that would/could exist even without

patriarchy? One that is not really about gender, or race, or class, ...

Or perhaps is the same concept/ideology?

One final thought on the original question. Patriarchy is, at some

level, an institution (at least it is seen that way by many). Any

anarchist I care to hang with is against all institutions (which are

inherently controlling and homogenizing). A feminist who is against

patriarchy but not against other institutions (work/capitalism,

government; these seem to be the contexts within which patriarchal

behavior is measured, at least on the broad scale), is really no

different from the communist who is against one institution (capitalism)

but not the rest (including, but not limited to, the state,

industrialism, etc). Just my 2c.

dot

“I see most feminist responses to patriarchy as absolutely perpetuating

the “gender” binary”

Sure. and most anarchists maintain fucked up patterns of behavior that

contradict what anarchy is too. Not trying to make an exact correlation

or anything, and I hang with anarchists not feminists for exactly the

reasons that you mention, but it is true that very few people push the

things that they believe in, in the directions that seem appropriate

(and/or obvious) to me.

What are some anarchist critiques of humanism?

alc

• Humanism facilitates ecological collapse.Belief in the right of human

supremacy over all other species (whether explicitly for domination or

under the guise of stewardship) has brought us to the brink of an

ecological collapse that will lead to a world of polluted wastelands and

destroy most species on Earth, including the human species. Divorc-ing

ourselves from values of aliveness, wildness, and regeneration has

achieved disastrous consequences for the majority of the human species

as well as all other species on Earth and all known habitats.

• Humanism furthers alienation.Belief in human separation from “nature”

has forced humanism us into a roles that foster neuroses and madness; an

alienated existence inflicts increasing psychological and spiritual harm

to we who live and more and more in a sterile, deadened, mechanical,

symbolic world of control.

• Humanism believes in speciesist Dominion.The social construct of

property arises from a humanist perspective that treats other species

and landbases only as utilitarian to certain humans rather than

possessing even the most rudimentary levels of intrinsic worth

(spirituality), self-ownership (philosophy), consideration for

ecological contribution (functionalism), or belief that they have no

superior or subordinate value (nihilism/egoism).

• Humanism rationalizes abuse.To do this humanists arbitrarily elevate

some measure (eg intellect, rationality, tool use) or content (eg soul,

nervous system) to justify authoritarian behavior toward anyone

classified as external. Such criteria change to rationalize the desire

for authoritarian behavior as desired. Humanism makes excuses and

rationalizations for human behaviors toward other species (slavery,

extermination) that humanists would never concede to other entities

(e.g. aliens or ma-chines) with greater of even the agreed-upon measures

or contents. It’s an identity defense system, not a moral truth.

• Humanism speaks the Myth of Progress.Humanists almost always believe

in the Myth of Progress, the belief that the state of humanity is always

positively improving socially or technologically in a straight, forward,

unidirectional line toward utopia, or at least claim this pattern has

occured so far with the development of the Neolithic Revolution.

Humanists believe that no other species does this, that humans are the

subject and consciousness of the cosmos, and therefore everyone and

everything else is an resource to exploit.

• Humanism acts as the modern religious authority.Humanism replaces God

at the throne of authority with a particular and unquestioned image of

the human species (the rational, productive man), and creates a new

clerical class of scientists, technicians, bureaucrats, and others that

mediate and divvy out Progress.

• Humanism has racist, colonialist mythology and history.Humanism has

constructed myths of an external environment and demonizes a concept of

nature that it perceives as hostile to human aims.Humanism therefore has

easily accommodated racism, as it is anti-nature and therefore to some

extent anti-any-ethnicity-that-resembles-nature, such as savages,

witches, barbarians, cavemen, Indians, Negroes, and supported those who

embody a struggle against nature, such as pilgrims, pioneers, mountain

men, Victorian-era masculine hetero males, Western scientists, who just

happened to also be the colonizers.

• Humanism hates wildness.Humanists usually love the features of urban

society that biotically cleanse landscapes to replace them with

monuments to the greatness of Man and and testaments to the glory of

Industry, artifacts of repression.

• Humanism hates aliveness.Humanists usually posses an intense

attachment to mass society and technophilia and drawdown of

non-renewables, and false notions that “Everything is natural” or “That

which is natural is subordinate”, and “Technology is neutral”. On a

spectrum of (a) all life-forms and landbases have value, to (b) only

humans and their settlements and artifacts and symbols have value, to

(c) only industrial technology has value, humanists are a lot closer to

(c) than they’d like to admit, and have justified or rationalized the

eradication or subjugation of “backward” peoples and entire species or

habitats for increasing technical complexity (see: Marxists,

transhumanists). For the most part, humanists today can more easily come

to terms with having no more traditional indigenous people on Earth, no

more migratory songbirds on Earth, no more old growth forests on Earth,

than having no more com-puters on Earth.

• Humanism inherits ignorance & arrogance.

Humanist rhetoricians therefore often just cloak colonialism and

dominion, taking them for granted or ap-plauding them without giving

room to radical critiques of their origins, histories, and trajectories,

and in fact suppressing dissidents historically.

• Humanism acts as another concept of sacrifice for control.

Stirner: How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is

its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No,

mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of

mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes

nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when

they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the

dung-heap of history in gratitude.

• Humanism has a cold heart.

Some anarchists have trouble confining our op- humanism position to

slavery and extermination to just 1 in 8,700,000 species, during a mass

extinction no less.

Stance on egoism (rational/ethical) vs. altruism?

Do you think altruism is possible? If it’s not, and everything everybody

does revolves around self-interest (i.e. what they will get out of it),

then why not choose Ayn Rand’s Objectivism (I fucking hate it and her

with a burning passion) and laissez-faire capitalism (equally hated)? As

according to egoist thought, it’s unethical/immoral to put others before

the self. The way it is argued seems to make it impossible to disprove

or even deny. Thoughts on this?

ipc

Your question isn’t taking into an account other egoisms that exist,

especially Stirner’s egoism, which is quite different that Rand’s. You

are right to say that Rand’s stance was that it is unethical/immoral to

be altruistic or do anything altruistic, but ethics and morality would

be of no concern to Stirner in deciding what sort of action to take. So

Stirner’s stance would be that one could do something altruistic if they

wanted to, or they could do something non-altruistic instead, it all

comes down to what that individual decides to do and this decision is

made with no consideration of what is considered “good” or “bad”,

“Moral”or “immoral”, “ethical” or “unethical”, etc.

ing

Let’s leave aside philosophy for a moment and go to the behaviour of

animals and humans. Science have shown that animals and humans both

engage in war and collaborate.

Peter Kropotkin in his book “Mutual Aid: A factor of Evolution” showed

that the not so visible side of success in species survival is

collaboration inside the species against others or in mere

self-survival.

Egoism can be said to be the direct logical linguistic opposite of

altruism yet like every binary operation it is not that simple. Max

Stirner himself said: “Who, then, is “self-sacrificing?”[Literally,

“sacrificing”; the German word has not the prefix “self.”] In the full

sense, surely, he who ventures everything else for one thing, one

object, one will, one passion. Is not the lover self-sacrificing who

forsakes father and mother, endures all dangers and privations, to reach

his goal? Or the ambitious man, who offers up all his desires, wishes,

and satisfactions to the single passion, or the avaricious man who

denies himself everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker,

etc.? He is ruled by a passion to which he brings the rest as

sacrifices.

And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not selfish, not egoist?

As they have only one ruling passion, so they provide for only one

satisfaction, but for this the more strenuously, they are wholly

absorbed in it. Their entire activity is egoistic, but it is a

one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism; it is possessedness.”

So one can be egoistic and also be altruistic at the same time if this

things outside me is of my love or desire. It is clear “egoism” and

“self interest” is involved here but of course it is also altruistic.

And so for example gift economies

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy) could be superficially

identified and mostly altruistic relationships but this is not exactly

the case. Anarchist antropologist David Graeber when speaking about

french antropologist Marcel Mauss says:

Instead, what anthropologists were discovering were societies where

economic life was based on utterly different principles, and most

objects moved back and forth as gifts and almost everything we would

call ‘economic’ behavior was based on a pretense of pure generosity and

a refusal to calculate exactly who had given what to whom. Such ‘gift

economies’ could on occasion become highly competitive, but when they

did it was in exactly the opposite way from our own: Instead of vying to

see who could accumulate the most, the winners were the ones who managed

to give the most away. In some notorious cases, such as the Kwakiutl of

British Columbia, this could lead to dramatic contests of liberality,

where ambitious chiefs would try to outdo one another by distributing

thousands of silver brace-lets, Hudson Bay blankets or Singer sewing

ma-chines, and even by destroying wealth sinking famous heirlooms in the

ocean, or setting huge piles of wealth on fire and daring their rivals

to do the same...In gift economies, Mauss argued, exchanges do not have

the impersonal qualities of the capitalist marketplace: In fact, even

when objects of great value change hands, what really egoism/altruism

matters is the relations between the people; exchange is about creating

friendships, or working out rivalries, or obligations, and only

incidentally about moving around valuable goods. As a result everything

becomes personally charged, even property: In gift economies, the most

famous objects of wealth heirloom necklaces, weapons, feather cloaks

always seem to develop personalities of their own.

David Graeber. “Give It Away”

So gift economies include motivations that don’t appear out of something

similar to “christian love” but of other “egoistic” tendencies such as

the desire of prestige and recognition as well as keeping good relations

with those who can help me in the future.

Hakim Bey thus establishes this bridge in this way:

The essence of the party: face-to-face, a group of humans synergize

their efforts to realize mutual desires, whether for good food and

cheer, dance, conversation, the arts of life; perhaps even for erotic

pleasure, or to create a communal artwork, or to attain the very

transport of bliss—in short, a ‘union of egoists’ (as Stirner put it) in

its simplest form—or else, in Kropotkin’s terms, a basic biological

drive to ‘mutual aid.’ (Here we should also mention Bataille’s ‘economy

of excess’ and his theory of potlatch culture.)

So a union of egoists is a form of mutual aid. Mutual Aid is not the

same as “christian love”. Mutual aid is something done in the

self-interest of both sides.

squ

I am not satisfied with the paradoxical assumptions of subjectivity that

support the concept of altruism. But, I am also not satisfied with a

constrained concept of subjectivity/self/ego/”I” (from now on just

“ego”). This is all tied up in the way that I understand subjectivity to

begin with.

That what we recognize as the ego is an expression of complicated

cognitive processes which make it possible for the boundaries of ego to

fluctuate: that the ego is capable of identifying with, appropriating,

connecting, or otherwise expanding to include other minds, bodies,

objects, and images. From the studies in developmental psychology that

I’ve read, it appears that the ego shrinks through development as theory

of mind develops, as a sense of self recedes from an undifferentiated

identification with all that is perceived. And from other studies of

subjectivity the ego appears capable of redefining its boundaries to

various extents: whether as a transcendental experience, a psychotic

break, consummate love (sometimes), empathy, and/or less powerful

experiences of identification with others.

So, if the ego is more of this sort of concept, then egoism is also less

bound. If my sense of self can egoism/altruism expand to include you (or

at the very least, my self-image and the image of you are intricately

bound up with each other), then my behavior is no longer towards you...

but towards myself. At the same time, if my sense of self doesn’t expand

to include you and I regard you as an other, I would enter into a

self-other relationship and be more or less consider-ate. I could reason

that my self-interests include the happiness of those around me and wind

up with an ‘enlightened self-interest’ or I could reason that it’s

better to be calloused towards the conditions of others and wind up with

a ethic like Ayn Rand’s.

If the ego is fairly amorphous and an ethics rooted in a static ego is

embraced, is that being true to the ego? Even worse, if the ego is the

expression of more fundamental psychological patterns that use it for

their unknown fulfillment... is it really the ego that can be the

grounds for an ethics? What if ego and environment are so intricately

entangled that it would make more sense to comprehend them as shades of

a common experience and not actually separate beings?

Why not choose Ayn Rand’s Objectivism? Who the fuck wants to live in a

world filled with miserable people?

Why put others before the self? Interdependence... my existence depends

upon some others to such an extent that there is no clean cut in our

reciprocal relations.

Is altruism possible? Only to the extent that it includes the ego, even

if that inclusion is through some sort of identification.

Is there a “social” and “anti-social” anarchism? What are the

distinctions?

What are the main ideas, texts, groups that embody these anarchism(s)?

Is there a middle ground between the two?

ict

I think social anarchism has to be seen as a position putting forward a

social organization alternative to the current societal forms.

And so it gives a collective answer and it is associated with

anarcho-syndicalism, bakuninist collectivism and anarcho-communism. As

far as “anti-social” anarchism, that has not been an important term

within anarchist discourse although I have read it in insurrectionist

and individualist texts but it wasn’t a central term where I read it.

A false dichotomy in a sense. Even egoist anarchists address society and

other people so it is not a “Robinson Crusoe” dream and there have been

many individualists who have participated in anarchist trade unions and

large Anarchist Federations such as francophone Federation Anarchiste

and spanish and italian FAIs.

On the other hand Murray Bookchin wrote a book called Social Anarchism

and Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, which accused everything

that didn’t go along with his particular view of “social anarchism” as

being “bourgeois”. The word “social anarchism” was proposed by the more

marxist like anarchists who wanted to establish an important difference

between their “class struggle”, platformist and economicistic approach

and the more “lifestyle” and/or humanistic approach of individualist

anarchists such as Emile Armand or the outlaw “violent” frame of mind of

the illegalists and propaganda by the deed insurrectionists. Because of

this Sebastien Faure and Voline proposed pluralistic and anarchism

without adjectives “synthesis anarchism” as an organizational

alternative in which anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, and

individualist anarchists could collaborate and fit in. It seems to me

synthesis anarchism in a way to go beyond the bad effects of the

dichotomy “social” and “individualist” and so large pluralistic

synthesis federations exist until today in mediterranean countries but

also anti-organizationalist insurrectionalists and individualists and on

the other hand cuasi-marxist platformist organizations.

I think philosophically the best middle ground that I have read is that

of Emma Goldman. She was an admirer of both Nietzsche and Stirner and

also an anarcho-communist. I think that can be called “egoist communism”

and these anarchists from San Francisco wrote a whole lengthy book: The

Right To Be Greedy: Theses on The Practical Necessity of Demanding

Everything by For Ourselves.

Bontemps was a French individualist anarchist who wrote on a concept

central to him, “social individualism”, but I don’t think anything by

him has yet been translated. He was a humanistic individualist and so

social individualism most likely has to do with the individualist side

of humanism but also with the “altruistic” side of humanism which

advocates friendship and empathy towards others while retaining

individual autonomy and freedom of association with those more like

oneself.

In the end the problem here is the vagueness of the words “social” and

“anti-social”. “Anti-social” sounds interesting in a romantic or poetic

sense but for conceptual clarity it is too unclear. The word “social”

can make one think both of “society” and of “socializing”. “Society” can

be a local society, a society of a country or state. Globalization

propagandists even talk of “global society”. On the other hand

“socializing” can mean talking with just one person and so misanthropics

or egoists by just talking with another similar type of person are

already socializing.

ank

Joseph Dejacque, one of the first individuals to create in theory and in

practice the split that would form between the anarchists and the state

socialists/communists, wrote “Let’s make war on society” in the early

1800s. While he attacked statists and even the anarchist Proudhon on the

basis of questions of personal liberty, he saw the ideal environment for

individual freedom being a communist society.

Max Stirner, who decried the (humanist) communist cause because it puts

the greater good of society in the place of God’s cause as the dominant

ideology, an ideology opposed to individual freedom and insurrection,

was involved in forming a milk cooperative. Interestingly enough, this

was the only project he is known for aside from his writing.

Renzo Novatore, possibly the most extremely anti-social anarchist I can

think of who wrote much, at one point declared to his anarcho-communist

comrades that he would fight alongside them in the destruction of the

existing society, and that when they established their new communist

society he would fight to destroy that one as well.

The current social vs. anti-social debate in anarchism is in many ways

reminiscent of and refers to this history, while at the same time it is

unique. The consciously anti-social tendency is probably strongest among

insurgents in Chile, where one can see that phrase as well as related

terms openly embraced in text after text. Or one could point to various

individuals influenced by Ted Kaczynski’s theory and practice, which is

highly anti-social and is centrally about a critique of modern society

and particularly leftism (and is significantly different from

individualist anarchism, operating on a different plane). But perhaps

the most intense episode in this debate happened recently in the wake of

the Marfin Bank firebombing in Athens, Greece on May 5, 2010 (in which

three workers died from a fire started by anarchists during massive

demonstrations). While I’m not familiar with all of the debate since it

occurred in Greek and little has been translated to English, it seems

that many anarchists blamed the deaths on what they described as

anti-social elements in the milieu. These elements were defined in terms

that will probably sound familiar to many of us: abandoning much of the

anarchist tradition, they rejected the idea of the revolutionary

potential of the masses and rather than placing sole blame upon the

bourgeois class, chose instead to direct their critique at the leaders

as well as the masses whose submission gives the leaders their power.

They also rejected the ideology of the oppressed’s liberation from their

oppression through their position as the oppressed and its social

movements (reminiscent here of Nietzsche among others). This contempt

for the workers, some argued, led a few anarchists to not be concerned

about whether their actions would cause the death of bank workers.

I will go out on a limb and say that I don’t buy this attempt to

establish a firm connection between anti-social ideas and the actions of

the arsonists, especially when the anarchists making this argument

clearly have a double agenda: to distance themselves from the arsonists

to clear their own feelings of guilt while promoting their own ideology

of social revolution in hopes of doing away with a plague that they were

by all accounts already very interested in stomping out or at least

controlling. (During the De-cember 2008 insurrection, insurrectionary

anarchists who had set plenty a fire in their day were trying to direct

the younger, more wild insurgents to not burn certain buildings such as

local businesses.) For the most part, it doesn’t seem that any of the

anarchists in the “anti-social tendency” in Greece (it’s unclear to me,

by the way, whether the anti-socials chose this term to explain their

differences with the social revolutionaries or whether some chose to

embrace the term that the social revolutionaries threw at them) acted

very differently in practice from insurrectionary anarchists, at least

not to the point of attacking anyone who is not a cop, politician, boss,

etc. But I’ve heard it claimed that a couple of actions distinguish

themselves, so I will examine them. The first was an action by a

little-known group who hijacked a commuter train, forced everyone off

it, and set it on fire. Their communique pointed out that the workers’

daily activity is what reproduces the system they are against, and that

this action was to deny the workers their daily commute. No one was

hurt, and it seems by all accounts an exemplary action, with even the

social anarchists only objecting to their rhetoric and not to the action

itself. The other was an action of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, who

placed a bomb in an area where the ruling party leader was giving a

speech during the campaign season. The communique declares that their

hatred and contempt was not only for the politician but also for the

masses who went to hear him speak. However, their intention was not to

hurt anyone, and they called in a bomb threat to force the evacuation of

the area and prevent the speech from taking place. The area was

evacuated and no one was hurt. Compare these with Mario Buda’s bombing

of Wall Street...

I think it was easier in the 1800s into the early 1900s to have faith in

the movements of the oppressed to liberate themselves from their

oppression. 1968 was another glimpse of possibility. One might argue

that the recent wave of social movements should put the debate to rest

again (it reached its peak before the Arab Spring, in a time of

unprecedented social peace), since social revolution seems like a real

possibility. But a different way of looking at it is that all the social

revolutions of the past have ended in everyone going back to work for

the continuation of the capitalist society in which we find ourselves

today; that we should have no faith in this wave, which is steadily

showing itself to accomplish not anarchy but only new democratic regimes

and other forms of recuperation; and that the very form of social

revolution is a form we should reject in favor of anti-social

insurrection. Drawing on Stirner or Novatore here we might reach the

conclusion that the seed always planted in the heart of the social

revolution, which caused new arrangements to be formed, which led to the

communist dictatorships in Russia and China and elsewhere; the reason

why the workers went back to work at the end of May 1968 was the

insurgents’ adherence to a higher cause and their need to act as a mass

rather than embarking on the more dangerous path of an egoist,

iconoclastic insurrection.

For the most part, anarchism has taken a middle ground on one

interpretation of this question. That is: anarchists are of course

against the existing society, so we are anti-social, but most anarchists

believe in creating a new anarchist society, so they are also social.

This is the 1^(st) layer of the middle ground, and it doesn’t interest

me. The 2^(nd) layer arises from the debate between the individualist

anarchists (especially as inspired by Stirner) who are not interested in

a new society, and the anarcho-communists, who are. In this, there is

another middle ground which includes the Galleanists, the whole

insurrectionary anarchist approach, and some outliers such as Volta-rine

de Cleyre. I’ve discussed this in the past. This middle ground is

interesting to me. But I think the way in which it understands itself as

a middle ground is a problem. Why? Because although it is illuminat-ed

by the understanding of the intimate link between individual freedom and

social liberation, and this link cannot be understood as mutual,

nevertheless it has always been the case historically and presently that

the cause of social liberation has been wielded as a tool to push the

individual back into line, on a daily level and during insurrection. It

is for this reason that I will say that I am on the side of the

anti-social when I see these come into conflict. Because individual

insurrection and social insurrection can mutually feed each other, but

without individual insurrection, social insurrection could not be, since

it is the insurrection of many individuals together, not as a mass, but

as individuals on a common trajectory. And when the “common cause” of

these individuals rears its head—the liberation of the people, of the

masses, of the proletariat, of the class, of the nation, etc—it does so

to squash insurrection and turn it into the new (or old) social order.

I am against social anarchism, not because I do not agree with the

premise that the individual’s freedom is most possible in a world where

all are free, but rather because social anarchism is a force that uses

the argument “one cannot be free while another is in chains” to turn

around and say to the rebels “how dare you try to be free while another

is in chains?!” As if one needed the approval of the masses in order to

embark on a process of liberation, as if what we need is more guilt! It

is a pathetic way to try to smooth out one’s own insecurities about

being wedded to one’s social position. Rather than seeing another’s

rebellion as a fuel to one’s own, the social anarchist protests, “But I

am oppressed and so many others are oppressed, so you must be oppressed

with us! You must be part of our fighting of our oppression together!”

There is not enough insurrection in the world. Each encounter I have

with an insurgent blows some air into my own fire. Platitudes and

pandering, attempts to help me, the insistence that only by serving

others can I make the world a better place: these are some of the wet

blankets tossed on top of the heaving mass that this world throws on my

flame. Focus on insurrection.

This does not mean swimming along with the masses.

But it does not mean you will be alone.

tgn

Yes, there is pro-social and anti-social anarchism. You can see the

pro-social in the whiny liberal-anarchist “build a movement,” support

‘the community,’ make-friends-with-your-neighbors tendencies. These

tendencies often see the role of anarchism as supporting The Social and

keeping it functioning in a way very similar to how it is functioning

now.

Pro-social tendencies exist in other political movements in more

paradoxical ways, but most posi-anarchists just have bad ideas about how

revolution happens and often criticize or shit talk riots, revolts, and

rebellions for not having an explicit pro-social characteristic or

articulation. They also downplay or distance themselves from forms of

revolutionary violence such as kidnapping bosses or murdering racist

union bosses and coworkers.

Most posi-anarchists are not explicit about whether their position is

chosen strategically for the rev., morally, or in an effort to protect

their own comfort.

Anti-social anarchists do not concern themselves with the continued

functioning of the social. We see all interruptions of society as

immediately connected to interruptions of capitalism. Anti-social

anarchists are not concerned with preserving the reigning moral order

that permeates and gives cohesion to the social order. Revolutionary

acts will be feared and hated by all reasonable members of society, and

that is no discouragement. We see society as a thing with an inside and

an outside, a center and a periphery, and we want the periphery to come

crashing down on the center to make its order and function impossible.

We want society as such to be destroyed and we want the world after to

be completely unrecognizable from this one.

Fire to the Prisons and Vengeance are both antisocial texts, Vengeance

is anarchist, and FttP is pro-anarchist. Everything Bash Back! ever

wrote was anti-social as are most insurrectionary texts, including the

contemporary insurrectionary trans feminism current that is basically

the only inspiring contemporary anarchist writing.

I’ll let the pro-social people define themselves some-where away from my

petty, bitter, shit talking.

ank

I think labeling FttP, BB!, and Vengeance as anti-social horribly

confuses things. BB! and FttP have had quite a few people with different

ideas write under their umbrellas. Vengeance’s conception of anarchism

is 110% class-based, and is ENTIRELY about “build a movement, support

the community, make friends with your neighbors”; it is one of the most

social anarchist publications I’ve ever encountered.

The only way in which these could all be called anti-social is that

they’re opposed to the existing class society, but this is true of all

anarchists, making it completely useless as a distinction.

This is why the social vs. anti-social debate has to be about what one

thinks of society not only as it exists but as it might ideally exist

(communist/anarchist society), and whether one’s (revolutionary) means

and ends are social in nature.

Also the recent insurrectionary transfeminist writings, mainly seemingly

based on the argument constructing a revolutionary class of people on

the basis of their bodies being unable to produce children, are some of

the least inspiring I’ve encountered in my entire life.

What happens when anarchists fundamentally disagree?

alc

Depending on the circumstances, anarchists express disagreement or

dissent by:

• separation by time (“taking turns”)

• separation by space (“voting with the feet”)

• decision by game of luck

• withdrawing participation

• withholding support

• ad hoc discussion

• formal debate

• arbitration by mutually agreed upon 3^(rd) parties

• arbitration by community assembly

• arbitration by ad hoc peer council

• immediate recall of delegated roles or tasks

• disruption/heckling

• ridicule/mockery

• attacking reputation

• disruption/obstruction

• shunning

• consensual duels

• feuding & pranks

• banishment

• property destruction

• combat

What is wrong with independent journalists in the eyes of

anarchists?

I have noticed that both T and S are getting heat from anarchists lately

about live streaming protests. They are freely and openly documenting

the events that are happening, and I see this as a good thing when

compared to the main stream media. Can you educate me on the issues that

anarchists have with live streamers such as T and S?

By the way, I created this logo and I think it aptly portrays one of the

most helpful roles that live streamers have to play at protests. They

keep the powers that be responsible for their actions.

[]

dot

The logo almost answers the question.

a. Recording people’s actions is more likely to be useful to our enemies

than it is to us, whether for the purposes of surveillance, criminal

charges, making it more confusing who is doing what (how does one tell

an “independent journalist” from a cor-porate one?), etc.

b. Recording people’s actions is part of making actions spectacular

(reifying them, making them abstract and separate from people’s lives).

c. The idea that these recordings are helpful in some kind of

“protecting ourselves” or “growing our numbers” way relies on the

extremely limited notion that more information is what is required to

make people free or active, or that the State cares very much when it is

recorded doing heinous things. As an example, while it is true that

having an Iraqi-war vet—who was tailor-made to be a posterboy (white,

slight of build, unthreatening looking, etc)—be attacked on national tv

did galvanize people, it is entirely open to question how relevant that

galvanizing was. And that was pretty much the best possible scenario for

public response...

This c. response basically loops back to a. (insufficient good for the

bad involved).

enk

Every individual has their own unique biases. This is as true of

journalists as anyone else. Often with indy journalists these

perspectives fall in line with some massified political consciousness.

There are quite a few liberal-cum-socialist, grassroots-y journalists

for whom the legiti-macy of the state never comes into question. Their

coverage of events can easily collapse some vast and unbounded events

and movements into digest-ible, non-threating activism. For a really

great example compare the diversity of views of Egyptians and Tunisians

from a year ago to the reformist framing used by “alternative” media.

According to Democracy Now! as much as Fox News, the movement was

pro-democracy rather than the more obvious conclusion that it was at

base anti-Mubarak/Ben Ali.

Surely the movement bureaucrats and democracy activists were there in

the first days, but they were not necessarily representative of the

movement as a whole. We must remain aware that indy journalists may be

doing the state’s work; recuperating radical actions by imposing

narratives in which such events are channeled into benign reformism.

I think it is helpful to distinguish the amateur, “citizen” (ew)

journalists from professional, “independent” journalists journalists.

“Citizen” journalists can be quite a bit wider in their perspectives

than those for whom it is a job. Their biases might also be a lot more

obvious.

Maybe there’s still some indy journalists out there perpetuating the

charade of objectivity. This should an unforgivable sin of journalism by

now. The ones most insistent about objectivity are usually the ones with

the biggest ax to grind.

dot

This is a better way to talk about what I touched on with “how can you

tell who is independent”, but to be clear, I’m not any more interested

in non-professional journalists than in paid ones. Mostly, intentions

are irrelevant to the harm caused.

How can I be an effective leader (in a non-hierarchical,

anti-authoritarian sense)?

As an additional question, does anybody know whether there’s been any

writing done on the subject? If so, links?

Obviously, we as anarchists oppose leadership in the form of authority

and hierarchies. However, I’ve read some things remarking on the organic

emergence of “leaders” in anarchist groups, in the form of people who

are the most experienced, the most confident, and/or the most capable of

taking action.

I’ve also seen proposed something akin to “if you must take the role of

a leader, do so only for as long as it takes to share your knowledge and

experience with those around you”. A leader who encourages others to

knock her off her pedestal, so to speak.

Basically, what I’ve run into is that a large portion of my friends are

either into anarchism or consider themselves anarchists (after being

exposed to it, through hanging around me), but don’t have the

knowledge/experience/initiative to be confident in working on projects.

I really want to share what I’ve got, but honestly I don’t have a lot of

experience with “leadership” and instilling confidence and inspiring

action. Maybe this is something totally out of my hands and it’s just a

matter of waiting for them to find their own initiative and desire to

act, but I really feel like what I’ve done thus far is equivalent to

saying, “Here’s what anarchism is—if you agree with it, cool. We should

do something about it.” And that doesn’t seem like enough.

alc

Time for an epic response; thanks for giving me an incentive to write it

out.

Concepts:

A. Guide: a leader who persuades by example and suggestion, based on

experience or informed speculation (expressed as such). Practices

voluntary relationships. Legitimate.

B. Master: a leader who manipulates through duress or deceit, based on

experience or misinformed speculation (often concealed). Practices

coercive relationships. Illegitimate.

---

In my opinion, legitimate leadership requires at least 13 conditions:

• Active Choicefollowers actively and voluntarily decide their roles

with informed consent, constantly re-evaluate

• Anarchistic Skepticismthe burden of justification rests on guides

rather than followers

• Contextual Meritguides proficient in a specific context

• Egalitarian Integrityabsence of force and fraud in interactions

• Egalitarian Purposeno compensation requested beyond effort ex-pended

or direct need; guides and followers live in the same material

conditions

• Empowering Trajectoryconcrete processes for empowering followers,

sharing information or materials, rotating roles, decentralizing agency,

and rendering further guidance unnecessary

• Finite Durationguidance duration directly linked to mutually-agreed

upon goal(s)

• Immediate Recallthe followers’ ability to immediately revoke status of

guide(s)

• Radical Accountabilityguides redress force, fraud, failure

• Radical Transparency

honest and empowering explanations of guides’ logic and aims

• Responsible Teaching

guides want responsibility to followers rather than power over them

• Social Leveling

the followers thwart guides’ senses of entitlement, arrogance, &

contempt

• Stakeholder Accessibility

the inclusion of all parties deserving agency, based on expressed or

implied need

---

Gently, she grasps her tender lover’s unpracticed cheek.

They brush faces, touch lips. She guides with her affection, encouraging

learning in the most compassionate of ways. As their intimacy grows,

they reach a balance together, her inexperienced partner becomes a

competent lover. And even with all of her practice, she could not help

but have her own learning stimulated. Now they walk their path

hand-in-hand; neither guides, neither follows.

He remembers his early youth, when his elders taught him to walk in the

forest and gather his nourishment. He remembers their confidence, his

apprehension, as he first stepped into the bush, nervous, with them. But

now he often walks under the pale light of the moon, fetching the

acorns, with only his memories keeping him company.

Soon he will teach his little ones to become sons of the leadership

oaks, the cycle starting afresh.

---

• *Leadership would emerge naturally among the members of a society, very

much as it does among children, and confine itself to taking initiatives

only when individual ones are impractical. The followers should be the

ones to decide whom they will follow and should be free to change

leaders as suits their convenience. In a continuum culture like that of

the Yequana, the functioning of leaders is minimal and it is possible

for any individual to decide not to act on the leader’s decision if he

prefers...*

–Jean Liedloff, The Continuum Concept

---

Immunization to Authoritarianism

If we want to live without rulers, we need empowerment to immunize us

from the threat of authoritarian relationships and defeat the potential

pitfalls of leadership.. In order for that to happen, we need to

understand the psychology of perception and prejudice, creativity,

intelligence, learning, logic and fallacies, intuition, critical

thinking, argumentation, problem-solving, planning, systems analysis,

and risk management. Those of us who know these things (such as myself)

would do well to act as guides and share our knowledge. So here goes

psychology

(self-actualization processes; cognitive biases; psychological

heuristics)

prejudice

(cognitive, affective, and behavioral prejudices)

creativity

(imagination; inspiration; intuition)

increasing intelligence

(“seek novelty; challenge yourself; think creatively; do things the hard

way; network”)

increasing learning

(working memory; attention)

logic

(formal vs informal; inductive vs deductive)

reason

(logic) vs intuition (instincts, associations)

logical fallacies

(search: “Critical Thinking as an Anarchist Weapon”)

awareness of disinformation techniques

critical thinking

as “the process of purposeful, self-regulatory judg-ment, which uses

reasoned consideration to evidence, context, conceptualizations,

methods, and criteria.”

critical thinking components

(skepticism; logic; clarity; credibility; accuracy; precision;

relevance; depth; breadth; significance; fair-ness)

critical thinking requirements

“falsifiability, logic, comprehensiveness, honesty, replicability,

sufficiency”

“humility, integrity, courage, autonomy”

“follow through, open-mindedness, foresight, attention, inquisitiveness,

thoroughness, fair-mindedness”

willingness to criticize oneself

“Critical thinking clarifies goals, examines assumptions, discerns

hidden values, evaluates evidence, accomplishes actions, and assesses

conclusions.”

argument mapping

(contentions, premises, co-premises, objections, rebuttals, lemmas)

problem-solving (techniques & methodologies; brainstorming;

collaboration; networking)

lateral thinking (idea-generating tools; altering focus; selection;

application)

planning principles (PsyBlog goal hacks: stop fantasizing; start

committing; start starting; visualize process not outcome; avoid the

what-the-hell-effect; sidestep procrastination; shifting task-or-goal

focus; reject robotic behavior; focus on the aim not the goal; know when

to stop; if-then plans; verbal-ization & visualization of processes;

contrast positive fantasy/indulging with negative reality/dwelling)

planning methodologies (STOP, OODA loops; SWOT analysis; PDCA cycles;

flow charts)

working backwards (goal; strategy; tactics; time-frames; deadlines;

review)

systems analysis (complexity; emergence; fragil-ity/resilience;

systempunkts; schwerpunkts)

risk management (risks; threats; vulnerability; mitigation)

TL;DR–Skeptical of Guides, Hostile to Masters, Deliberate as Fuck,

Destroy Power Through Collective Self-Empowerment, Tell Everyone.

dot

Two more things...

One text that was interesting to me (despite her reputation) was

Starhawk’s book on group dynamics and structure (Truth or Dare). It

encouraged me to think about the different roles that people play, how

they can be played well, and how many (all?) of them have a place in a

happy group.

Which leads to the point that being a leader (good or bad) requires

participation from the group. To some extent we all are at the mercy of

our friends and context (ie part of the problem with how we view leaders

is the idea that “a good leader can overcome things on their own”). I

have been in many a group that defused a power play, made a comment into

a joke (or refused a joke and made it into a comment), etc without even

noticing what was happening. When the topic of leaders arises, the

context that the individual operates within is not given enough credit

for leadership what happens.

The example given by the question seems to be one of commitment, that

people are afraid or unwilling to act (which can be for a number of

different reasons), and I think that sometimes leaders are merely the

people who are willing to do something even if it means they might be

wrong (or be seen as wrong).

How do anarchists feel about worker-owned businesses?

When I say “worker-owned businesses”, I’m talking along the lines of

workers democratically and collectively owning, making decisions for,

and obviously working the business in a non-hierarchical manner. I’ve

seen a lot of anarchist-friendly printing shops and book stores run this

way, along with bakeries, bicycle shops, and even some small

restaurants.

dot

Hardass answer: this anarchist feels no way at all about worker-owned

businesses.

There are some businesses and fields that are more fun to work in. There

are some businesses that teach skills that are more useful in the rest

of my life.

There are some businesses (or jobs) that introduce me to people whom I

am more likely to enjoy.

But none of that has anything to do with anarchy or capitalism... only

with reform.

Not so hardass answer: being able to live our lives more the way we want

to (time off to fuck shit up, connecting with people who become good

parts of our lives, enough money to work short hours, etc) is a good

thing, and may help make changing the world more do-able.

Back to hardass: or it might not.

And the reality of these kinds of more-pleasurable jobs tends to be that

they pay less money and require more time, more commitment, and more

energy... vs working a job that one doesn’t care about and can hence

exploit fully.

Are anarchists by definition anti-authoritarian?

If there is a broad anti-authoritarian political tendency are

anarchists, by definition, a part of it?

nnn

Conceptually, if we start from the notion that authoritarians value

authority, order, and/or rule over freedom, that authoritarians value

obedience over autonomy, then anarchists are anti-authoritarian by

definition, no matter if the authoritarian manifested is a person,

policy, or practice.

It is easy to point to something that tramples the wills of people and

oppose it. But opposing the bad guy, the boss, the dictator is easy and

not very deep. If this is the extent of the analysis of

authoritarianism, that it picks off particular people or programs, but

leaves intact the structures that they plug into then this easy type of

anti-authoritarian stance is below the anarchist bar.

What is the difference between “revolution” and “insurrection”?

ank

Stirner wrote:

• *Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The

former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established

condition or status, the State or society, and is accordingly a

political or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable

consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from

it but from men’s discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising,

but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the

arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new

arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be

arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on

“institutions.” It is not a fight against the established, since, if it

prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working

forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is

dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an

established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not

a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness

alone) an egoistic purpose and deed.*

I write: Insurrection does not have to mean the uprising of a single

ego, it can be the simultaneous uprising of many individuals together.

It differs from revolution, however, in that it is simply uprising.

Revolution may “follow” an insurrection in reestablishing a new order.

Most revolutionaries would say that an insurrection is necessary to the

process, but is not all of the process.

In the Marxist sense, revolution is the total overthrow of an

economic-political system and its replacement with another one—the most

accessible example being the bourgeois revolution which overthrew

feudalism and produced capitalism. So from a Marxist perspective we have

no examples of a full proletarian revolution (yet), only various

proletarian insurrections (the Paris Commune, etc), which have been put

down, or coopted for example by the Bolsheviks. Others would say that

the problem isn’t that “we haven’t gone far enough” to full revolution

through insurrection, but that we are on the side of insurrection itself

because that is where anarchy or communism “live,” while revolution is

itself a cooptation of insurrection (see Stirner).

What is insurrectionary anarchism?

• *These days every time I encounter “insurrectionary anarchism” it just

seems like plain anarchism to me. Nothing sticks out about it that would

make this taxonomy appropriate. Maybe its effects have really become

that ubiquitous?*

dot

There is a pretty good thread about this question, from 1/2011 on

anarchistnews.org. It starts out with a long statement about what

insurrectionary anarchy is against (capitalism, government, cultural

standards like the nuclear family, <and all their representations>which

is where the interpretation comes in, of course), and how the poster(s)

cannot say what they are for unless you are working with them (this

seems fairly representative, the point being that what one is for cannot

be spoken of without being co-opted/misunderstood)... Here is a good

bit:

IA mostly responds to the context of an organized left in power and

armed struggle in Italy in the late 70s and 80s. As it is a theoretical

and strategic response to this context, the FAI or other tendencies and

anarchists before this could not be considered “insurrectionary

anarchist.

(So, this draws a distinction between insurrectionary tactics, which are

old, and “insurrectionary anarchist” which starts at a specific time &

place).

This thread also makes clear that i@ has more in common with illegalism

than with other kinds of anarchist thought, and that there is a conflict

between it and anarcho-syndicalism. To me this is where current rhetoric

muddies the waters, since groups like modesto anarcho claim both labels.

ank

Insurrectionary anarchism is distinguished from “plain anarchism” on

questions of approach more so than on what one is for and against.

IA is thus associated with the critique of formal organization,

practices of informal organization, attack, permanent conflict,

illegalism, and other matters that are primarily practical rather than

ideological.

But beneath this thrust are two clear ideas—one dealing with time and

another with relationships—that are both refusals of mediation. Firstly,

IA is characterized by the rejection of a future revolution (waiting for

it or making progress toward it); instead, insurrection is seen as

something to be immediately practiced. Secondly, IA rejects the bodies

that mediate the spaces between individuals and organizes them in mass

revolutionary activity.

The distinction was first expressed by Stirner, whose ideas have been

enormously influential to all of the well-known insurrectionary

anarchists:

Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The

former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established

condition or status, the State or society, and is accordingly a

political or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable

consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from

it but from men’s discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising,

but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the

arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new

arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be

arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on

“institutions.” It is not a fight against the established, since, if it

prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working

forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is

dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an

established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not

a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness

alone) an egoistic purpose and deed.

Is class struggle anarchy different from insurrectionary anarchy?

• *How? If they’re not different, then why are they called different

things?*

law

Different analysis, different tactics, different approaches. But the

problem is that those who rail against “insurrectionary” anarchists

almost always use a strawman argument. The insurrectionary anarchists I

know do not ignore, dismiss, or otherwise disregard a class analysis of

capitalism and the state. Those who refer to themselves as “class

struggle” anarchists are almost always using that terminology as a

short-cut way of describing their strategies and tactics. More

specifically it appears that they do not reject labor unions as

locations for revolutionary intervention, whereas most other anarchists

(and not just the crazed insurrectionaries) do. Perhaps the main

distinction is manifest around the organizational question; class

struggle anarchists tend to favor formal membership-based cadre

organizations, while insurrectionary anarchists reject them in favor of

networks and informal ones.

What is social war?

I see social war as a reaction to the focus on class war by certain

significant portions of political people. Class war tends to emphasize

rigid distinctions between classes that don’t make sense anymore (if

they ever did), and a marxist/economic analysis that doesn’t address

many other causes and effects of hierarchy. So social war emphasizes

both that we are all participants in this war (instead of just the

working class-as-revolutionary-agent), and that we are at war with

society, and that society is at war with itself.

That definitely leads to an amorphousness that communists especially (it

seems) don’t like to deal with, but to me seems appropriate to the

blurry lines and shifting ground that we deal with all the time.

• *Rejecting the logic of social peace, we instead assert a different

rationale: social war. Social war is our way of articulating the

conflict of class war, but beyond the limitations of class. Rather than

a working class seeking to affirm ourselves in our endless conflict with

capital, we desire instead to abolish the class relation and all other

relations that reproduce this social order. Social war is the discrete

and ongoing struggle that runs through and negotiates our lived

experience. As agents of chaos, we seek to expose this struggle, to make

it overt. The issue is not violence or non-violence. What’s at issue in

these forays against capital is rather the social peace and its

negation. To quote a comrade here in Oakland:*

• *Windows are shattered when we do nothing, so of course windows will be

shattered when we do something; blood is shed when we do nothing, so of

course blood will be shed when we do something.*

• *Social war is this process of doing something. It is our concerted

effort to rupture the ever-present deadliness of the social peace.*

<right>Occupy Everything</right>

sab

social war: The narrative of “class struggle” developed beyond class to

include the complexities and multiplicities of all social relations.

Social war is conflict within all hierarchical social relations.

Social war means society against the state.

The above is from a few sources, and I think is a lot more on target

than what dot eludes to. The whole “war on society” bit is totally

strange to me. More like most of society against a tiny elite that

control state and capital.

dot

Just to clarify—while there is a piece of the “most of society against a

tiny elite” that makes sense (having a defined enemy is one important

perspective), ONLY paying attention to that ignores that we are all part

of the society that we are fighting. Power/hierarchy/authoritarianism

doesn’t just exist in some external form, in some easily identified

other (the tiny elite); it is in all of us. it is We™ (also known as The

Masses) who continue to accept the fucked up situation we are in, We who

have not risen up and cast off the chains. The only way to make sense of

that passivity (as far as I can tell) is to understand that we are all

implicated, even the people who seem to have the most to gain from a

revolution. Society, for lack of a better word.

Liberal or Conservative?

• *I am trying to understand the differences between left vs right wing

politics. Anarchism is left but from what I read, left wing is more

liberal while right wing is conservative. Also, it seems that Liberals

promote more government and also advocate discrimination.*

• *So, why is Anarchism considered left and of the two, is it more

liberal or conservative by nature? I’m new to politics in general and

would love any answers. To me, liberal and conservative are just words

that keep getting changed along with America’s society, but I’m

wondering how, specifically, Anarchism falls towards the left, which is

marked more “Liberal”. Any help would be awesome!*

vvo

I used to believe anarchists were right-wing for this very reason, and

therefore looked upon them the same as I do neo-cons.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/index

This pretty nifty site rejects the one-axis “Left-to-Right” political

spectrum in favor of a two-axis kind of chart. The X-axis is the

‘economic’ spectrum, with collectivism/communism on the left and

neo-liberalism/free-market libertarianism on the right. On the Y-axis,

the top is authoritarianism/fascism and the bottom is

libertarianism/anarchism. Obviously it’s not perfect, but I think it’s a

hell of a lot better than the usual narrow depiction of the spectrum.

Some people (probably most people) consider anarchists to be part of the

left because anarchists have frequently (especially historically) called

themselves “anarcho-communists” (referring to the desire for communism —

a state-free society, without the interim stages usually insisted on by

people who call themselves just “communists”). Communists and anarchists

are both considered to be part of the left because of a focus on how the

state and context influences individuals. Ironically, conservatives

usually focus more on individual will power and responsibility (which,

in a society that is set up to be unequal, absolves institutions of

responsibility...).

But there is definitely a significant segment of anarchists who call

themselves neither right nor left.

ast

Okay, but Anarchism is liberal in that it promotes Socialism but

Conservative in its anti-state tendencies? Just seems to be so many

contradictions with this.

Also, being that Conservatives are for more individuality, would

Anarcho-individualism be considered right wing? From what I read, both

Social and Individual Anarchism are opposed to capitalism, making it

more left wing?

dot

Anarchists are not promoting socialism as socialism is currently

understood. That is, socialism is now associated (like communism) with

the states that have called themselves socialist and communist, and

anarchists don’t promote states or transitions that go through states.

It’s clearer to say that anarchism is neither liberal nor conservative,

since both liberalism and conservatism are labels for groups of people

(as well as labels for collections of ideas), with which anarchists

usually have little in common. All anarchists are against capitalism, it

is one of the fundamentals of anarchism. (People who call themselves

anarcho-capitalists are basically playing word games.) And yes,

anarcho-individualism has been attacked by leftists as being right-wing

in its effects if not in intention.

We are against capitalism, but that does not make us left-wing. Most

people on the left wouldn’t say that they’re against capitalism at all,

just that they want a kinder, gentler capitalism.

mtb

The word “liberal” is related to the word “liberty” and was originally

used to mean generous or unrestrained. In modern political parlance, it

has come to mean many things, but it usually implies progressivism; the

promotion of change. The word “conservative” comes from the word

“conserve” and suggests maintenance and preservation. This word too has

been bastardized, bent for propagandistic purposes, but it still implies

reverence for the old ways. Thus, liberal politicians advocate reform

and development while conservative ones call for a return to traditional

values.

In the sense that anarchists reject so-called traditional values, and in

the sense that they agitate for a new society that is radically

different from the norm, they are leftists. Further, many people today

consider marxist movements to be a product of the left and capitalist

protractors a part of the right. So, since many anarchists are

socialists, communists, etc; anarchy—especially European anarchy—is

often placed within the leftist milieu.

What is post-left anarchism?

alc

Post-left anarchy has developed thought in 6 main areas:

• The Leftcritiquing the Left as nebulous, anachronistic, distracting, a

failure, and at key points a counterproductive force historically (“the

left-wing of capital”)critiquing Leftist activists for political

careerism,celebrity culture, self-righteousness, privileged vanguardism,

and martyrdomcritiquing the tendency of Leftists to insulate themselves

in academia, scenes, and cliques while also attempting to

opportunistically manage struggles

• Ideologya Stirner-esque critique of dogma and ideological thinking as

a distinct phenomenon in favor of “critical self-theory” at individual

and communal levels

• Moralitya moral nihilist critique of morality/reified values/moralism

• Organizationalismcritiquing permanent, formal, mass, mediated, rigid,

growth-focused modes of organization in favor of temporary, informal,

direct, spontaneous, intimate forms of relationcritiquing Leftist

organizational patterns’ tendencies toward managerialism, reductionism,

professionalism, substitutionism, and ideologycritiquing the tendencies

of unions and Leftist organizations to mimic political parties, acting

as racketeers/mediators, with cadre-based hierarchies of theoretician &

militant or intellectual & grunt, defailting toward

institutionalization, and ritualizing a

meeting-voting-recruiting-marching pattern

• Identity Politicscritiquing identity politics insofar as it preserves

victimization-enabled identities and social roles (i.e. affirming rather

than negating gender, class, etc.) and inflicts guilt-induced paralysis,

amongst otherscritiquing single-issue campaigns or orientations

• Valuesmoving beyond anarchISM as a static historical praxis into

anarchY as a living praxisfocussing on daily life and the

intersectionality thereof rather than dialectics / totalizing narratives

(except anarcho-primitivists tend toward epistemology)emphasizing

personal autonomy and a rejection of work (as forced labor, alienated

labor, workplace-centricity)critiquing Enlightenment notions of

Cartesian dualities, rationalism, humanism, democracy, utopia,

etc.critiquing industrial notions of mass society, production,

productivity, efficiency, “Progress”, technophilia, civilization (esp.

in anti-civilization tendencies)

Who do post-Leftists organize or take action with?

I know that post-Leftists are not anarcho-capitalists, so obviously

right wingers are out of the question. But most people who are not

Republicans or Libertarians are either liberals who vote for the

Democrats, or are some variety of Leftists (Socialists, Communists,

etc).

Seems there is a very limited pool of people post-Leftists can work with

if they refuse to work with Leftists. Surely they don’t organize with

apathetic or apolitical people only?

ing

It would depend on the situation. I am sure others will have much to say

about this, much of it that will conflict with me, but my take is that

post-left anarchists organize on a temporary basis with those they have

affinity with in order to achieve particular goals.

I don’t mean such a broad answer as a cop-out, but rather to distinguish

between the traditional leftist model of organizing (building

institutions, fronts, and infrastructure with the goal of furthering

“the revolution”), and that of the pl@ perspective (finding affinities

that work for a period, and letting those go when they don’t). It isn’t

a matter of never working with people who identify with the left, but of

always remaining apart from the left, of refusing to be assimilated in

to a mass for the good of the movement. Which tends to piss off lefties.

alc

No post-left anarchist I know categorically refuses to work with

Leftists, we just prefer to not operate in the modes we associate with

the Left. Maybe some of us disassociate with everyone who identifies as

Left or Right, but I doubt that exists as a common pattern.

I talk with open-minded people, and deconstruct the ideologies of

close-minded people. I associate with green anarchists, luddites, &

zero-work advocates & productive play promoters, family, friends, people

who engage in direct action, solidarity unionists, unemployed people,

students, domestic and migrant laborers, festival goers, event

attendees, strangers, travelers, youth, onlookers...I can find at least

some common ground for interaction with most anarchists and point out my

own overlaps with people who do not call themselves anarchists, enough

to find resonance with them. I volunteer with youth and that gives me an

opportunity to engage in an introductory discussion about different

perspectives.

As a pl@ I differ in theory, orientation, & strategy from the Left, but

people who identify with the Left do not necessarily automatically

refuse my preferred methods of association (impermanent, direct,

spontaneous, intimate, mostly but not always informal) nor embody the

celebrity managerialism I loathe. Even if someone endorses bureaucratic

unions or political parties that usually doesn’t prevent them from

relating outside of those. I typically “organize” with people to the

extent that we share an affinity, mostly initiated by me interjecting

something critical of the status quo, leading to a search for shared

experiences (eg disliking having a boss, feeling powerless), and common

values (eg self-determination, partnership), refining a mutual critique

to our situation, and finally culminating in some sort of proposition

for action followed by review.

TL;DR: Post-left anarchists I know tend to organize with whomever it

makes sense to do so with at the time for as long as it makes sense, and

involve ourselves in intentional explorations of affinity that allow for

divergence, conflict, and disassociation.

According to post-leftists, what defines the left?

dot

• old and rigid forms of organization

• specialization of roles, both within organizaions and between radicals

and the masses™

• representation

• ideological thinking

• categorization of (or perpetuating the categorization of) people into

state-sponsored identities (gender, skin color, religion, etc)

• valorization of work

law

I agree with dot, but I think some basics need to be examined even

before her list.

The Left is usually considered by most (sympathetic) commentators to

have something to do with a criticism of (the worst excesses of)

capitalism—naturally depending on how we understand capitalism. The Left

is often therefore equated with a generic Socialism. We have to

acknowledge that Socialism is internally incoherent enough to be able to

accommodate such diverse ideas as Maoism, right-wing (anti-Marxist,

anti-revolutionary) Social Democracy, revolutionary (or reformist)

Marxism, the left wing of the Democratic Party (Kucinich), and some

types of anarchism (NEFAC, syndicalists, pro-democracy folks like

Milstein). What they all share is a desire to use and/or take over most

of the functions of the state in ways that ameliorate those

aforementioned excesses. In this way they remain within the

authoritarian system common to all other forms of tinkering with

institutions of hierarchy and domination.

The reason post-left @s dislike Leftist categories and strategies is

that we (if I may speak for others for the moment) find those categories

and strategies to be historical failures; we judge them failures not

just because stupid people were doing them, but because of the inherent

philosophical problems with them. So a rigid organizational form like a

political party (point a) is a problem not because of its particular

program or platform or internal decision-making process, but because it

is organized as a supposedly representative body (point c) that requires

a division of labor (point b).

Ideological thinking (point d) is a problem because it uses backwards

logic. Ideologists begin from solutions or answers and only later

formulate questions—that just by coincidence happen to point precisely

to those solutions or answers. The questions are only questions in a

technical sense because they being with Why What Where Who Which When

How, but they have the (desired/expected) answers imbedded in them. Most

Leftist questions are How statements rather than Why questions. In this

way they remain in line with all other forms of authoritarian or

hierarchical methods of so-called discussion.

Because most forms of Leftism begin as a reaction to the ugly aspects of

capitalism, they all share strategies for curtailing its excesses. One

way to begin that process is to valorize not just work (point f) but

workers as workers, as those whose labor and effort produces the wealth

that is expropriated (by providing workers with a wage lower than the

value of the goods and services their labor goes to produce) by those

who own the means of production (whether capitalists or the state).

Whether workers are conceived of as the Revolutionary Subject of History

or just poor slobs who don’t get enough pay and/or benefits, they are

elevated as the primary object (or agent) of salvation.

All leftist strategies are predicated on a redistribution of wealth,

which means that they all wish to maintain methods of calibrating value

in labor, in commodities, and in exchange. This is economy, and along

with retooled mechanisms of statecraft (whether enshrined as government

or the voluntarism so beloved of NGOs), certainly is a decent way of

understanding the primary problems associated with Leftism. It has been

pointed out by the left-anarchist critics of post-left @ that these are

basic anarchist criticisms of capitalism and the state and

authoritarianism in general. Fair enough; not many post-left @s trumpet

their analyses as particularly new or ground-breaking. But one of the

neglected points of post-left @ is that we are critics of false

opposition to capitalism and the state. Where Leftists (and many left

anarchists fall into this category) want to improve the lives of

workers, post-left @s wish to abolish work (as a coercive and separate

sphere of useful endeavor); where Leftists wish to expropriate the means

of production to turn them to social use rather than as generators of

profit, post-left @s wish to abolish economy, and at the very least

facilitate a large-scale discussion of which technologies to maintain

while destroying the ones that most folks don’t want or need; where

Leftists want to develop or extend protections or compensations for

categories of people who have been historically oppressed, post-left @s

wish to abolish the ideology of victimization (point e).

Naturally there a ton of questions that arise from this brief overview,

but that’s as it should be. For me the most interesting aspect of

identifying with post-left @ is that we actually yearn for more

questions than answers; with any luck, that’s also a way of steering

clear of ideology.

Are actual anarchists socialists?

law

To get to the heart of your question: depends how you define/understand

“socialism” (and ��anarchism” for that matter). If socialism is

characterized by a generic opposition to capitalism, then sure,

anarchists are socialists. If socialism means that the state controls

the production and distribution of goods and services, then no,

anarchists are not socialists. If socialism means that people who have

no direct access to or control of the means of survival without working

or getting economic support from the state will get to have that access

and control, then sure, anarchists are socialists. If socialism means

that hierarchical institutions that foster a division of labor will

continue under the control and direction of the best and brightest, then

no, anarchists are not socialists.

As is the case with many of the questions being posed, there are at

least two or three more questions that need to be asked before a proper

answer is attempted, let alone agreed upon.

How do anarchists define “identity politics”?

dot

I define identity politics mostly negatively—ie, I think that most

people who use identity to mean something, tend to drastically simplify

and over-generalize what it means in a person’s (and/or a people’s) life

(whatever “it” might be—usually race, class, sex, sexual preference,

physical ability, etc). So I get very wary when people talk about

identity. Also I think people talk about identity (or use identity-coded

language) as a way to identify themselves and each other as belonging to

a particular group (we are the people who use these words and by doing

so indicate that we care about the following things in the correct

manner...)

That said, I do think that socially created/understood markers do mean

something. I do think that being poor, rich, paraplegic, queer,

able-bodied, brown-haired, balding (etc) means *some*thing. I just don’t

think that people know what it means, or have figured out a good way to

think about what it means, much less to talk about what it means.

enk

Answers to this question will be determined by what anarchists mean by

“politics” which is a weighty question unto itself. Some answers to that

have been attempted on this site. To focus on the identity portion of

the term: Like dot, I tend to use the phrase as shorthand for certain

unfavorable approaches. These approaches tend to focus on a particular

identity group to the (near) exclusion of other subjects for analysis,

theory, and practice. The epitome of identity political analysis views a

specific form of oppression as the main oppression from which all others

stem. It then becomes hard to arrive at coherent analysis of other forms

of oppression. Even much of economic analysis can turn into identity

politics in the form of fetishization of workers.

Of course, identity is important. First of all because it is socially

enforced. Second because it is often internalized. For the foreseeable

future people will continue to distinguish themselves based on all sorts

of identity components, and our social experience will thus be informed

by vast categories of wildly diverse individuals. There is useful

information to be gleaned from the theorization about different identity

groups to which people assign themselves or are assigned by others.

There are tens of thousands of years of history based on identity

concepts like Woman or Slave or Deviant. Even if it is desirable to move

away from using such stock categories for the individuals that compose

society, these concepts are highly embedded in the culture and are

therefore important touchstones in any good analysis.

It is when we submit to essentialist thinking about these groups that we

limit the potential for our own identity-creation. For my whole life I

have taken it for granted that because I have certain sex

characteris-tics, I am a man. Everyone I have ever encountered has

treated me like a man (or boy), and yet there has always been some

nagging doubt. It is only recently that I am able to express that,

though I am easily categorizable biologically, that I have no affinity

to any gender identity. Though I now understand this, I am still stuck

in a society that wants to pigeon-hole me in the male gender. This is

just as disconcerting coming from leftist feminists as from aggressive

men.

So as an alternative to the extremes of identity politics and attempted

identity-blindness I try to understand peoples’ own self-identity

constructions.

To clarify a bit, I find that identity discourse is often interesting

and worthwhile. As an example; I know a twin who has developed their own

unique discourse about the prejudices and stereotypes of “singlets”

toward “multiples”. They have actually been asked such things as “How do

you know which one you are?”!

It’s the subsumation of all other discourses about oppressive behavior

to one particular identity discourse that I would disdainfully call

“identity politics”.

What is consensus and how is its use opposed to hierarchy?

ank

Consensus means full agreement reached between all persons within a

group or set.

The term is used by anarchists as well as many others to refer to

internal decision-making processes in which full agreement is required

in decisions that (significantly) affect others in the group or are made

in the name of the whole group.

Generally it is understood that individuals and affinities always have

the power to act autonomously, and that consensus is needed only to

claim the approval of a larger body or make decisions that affect others

in the body. Unfortunately, however, consensus practice often finds

individuals and affinities acting subservient to the larger group and

unnecessarily requesting approval for insignificant decisions or for

decisions that would better be done autonomously. Individuals also often

forget that if they want something to happen they may have to do it

themselves. (A group cannot do anything unless individuals within it

take initiative). A common argument for why using consensus process

opposes hierarchy is something resembling: “It allows us to make

decisions in the process of fighting against systems of hierarchy while

also not making those decisions hierarchically.”

But the word “hierarchy” originally refers not to authorities having

power of decision-making, but rather to spiritual beings holding a

sacred power (of closeness to God). This meaning was transposed to the

Catholic hierarchy (made up of persons supposedly having sacred power),

and this transposition gave hierarchy an embodied and systematic force.

Following this, it could be argued that hierarchy originates in the

power that ideas have when held above us as sacred, and that this power

can take on a social and material form. (This would be too long of a

divergence to go into depth on here, but you could refer to Max Stirner

for more on the topic.) Perhaps, then, the issues I described above

concerning consensus, such as the inability of the individual or

affinity to feel able to act autonomously from the consensus-making

group, are related to a kind of hierarchy in which the sacredness of

consensus can have a power over the will of each individual who’s part

of the whole.

Others will point to issues of social status, identity politics, etc as

“the hidden hierarchies within consensus.” These claims may be true but

often the approach seeks to reduce everyone to a lowest common

denominator, equality, in which everyone is inoffensive, and walking on

the eggshells of their so-called privileges, which certainly is no way

to live freely much less constitute a force to destroy the immense

institutional structures of hierarchy that are this society.

Why don’t anarchists vote?

mtp

An anarchist has a larger view of the world than its political systems

and politicians allow for. We must keep ahold of that perspective and it

is not a simple task; we are constantly bombarded with the simplistic

messages and world views conveyed by commercialism and politics. To

effectively vote, one must engage with the dynamics and arguments that

are being voted upon and this will necessarily narrow one’s perspective.

It is not that the act of voting in a vacuum is bad or destructive, in

fact it just doesn’t matter. But engaging in the liberal/conservative

banter renders one relatively thoughtless.

dot

There have been many arguments made against voting that deserve to be

listed: here are three...

• We don’t believe in representation. Even direct democracy is only one

possibility (and an overlyvalorized one) among many ways to resolve

conflict or make decisions in a group, and is based on competition

instead of on finding the best option.

• The act of voting in the current system does nothing but validate

false choices and confirm our own powerlessness over a system that is

corrupt at its core.

• Since the system itself is the problem, even in the case of the pure

soul who might somehow find themselves in a position of power (as if the

process of getting into office itself is not one of compromise and

power-brokering), this person will be forced to work the system or never

get anything done. Inevitably, campaign promises that sound lovely will

either not happen, or will happen in ways that lead to worse results.

alc

The word “voting”, since it includes both electoral politics and

signifying one’s preference for a certain resolution, seems rather

vague. Etymologically it comes from “a vow to do something”, even more

vague.

Reasons I wouldn’t vote (mostly in elections):

Futility. Trying to elect a ruler in any system competent enough to gain

a monopoly probably would not fundamentally challenge that system.

Distraction. I would not desire to empower an elite at the expense of

everyday people. Empowering one sector of a population at the expense of

everyone else would only at best distract me from actualizing anarchic

relationships or demolishing hierarchical ones. Example: guerilla

gardening, Food Not Bombs, and Black Panther food distribution offer

useful examples of autonomy from the welfare state.

Insufficiency. I can understand, and feel for, people voting in

elections out of a perspective of self-preservation, or against their

own enslavement. For example, a womyn trying to elect a politician who

opposes the criminalization of abortion, or a man trying to elect a

politician that opposes military conscription. At the same time,

bandaids do not cure diseases, and shuffling a deck or changing the

deck’s players does not change the cards.

Competition. Representative democracy/aristocracy institutionalizes

competing factions, with all of the pitfalls of politics in place.

Bureaucracy. Mass organizations tend towards sluggishness, and other

hindrances. More futility. Even if I voted for someone to introduce

systemic instability in furtherance of revolutionary conditions, that

one vote would still count as much as a drop in an ocean with today’s

population sizes and the notion of “one person, one vote”.

Incompatibility. Representation relies on reduction and substitution,

and always diminishes the represented. By necessity political

representation filters out aspects and experiences, especially when

politics removes representatives from the community/ context they

supposedly represent.

Inconsistency. I would not willingly compromise certain convictions,

namely, anti-authoritarianism. So when would I vote? If it seemed

effective, empowering, sufficient, non-oppressive, non-exploitative,

direct, compatible, and consistent with my principles, I would. I would

vote to abolish a law if I felt my single vote had a chance of changing

the outcome. I would probably also vote under duress. And I vote in

consensus decisions, formally and informally, quite often.

Is the academy a good place for anarchists?

dot

I was just listening to a philosophy professor talk about fear (mostly

in the context of fear as a tool of politicians) and he mentioned that

while one would think that universities are a place where fear is less

of an issue, professors (he included himself) were some of the most

timid people he’s ever spent time with. (He went on to say that the

academy is a place where people are always watching, always competing,

and always threatened by what can be taken away—or not given in the

first place.) Professors are people who have shown that they are willing

to abide by the rules set up to contain and restrict creativity (to

color inside the lines).

The academy is like politics in the sense that people who are anarchists

or anarchist-friendly are frequently tempted to combine their anarchist

ideas with getting a job, or working within the system. But the academy

is a deeply hierarchical and authoritarian system, one that is designed

to co-opt new ideas and integrate them into first the academy and then

the larger society (capitalism runs on edgy new things to sell to people

who are dissatisfied, and sustains itself partly by integrating new

behaviors and ideas instead of resisting them).

Universities operate as a) screens to winnow out uncontrollables, b)

training camps for acceptable thinking, c) think tanks for corporations

and statists (think about the vast amount of information that exists in

all those theses and projects and who actually uses that information).

I have no problem with people who view school as a job. I know one

professor with politics I trust (who just got laid off, btw), who views

it as exactly that. My issue is when anarchists or

students-interested-in-anarchy extol the virtues of academia as the job

to have, as a valuable organizing position, as a way to make change. And

with how anarchists/students-interested-in-anarchy (regardless of their

motivations and the purity of their desires) both feed information into

the system that is against us (to the extent that anarchy informs their

studies), and frequently use the anarchist scene as fodder for their

professional lives.

How have the Situationists influenced contemporary anarchism?

a!

The Situationist International, especially thesis 91–94 of Debord’s

Society of the Spectacle, formulated the clearest anarchist critique of

anarchism in the 1960s. This critique represents for many anarchists

(specifically anarchists who have since declared anarchism to be

distinct from the leftist heritage of Communism, Social Democracy, and

State Socialism) the beginning of a new era for anarchist thinking and

practice.

The inspiration for this thinking can be seen in the critique of work &

the left (Bob Black & Anarchy: a Journal of Desire Armed), an ongoing

dialogue with anarchists and so-called post-situationists since the

1970s, and the cultural influence that the SI had vis-a-vis punk rock

and bohemian counter-culture ever since. Here is a summary of the

critique of anarchists in Debord’s SoS.

1) Bakunin critiqued Marx for declaring that a stateless society must

pass through a “dictatorship of the proletariat” while in practice

participating in a conspiratorial group that acted outside, and above,

the First International.

This is addressed in modern anarchist practice by a demand for

transparency in all aspects of organizational issues and an attempt to

have anarchist practice be indistinguishable from anarchist goals.

2) The ideology of pure freedom (Debord’s term for anarchist political

philosophy), flattens the difficulties of political struggles in reality

while demanding the all-encompassing goal of the total negation of the

current order. Both mystical and doctrinaire, anarchists have remained

emblematic of the soul of struggle and its impossibility.

This critique is ignored or addressed by different an-archist tendencies

in different ways. The most clear engagement of it is the Italian

anarchist analysis from the 1970s that has resulted in the simple

practice of Insurrectionary Anarchism.

3) Consensus and unanimity in anarchist practice (especially in the

Spain Revolution) has been a strategic failure. This critique has been

contested by anarchist practice and success in non-revolutionary moments

like the anti-globalization movement, alcoholics anonymous, and the

Occupy movement. The critique of anarchists as “specialists of freedom”

still rings true.

4) Anarchists believe that revolution is immanent. It is possible at any

time and does not require a particular historical process to unfold.

This faith means that there is not anarchist clarity around how to

extend partial victories. This critique still holds true and can be seen

as recently as the Occupy Movement.

I’m concerned about how we’ll help those of us who need long term

care, like disabled people or the mentally ill.

dot

One argument is that people will have more time, energy, and capacity to

care for other people because they will not be subsumed by capitalist

concerns (making enough money to survive themselves), and will be aware

of their own capacity to care for other people (instead of thinking that

they are not skilled enough, or not allowed to, take care of people).

Another argument is that there will be fewer instances of disability and

mental illness because the human world will make more sense.

Another argument is that it’s not awesome now, so changes are unlikely

to make things worse, even if they don’t make them tons better.

Would an anarchist bookstore clerk call the cops if the bookstore

was being robbed at gunpoint?

• *Imagine you are working at an anarchist bookstore. You are seated at

the till. You are old and weak, and believe that your ideology is some

sort of shield. A young man in a ski mask walks in and pulls out an semi

automatic handgun. The man asks for the money in the till, and all the

money that you have in your pockets. The man beats you senseless. The

man takes the money and runs away.*

• *Would you call the police to report the robbery? Would you participate

in the robbery investigation?*

• *If a suspect was captured and the prosecutor filed a complaint against

the suspect would you attend the preliminary examination to testify?

Would you testify at the trial? Would you subject yourself to the

court-power of the subpoena?*

dot

The answer is either completely obvious, or unknowable (well, actually

both).

The straight answer to your question is no, the anarchist would not call

the cops, nor participate in the legal investigation in any way, because

the anarchist part is pretty straightforward.

The actual answer is that anarchists live in the world, and have

multiple motivations (frequently conflicting) as does every other group

(and individual). So the clerk part could potentially outweigh the

anarchist part, or the scared person part could potentially outweigh the

anarchist part, at least in that moment, or for this situation.

The question assumes not only that the clerk is frail (hence presumably

unable to fight back—although there is nothing to keep such a person

from having weapons of her own), and that the clerk does not know the

robber, and that the clerk is alone (without social resources to do

something about the robber). These are all fair assumptions given the

reality of life today, but deserve also to be called into question,

since all of those pieces of the question are ones that anarchists want

to do something about, not just the part about what happens when someone

hurts someone else.

How could people in an anarchist society be protected from violence,

aggression, and abuse?

• *Clearly the police and other government agencies perform functions

that are directly linked to the maintenance of the political status quo.

On this basis, they must be challenged. However, the majority of us

would feel compelled to call the police should we be under attack. How

may an anarchist society reconcile this need for protection, with the

need for liberty and freedom from authority?*

str

Calling the police does not not always bring about “protection”.

Protection vs liberty and freedom from authority, may be more closely

linked then we are otherwise lead to believe. It could be that perhaps

these “need” no reconciliation whatsoever.

dot

Many people—not just anarchists—do not call the police when they are

threatened. The protection the police (claim to) offer is pretty

specific and extremely limited.

The fact that some people still don’t think they have any other recourse

has as much to do with the fact that police are seen to be the only

legitimate users-of-force in this society, as it does with actually

protecting ourselves. Police, for a variety of reasons (not all of them

even in their control), also tend to escalate conflicts rather than

actually resolve anything. One of the basics of anarchist thought is

direct action, which means that we handle things ourselves. Handling

things can mean a wide variety of things, from violence to mediation (or

all of the above), and could include various numbers of people (ie —

“us” is contextual).

What would we do about violent people who are already in prison?

• *I know we can help teach the next generation and all that stuff but

what do we do about the rapists and murderers who are already in jail?

If we were to topple the state tomorrow all those people do not just

disappear.*

dot

Who is we? What is violence? How are you picturing the state getting

toppled? Surely these are all crucial parts of the question?

I can’t figure out how your question makes sense outside of a classic

revolutionary scenario (suddenly wetm have the power to decide how to

punish bad people, but they’re still defined as bad by the same

constructs that some of us are fighting against). Put another way, the

people who have the violence done against them (and their friends and

family) would presumably be the people who would decide what to do—and

maybe this would include the friends and family of the person who done

wrong, and maybe the wrong-doer as well, depending on the situation.

Or maybe, no one would decide anything. Maybe people would just move

away, like they do now, and/or get ostracized by some folks and not by

others...I expect there would be a lot of different ways to deal with

messed up behavior, and all of them would work in some ways and not work

in others.

It sounds like you’re assuming a lot of things would stay the same—like

society-as-a-group-of-people-who-are-fundamentally-estranged-from-each-other

and who-have-and-use-the-power-to-control-other-people’s-lives.

I reject that.

We open up the prisons and start over with everyone. Some fucked up shit

will happen, no doubt. But the revolution (whatever that means) is not

about not-having-fucked-up-shit-happen. It’s about changing the range,

the level, the scope of the fucked up shit that happens.

mta

I love the way dot says it. “we open up the prisons and start over with

everyone” but in my opinion those who disagree with anarchy will

probably start a group—similar to police—who would “get rid” of the

criminals. not because they would be paid in any way but because they

feel it’s important to “get rid of” the criminals.

kd

One of the many frustrating aspects of the judicial system, for me, is

the acceptance of the idea that we can’t decide what is right or wrong

for ourselves; that someone we have no connection to, who knows nothing

of us or our situation, is allowed to decide whether or not we have been

wronged by another and then make a decision about the fate of that

person. Is it so crazy to think that we could empower ourselves to take

back that authority in our own lives and communities?

Example (not the best, but there really never is a perfect example). If

someone breaks into my home, I don’t desire to call a stranger (the

police) to make them whisk the person off, so that another stranger (the

judge/jury) can decided whether or not they were really in my home and

whether or not that was okay. I should be able to confront them at that

moment, in that place. In the time it would take to call the police, one

could instead call friends and neighbors if they felt they needed

someone else involved.

When you get into more serious matters, like instances of sexual assault

or murder, things will always be tricky. But the current “justice”

system has proven that it is ineffective at both identifying the correct

perpetrator, and stopping them from doing something again (except in

cases of lifelong imprisonment/ death). Whose to say that the people

directly involved couldn’t do a better job or finding out who did it and

finding a correct solution. And, while I do recognize the problematic

aspects of “vigilante justice”, I personally find no fault in physically

confronting someone who has harmed you or telling them that they must

leave town. But there is also room for talking through things,

understanding a situation, learning from our mistakes, and moving on in

ways deemed appropriate by those directly involved.

And we must recognize the cause of most crime. Personally, I don’t

beleive that people are born murderers or rapists. Society, the

conditions of their lives (especially as children), and a variety of

other factors affect what decisions people make. So, we must take a look

at the causes of violence in the first place. The disempowerment that

comes from economic, racial, class based, etc oppression that may cause

someone to lash out and seek power over another. The obsession with

power that this society tries to force-feed us that causes those with

power to desire more at any cost. The message that empowerment or power

over are both power—and therefore interchangeable, equal, and necessary

to our well-being.

I apologize if this sounds vague or intangible, but the abolition of

prisons is far more complicated than the simple destruction of a few

walls. We could rid ourselves of prisons tomorrow, but we would find

that people would simply replace them. Same goes for police; we could

kill all cops, but new cops, even if under a different name, would pop

up everywhere As long as there is a need for such institutions, they

will continue to exist. We need to change the way we view ourselves,

each other, our communities, our relations, etc. We must rid ourselves

of a need for prisons.

First and foremost we need to empower ourselves, our friends, our

communities, to take back that control, to recognize that we don’t need

the mediation of strangers to decide what is good or bad, right or wrong

for us.

Finally:

The question itself is mildly absurd. The prison system isn’t something

that can be done away with overnight. As long as we have system where

there are “criminals” there will be jails, so that question kinda puts

the cart before the horse.

Secondly, we shouldn’t do anything to/with them. What options do we

have? It would be ridiculous to re-incarcerate them in an “anarchist

prison”, put them through “accountability processes” or exile them from

communities they aren’t a part of. I would argue that we simply let them

be. Most people in jail just want to get out and get on with their

lives. Those who continue to cause harm will be dealt with by those it

relates to, but I would speculate that this would be a small minority of

cases.

How would an anarchist society deal with crimes like rape or serial

murder?

I’m personally an anarcho-syndicalist; but, this is something that

perplexes me often. I don’t see how a mutualistic society could intern

people, without state backing.

And you hardly want private police, like the cough anarcho-capitalists.

law

There are so many clarifying questions/ objections required by your

casual statement... For an anarchist to use a term like “crime” is

automatically a problem; such a concept is meaningless in a context

where deviant (non-normative) behavior is dealt with by the affected

individuals making up a community/commune/affinity group (or whatever

other meaningful level of social organization you like). That’s commonly

called Direct Action. “Crime” is a legal category, requiring an

institutionalized system of allegedly neutral conflict resolution to

take the place of what the statists see as their purview alone:

retaliation, retribution, vengeance (the pretense to rehabilitation

should be, by now, completely discredited). This usually takes the form

of arrest, trial, and incarceration. In short, punishment for behaving

outside the parameters decided by those who run the State. By taking the

response to deviance out of the hands of those directly affected, the

legal authorities are merely delegitimizing (and making it a crime!) the

autonomy and cohesion of any meaningful level of social organization.

What would happen in an anarchist society to deal with rape and murder

would probably look a lot like what happens in other non-statist

cultures when someone does something particularly nasty: the survivor,

the family and friends decide how to proceed, whether it’s one or more

of the following. Public shaming or beating; concern coupled with

compassion and care; expulsion; execution—and a million other

possibilities in between. All options are on the table, unlike what

happens in statist cultures, where the authorities decide the punishment

in a sham neutrality for the good of “the people.”

possible reading list (in no order)

Anarchy Alive! – Uri Gordon

An examination of contested issues between and among anarchists. The

questions of Violence, Power, Technology, and Nationalism are each given

their own chapters.

Anarchy Works – Peter Gelderloos

A cross-cultural examination of how anarchist principles have worked,

whether the practitioners called themselves anarchists or not.

Recipes for Disaster – CrimethInc.

Big and small, legal and il-, 62 recipes that run the gamut from

dumspter-diving to banner drops, open relationships to locking down

streets, monkeywrenching to coalition building.

Anarchy after Leftism – Bob Black

Black’s response to Murray Bookchin’s Social Anarchism or Lifestyle

Anarchism. Black accuses Bookchin of being a closeted authoritarian,

city-statist and Marxist with a penchant for high tech and the Athenian

polis. Black defends what he calls heterodox or post-leftist anarchism,

a kind of anti-work, individualist, and moderately primitivist form of

anarchism.

The Anarchist Tension – Alfredo M. Bonanno

One of the most influential (along with Armed Joy and At Daggers Drawn)

of the insurrectionary writings. Challenges anarchists to resist dogma

and easy answers.

anything written by Fredy Perlman (Against (His)Story, Against Leviathan

would be a good start)

To be healthy and sane we need to be grounded in a more direct

relationship with nature and with other people in comprehensible,

face-to-face communities. Leviathanic civilization destroys these basic

relationships — hence the pathology of the modern era. This book covers

all this. It’s deep, it’s allegorical, it’s like nothing you’ve ever

read before.

bolo’bolo – p.m.

A sketch of how a future anarchist society could work, the only utopia

with enough diversity to deserve the name anarchist.

Society of the Spectacle – Guy Debord

One of the main texts of the Situationists, explaining (in aphorisms)

the concept of the Spectacle as the defining impetus of western culture,

one that is, through consumption, continually searching for meaning.

some people/groups mentioned

Bonanno, Alfredo M.

(1937-) A main theorist of contemporary insurrectionary anarchism who

wrote essays such as Armed Joy (for which he was imprisoned for 18

months by the Italian government), The Anarchist Tension and others; an

editor of Anarchismo Editions and many other publications, only some of

which have been translated into English. He has been involved in the

anarchist movement for over thirty years.

Bakunin, Mikhail

(1814–1876) A well-known Russian revolutionary and philosopher, theorist

of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of

anarchist theory in general. Despite (or because of) criminal status,

Bakunin gained great influence with the youth in Russia and all of

Europe. He was involved in the insurrection in Lyon, which foreshadowed

the Paris Commune.

In 1868, Bakunin joined the International Working Men’s Association, a

federation of trade union organizations with sections in most European

countries. The 1872 Hague Congress was dominated by a struggle between

Marx and his followers who argued for parliamentary electoral

participation and a faction around Bakunin who opposed it. Bakunin’s

faction lost the vote, and he was eventually expelled for maintaining a

secret organisation within the international. The anarchists insisted

the congress was rigged, and so held their own conference of the

International in Switzerland. From 1870 to 1876, he wrote much of his

seminal work such as Statism and Anarchy and God and the State.

Camatte, Jacques

A French writer, once a Marxist theoretician and member of the

International Communist Party. After collecting and publishing a great

amount of historical documents from left communist currents, and

analysing the most recently discovered writings of Marx, in the early

70s Camatte abandoned the Marxist perspective. He decided instead that

capitalism had succeeded in shaping humanity to its profit, and that

every kind of “revolution” was thus impossible; that the working class

was nothing more than an aspect of capital, unable to supersede its

situation; that any future revolutionary movement would basically

consist of a struggle between humanity and capital itself, rather than

between classes; and that capital has become totalitarian in structure,

leaving nowhere and no-one outside its domesticating influence. This

pessimism about revolutionary perspective is accompanied by the idea

that we can “leave the world” and live closer to nature, and stop

harming children and distorting their naturally sane spirit.

Dupont, Monsieur & Frère

Monsieur Dupont is a duo of ex-activist communists in the UK, who wrote

Nihilist Communism, in which they posit the irrelevance of most of the

agitational activities of people who want foundational political and

social change, partly because these “pro-revolutionaries” are inculcated

by the same society that they are challenging, and partly because

dramatic social change, if it comes at all (which it is likely not to),

will only come from “the essential proletariat”, which are the workers

who control things that the system absolutely relies on (power,

transportation, etc). Frère Dupont, author of species being, is one of

the two.

Berkman, Alexander

(1870–1936) an anarchist known for his political activism and writing, a

leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20^(th) century.

Soon after his arrival in New York City, Berkman became an anarchist

through his involvement with groups that had formed to campaign to free

the men convicted of the 1886 Haymarket bombing. He came under the

influence of Johann Most, the best-known anarchist in the United States,

and an advocate of propaganda of the deed—attentat, or violence carried

out to encourage the masses to revolt.

He attempted to assassinate businessman Henry Clay Frick as an act of

propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life, and

Berkman served 14 years in prison. His experience in prison was the

basis for his first book, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.

Berkman voiced his opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the

repression of independent voices in his 1925 book, The Bolshevik Myth.

While living in France, Berkman continued his work in support of the

anarchist movement, producing the classic exposition of anarchist

principles, Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism. Suffering

from ill health, Berkman committed suicide in 1936.

de Cleyre, Voltairine

(1866–1912) A prolific American anarchist writer and speaker, she

opposed the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality

and women’s lives. She began her activist career in the freethought

movement. Her political perspective shifted throughout her life,

eventually leading her to become an outspoken proponent of “anarchism

without adjectives.”

For several years she associated primarily with the American

individualist anarchist milieu. Eventually, however, she rejected

individualism.

“Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and

administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly

consistent with ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting

upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all

compatible with my notion of freedom.”Instead, she became one of the

most prominent advocates of anarchism without adjectives. In The Making

of an Anarchist, she wrote, “I no longer label myself otherwise than as

‘Anarchist’ simply”.

Debord, Guy

(1931–1994) A French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the

Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding

member of the Situationist International (SI). He was also briefly a

member of Socialisme ou Barbarie (a French-based radical libertarian

socialist group of the post-World War II period).

Debord joined the Letterist International when he was 19. A schism

birthed several factions of Letterists, one of which was decidedly led

by Debord. In the 1960s, Debord led the Situationist International

group, which influenced the Paris Uprising of 1968. Some consider his

book The Society of the Spectacle to be a catalyst for the uprising.

FAI

The Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI, Iberian Anarchist Federation) is

a Spanish organization of anarchist (anarcho-syndicalist and

anarchist-communist) militants inside the Confederación Nacional del

Trabajo (CNT) anarcho-syndicalist union. It is often abbreviated as

CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations.

The FAI publishes the periodical Tierra y Libertad. It was founded in

Valencia in 1927 to campaign for keeping the CNT on an anarchist path.

It viewed the CNT as having become a mediator between labour and

capital, rather than representative of the working class.

Goldman, Emma

(1869 –1940) An anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and

speeches, she played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist

political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of

the 20^(th) century. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair,

she became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy,

women’s rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. In

1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth .

Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including

prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage,

free love, homosexuality, and appreciation of Nietzsche. Although she

distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward

women’s suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender

politics into anarchism.

After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to

support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14,

1940, aged 70.

The Invisible Committee

An anonymous group of French intellectuals named as the authors of The

Coming Insurrection, a call to arms along the lines of the

Situationists.

Kropotkin, Pyotr

(1842–1921) A Russian prince, zoologist, evolutionary theorist,

philosopher, scientist, pacifist, revolutionary, economist, activist,

geographer, writer, and one of the world’s foremost anarcho-communists.

Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and

based on voluntary associations be-tween workers. He wrote many books,

pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread

and Fields, Factories and Workshops, and his principal scientific

offering, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. He also contributed the

article on anarchism to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition.

Mutual Aid provided an alternative view on human survival to the claims

of interpersonal competition and natural hierarchy proffered at the time

by some “social Darwinists”. He argued “that it was an evolutionary

emphasis on cooperation instead of competition in the Darwinian sense

that made for the success of species, including the human.”

Nietzsche, Freidrich

(1844–1900) was a German philosopher, poet, cultural critic and

classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality,

contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for

metaphor, irony and aphorism.

Nietzsche’s influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy,

notably in existentialism, nihilism, and postmodernism. His style and

radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted

in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental

tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, the Übermensch, the

eternal recurrence, the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy,

perspectivism, and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the

idea of “life-affirmation”, which involves an honest questioning of all

doctrines that drain life’s expansive energies, however socially

prevalent and radical those views might be.

Novatore, Renzo

The pen name of Abele Rizieri Ferrari (1890–1922), Italian individualist

anarchist, illegalist, and anti-fascist poet, philosopher, and militant,

now mostly known for his book (posthumously published), Toward the

Creative Nothing (Verso il nulla creatore).

He discovered Errico Malatesta, Peter Kropotkin, Henrik Ibsen and

Friedrich Nietzsche, and especially Max Stirner. From 1908 on he

embraced individualist anarchism. In 1910, he was charged with the

burning of a local church and spent three months in prison, but his

participation in the fire was never proved. A year later, he went on the

lam because the police wanted him for theft and robbery.

As the Great War approached he deserted his regiment on April 26, 1918

and was sentenced to death by a military tribunal. He left his village

and fled, propagating the desertion from the Army and the armed uprising

against the state. By the early 1920s Italy was about to be taken over

by Fascism. He decided to go underground and in 1922 he joined the gang

of the famous robber of anarchist inspiration: Sante Pollastro, and was

killed in a shoot-out.

Perlman, Fredy

(1934–1985) was an author, publisher and activist. His most popular

work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise

of state domination with a retelling of history through the Hobbesian

metaphor of the Leviathan. The book remains a major source of

inspiration for anti-civilisation perspectives in contemporary

anarchism. His work both as an author and publisher has been very

influential on modern anarchist thought.

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph

(1809–1865) was a French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist,

and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the

first person to call himself an “anarchist”. He is considered among the

most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism. After the events

of 1848 he began to call himself a federalist.

Tiqqun

The name of a French philosophical journal, founded in 1999 with an aim

to “recreate the conditions of another community.” It was created by

various writers and dissolved in 2001 following the attacks of September

11, 2001. Tiqqun is also, more generally, the name of the philosophical

concept which stems from these texts, and is often used in a broad sense

to name the many publications containing the journal’s texts, in order

to designate “a point of spirit from which these writings come.”

Situationists

The Situationist International (SI) was an internationalist group of

revolutionaries based mainly in Europe. It was founded in 1957 and

reached its peak of influence in the general strike of May 1968 in

France.

With ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20^(th) century European artistic

avant-gardes, they advocated experiences of life alternative to those

allowed by advanced capitalism, for the fulfillment of human desires.

They suggested and experimented with the construction of “situations,”

which were environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires.

Their theoretical work peaked with the highly influential book Society

of the Spectacle. The SI was dissolved in 1972.

the Frankfurt School

A school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, initially

consisting of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx’s

followers parroted a narrow selection of Marx’s ideas, usually in

defense of orthodox Communist parties. Many of the Frankfurt School

theorists believed that traditional Marxist theory could not adequately

explain the turbulent and unexpected development of capitalist societies

in the 20^(th) century. Critical of both capitalism and Soviet

socialism, their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative

path to social development.