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Title: Letter To The Anarchists
Author: Anarqxista Goldman
Date: July 2022
Language: en
Topics: direct action, emancipation, activism, 1848
Source: Retrieved on July 30th 2022 from https://archive.org/details/letter-to-the-anarchists

Anarqxista Goldman

Letter To The Anarchists

Every morning I wake up in the anarchist house where I live somewhere in

Western Europe and I switch on my laptop. I survey, for about 30 minutes

before I go for a naked walk in the woods near my home, what the world

is saying about itself. [The following examples are all real.] Some cops

in New Orleans ignored a rape but some other American cops shot a boy

with a toy gun dead. In England, a pensioner with nothing in their

fridge can’t afford to buy food and is afraid to turn on the heating. In

the Philippines, Monkeypox has been reported and is being described as a

sex disease it is not. Elsewhere, environmental campaigners have

sabotaged machinery that is voraciously cutting through a forest and

destroying a natural habitat. In Poland some people accused a woman of

having an abortion and they want her in prison for it. Politicians in

various countries are trying to make laws that make it impossible for

trans people to exist. British Prime Ministerial contenders are seeking

to outdo each other in cruelty towards refugees. Hannover in Germany is

cutting energy use in response to the “Russian gas crisis”. Elsewhere

utility companies are announcing billion dollar profits but their

workers can buy less and less in the shops for the same amount of money.

Much of the world, in another case, simply gave up trying to mitigate

Covid outbreaks and just said “fuck it”. I could go on, and you know I

could go on, and never stop writing examples of terrible things

happening to real people in real time. The question is, what, if

anything, are we going to do about it?

I write as an anarchist to anarchists. I write as an active anarchist

[which means it makes an active difference to how I live, and have

chosen to organise, my life] to anarchists I hope are also active

anarchists. But I am not your judge and I am not here to tell you what

to do. I have done thorough research in regard to historical anarchism

and you will see this in the numerous books about it I have written and

all of that research teaches me that anarchism teaches personal

responsibility, agency and autonomy. You must act for yourselves and you

must find your own reasons for acting. BUT, I insist, IF YOU ARE AN

ANARCHIST THEN YOU HAVE COMMITTED YOURSELF TO ACTION. An inactive

anarchist is the same as no anarchist at all and is as useless as a

chocolate fireguard.

The place is here and the time is now for anarchist action which thrives

and grows in an atmosphere of human solidarity and freedom-seeking

liberty. Can we expect that, as capitalism collapses and authoritarian

government becomes increasingly desperate and brazen in its dogmatic use

of illegitimate authority, these entities will realise their faults and

come to their senses? Of course not! Capitalists and political

authoritarians will hold onto their power to exploit and coerce to the

bitter end — OUR bitter end. They must be stopped because they will not

stop of their own free will. They, and the millions blinded by their

constant propaganda and terrified into submission by their seemingly

overwhelming arsenals of violent weaponry and those prepared to wield

it, are going to carry on down the same dead-end path until they slam,

head on, into catastrophic civilizational collapse. We can ride that

train passively to our doom with our Netflix and our iPhones or we can

spend our lives trying to derail the train. That’s not going to be

pretty either but at least there might be something left to save

afterwards in that case.

As anarchists, of whatever stripe, we have certain values and desires. I

want to quote three key quotations from the history of anarchism that

particularly stand out to me in this regard:

“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.

The revolution commands one to make arrangements, the insurrection

demands that he rise or exalt himself. What constitution was to be

chosen, this question busied the revolutionary heads, and the whole

political period foams with constitutional fights and constitutional

questions... The insurrectionist [however] strives to become

constitutionless.” [Max Stirner, Der Eigene und Sein Eigentum]

“The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and

minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to

do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much

liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct

action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and

restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance

are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal

necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls

for free, independent spirits, for ‘men who are men, and who have a bone

in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through.’” [Emma Goldman,

“Anarchism: What It Really Stands For”]

“we anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people

to emancipate themselves.” [Errico Malatesta, l’Agitazione, June 18,

1897]

I write this letter not to coddle anybody. Plenty of anarchists, past

and present, know in their own bodies, and can testify to, the pain and

struggle that real anarchist action needs and requires. So I offer you

nothing but struggle for a cause, an insurrection in the name of freedom

and of life for all. This does not mean I commit all anarchists to

violence and fighting. I commit no one to anything and you must find

your own place and your own path in a new network of anarchist

relationships that has repudiated both capitalist and authoritarian

ones. You must do something. In my own mind setting up genuine mutual

aid networks [not the begging or charity that social media encourages

but the genuine building of support networks and human relationships of

mutual commitment] are as authentically anarchist as attacking banks,

corporations and governments. To be sure, both are needed but what you

do will, and should, be always up to you. Yet it is way past time [as

record temperatures are set around the globe] that we started genuinely

supporting each other and supporting people genuinely for there is

genuine need everywhere around us. We have to supply that need and we

have to be prepared to break the law, and possibly pay the price for

doing that, ourselves. Feeding people and giving supplies to the

homeless is increasingly criminalised in our world. We must dare to be

criminals to help others. There is no other way. So talk to your

neighbours, talk to your friends, talk to people you see hanging around,

breed concern for others and their problems not in an interfering way

but in a way that breeds trust, togetherness, relationship, concern for

more than yourself. But know who to trust and, more importantly, who not

to trust. Plan nothing destructive with people you would not vouch for

with your own life and even then do so on a “need to know” basis.

Together we can do great things but there will always be forces ranged

against those who want to change our world in favour of general liberty

and we must expect that they will not stay inert or stand idly by. Even

so-called friends and allies can go rogue if you differ in your means.

Thus, when it comes to organisation, I believe whole-heartedly in a

decentralised model. One group of 10,000 people all doing the same thing

is much more easily coerced and controlled [by violent outside forces or

inside siren voices] than 1,000 groups of ten people doing 1,000

different things. You do not need to create vast organisations and big

groups. You need only a few people totally committed to doing something

and providing some kind of aid or service. Lots of little groups is and

will always be better than one big one and, if a reality, can hardly be

stopped even by a million cops. So have no hang ups about size. Simply

be committed to what you do and inspire others to do something too. We

can all help each other in our own ways and get on fine. We need no

leaders or “coordination” but simply the active social concern of

increasing numbers of people activated to act in communal solidarity in

their own freely associating ways. When we do this we create organic

networks which maintain autonomy and agency whilst being about more than

just ourselves. Such networks can be conduits for genuine mutual aid,

the spread of socially necessary information and defence from attack by

dangerous others. Anarchists seek a new society and its up to them to

actively and consistently create it. You are not expected to do it all

but simply to play your part.

I constantly see people calling themselves “anarchists” on social media.

I constantly wonder what it is they think makes them an anarchist and I

constantly wonder what they are DOING that justifies such a

self-description. I wish they were all anarchists as I understand the

term for we need all the help we can get. I take seriously what David

Graeber had on his Twitter bio, that “anarchist” is NOT an identity but

an action. I agree whole-heartedly with this analysis. If you’re doing

nothing anarchist, if its not changed how you live and how you relate

with and to other people, then you’re not an anarchist; you’re trading

on a label and a history with which you have nothing to do for it is

actualised in no meaningful way in how you live. You’re diluting

“anarchist” and bringing it into disrepute. Anarchism, of all

ideologies, is the one that is least ideological, least about “belief”,

least about adherence to a dogma. Anarchism is practice or it is

nothing; it is what you do and how you live; it is, in Malatesta’s

words, “emancipating yourself”; it is, in Stirner’s, “making yourself

constitutionless” and being an insurrection; it is, in Goldman’s,

“having integrity and a backbone”.

Anarchism, as I have written about it most recently, is a matter of

political, economic, moral and intellectual emancipation, an invitation

to relationships made by those with autonomy and agency and in fully

free association. It is for human beings to create such relationships,

and communities of such relationships, if they are of a mind and will to

do so. But I teach no certainty of success for these agents of future

freedom for those who want no such communities are real, are armed, and

are organised to carry on with their societies of coercion and

exploitation. There is no place here [for those who value the freedoms

that I and anarchists seek] for reclining in any kind of normalised

comfort. Anarchists are committed to destroying the

capitalist-authoritarian system which is a system of forced

incarceration. So they cannot become corrupted, weak and without

motivation due to over-consumption of capitalist media which aim to lull

you to sleep, stop you from caring and stop you from acting. There is no

place for accepting your imprisonment and getting used to life inside

the prison walls. We must wean ourselves and others from such fatal

addictions and take responsibility for creating new human relationships

which eschew capitalism [at certain cost to ourselves] and seek open

commensality, mutual aid, and an embrace of commonism and the commons.

Our world and its resources have been stolen from most of us to be sold

back to us for vast private profits. We must allow this no more. We must

say no and stand up, as Gerrard Winstanley once did, for “a common

treasury”.

My fellow anarchists, this was just a few brief words to encourage you,

wherever you are, to act — by yourself and with others. DIRECT ACTION is

the beating heart of any and all anarchisms and we must not fail in it

now when it is most needed. We must keep acting — directly — for our own

lives and for the lives of all others without distinction of race,

culture, sexuality, gender or creed. The capitalist-authoritarians of

every stripe will only squeeze harder the more the world slips through

their grasp and people will pay the price of their violence as they

always do. We must be those with ideas and energy who enable freedom,

human solidarity, cooperation and an organic harmony of autonomous human

beings. Or we must die trying because life depends on it.

Anarqxista Goldman X