Anarchy

A brief outline of an old idea

This is the first of three introductory posts that establish the foundation of what I aim to do in this newsletter.

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”
—Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

This may be the most precious thing capitalism steals from us: our ability to imagine. Those in power would love for us to believe that there are no alternatives, but anarchy is the firm insistence that another way of living is possible. We boldly imagine the end of this world, so that we can imagine birthing a new one.

“An-archy” comes from the Greek and means “without-rule.” Anarchism is the theory and practice of creating a world without rule. Anarchists are people who desire that world and act to make it a reality.

I use “rule” here instead of “government” because while it is certainly true that anarchists are opposed to all forms of government, we are more generally opposed to the principle of authority itself, by which some accumulate power at the expense of others. This means anarchists oppose capitalism and the state, as well as patriarchy, white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, and future systems of control that have yet to be established.

Most people assume living in a state of anarchy means violence and chaos, partly because there is a lot of propaganda encouraging people to think that way, and partly because when rulers are overthrown, or when space is opened up to live without rule, those ruptures seem to involve violence and chaos.

First of all it would make sense if they did, since it takes great force to change things that are deeply embedded. Those who prefer gradual or incremental change are usually ok with things not really changing at all, and of course those currently in power will not willingly give it up. They will go down fighting, just as they gained power through fighting in the first place.

But this view also misses something important: the inherent violence of living under rule. The idea that anarchy brings chaos and violence to an otherwise peaceful and orderly system is a lie that keeps us in bondage to those systems. War, poverty, scarcity, crime, debt, all these are products of societies under rule, under hierarchy. Without government none of them would exist. Not only that, but daily life under rule is permeated with drudgery and loneliness which would not exist in a free society.

It also misses the real character of change: in moments when rule is suspended, those involved usually recall how joyful, wild, and free it feels, what a gasping relief it is to suddenly reclaim your own power and act on your own terms. People also usually note how surprised and delighted they are to discover spontaneous powers of teamwork and cooperation they didn’t think possible.

Anarchy is more than the state of nature: it is a conscious rejection of the will to power and domination. Anarchy is more than chaos: it is the creative destruction that opens pathways to flourishing.

“All power to the imagination!”
—Paris uprisings, May 1968

Resistance to authority has existed as long as authority itself. Many trace the origins of what would become the anarchist movement to forerunners in the ancient world and the Middle Ages: Taoism, Buddhism, ancient Greece, early Christianity, and Middle Eastern sects, both pre-Muslim and Sufi, all produced thinkers and movements with clear anarchist characteristics.

William Godwin’s An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) was the first modern work to expound anarchism, and Max Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own (1844) heavily influenced the nascent anarchist milieu. But the first person to call himself an anarchist was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French philosopher and printer, with his 1840 work What Is Property? The subsequent falling out of two of his followers, Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, marked the split between anarchism and Marxism which continues today.

Classical anarchists of the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe also include Peter Kropotkin, Eliseé Reclus, Errico Malatesta, Leo Tolstoy, Emma Goldman, John Henry Mackay, Gustav Landauer, Johann Most, Rudolf Rocker, and Mohandas Ghandi.

In America, anarchism developed independently but later integrated with the European currents. Some important figures: Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, Adin Ballou, John Humphrey Noyes, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Alexander Berkman.

There are many libertarian thinkers whose ideas contribute greatly to the anarchist worldview but who themselves do not claim (or predated) the label: Marquis de Sade, Charles Fourier, Wilhelm von Humbolt, Friederich Nietzche, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Edward Carpenter, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Bertrand Russel, Aldous Huxley, Martin Buber, Lewis Mumford, Noam Chomsky, Albert Camus, and Michel Foucault.

I list these figures in order to give readers a sense of how old, complex, and diverse anarchism is, and how influential it has been in areas which don’t usually involve discussion of anarchism.

Of course, anarchy is not carried on the backs of great men. What makes a movement matter are the vast numbers of ordinary people who get involved, taking their lives into their own hands and refusing to let their futures be decided for them. We look to these figures not as idols, authorities, or representatives, but as human beings like us.

“In vain you tell me that Artificial Government is good, but that I fall out with the Abuse. The Thing! The Thing itself is the Abuse!”
—Edmund Burke

Some paragraphs on analysis:

Anarchists oppose government in all its forms. Democratic, communist, fascist, all governments are violent institutions that function on genocide and environmental devastation. They accomplish this through specific institutions, namely the military, police, prisons, the court system, and the rule of law. Anarchists aim to abolish all of these. Free people do not need laws to tell them how to live, and self-organized societies have no need to go to war with their neighbors.

Anarchists oppose capitalism as the latest and most destructive form of government. In fact anarchism as a political movement arose in direct response to capitalism and its deadening flavor of control. We oppose not only the profit motive as the driving engine of society but also work, property, and money. In a free society, labor is inseparable from social life. Our relations with things and each other do not need to be mediated by money; we can get what we need from living together with others, and do and make what we want with our time.

Anarchists oppose identity as one of capitalism’s instruments of control. This means we aren’t satisfied with equal rights on the basis of race, gender, sex, orientation, or ability. We wish to see the final dissolution of all these identity markers which are used as a way for governments to control their populace. True freedom will not be given to us by the rich and powerful, neither through rights nor representation. We must win it for ourselves.

Anarchists oppose all social institutions and relationship structures that manufacture capitalist identity. This includes schooling, marriage, and the nuclear family. Schools were created to prepare people to work in factories, offices, and the military; marriage is an economic as well as religious contract meant to determine paternity and heredity; and the nuclear family is the social unit most suited for and dependent on capitalist production.

At this point some might throw up their hands and say “well really, if you wanted to destroy civilization you might have said so from the start.” One might rejoin that since civilization is in such a state, destroying it surely can’t be much worse than keeping it as is.

The tricky truth is that each of the violent systems anarchists oppose is a distortion of real human needs and tendencies. As in, in a free society we will still organize into decision-making bodies, we will still make tools and establish systems of distribution, we will still interact in groups and find belonging and love people. But these processes will no longer be premised on domination. We won’t have to follow orders, make weapons or money, or be forced into certain kinds of relationships.

The fact that so many of us cannot imagine making decisions without voting or electing a representative shows how deeply the propaganda has seeped. That we can’t imagine doing what we want with our time, or choosing to live with people we love shows how our social fabrics have unraveled. But once we recover our ability to dream, and connect with others who share those dreams, we can begin to live differently.

“Are not Religion & Politics the Same Thing?”

”Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords seem to me fools; they seem to me to be something Else besides Human Life.”

—William Blake

A word on religion is needed here. Most anarchists today are atheist, but historically many anarchists and their forebears were people of faith. Some anarchists believe religion must be fully eradicated in order to maintain truly free societies, and others believe anarchism would benefit from re-embracing mysticism and spirituality.

It’s easy to see why atheism is common with anarchists. Belief in God often involves submission to authority, something no anarchist is willing to accept. Moreover, religious authority has been a bulwark for nearly all other systems of power, as well as forming its own hierarchies with their attendant violence and control.

Christianity in particular has been the religion of empire: from Rome to America, spreading Christianity has meant extending the authority and supremacy of Christian states. The process of colonization has from the start included forced conversions under threat of death, and the violent suppression of indigenous lifeways. Unsurprisingly, a popular anarchist slogan (modified from a statement of Bakunin) declares, “No gods, no masters.”

However, the historical record offers a rich picture. Even after Rome’s stamp of officialdom, persistent heretical sects demonstrated anarchist sensibilities, especially during the Middle Ages and the Reformation. Some of these groups include the Spirituals (followers of St. Francis of Assisi), the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Taborites and Hussites, the Diggers and Ranters, and the Anabaptists.

Prominent Christians who were either avowed anarchists or adjacent to it include William Blake, Gerrard Winstanley, Adin Ballou, Leo Tolstoy, Ammon Hennacy, and Dorothy Day. These people base their worldview in liberating interpretations of sacred texts and communal traditions, drawing on history, experience, and conviction to make the case for anarchy on religious grounds.

Today, religious fundamentalism of all stripes fuels oppressive regimes and reactionary movements. But we do not need to cede the religious ground to the reactionaries. Radicals can reclaim spiritual language and create space for liberation.

“In conclusion: any liberatory belief system, even the most libertarian (or libertine), can be flipped 180 degrees into a rigid dogma… Conversely, even within the most religious of religions the natural human desire for freedom can carve out secret spaces of resistance”

—Peter Lamborn Wilson, Anarchist Religion?

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Anarchy came into my life through great ruin. After years of struggle I overcame the fundamentalist Christian worldview I was given, with all its attendant traumas to my body and mind. However, when the rubble of religion settled I saw that my deepest convictions remained, stripped of the ideology in which I had been raised. I looked around and saw not that what I had believed was wrong, but that it was simply not Christian.

The things I most believed then are the things I most believe now. Scripture says it is for freedom that Christ has set you free—anarchists say freedom is both the end and the means. Christians aim for sanctification in this life—anarchists aim to prefigure the world as it could be. “Bring the kingdom of heaven to earth”—“build the new world in the shell of the old.”

The body of Christ, understood as the brotherhood of all believers, parallels anarchist internationalist spirit: we stand in solidarity with all oppressed people, regardless of nation or creed. The early church practiced forms of community that were anarchist in several regards (property was held in common not privately owned, giving was honored and hoarding stigmatized, men and women enjoyed relative equity compared with their Greek and Roman contemporaries).

Feeling like I was in revolt against the powers of this world became no longer a piece of propaganda but a practical politics. The idea of a ragtag band of revolutionaries bent on changing the world was no longer an ancient myth or a pretense of oppression but a demonstrable reality. What I studied in small groups I found in affinity groups.

Finding anarchism felt like coming home. Here was a way of thinking that felt right and natural, a long tradition I felt proud to claim, and a way of living that not only aimed for a better world to come but offered meaning and joy in this life, here and now. Unlike those still waiting for the Messiah’s return, anarchists know no one is coming to save us. We are the ones we’re waiting for. Far from pessimistic, this fundamental recognition of our own power and responsibility is the first glimmer of freedom.

“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want
and the courage to take.”
—Emma Goldman

For those interested in exploring anarchy in greater depth, or curious about what informs my personal worldview (and this post), listed below are some resources for further study.

• Anarchy Works, by Peter Gelderloos and the Anarchist FAQ team

• Demanding the Impossible, by Peter Marshall

• CrimethInc, an anarchist collective producing news, books, zines, and more

• The Anarchist Library, a massive and continually updating online archive

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