AK Press: What Do You Mean By "Anarchism"

{MB: for the record, because I have already been asked, here is What I Mean By Anarchism)

What Do You Mean By "Anarchism?
AK Press

"Like all really good ideas," writes Clifford Harper, "Anarchy is pretty simple when you get down to it—human beings are at their best when they are living free of authority, deciding things among themselves rather than being ordered about." Anarchism means abolishing the state and all coercive social relations. It means a society in which individuals create and control their own collective organizations to meet their social and economic needs. These organizations would federate and democratically coordinate (rather than compete) among themselves without any government oversight. Some say that this is impossible, that without governmental authority we’d descend into violence, lawlessness, and corruption. But, look around: isn’t that pretty much what we have now? Government is a centralized force that imposes rules from above, suppressing individual initiative in the interests of a small minority. Capitalism is an economic system based on exploitation, private ownership (theft) of society’s resources, and a logic of ruthless competition. Rather than accept these human constructions as "natural," AK Press draws on a rich history of folks from all over the planet and from all walks of life who have imagined, fought for, and actually achieved something better.

No government, “revolutionary” or otherwise, has ever liberated its citizens from gender, racial, or class oppression. No government has ever developed a model for an environmentally sustainable society. With a record like that, it’s strange that anyone still backs that particular horse. Back in the day, as socialist ideas were developing and confronting the emerging capitalist system, revolutionaries claimed that “the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves.” Anarchists still make that claim. We don’t advocate “no control,” but insist on asking “control by whom?” We work to destroy arbitrary power (political, economic, and social), to take decision-making power away from “officials,” while developing our ability to fill that void and provide for ourselves. “People's governments” invariably become calcified and abandon the struggle for human freedom. This is why we identify with the liberatory strains within the history of socialism—the unbroken thread of impassioned resistance against both the terrors of capitalism and the tyranny of government.

Anarchism doesn't tell people what to do. It tells them that they have the ability to make decisions about the issues that affect them. Anarchism, and the anarchist movement, is about emancipation, empowerment, and agency. Ask yourself this: what would your ideal transportation system, agricultural system, neighborhood, school, or workplace look like? Now ask yourself how much influence you and the people around you have over these issues? Can we afford to leave these decisions to the same people who have been screwing up our lives thus far?

Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould once wrote, “I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” The repressive hierarchies of capitalism and the state create human beings who are mere shells of what we could be, stunting us mentally, physically, and emotionally. Adding insult to injury, we’re then taught to blame ourselves for this situation, instead of looking for the institutional roots of our problems.

Beca0use destroying one form of oppression only leaves the others to fester, anarchism tries to focus on all unequal power relations simultaneously. Capitalism and the state didn’t invent racism, patriarchy, or gender oppression, but they use a variety of divisive tactics to bolster our dependence on them. Understanding how oppressions are interlinked is an important step in overcoming them, as well as a way to practice freedom here and now, rather than relegating it to some distant future.

For us, anarchism is a practical framework for working out these issues. It’s a revolutionary analysis that helps us understand the roots of domination, both as individuals and as members of exploited social groups. It offers a useful and instructive history of theoretical and practical experimentation by people who have worked to expand the definition of freedom itself by fighting those who violently constrain and deny it.

Read the Rest of This Statement