An Overview of Anarchism

The effectiveness of these seemingly inexpedient methods was demonstrated to the public eye in Seattle, when tens of thousands of activists were brought together in a common struggle, under no stifling leadership, and on a shoestring budget.
The effectiveness of horizontal organizing has been illustrated many times since Seattle, and continues to play an increasing role in the global justice movements. Not surprisingly, anarchism, as a philosophy and movement in its own right, has been growing in tandem with the organizing tactics it espouses.
However, many people, even in contesting the corporate world order, rely on corporate media stereotypes in their understanding of anarchism. These stereotypes portray unintelligent young people engaging in various acts of violence. Far from being unintelligent, anarchism comes from a rich intellectual tradition that includes Bakunin, Emerson, Whitman, Goldman and Chomsky.
Neither is anarchism inherently violent; in truth it has a long pacifistic tradition as well. Aside from drawing on Thoreau, an early American anarchist, Gandhi himself cited Tolstoy, another anarchist, as his greatest source and inspiration. Furthermore, Gandhi’s spiritual successor was also an anarchist. Peaceful anarchism even played a role in the Civil Rights Movement of the fifties and sixties. Many members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, instrumental in organizing the Freedom Rides, were anarchists, and the group itself organized along anarchistic principles.
We have done a cursory study of what anarchism is not, so we may begin to look at what this movement and philosophy is in actuality. Edward Abbey, the American writer and environmental activist, said that “Anarchism is not a romantic fable, but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” The reason Abbey stressed that anarchism is not a romantic fable is because this is one of the first assumptions critics make when they begin to have a less superficial understanding of anarchism, and shed the senseless violence stereotype.
After all, anarchism is the logical conclusion of the belief that human beings are essentially good, but with a tendency towards opportunism. Our problems are not a result of any innate evil, but of the inequalities and injustices stemming from elitist and exploitative power structures.
Basically, anarchism is the belief that people have a right to organize their own lives and deal with one another as a community, through free associations. It is the belief that society can better care for all of its members without the interference of any self-perpetuating power structures that will inevitably protect the interests of the rulers at the expense of the ruled.
Some forms of anarchist thought draw heavily on anthropology, pointing out that anarchy can work. In fact throughout the majority of human history our societies have been anarchistic and egalitarian, and only food surpluses, leading to property and then power structures in control of this property, ever changed humanity’s anarchistic tradition. Statist societies only ever came to be prevalent due to their increased ability to wage warfare (a ruling elite controls the labour force, mandates increased production; increased production leads to more resources; rather than being used to the benefit of the population, these resources are controlled by the elite and used for military purposes); hence, all states are based on the belief that might makes right.
If our own personal experience does not lead us to believe that the state rests fundamentally on coercive force, we can look back into history and see that there has been no interruption in the Western continuum of government; that our modern “democratic” forms are nothing but an evolution from those early military feudal states. States keep their subjects in line by mimicking nature; by pretending to be something constant and irreplaceable (when they are in reality arbitrary and man-made). This practice leads to the apathetic belief that there is no alternative to government, and apathy is what allows injustice to flourish.
In an age when religion was at the forefront of social life, states won legitimacy through God, by claiming a mandate from Heaven. As the rise of science changed the collective public consciousness, heaven was no longer a sufficient excuse. Scientists were stating the patterns of nature as laws; so, too, would governments. States bound themselves to the rule of law, but was this a move to any more “just” a form of government? The first such charter, the Magna Carta, involved no public input. The drafting of the Magna Carta was the result of a meeting between the aristocracy and the monarchy about how to more effectively rule. England’s economic elite was cementing an alliance with England’s political elite. (We would do well to ask against whom they were allying themselves).
After science had cast the Universe in purely mechanical terms, Europe experienced an explosion in humanistic sentiments, notably voiced by Rousseau in his eloquent folly concerning “consent of the governed” (no matter who may have signed the Constitution, I cannot for the life of me ever remember giving my consent to be ruled…). In response, Europe’s leaders shaped their monarchies into Constitutional Republics, seemingly including the neglected masses into the process of their own subjugation. This process was not brought about through revolution. We must point out that France’s revolution was overturned by Napoleon’s counterrevolution, and that America’s revolution, stemming from the Declaration of Independence (now a voided document) and resulting in the Articles of Confederation, was overturned by a quiet counterrevolution, in the form of our Constitution (a secret document when it was written), because the Articles of Confederation had no means for protecting the landed elite from the poor farmers and workers. As James Madison so boldly put it, “the minority of the opulent must be protected from the majority,” and even the elitist Mr. Madison had become appalled before his death by how much the elite had managed to solidify their economic rule and infiltrate the political sphere.
A fine example of the state’s willing evolution into the so-called democratic forms we have today is that of Bismarck’s Germany. Historians agree that Bismarck was no populist, yet he set up a constitutional government for Germany under almost no pressure from the population. While the shortsighted conservatives among Germany’s elite were afraid of upsetting the status quo, Bismarck understood that a constitution would only solidify his power by pulling wool over the people’s eyes and allowing social dissidents to expend all their energies by futilely working within the parameters of the electoral system. And since the switch to democratic forms, states have only become more secretive, exploitative and powerful.
Rather than trying to reform the state, anarchists seek to subvert and abolish it. As a philosophy, anarchism today takes a number of forms. Most anarchist models for society are based on the community. Some views predict that our current level of civilization will be maintainable, but the economy will be built not by hierarchical corporations but by democratically organized labour federations entering into free and non-regimented associations with communities or other such federations for purposes of production and distribution. Other forms of anarchist thought, stemming largely from the environmental movement, feel that technology and property are irrevertibly connected with the concept of domination; anarcho-primitivism espouses a return to the egalitarian pre-state societies that history has already proven can work.
Anarchism is largely active not at protests, but in grassroots, community organizing. Anarchist groups often take direct approaches to solving the inequalities built into the system. These include groups that make and distribute free and healthy food in urban areas, groups that take over and repair vacant housing units for homeless families, groups that establish infoshops for the purpose of providing free and independent media, and groups that establish community gardens, so people can be involved in the production of their own food, free from the chemical and GMO-ridden control of for-profit corporations.
Due to the necessity of the context, anarchist movements in the Third World often take on a more militant tone. Mujeres Creando (Women’s Initiative), an anarcho-feminist group in Bolivia, recently took over a number of banks to demand cancellation of the debts of small farmers who were starving because all the food they grew was going to pay off interest.
Significantly, anarchism is not utopian. Anarchists do not presume to know how society can be ordered for everyone’s benefit; if anything, anarchy means self-determination and self-actualization. One of anarchism’s critiques of other progressive movements is that they are all inherently elitist, because they involve a small group of people, no matter how altruistic, taking it upon themselves to decide how society should be run. Anarchy will not be free of problems. Humans will always have conflicts with other humans. But we owe it to ourselves to be mature in the fullest sense of the word, by solving our problems without the interference of any Big Brother.