I wonder if someone who knows more about historical anarchism and anarchists might know how anarchists of yore dealt with these types of questions.
It seems to me a lot of theory is centered on the question of Why Anarchy? and not How to Anarchy.
I personally find the questions of How to Anarchy tedious distractions, but I also understand that people are anxious and scared and that anarchism can be scary and that we've had a lot of a human's natural inclination to exploration and adventure beaten out of us by the demands of capitalism. So I get the want for reassurance, but I'd rather encourage people to be bold and creative, not moving from one authority to another.
Majrelende wrote (edited )
This isn't history, just something that has been on my mind for a while.
Much of the people's anarchism, so to speak, is based around how-to-anarchy: ideologies like primitivism (by looking to how our anarchic ancestors lived), communism (by abolishing market relations and returning to a gift economy), syndicalism (by organising democratically to overthrow the society), and so on. Some people worship these ideologies; others react to the worship, and reject them completely. I think that by looking at them as adverbs and not nouns (i.e. primitively, communally, syndically?) it is more anarchically seen.
Anarchy is a skill, not a single method or formula-- like pottery isn't just making 20cm by 10cm cylindrical mugs with uniform thickness. The domesticated mind has absolutely no creativity of any kind.
Here is the closest I can think of to an anarchist method, also from more of a daoist lineage (via Fukuoka):
*gentle as in the mannerism, not as in gentry
**also in the wider sense, non-coercive relations such as friendship
I think that every theorist of these supposed sub-branches of anarchism is simply responding creatively to their local conditions. If we all aspire to this, and view others' ways of anarchy not as mandates or eternal truths but as approaches to anarchy based on perceived conditions, we can 1. learn to better tolerate and communicate with other people (anarchist and otherwise) who don't agree with us and 2. create an infinitely more effective path to anarchy.