Submitted by bittertransslut in AskRaddle
What anarchist ideas or means are necessary for an organization/action to be anarchist in your eyes?
Need it be named as such?
If eliminating hierarchy is unrealistic how much hierarchy can be accepted before it is no longer anarchist? Is hierarchy in the means or the end more important in this?
Is means or ends more important for determination?
perhaps a taco/sandwich question or one that has been answered but one that itches my mind often.
An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )
I don't care what people call themselves, and I think the importance of calling yourself an anarchist is entirely based on context.
Anarchism is a direct action ethic against authority. We do not allow for mediation of our lives by things outside of ourselves and our context. This implies maximal decentralisation of power. We want the people most affected by any decision to be making the decisions.
Historically this implies that we are at minimum anti-state and anti-capitalism. States are hierarchical structures imposed from the outside, in the form of 'representation'. Capitalism hierarchises society by tending to concentrate wealth in the hands of few, and because capitalists in some sense monetarily benefit from creating identity-based underclasses who may be exploited more. Being against stratified society extends to all divisions of identity, common examples including race, gender, sexuality and ability. Furthermore, stratified societies existed before capitalism, and we reject those too; we reject civilisation and whatever else concentrates power and breeds authority.
Anarchism is a tension. None of us can live fully anarchist lives if we assume that it requires dogmatic disobedience to all external structures. There's rarely much use in getting killed or imprisoned just because we won't stop when a cop wants to pull us over, for example.
Anarchist organisations would likely have flat structures, some might have space for specific forms of bottom-up organisation, and operation through federation of noncentralised parts. They would not participate in elections or any non-fluid, non-adhoc representative forms of organisation, and would always seek to undermine those who do.
Critiques/comments welcome.