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What is Anarchy?

Anarchy is the opposition to authority, the rejection of hierarchy and the struggle for autonomy and self-determination.

Anarchy is above all a practice, not a theory. It is about actively working to end authoritarian relationships wherever they exist, and build non-authoritarian alternatives. It is not about trying to prescribe a way of life for an imagined place and time, and imagined people. It is for real people and dealing with real problems.

Anarchy is desire for freedom.

Anarchy is hundreds of years of disparate people yearning to be freer.

Here are some of them.


Anarchy is the thing we want. It is the Beautiful Idea. It is the entirely impractical idea that we can be, and must insist on being, totally free. From domination, of course, but also from mundanity and morality. It is the id to the super-ego of society and its shaming, fear-instilling humiliations and self-inflicted limitations.

Anarchy is an act of faith—a leap into the unknown—and a totally sober proposition. It is an explosion and the simple things we do unconsciously. It is something that predates civilization and cannot be tamed by cities, governments, exchange, or politics.

Anarchy is anarchy, it is both organization (along completely different lines than the ones that currently exist on a broad level), and chaos. It is each of us having the ability to determine our own lives and the ways that we relate to others, from our most intimate relationships to the more far-flung. Anarchy is impossible and it is that very impossibility that makes it desirable. As desirable as the eventual lover or the water at the end of a long hike. As impossible as independence, autonomy, and collaboration among equals.

Long Live Anarchy!

Anarchy describes a particular type of situation, one in which either authority does not exist or its power to control is negated. Such a situation guarantees nothing—not even the continued existence of that situation, but it does open up the possibility for each of us to start creating our lives for ourselves in terms of our own desires and passions rather than in terms of social roles and the demands of social order. Anarchy is not the goal of revolution; it is the situation which makes the only type of revolution that interests me possible—an uprising of individuals to create their lives for themselves and destroy what stands in their way. It is a situation free of any moral implications, presenting to each of us the amoral challenge to live our lives without constraints.

Since the anarchic situation is amoral, the idea of an anarchist morality is highly suspect. Morality is a system of principles defining what constitutes right and wrong behavior. It implies some absolute outside of individuals by which they are to define themselves, a commonality of all people that makes certain principles applicable to everyone.

As opponents of control, we should not assume an adversarial position (like the forces of counter-control), nor identify ourselves with the oppressed (the controlled); rather, we should situate ourselves within the matrix of anarchy, and become uncontrollables. Only then can we develop a liberatory praxis, which simultaneously promotes the disintegration of the entire control complex, and facilitates others to reintegrate within the creative potentialities of anarchy. We should be neither demonic, nor humanist, but anarchic.

Our divine principle should not be deistic power, or demonic, Dionysian energies, or
human community, but positive and creative chaos (a natural “order” which the advocates of order designate as disorder). Chaos is homologous with ecological order, and social ecology constitutes the specifically human component within that order. It is from this position that we must approach those existential problems that remain so troubling.

If anarchy does not have a road map then we (as anarchists) are free to work together. Our projects might not be of the same scale as the general strike, or even the halting of business-as-usual in a major metropolitan area, but they would be anarchist projects.

An anarchy without road map or adjectives could be one where the context of the decisions that we make together will be of our own creation rather than imposed upon us. It could be an anarchy of now rather than the hope of another day. It would place the burden of establishing trust on those who actually have a common political goal (the abolition of the state and capitalism) rather than on those who have no goal at all or whose goal is antithetical to an anarchist one.

An anarchy without road map or adjectives does not ignore difference but instead places it in the context that it belongs in. When we are faced with a moment of extreme tension, when everything that we know appears about to change, then we may choose different forks in the road. Until that time anarchists should approach each other with the naïvete that we approach the world with. If we believe that the world can change and could change in a radical direction from the one traveled the past several thousand years then we should have some trust in others who desire the same things.

The goals of anarchy don’t include replacing one ruling class with another, neither in the guise of a fairer boss or as a party. This is key because this is what separates anarchist revolutionaries from Maoist, socialist, and nationalist revolutionaries who from the onset do not embrace complete revolution. They cannot envision a truly free and equalitarian society and must to some extent embrace the socialization process that makes exploitation and oppression possible and prevalent in the first place.

Our anarchy is an anarchy of abundance. It must be in order to survive against the power of our enemies. We are forcing the horizons wide open to the imagination. We believe there can (and must) be a world that has both wilderness and cities—a planet where people live in hunting-gathering tribes and in the diverse neighborhoods of cities. Where the goals of both groups are in harmony. There is enough creativity in our minds, enough courage in our souls, and enough passion in our hearts to accommodate both green and urban anarchy. No desire need succeed by destroying the other.

Anarchy is positioned to articulate —not a program— but a number of revolutionary themes with contemporary relevance and resonance. It is unambiguously anti- political, and many people are anti- political. It is hedonistic, and many people fail to see why life is not to be lived enjoyably if it is to be lived at all. It is “individualistic” in the sense that if the freedom and happiness of the individual —ie, each and every really existing person, every Tom, Dick and Murray —is not the measure of the good society, what is? Many people wonder what’s wrong with wanting to be happy. Post-leftist anarchy is, if not necessarily rejective, then at least suspicious of the chronically unfulfilled liberatory promise of high technology. And maybe most important of all is the massive revulsion against work, an institution which has become more and more important, and oppressive, to people outside academia who actually have to work. Most people would rather do less work than attend more meetings. Post-leftist anarchists mostly don’t regard our times one-dimension- ally, as either a “decadent, bourgeoisified era” of “social reaction” or as the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The system, unstable as ever, never ceases to create conditions which undermine it. Its self-inflicted wounds await our salt. If you don’t believe in progress, it’ll never disappoint you and you might even make some progress.

By taking for our watchword anarchy, in its sense of no-government, we intend to express a pronounced tendency of human society. In history we see that precisely those epochs when small parts of humanity broke down the power of their rulers and reassumed their freedom were epochs of the greatest progress, economical and intellectual. Be it the growth of the free cities, whose unrivalled monuments —free work of free associations of workers—still testify of the revival of mind and of the well-being of the citizen; be it the great movement which gave birth to the Reformation —those epochs witnessed the greatest progress when the individual recovered some part of his freedom. And if we carefully watch the present development of civilised nations, we cannot fail to discover in it a marked and ever-growing movement towards limiting more and more the sphere of action of government, so as to leave more and more liberty to the initiative of the individual. After having tried all kinds of government, and endeavoring to solve the insoluble problem of having a government ‘which might compel the individual to obedience, without escaping itself from obedience to collectively,’ humanity is trying now to free itself from the bonds of any government whatever, and to respond to its needs of organisation by the free understanding between individuals prosecuting the same common aims.

There are a million ways to go about attacking the interconnected structures of power and oppression, and creating anarchy. Only you can decide which paths to take. It’s important not to let your efforts be diverted into any of the channels that are built into the system to recuperate and neutralize resistance, such as requesting change from a political party rather than creating it yourself, or allowing your efforts and creations to become commodities, products, or fashions. To free ourselves, we need to regain control over every aspect of our lives: our culture, our entertainment, our relationships, our housing and education and healthcare, the way we protect our communities and produce food — everything. Without getting isolated in single-issue campaigns, figure out where your own passions and skills lie, what problems concern you and your community, and what you can do yourself. At the same time, stay abreast of what others are doing, so you can build mutually inspiring relationships of solidarity.

The State had now disappeared from my conception of society; there remained only the application of Anarchism to those vague yearnings for the outpouring of new ideals in education, in literature, in art, in customs, social converse, and in ethical concepts. And now the way became easy; for all this talking up and down the question of wealth was foreign to my taste. But education! As long ago as I could remember I has dreamed of an education which should be a getting at the secrets of nature, not as reported through another’s eyes, but just the thing itself; I had dreamed of a teacher who should go out and attract his pupils around him as the Greeks did of old, and then go trooping out into the world, free monarchs, learning everywhere —learning nature, learning man, learning to know life in all its forms, and not to hug one little narrow spot and declare it the finest one on earth for the patriotic reason that they live there, and here I picked up Wm. Morris’ News from Nowhere, and found the same thing. And there were the new school artists in France and Germany, the literateurs, the scientists, the inventors, the poets, all breaking way from ancient forms. And there were Emerson and Channing and Thoreau in ethics, preaching the supremacy of individual conscience over the law,— indeed, all that mighty trend of Protestantism and Democracy, which every once in a while lifts up its head above the judgments of the commonplace in some single powerful personality.

That indeed is the triumphant word of Anarchism: it comes as the logical conclusion of three hundred years of revolt against external temporal and spiritual authority—the word which has no compromise to offer, which holds before us the unswerving ideal of the Free Man.

Anarchy, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property, from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.


Source code

Anarchy is the opposition to authority, the rejection of hierarchy and the struggle for autonomy and self-determination.

Anarchy is above all a practice, not a theory. It is about actively working to end authoritarian relationships wherever they exist, and build non-authoritarian alternatives. It is not about trying to prescribe a way of life for an imagined place and time, and imagined people. It is for real people and dealing with real problems.

Anarchy is desire for freedom. 

Anarchy is hundreds of years of disparate people yearning to be freer.

Here are some of them.

---

Anarchy is the thing we want. It is 
the Beautiful Idea. It is the entirely 
impractical idea that we can be, and 
must insist on being, totally free. From 
domination, of course, but also from 
mundanity and morality. It is the id to 
the super-ego of society and its 
shaming, fear-instilling humiliations and 
self-inflicted limitations.

Anarchy is an act of faith—a leap 
into the unknown—and a totally sober 
proposition. It is an explosion and the 
simple things we do unconsciously. 
It is something that predates civilization 
and cannot be tamed by cities, 
governments, exchange, or politics. 

Anarchy is anarchy, it is both organization 
(along completely different lines 
than the ones that currently exist on 
a broad level), and chaos. It is each of 
us having the ability to determine our 
own lives and the ways that we relate 
to others, from our most intimate 
relationships to the more far-flung. 
Anarchy is impossible and it is 
that very impossibility that makes it 
desirable. As desirable as the eventual 
lover or the water at the end of a long 
hike. As impossible as independence, 
autonomy, and collaboration among 
equals. 

Long Live Anarchy! 

Anarchy describes a particular type 
of situation, one in which either 
authority does not exist or its power 
to control is negated. Such a situation 
guarantees nothing—not even the 
continued existence of that situation, 
but it does open up the possibility for 
each of us to start creating our lives 
for ourselves in terms of our own 
desires and passions rather than in 
terms of social roles and the demands 
of social order. Anarchy is not the goal 
of revolution; it is the situation which 
makes the only type of revolution that 
interests me possible—an uprising 
of individuals to create their lives for 
themselves and destroy what stands in 
their way. It is a situation free of any 
moral implications, presenting to each 
of us the amoral challenge to live our 
lives without constraints. 

Since the anarchic situation is  amoral, 
the idea of an anarchist morality is 
highly suspect. Morality is a system of 
principles defining what constitutes 
right and wrong behavior. It implies 
some absolute outside of individuals 
by which they are to define themselves, 
a commonality of all people that 
makes certain principles applicable to 
everyone.    

As opponents of control, we 
should not assume an adversarial 
position (like the forces of counter-control), 
nor identify ourselves with the oppressed 
(the controlled); rather, we should situate 
ourselves within the matrix of anarchy, 
and become uncontrollables. Only then can 
we develop a liberatory praxis, which 
simultaneously promotes the disintegration 
of the entire control complex, and 
facilitates others to reintegrate within 
the creative potentialities of anarchy. 
We should be neither demonic, nor 
humanist, but anarchic. 

Our divine principle should not be deistic power, 
or demonic, Dionysian energies, or  
human community, but positive and 
creative chaos (a natural “order” which 
the advocates of order designate as 
disorder). Chaos is homologous with 
ecological order, and social ecology 
constitutes the specifically human 
component within that order. It is 
from this position that we must approach 
those existential problems that
remain so troubling.

If anarchy does not have a road map 
then we (as anarchists) are free to 
work together. Our projects might 
not be of the same scale as the general 
strike, or even the halting of business-as-usual 
in a major metropolitan area, 
but they would be anarchist projects. 

An anarchy without road map or 
adjectives could be one where the 
context of the decisions that we make 
together will be of our own creation 
rather than imposed upon us. It could 
be an anarchy of now rather than the 
hope of another day. It would place the 
burden of establishing trust on those 
who actually have a common political 
goal (the abolition of the state and 
capitalism) rather than on those who 
have no goal at all or whose goal is 
antithetical to an anarchist one. 

An anarchy without road map or 
adjectives does not ignore difference 
but instead places it in the context that 
it belongs in. When we are faced with 
a moment of extreme tension, when 
everything that we know appears 
about to change, then we may choose 
different forks in the road. Until that 
time anarchists should approach each 
other with the naïvete that we approach 
the world with. If we believe 
that the world can change and could 
change in a radical direction from the 
one traveled the past several thousand 
years then we should have some trust 
in others who desire the same things.

The goals of anarchy don’t include replacing 
one ruling class with another, neither in the 
guise of a fairer boss or as a party. This 
is key because this is what separates 
anarchist revolutionaries from Maoist, 
socialist, and nationalist revolutionaries 
who from the onset do not embrace 
complete revolution. They cannot envision 
a truly free and equalitarian society and 
must to some extent embrace the 
socialization process that makes 
exploitation and oppression possible 
and prevalent in the first place.

Our anarchy is an anarchy of abundance.
It must be in order to survive 
against the power of our enemies. 
We are forcing the horizons wide open 
to the imagination. We believe there 
can (and must) be a world that has both 
wilderness and cities—a planet where 
people live in hunting-gathering tribes 
and in the diverse neighborhoods of 
cities. Where the goals of both groups 
are in harmony. There is enough creativity 
in our minds, enough courage in our souls, 
and enough passion in our hearts to 
accommodate both green and urban anarchy. 
No desire need succeed by destroying the other.

Anarchy is positioned to 
articulate —not a program—
but a number of revolutionary themes 
with contemporary relevance and 
resonance. It is unambiguously anti-
political, and many people are anti-
political. It is hedonistic, and many 
people fail to see why life is not to be 
lived enjoyably if it is to be lived at all. 
It is “individualistic” in the sense that 
if the freedom and happiness of the 
individual —ie, each and every really 
existing person, every Tom, Dick and 
Murray —is not the measure of the 
good society, what is? Many people 
wonder what’s wrong with wanting to 
be happy. Post-leftist anarchy is, if not 
necessarily rejective, then at least 
suspicious of the chronically unfulfilled 
liberatory promise of high technology. 
And maybe most important of all is 
the massive revulsion against work, 
an institution which has become more 
and more important, and oppressive, 
to people outside academia who actually 
have to work. Most people would 
rather do less work than attend more 
meetings. Post-leftist anarchists mostly 
don’t regard our times one-dimension-
ally, as either a “decadent, bourgeoisified
era” of “social reaction” or as the 
dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The 
system, unstable as ever, never ceases 
to create conditions which undermine
it. Its self-inflicted wounds await our 
salt. If you don’t believe in progress, 
it’ll never disappoint you and you 
might even make some progress. 

By taking for our watchword anarchy, 
in its sense of no-government, 
we intend to express a pronounced 
tendency of human society. In history 
we see that precisely those epochs 
when small parts of humanity broke 
down the power of their rulers and 
reassumed their freedom were epochs 
of the greatest progress, economical 
and intellectual. Be it the growth of the 
free cities, whose unrivalled monuments
—free work of free associations 
of workers—still testify of the revival 
of mind and of the well-being of the 
citizen; be it the great movement 
which gave birth to the Reformation
—those epochs witnessed the 
greatest progress when the individual 
recovered some part of his freedom. 
And if we carefully watch the present 
development of civilised nations, we 
cannot fail to discover in it a marked 
and ever-growing movement towards 
limiting more and more the sphere of 
action of government, so as to leave 
more and more liberty to the initiative 
of the individual. After having tried all 
kinds of government, and endeavoring 
to solve the insoluble problem of 
having a government ‘which might 
compel the individual to obedience, 
without escaping itself from obedience 
to collectively,’ humanity is trying now 
to free itself from the bonds of any 
government whatever, and to respond 
to its needs of organisation by the free 
understanding between individuals 
prosecuting the same common aims. 

There are a million ways to go about 
attacking the interconnected 
structures of power and oppression, 
and creating anarchy. Only you can 
decide which paths to take. It’s important 
not to let your efforts be diverted 
into any of the channels that are built 
into the system to recuperate and neutralize 
resistance, such as requesting 
change from a political party rather 
than creating it yourself, or allowing 
your efforts and creations to become 
commodities, products, or fashions. 
To free ourselves, we need to regain 
control over every aspect of our lives: 
our culture, our entertainment, our 
relationships, our housing and education 
and healthcare, the way we protect 
our communities and produce food — 
everything. Without getting isolated 
in single-issue campaigns, figure out 
where your own passions and skills 
lie, what problems concern you and 
your community, and what you can do 
yourself. At the same time, stay abreast 
of what others are doing, so you can 
build mutually inspiring relationships 
of solidarity. 

The State had now disappeared 
from my conception of society; 
there remained only the application of 
Anarchism to those vague yearnings 
for the outpouring of new ideals in 
education, in literature, in art, in 
customs, social converse, and in ethical 
concepts. And now the way became 
easy; for all this talking up and down 
the question of wealth was foreign to 
my taste. But education! As long ago as 
I could remember I has dreamed of an 
education which should be a getting at 
the secrets of nature, not as reported 
through another’s eyes, but just the 
thing itself; I had dreamed of a teacher 
who should go out and attract his 
pupils around him as the Greeks did of 
old, and then go trooping out into the 
world, free monarchs, learning everywhere
—learning nature, learning man, 
learning to know life in all its forms, 
and not to hug one little narrow spot 
and declare it the finest one on earth 
for the patriotic reason that they live 
there, and here I picked up Wm. Morris’ 
News from Nowhere, and found the 
same thing. And there were the new 
school artists in France and Germany, 
the literateurs, the scientists, the 
inventors, the poets, all breaking way 
from ancient forms. And there were 
Emerson and Channing and Thoreau 
in ethics, preaching the supremacy of
individual conscience over the law,—
indeed, all that mighty trend of 
Protestantism and Democracy, which every 
once in a while lifts up its head above 
the judgments of the commonplace 
in some single powerful personality. 

That indeed is the triumphant word 
of Anarchism: it comes as the logical 
conclusion of three hundred years of 
revolt against external temporal and 
spiritual authority—the word which 
has no compromise to offer, which 
holds before us the unswerving ideal 
of the Free Man.

Anarchy, then, really stands for the 
liberation of the human mind 
from the dominion of religion; the 
liberation of the human body from the 
dominion of property, from the 
shackles and restraint of government. 
Anarchism stands for a social order based 
on the free grouping of individuals for 
the purpose of producing real social 
wealth; an order that will guarantee to 
every human being free access to the 
earth and full enjoyment of the 
necessities of life, according to individual 
desires, tastes, and inclinations.