At the beginning of each issue of The Transmetropolitan Review we provided a brief explanation of what anarchism is. Too long have our detractors, infiltrators, the media, the police, and rich kids have been the ones explaining what anarchism is to the public. In each issue, we have aimed to keep our definitions simple, to combine the words of anarchists throughout time and synthesize their thoughts into something short and easy to understand. This is an unending effort, and anarchist pedagogy is notoriously slow. But out goal remains to spread anarchism, and so we present you with the definitions of anarchism, originally released in the fall-winter of 2015-2016 in the Seattle region. Around 700 issues of each paper were printed, and each issue has received around 1000 views on the website. We encourage other anarchists to engage in similar projects in their respective regions. At this moment of electoral narcosis and confusion, we must remind people of the beautiful idea and what it can offer to this bruised and battered world.
#3
Organization which is, after all, only the practice of cooperation and solidarity, is a natural and necessary condition of social life. It is an inescapable fact which forces itself on everybody, as much on human society in general as on any group of people who are working towards a common objective. The age long oppression of the masses by a small priveliged group has always been the result of the inability of most workers to agree among themselves to organize with others for production, for enjoyment, and for the possible needs of defence against whoever might wish to exploit and oppress them. Anarchism exists to remedy this state of of affairs, to trigger this organization.
When a community has needs and its members do not know how to organize spontaneously to provide them, someone comes forward, an authority who satisfies those needs by utilising the services of all and directing them to his liking. If the city streets are unsafe and the people do not know what measures to take, a police force emerges that expects to be supported and paid by the community, as well as imposing itself on them and throwing its weight around. If some item is needed, and the community does not know how to arrange with the distant producers to supply it in exchange for their locally produced goods, the merchant will appear who will profit by wedging himself between the producer and consumer. This is what has happened in our midst; the less organized we have become, the more prone we are to imposed on by a few individuals. And this is understandable…
So much so that organization, far from creating authority, is the only cure for it and the only means whereby each one of us will get used to taking an active and conscious part in collective work, and cease being passive instruments in the hands of rulers.
An anarchist organization must, in my opinion, allow for complete autonomy, independence, and therefor full responsibility, to individuals and groups. Free agreement between those who think it useful to come together for cooperative actions. A moral duty to fulfill ones pledges and to take no action which is contrary to any agreements. On such bases one then introduces practical forms and the suitable instruments to give real life to the organization. Thus the groups, the federation of groups, the federations of federations, meetings, assemblies, farms, coops, etc. But this all must be done freely, in such a way as to not restrict the thought and initiative of individual members, but only to give greater scope to the efforts which, in isolation, would be impossible or ineffective.
We would certainly be happy is we could all get along well together and unite all the forces of anarchism in a strong movement; but we do not believe in the solidity of organization which are built up on concessions and assumptions and in which there is no real agreement and sympathy between members. Better disunited than badly united. But we would wish that each individual joined their friends and that there should be no isolated forces, or lost forces.
The fundamental error of the reformists is that of dreaming of solidarity, a sincere collaboration, between masters and servants, between proprietors anf workers. Those who envisage a society of well stuffed pigs which waddle contentedly under the thumb of a small number of swineherd; who do not take into account the need for freedom and human dignity; who believe in a God or a Market that orders the poor to be submissive and the rich to be good and charitable–are gravely mistaken. A social peace based on abundance for all will remain a dream so long as society is divided into antagonistic classes, that is the employers and the employees.
The antagonism is spiritual rather than material. There will never be a sincere understanding between bosses and workers because the bosses above all want to remain bosses and secure always more power at the expense of the workers and the land, as well as by competition with other bosses, whereas the workers have had their fill of bosses and don’t want more!
We are reformers today in so far as we seek to create the most favourable conditions and as large a body of enlightened militants so that a insurrection by the people would be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. But we will never recognize the institutions. We will take or win all possible reforms with the same spirit that one tears occupied territory from the enemy’s grasp in order to go on advancing, and we will always remain enemies of every government, whether it be that of the Democrats today, or the Republican or Socialist governments of tomorrow.
Since no one can do everything in this world, one must choose one’s own line of conduct. The rest follows.
#4
The word “anarchy” was universally used in the sense of disorder and confusion; and it is to this day used in that sense by the uninformed as well as by political opponents with an interest in distorting the truth.
We will not enter into a philological discussion, since the question is historical and not philological. The common interpretation of the word recognises its true and etymological meaning; but it is a derivative of that meaning due to the prejudiced view that government was a necessary organ of social life, and that consequently a society without government would be at the mercy of disorder, and fluctuate between the unbridled arrogance of some, and the blind vengeance of others.
The existence of this prejudice and its influence on the public’s definition of the word “anarchy” is easily explained. Humans, like all living beings, adapt and accustom themselves to the conditions under which they live and pass on acquired habits. Thus, having been born and bred in bondage, when the descendants of a long line of slaves started to think, they believed that slavery was an essential condition of life and freedom seemed impossible to them. Similarly, workers who for centuries were obliged, and therefore accustomed, to depend for work, that is bread, on the goodwill of the master, and to see their lives always at the mercy of the owners of the land and of capital, ended by believing that it is the master who feeds them, and ingenuously ask one how would it be possible to live if there were no masters.
So, since it was thought that government was necessary and that without government there could only be disorder and confusion, it was natural and logical that anarchy, which means absence of government, should sound like absence of order. Nor is the phenomenon without parallel in the history of words. In times and in countries where the people believed in the need for government by one man (monarchy) the word republic, which is government by many, was in fact used in the sense of disorder and confusion — and this meaning is still to be found in the popular language of almost all countries.
Change opinion, convince the public that government is not only unnecessary but extremely harmful, and then the word anarchy, just because it means absence of government, will come to mean for everybody: natural order, unity of human needs and the interests of all, complete freedom within complete solidarity.
Those who say, therefore, that the anarchists have badly chosen their name because it is wrongly interpreted by the masses and lends itself to wrong interpretations, are mistaken. The error does not come from the word but from the thing; and the difficulties anarchists face in their propaganda do not depend on the name they have taken, but on the fact that their concept clashes with all the public’s long established prejudices on the function of government, or the State as it is also called.
The Revolution is the creation of new living institutions, new groupings, new social relationships; it is the destruction of privileges and monopolies; it is the new spirit of justice, of solidarity, of freedom which must renew the whole of social life, raise the moral level and the material conditions of the masses by calling on them to provide, through their direct and conscious action, for their own futures. Revolution is the organisation of all public services by those who work in them in their own interest as well as the public’s; Revolution is the destruction of all coercive ties; it is the autonomy of groups, of communes, of regions; Revolution is the free federation brought about by a desire for solidarity, by individual and collective interests, by the needs of production and defence; Revolution is the constitution of innumerable free groupings based on ideas, wishes, and tastes of all kinds that exist among the people; Revolution is the forming and disbanding of thousands of representative, district, communal, regional, national bodies which, without having any legislative power, serve to make known and to coordinate the desires and interests of people near and far and which act through information, advice and example. Revolution is freedom proved in the crucible of facts — and lasts so long as freedom lasts, that is until others, taking advantage of the weariness that overtakes the masses, of the inevitable disappointments that follow exaggerated hopes, of the probable errors and human faults, succeed in constituting a power, which supported by an army of conscripts or mercenaries, lays down the law, arrests the movement at the point it has reached, and then begins the reaction.
(Reprinted from The Anarchist Library)
Anonymous