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Bob Black Anarchy 101 What is “anarchism”? What is “anarchy”? Who are “anarchists”? Anarchism is an idea about what’s the best way to live. Anarchy is the name for that way of living. Anarchism is the idea that the state (government) is unnecessary and harmful. Anarchy is society without government. Anarchists are people who believe in anarchism and desire for us all to live in anarchy (as all our ancestors did for at least a million years). People who believe in government (such as liberals, conservatives, socialists and fascists) are known as “statists.” Anarchists appreciate that statists don’t believe all the same things. Some of their differences with each other are important. But the most important difference of all is between what they all believe in—the state—and what anarchists believe in: anarchy It might sound like anarchism is purely negative, that it’s just against something. Anarchism truly is unconditionally against something: the state. But it is also for something: a decentralized, cooperative, human-scale society. Anarchists have many positive ideas about life in a stateless society. But, unlike Marxists, liberals and conservatives, they don’t offer a blueprint. Aren’t anarchists bomb-throwers? No — at least not compared to, say the United States Government. Why do we still hear about “bomb-throwing anarchists,” although anarchists rarely throw bombs any more, but not about “bomb-dropping Presidents”? According to one study, governments killed 292 million civilians during the 20th century. They are by far the greatest terrorists. Anarchists have been active for many years and in many countries, under autocratic as well as democratic governments. Sometimes, especially under conditions of severe repression, some anarchists have thrown bombs. But that has been the exception. The “bomb-throwing anarchist” stereotype was concocted by politicians and journalists in the late 19th century, and they still won’t let go of it, but even back then it was a gross exaggeration. Has there ever been an anarchist society that worked? Yes, many thousands of them. For their first million years or more, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers in small bands of equals, without hierarchy or authority. These are our ancestors. Anarchist societies must have been successful, otherwise none of us would be here. The state is only a few thousand years old, and it has taken that long for it to subdue the last anarchist societies, such as the San (Bushmen), the Pygmies and the Yanamomo Indians in the Amazon. But we can’t go back to that way of life. Most anarchists would agree. But it’s still worthwhile to study these societies, if only to learn that anarchy isn’t impossible. We might even to pick up some ideas on how a completely voluntary, highly individualistic, yet cooperative society might work. To take just one example, anarchist foragers and tribesmen often have highly effective methods of conflict resolution, including mediation and nonbinding arbitration. Their methods work better than our legal systems because the family, friends and neighbors of the disputants encourage disputants to agree, helped by sympathetic and trustworthy go-betweens, to find some reasonable resolution of the problem. In the 1970s and 1980s, academic supposed experts tried to transplant some of these methods into the American legal system. Naturally the transplants withered and died, because they only live in a free society. Anarchists are naïve: they think human nature is essentially good. Not so. It’s true that anarchists reject ideas of innate depravity or Original Sin. Those are religious ideas that most people no longer believe in. But anarchists don’t usually believe that human nature is essentially good either. They take people as they are. Human beings aren’t “essentially” anything. We who live under capitalism and its ally, the state, are just people who have never had a chance to be all we can be. (And surely the last place to be all you can be is in the Army!—which is where you can most clearly see the essence of the state: blind obedience, hierarchy, and systematic violence.) Although anarchists often make moral appeals to the best in people, just as often they appeal to enlightened self-interest. Anarchism is not a doctrine of self-sacrifice, although anarchists have fought and died for what they believe in. Anarchists believe that the carrying-out of their basic idea would mean a better life for almost everyone. How can you trust people not to victimize each other without the state to control crime? If you can’t trust ordinary people not to victimize each other, how can you trust the state not to victimize us all? Are the people who get into power so unselfish, so dedicated, so superior to the ones they rule? Political power, as anarchist Alex Comfort argued, attracts some of the same kind of people as crime does. The more you distrust your fellow man, the more reason there is for you to become an anarchist. Under anarchy, power is reduced and spread around. Everybody has some, but nobody has very much. Under the state, power is concentrated, and most people have none, really. Which kind of power would you like to go up against? But — let’s get real — what would happen if there were no police? As anarchist Allen Thornton observes, “Police aren’t in the protection business; they’re in the revenge business.” Forget about Batman driving around interrupting crimes in progress. Police patrol does not prevent crime or catch criminals. When police patrol was discontinued secretly and selectively in Kansas City neighborhoods, the crime rate stayed the same. Other research likewise finds that detective work, crime labs, etc. have no effect on the crime rate. But when neighbors get together to watch over each other and warn off would-be criminals, criminals try another neighborhood which is protected only by the police. The criminals know that they are in little danger there. But the modern state is deeply involved in the regulation of everyday life. Almost every activity has some sort of state connection. That’s true — but when you think about it, everyday life is almost entirely anarchist. Rarely does one encounter a policeman, unless he is writing you a traffic ticket for speeding. Voluntary arrangements and understandings prevail almost everywhere. As anarchist Rudolph Rocker wrote: “The fact is that even under the worst despotism most of man’s personal relations with his fellows are arranged by free agreement and solidaric cooperation, without which social life would not be possible at all.” Family life, buying and selling, friendship, worship, sex, and leisure are anarchist. Even in the workplace, which many anarchists consider to be as coercive as the state, workers notoriously cooperate, independent of the boss, both to minimize work and to get it done. Some people say anarchy doesn’t work. But it’s almost the only thing that does! The state rests, uneasily, on a foundation of anarchy, and so does the economy. Aren’t anarchists atheists? Most people aren’t atheists. You don’t have to be an atheist to be an anarchist. Anarchists respect everyone’s personal beliefs, they just don’t want them to be imposed on others. Historically, many anarchists have been atheists because organized religion has historically been the ally of the state, and because religion has discouraged people from thinking for themselves. All anarchists oppose the unholy alliance of church and state whether in Iran or Israel or the United States. But there have been influential Christian anarchists (Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Day), Jewish anarchists (Paul Goodman), Muslim anarchists (Hakim Bey), and anarchists who identify with pagan or Eastern religious traditions. Culture? Anarchism has always attracted generous and creative spirits who have enriched our culture. Anarchist poets include Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. American anarchist essayists include Henry David Thoreau and, in the 20th century, Dwight Macdonald, Paul Goodman, and the Catholic anarchist Dorothy Day. Anarchist scholars include the linguist Noam Chomsky, the historian Howard Zinn, and the anthropologists A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Pierre Clastres and David Graeber. Anarchist literary figures are far too numerous to list but include Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, B. Traven, Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein ), and Alex Comfort (author of anarchist essays as well as The Joy of Sex). Anarchist painters include Gustav Courbet, Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, and Jackson Pollock. Other creative anarchists include such musicians as John Cage, John Lennon, the band CRASS, etc. Supposing you’re right, that anarchy is a better way to live than what we have now, how can we possibly overthrow the state if it’s as powerful and oppressive as you say it is? Anarchists have always thought about this question. They have no single, simple answer. In Spain, where there were one million anarchists in 1936 when the military attempted a coup, they fought the Fascists at the front at the same time that they supported workers in taking over the factories, and the peasants in forming collectives on the land. Anarchists did the same thing in the Ukraine in 1918–1920, where they had to fight both the Czarists and the Communists. But that’s not how we will bring down the system in the world of the 21st century. Consider the revolutions that overthrew Communism in Eastern Europe. There was some violence and death involved, more in some countries than in others. But what brought down the politicians, bureaucrats and generals — the same enemy we face — was most of the population just refusing to work or do anything else to keep a rotten system going. What were the commissars in Moscow or Warsaw to do, drop nuclear weapons on themselves? Exterminate the workers that they were living off?