there is probably more rubbish talked about anarchism than any other political idea. actually, it has nothing to do with a belief in chaos, death and destruction. anarchists do not normally carry bombs, nor do they ascribe any virtue to beating up old ladies.
it is no accident that the sinister image of the mad anarchist is so accepted. the state, the press and all the assorted authoritarian types, use every means at their disposal to present anarchy as an unthinkable state of carnage and chaos. we can expect little else from power-mongers who would have no power to monger if we had our way. they have to believe that authority and obedience are essential in order to justify their own crimes to themselves. the tv, press and films all preach obedience, and when anarchy is mentioned at all, it is presented as mindless destruction.
the alleged necessity of authority is so firmly planted in the average mind that anarchy, which means simply 'no government' is almost unthinkable to most people. the same people, on the other hand, will admit that rules, regulations, taxes, officiousness and abuse of power (to name but a few) are irritating to say the least. these things are usually thought to be worth suffering in silence because the alternative - no power, no authority, everybody doing what they pleased - would be horrible. it would be anarchy.
yet there are a limitless range of possible societies without the state. not all of them would be unpleasant to live in. quite the contrary! any kind of anarchist society would at least be spared the horrible distortions the state produces. the 'negative' side of anarchism - abolition of the state - has to be balanced against what replaces it - a society of freedom and free co-operation.
various sorts of anarchists have differing ideas on exactly how society ought to be organised. they all agree that the state must be replaced by a society without classes and without force. it is because of this belief in freedom that we are reluctant to put forward a rigid blueprint. we offer only possible models backed up by evidence drawn from life. actually, there has already been an anarchist society and it took nothing less than mass murder to stop it.
another common misunderstanding from those who know slightly more about it, is that anarchism is a nice daydream, a beautiful but impractical idea. in fact, the anarchist movement has a long history and it arose not in the heads of ivory tower philosophers, but directly from the practical struggle for survival of masses of ordinary, downtrodden people. it has always been intensely practical in its concerns and its ways of doing things. the movement has come quite close to success a few times. if it is really so hopelessly impractical, then why is the state so determined to stamp it out?
elementary anarchism
very few people seem to understand anarchism, even though it is a very simple, straightforward idea. it can be expressed basically as running our own lives instead of being pushed around.
there is nothing complicated or threatening about anarchism, except the fearsome arguments it can get you into. such as the one about the chaos there would be if everyone did just what they wanted. but we have chaos already don't we? millions are out of work, whilst others do too much boring, repetitive labour. people starve at the same time as food is being dumped into the sea to keep prices up. our air is choked by the fumes from cars that contain only one person. the list of crazy, chaotic things that happen is endless.
even the 'good' things that the state does are actually harmful. the health service, for example, patches us up just like an industrial repair shop which in a sense it is. it serves to make us dependent on the state and, worst of all, it buys us off cheaply. it prevents us from creating the genuine, self-managed health service we need, geared to our needs not theirs.
authorities by their very nature can only interfere and impose things. surely, ordinary people can figure out some way of coping, without planners knocking down their houses to build yet more empty office blocks? it is a basic anarchist principle that only people who live in an area have the right to decide what happens there.
all this chaos, we believe, arises from authority and the state. without the ruling class and its need to keep us in bondage, there would be no state. without the state we would be in a position to organise freely for our own ends. surely we couldn't make a worse mess than we are stuck with already? free organisation could provide a much greater orderliness than a society that concentrates on the systematic robbery and suppression of the majority of its members.
some common arguments against anarchism
we are often asked how an anarchist society would deal with, for instance, murderers. who would stop them without the police?
most murders are crimes of passion and therefore unpreventable by police or anyone else. hopefully, however, in a saner, less frustrating society such 'crimes' would be less common.
our rulers claim to be protecting us from each other. actually they are more interested in protecting themselves and 'their' property from us.
if we, as members of a local community, owned and shared all resources it would become absurd to steal. an important motive for crime would be abolished.
these local communities would need to develop some means of dealing with individuals who harmed others. instead of a few thousand professional police there would be 51 million in the 'united kingdom' alone. ultimately, our only protection is each other.
prisons fail to improve or reform anyone. local people aware of each others' circumstances would be able to apply more suitable solutions, in keeping with the needs of the victim and the offender. the present penal system, on the other hand, creates criminal behaviour. long term prisoners are often rendered incapable of surviving outside an institution that makes all their decisions for them. how is locking people up with others of an anti-social turn of mind (the worst of whom are the screws) supposed to develop responsibility and reasonable behaviour? of course it does just the opposite. the majority of prisoners re-offend.
another question anarchists have had thrown at them for years is: "but who would do all the dirty and unpleasant jobs?". we imagine each community would devise its own rota system. what is so impossible about that?
then there's the question: "but what about those who refuse to work?". well, social pressure can be applied. people could, for example, be 'sent to coventry', i.e. ignored. in drastic cases they could be expelled from the community.
but people need to work. people have a definite need for creative activity. notice how many people spend their time working on cars or motor bikes, in gardening, making clothes, creating music. these are all creative activities that can be enjoyable. they are usually thought of as hobbies rather than work, since we're brought up to think of work as a torment to be endured.
in this society of course, work is a torment. naturally, we hate it. this does not mean that we are naturally lazy, it means that we resent being treated like machines, compelled to do mostly meaningless work for someone else's benefit. work does not have to be like that - and if it were controlled by the people who had to do it, it certainly would not be.
of course some jobs just have to be done, and there are few methods in sight of making collecting rubbish a fun occupation. everybody would have to take a share and everybody would have to see to it that nobody got away with shirking their responsibilities.
a further point worth making is that unemployment is only a problem created by capitalism. in a sensible world there would be no unemployment. everyone would have a shorter working week, because they would only produce things that were needed. if we were to get rid of the parasitic ruling class, we would be free of most of the economic pressure to work.
if you still need to be convinced that an anarchist society could solve the problem of people failing to meet their responsibilities, then imagine yourself being compelled to face a meeting of the whole community you live in and being publicly discussed as a problem. ugh!
yet another common objection is: "well, perhaps it would work on a peasant village scale, but how can you run a complex industrial society without the authority of managers?". well, in the first place, we believe that society needs to be broken down to smaller-scale units as much as possible, so as to make them comprehensible to small groups of ordinary people. it is a noticeable fact of organisation, as well as a basic principle of anarchist theory, that small groups of people can work efficiently together, and co-ordinate with other such groups; whereas large formless groups are gullible and easily dominated. expanding this point it is interesting to note that recently the famous 'economies of scale' that justify steel works, for example, covering many square miles, have been increasingly called into question. beyond a certain point factories, farms, administrative systems and so on, actually get much less efficient as they get larger.
as much as is reasonably possible should be produced and consumed locally. some facilities, however, would have to be dealt with on a regional or even larger scale. there is no insoluble problem about this, in fact solutions were found by the spanish working class in the thirties. the barcelona bus company doubled services, made generous contributions to the city entertainments collective and produced guns for the front in the bus workshops. all this was achieved with a smaller workforce, as many had left to fight the fascists. this amazing increase in efficiency, despite the war and serious shortages of essential supplies, is not surprising on reflection after all, who can best run a bus company? obviously bus workers.
all the barcelona workers were organised into syndicates - groups of workers in the same enterprise, sub-divided into work groups. each group made its own day-to-day decisions and appointed a delegate to represent their views on wider issues concerning the whole factory, or even the whole region. each of the delegates was instructed in what to say by their workmates and the task of being a delegate was frequently rotated. delegates could be changed at short notice if it was felt they were getting out of line (the principle of recallability). these show the basic anarchist principles of free federation in practice. by adding more levels of delegation it is possible to cope with organising activity on any scale, without anyone giving up their freedom to work as they choose. this idea of federalism is illustrated again in a later section called 'local action and organisation'.
let's move on to another objection - "wouldn't a society without a state have no defence from attack by foreign states?".
well, it must be said that having a state hasn't prevented us from being taken over by the us empire. in fact 'our own' armed forces are used against us as an army of occupation. the state does not defend us. it uses us as cannon fodder to defend our rulers, who, if the truth be untangled, are our real enemies.
returning to the question, a classic anarchist answer is to arm the people. anarchist militias in spain very nearly won the civil war despite shortages of weapons, treachery by the communists and intervention by germany and italy. where they made their mistake was in allowing themselves to be integrated into an army run by statists. an armed population would be difficult to subdue.
but yes, we could be destroyed. we believe that the real nuclear threat is from 'our side'. the american rulers would probably exterminate us all rather than willingly allow us our freedom.
against the threat of destruction our best defence is the revolutionary movement in other countries. put another way, our best defence against the russian nuclear bomb is the current movement of the polish workers. this may well spread to the rest of the soviet empire. conversely their best hope of not being vaporised is that we might succeed in abolishing 'our' bomb. (cnd has not yet realised that banning the megadeath weapons means banning the state!)
it is instructive how the russian revolution was saved from wholesale british intervention by a series of mutinies and 'blackings' by british workers.
true security would be guaranteed if we could develop our international contacts to the point where we can be sure that the workers in each 'enemy' country will not allow their rulers to attack us.
the last few pages have been a very brief introduction to the way anarchists think. there are plenty more ideas and details to be found in various books on the subject. but basically you understand anarchism by living it, becoming involved with other anarchists and working on projects, so this is the theme around which the majority of this little book is written - anarchist actions.
anarchism in action
if you have followed this pamphlet so far, you should have a fairly reasonable idea of what an anarchist society is. the problem is how to get from here to there.
within anarchism there are many different but related ideas. there are complete systems of anarchist political theory going by names like federalism, mutualism, individualism, syndicalism, anarchist-communism, anarcha-feminism, situationism, and so on.
the arguments between different brands of anarchism have been going on for a long time and are too involved for an introductory pamphlet.
however, if we think in terms of what anarchism says needs to be done now, it turns out that there is considerable agreement between brands. each strand emphasises the importance of action in a particular area of life.
if you begin to put the ideas of the following pages into practice, you will start to work out your own version of anarchism. by doing this you will be adding a new member to a movement that always needs new members, particularly ones who have thought things through. try your ideas out on your friends, read more on anarchism, talk with other anarchists!
be an independent thinker. there is no other sort.
organising in the workplace
traditionally, anarchists believe that the main problem with the world is that it is divided into masters and 'wage slaves'. if we could get rid of the bosses and run industry ourselves, for the benefit of our own needs not theirs, it would clearly make a big improvement and would transform every area of life.
there are, however, some anarchists who believe the working class is so used to being enslaved that some other route to revolution will have to be found.
an anarchist at work, however, will usually at least try to get his or her workmates to organise themselves. we try to spread the simple idea that by sticking together we resist being pushed around. this is best done by talking to workmates, becoming accepted and trusted by them, rather than by high pressure preaching. solidarity can best be learned through action.
anarchists try to be ready for strikes when they happen. usually the most important task in such situations is to undermine the power of the official union line and get people working together directly rather than through the 'proper channels'. the point of anarchism is to seize control of our own lives, not to hand it over to an official for a sell out. as it happens such direct action is the tried and tested way of winning industrial battles. unity is strength.
to the anarchist, strikes for more small changes, demarcation disputes, and so on, are not especially revolutionary. to us, the only real point in such actions is that in the course of them people may begin to learn how to organise for themselves and gain confidence in their collective power. eventually this experience could prove useful and begin to allow workers effectively to challenge the industrial power structure and build towards complete workers' control of production.
we have a long history to draw on and many useful techniques that have worked elsewhere. there are ideas like slowing down till we reckon we are working at a rate appropriate to the wage. or 'good work' strikes, taking care to do a good job irrespective of the time it takes. such actions only make sense if taken by a group of people in a united fashion. they are examples of direct action. we don't ask the bosses, we tell them. by contrast the indirect (so-called democratic) method is to wait five years and put a cross opposite the name of a labour politician, who turns out to be in the same freemason's lodge as the opposition candidate.
we would hope that self-organisation among workers will once again (as at other times in recent history) reach the point where they are prepared to act together and confront the state in its entirety. if the next time around there is adequate experience, organisation, preparation and awareness, it will be possible to dispose of the state and bosses and move towards an anarchist society and an anarchist world.
there are a variety of ways differing anarchists believe this could come about. some anarchists support the idea of building giant unions controlled from the bottom up, rather than the usual top down structure. this syndicalism is a clear strategy for revolution which has been shown effective in the past. the union ideally includes all the workers in each place and aims to develop self-organisation to the point where the workers can easily take over the factories. strikes can, where necessary, be backed up by solidarity action from other workers.
eventually, enough workers will have joined and become active for a general strike. the state is paralysed and can do nothing if it cannot trust the army to kill its own relatives. the general strike may be a general take-over by the people, or develop into one. at this point the work of building utopia can begin.
some anarchists reject aspects of this plan. they doubt the wisdom of forming unions at all, even if decentralised. they worry that a layer of professional leaders will develop. there is also the danger of getting lost in the swamp of everyday compromise over petty issues.
in any case this difference in approach does not prevent working together. in the 'united kingdom' (joke phrase) the existing labour-mafia controlled unions have already got it all sewn up. the prospects for forming anarchist unions are obviously dismal.
in these circumstances, it seems that the way forward is to try to promote links between workers that by-pass the mafia controlled union hq's which try to monopolise information so as to maintain control. any action such as flying pickets, which puts control in the hands of strikers themselves, should be encouraged.
it would be useful if anarchists working in the same industry were in contact. where contacts do not already exist, a conference is a good starting-off point.
'national' issues
large scale campaigns
anarchists usually make a poor showing in influencing large scale campaigns. this is partly because the christians, liberals, trotskyists, and so on, who generally manage to control them, often make them so lifeless, ineffectual and generally wet that no self-respecting anarchist will go near them.
in fact we see the leaderships of these groups as an important part of the system, whose function is to control protest by steering it harmlessly into 'proper' channels.
an example of this process at work was the attempt by 'friends of the earth' to contest the public inquiry into the windscale nuclear reprocessing plant. the result was that a good deal of energy and money was directed into an entirely useless argument between rival experts. the illusion was fostered that the government is fair and reasonable and has a right to make this kind of decision. the verdict was of course a foregone conclusion and the go-ahead was given. the net effect was to misdirect and defuse protest about the nuclear power programme.
on the other hand, many anarchists believe that it is a good idea to get involved with campaigns such as cnd, the anti-nazi league, animal liberation, and so on. this is because there is some prospect that joining one of these campaigns may be the first step for some people in becoming anarchists. an anarchist's presence might help this process. also, campaigns which bring important issues to public attention provide opportunities to show how particular evils relate to oppression in general and the need for revolution. in some cases it is worth urging anarchists to join such organisations in order to prevent domination by the more noxious political types. sometimes it is actually possible to introduce anarchist methods of organising and direct action tactics.
for example, an anarchist involved in cnd would try to point out the relationship between nuclear weapons, nuclear power, militarism, the state and class society. we would point out the futility of asking the state to behave nicely and would recommend instead asking the workers who build the bombs and the aircraft, and so on, to do something more useful instead. we would also do our best to prevent our old enemy the labour party from taming the anti-missile movement and then quietly burying it, as they did in the early sixties.
we would also try to spread more decentralised methods of organisation, based on small groups federating with each other. this would have the advantages of greater flexibility, giving each member more chance of being fully involved, and of preventing a ruling clique from developing.
few anarchists would claim that a movement like cnd is likely to bring about the revolution, or even to get anywhere near banning nuclear weapons. the best we can reasonably hope for is that it will cause increasing numbers of people to think about how this society really works.
interpersonal relationships
as we have said earlier, there is a concern for the rights of the individual running through anarchism. there is no point in all our activities and theorising if it is not eventually going to make life better for individuals like you and me.
unlike marxists and other fake socialists, we believe in at least trying to live out our principles in everyday life. if you believe in equality you should treat people as equals as far as you can. an anarchist would be less likely to forgive marx's ill treatment of his servants and his wife than a marxist would!
the ways people treat each other add up to make society as a whole. in an insane society like this one, people treat each other badly.
sadly, though, the hippies were wrong. it is not 'all in your head'. individual solutions like dropping acid and living in the country turn out to be not solutions at all, but simply escapism. before the revolution it is not possible simply to choose to live as though you were free. society will not let you.
before the revolution it is up to us to behave as if we were reasonable human beings in a reasonable world as far as possible. it is difficult, but not impossible, with a little help from your friends, to grow to something more than the state of infantile dependence this society tries to keep us in.
