This post is part of our series defining words. Defining words might seem trivial, but one of the most effective strategies authoritarians employ is redefining what specific words mean. The most famous example of this might be when the Nazis tried to redefine socialism. At the time, socialism was extremely popular, but just like today, most people weren’t paying enough attention to really understand it. That made it easy for the Nazis to add the word “national” to create “national socialism” which sounds like a kind of socialism even though it is exactly the opposite. The confusion they created didn’t just help the Nazis of the 1930’s — it continues to help authoritarians today.
anarchism: belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion
Google’s online dictionary
It seems like every day another US politicians is using the word “anarchists” as a pejorative, and in fact, for most Americans, anarchy is synonymous with chaos and destruction. But for anarchists, anarchy is exactly the opposite: Anarchy is order. As an outsider to the left, I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last 4 years trying to make sense of the different kinds of leftists, and I’ve concluded that anarchists believe in the purest form of the leftist ideals of democracy, justice and liberty, based on belief in the innate goodness of human beings.
Anarchists believe that human beings are capable of building a society where everyone is treated with respect and dignity, and is able to get what they need to excel in life. The word literally means “no government”; anarchists believe that once people have established a culture of good, no formal hierarchy (including government) would be necessary. Importantly, all leftists share roughly this same end goal, but disagree with how to get there. The anarchists’ method for working toward these goals is by living their values and thus nudging our culture to be a little bit better, bit by bit — this is completely voluntary change without force or compulsion.
Is this utopian? Perhaps. But what is the alternative? How can we expect to make the world better if we believe that people are innately bad? If that’s true then there’s no government structure that will make the world better because all governments are made of people — and all alternate forms of authority and organization (like markets or corporations) are made up of people as well. The only rational approach is to assume people can be good and try to find ways to free them from systems that debase them, slowly working toward something better. The goal isn’t to attain a utopia, but rather to work toward something better that more closely resembles it. Things can’t be better if we surrender to dystopian assumptions about the nature of people.
Democracy means the people have control of government; the anarchist approach is to give the people so much power that there is no division between the people and the government, and so there essentially is no government. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats believe in democracy; at least the Republicans admit to this. Both parties want a group of elites to hold power, and then the rest of us may only appeal to them to do the right thing. Anarchists understand that electoral power is just one kind of power — and a weak part at best. They want to democratize all kinds of power but also help people develop the ethical and technical skills necessary to wield that power.
Anarchists believe we are capable of administering justice among ourselves, particularly if we form coherent communities where we know one another. Because they believe in the innate goodness of human beings, they are willing to go the extra mile to redeem people who have failed their communities, instead of immediately tossing them in the trash as our current society does. Anarchists understand that punitive systems of justice only make things worse.
I would break an anarchist view of liberty into three components: First, yes, you should be free to do what you want (assuming it doesn’t hurt other people). Second, the responsibility that comes with freedom is responsibility to your community. Third, the best way to achieve your own freedom and respect your responsibility to your community is to take personal responsibility for your own actions and power. That means that you willingly work with your community to make amends if you make a mistake that harms someone else. Anarchists accept the burden of freedom, so they are able to take democracy seriously.
Two general methods anarchists use to build a better world are mutual aid and dual power.
Mutual aid is a community working together to help itself. Different individuals might have time, skills or resources necessary to address an issue, and each person provides what they can and, hopefully, receives what they need. When it is working optimally, mutual aid results in the same people both providing help and receiving help.
Community defense is another way of describing mutual aid; it refers to defense against any kind of destruction that might threaten a community (not just violence). Because it is a form of mutual aid, it works best when the entire community participates. Instead of a model of defense where “sheep dogs” protect “sheep” from “wolves”, it is a model where everyone is important and participating in their own defense. No one is above or below anyone else. For example, instead of relying on FEMA to rescue people in a flood, anarchists would organize the community to rescue itself; community members with time, skills and/or resources would make sure that everyone else in the community was safe. Community defense is more specific than mutual aid because it implies an attack.
For anarchists, dual power means identifying institutions that are oppressive and undemocratic and building functionally similar organizations that are controlled by the community. In terms of food, for example, if all the food in your community is sold by one grocery store that is owned by an out-of-state corporation with a global supply chain, then anarchists would want to build another method of food distribution based on food grown by local farmers and distributed by members of the community.
All these ideas are obviously good in both a practical and moral sense, yet anarchists have been consistently vilified. There’s a simple explanation for why the media, both political parties, and every other major system of power dismisses anarchy, portrays it as crazy talk, and conflates it with things like violence, vandalism, and chaos: Anarchism is pure democracy and democracy is a threat to any power system. This has been true historically as well: Every authoritarian system in modern times has attacked anarchists.
Mid-Missouri John Brown Gun Club has members of various political identities, but works based on anarchist organizing principles, which means operating without a formal hierarchy (although individuals do take on specific responsibilities), and always trying to find the ethical solution to problems based on an optimistic view of humanity. We’ve found that though organizing this way certainly has challenges and requires extra work, it is well worth it.
RELATED MATERIAL
If you are a Christian, you might be interested in Elbert Hubbard’s 1939 book Jesus Was an Anarchist which is available as a free download.
Existential Comics has devoted quite a few comics to historical anarchists, with a recurring punchline that accurately reflects how authoritarian governments react to real anarchists. Here are two of my favorites:
Are You an Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! by David Graeber
If you’d like to watch a video of anarchism explained by a respected expert, then I recommend this video of Noam Chomsky (2013; 36 minutes):