[1] Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariway write that before colonial contact nearly all traditional African societies were “anarchies,” and they make a strong argument to this effect. The same could also be said of other continents. But as the author does not come from any of these societies, and since Western culture traditionally believes it has the right to represent other societies in self-serving ways, it is best to avoid such broad characterizations, while still endeavoring to learn from these examples.

[2] “The Really Really Free Market: Instituting the Gift Economy,” Rolling Thunder, No. 4 Spring 2007, p. 34.

[3] Robert K. Dentan, The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979, p. 48.

[4] Christopher Boehm, “Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy,” Current Anthropology, Vol. 34, No. 3, June 1993.

[5] Amy Goodman, “Louisiana Official: Federal Gov’t Abandoned New Orleans,” Democracy Now, September 7, 2005. Fox News, CNN, and The New York Times all falsely reported murders and roving gangs of rapists in the Superdome, where refugees gathered during the storm. (Aaron Kinney, “Hurricane Horror Stories,” Salon.com)

[6] Jesse Walker (“Nightmare in New Orleans: Do disasters destroy social cooperation?” Reason Online, September 7, 2005) cites the studies of sociologist E.L. Quarantelli, who has found that “After the cataclysm, social bonds will strengthen, volunteerism will explode, violence will be rare...”

[7] Roger M. Keesing, Andrew J. Strathern, Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, 3^rd Edition, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998, p.83.

[8] Judith Van Allen “Sitting On a Man”: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women.” Canadian Journal of African Studies. Vol. ii, 1972, pp. 211–219.

[9] Johan M.G. van der Dennen, “Ritualized ‘Primitive’ Warfare and Rituals in War: Phenocopy, Homology, or...?” rechten.eldoc.ub.rug.nl Among other examples, van der Dennen cites the New Guinea highlanders, among whom warring bands would face off, yell insults, and shoot arrows that did not have feathers, and thus could not be aimed, while another band on the sidelines would yell that it was wrong for brothers to fight, and attempt to calm the situation before blood was shed. The original source for this account is Rappaport, R.A. (1968), Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People. New Haven: Yale University Press.

[10] “The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker,” The Catholic Worker, May 2008.

[11] Graham Kemp and Douglas P. Fry (eds.), Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World, New York: Routledge, 2004. Semai murder rate, p. 191, other murder rates p. 149. The low Norwegian murder rate shows that industrial societies can also be peaceful. It should be noted that Norway has one of the lowest wealth gaps of any capitalist country, and also a low reliance on police and prisons. The majority of civil disputes and many criminal cases in Norway are settled through mediation (p. 163).

[12] Robert K. Dentan, The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979, p. 59.

[13] Dmitri M. Bondarenko and Andrey V. Korotayev, Civilizational Models of Politogenesis, Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2000.

[14] Harold Barclay, People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy, London: Kahn and Averill, 1982, p. 98.

[15] Christopher Boehm, “Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy,” Current Anthropology, Vol. 34, No. 3, June 1993.

[16] The victories of the movement and the failure of the IMF and World Bank are argued by David Graeber in “The Shock of Victory,” Rolling Thunder no. 5, Spring 2008.

[17] The paragraphs regarding the Hill People and Southeast Asia are based on James C. Scott, “Civilizations Can’t Climb Hills: A Political History of Statelessness in Southeast Asia,” lecture at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, February 2, 2005.

[18] Alan MacSimoin, “The Korean Anarchist Movement,” a talk in Dublin, September 1991. MacSimoin references Ha Ki-Rak, A History of the Korean Anarchist Movement, 1986.

[19] Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, New York: Free Life Editions, 1974, p. 73.

[20] Ditto, p. 73. The statistic on Graus comes from p. 140.

[21] Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, London: Freedom Press, 1975, pp. 206–207.

[22] Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, New York: Free Life Editions, 1974, p. 113.

[23] The criticisms of the this and the following paragraphs are based on an interview with Marcello, “Criticisms of the MST,” February 17, 2009, Barcelona.

[24] Wikipedia, “Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca,” [viewed November 6, 2006]

[25] Diana Denham and C.A.S.A. Collective (eds.), Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca, Oakland: PM Press, 2008, interview with Marcos.

[26] Ditto, interview with Adán.

[27] Melford E. Spiro, Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia, New York: Schocken Books, 1963, pp. 90–91.

[28] Robert Fernea, “Putting a Stone in the Middle: the Nubians of Northern Africa,” in Graham Kemp and Douglas P. Fry (eds.), Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World, New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 111.

[29] Alice Schlegel, “Contentious But Not Violent: The Hopi of Northern Arizona” in Graham Kemp and Douglas P. Fry (eds.), Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World, New York: Routledge, 2004.

[30] Melford E. Spiro, Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia, New York: Schocken Books, 1963, pp. 83–85.

[31] Gemma Aguilar, “Els okupes fan la feina que oblida el Districte,” Avui, Saturday 15 December 2007, p. 43.

[32] Natasha Gordon and Paul Chatterton, Taking Back Control: A Journey through Argentina’s Popular Uprising, Leeds (UK): University of Leeds, 2004, p. 45.

[33] William Foote Whyte and Kathleen King Whyte, Making Mondragon: The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Cooperative Complex, Ithaca, New York: ILR Press, 1988, p. 5.

[34] Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2002, pp. 183–187.

[35] Michael Albert, Parecon: Life After Capitalism, New York: Verso, 2003, pp. 104–105.

[36] Diana Denham and C.A.S.A. Collective (eds.), Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca, Oakland: PM Press, 2008, interview with Tonia.

[37] Ditto, interview with Francisco.

[38] Cahal Milmo, “On the Barricades: Trouble in a Hippie Paradise,” The Independent, May 31, 2007.

[39] Technically, human elders provide a reproductive function because they store obscure types of information like how to survive natural disasters that only occur once every several generations, and they can also serve to increase social cohesion by increasing the amount of living relations within the community — for example the number of people with the same grandparents is much larger than the number of people with the same parents. However, these survival benefits are not immediately obvious and there is no evidence of any human society making such calculations when deciding whether or not to feed their toothless grannies. In other words, the fact that we avail ourselves of the benefits of the elderly is a reflection of our habitual social generosity.

[40] Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, London: Freedom Press, 1975, p. 270.

[41] Neille Ilel, “A Healthy Dose of Anarchy: After Katrina, nontraditional, decentralized relief steps in where big government and big charity failed,” Reason Magazine, December 2006.

[42] Albany Free School website (viewed November 24, 2006) www.albanyfreeschool.com

[43] Natasha Gordon and Paul Chatterton, Taking Back Control: A Journey through Argentina’s Popular Uprising, Leeds (UK): University of Leeds, 2004, pp. 43–44.

[44] See chapter 5 in Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory, London: Pluto Press, 2008.

[45] The description of the New Guinea highlanders in Jared Diamond’s book (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, New York, Viking, 2005), particularly the portrayal of their curiosity, wit, and humanity, does a great service to dispelling the lingering imagery of so-called primitive peoples as grunting apes or noble savages.

[46] “Wikipedia survives research test,” BBC News 15 December 2005 news.bbc.co.uk

[47] “Editorial administration, oversight and management” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org

[48] Patrick Fleuret, “The Social Organization of Water Control in the Taita Hills, Kenya,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 12, 1985.

[49] Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, New York: Free Life Editions, 1974, p. 66.

[50] Ditto, p. 88.

[51] All the quotes and statistics in the paragraph come from Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, New York: Free Life Editions, 1974, pp. 88–92.

[52] Ditto, pp. 75–76

[53] George Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Oakland: AK Press, 2006, pp. 84–85

[54] The Stonehenge Free Festivals, 1972–1985. www.ukrockfestivals.com Viewed 8 May 2008.

[55] The Curious George Brigade, Anarchy In the Age of Dinosaurs, CrimethInc. 2003, pp. 106–120. The statistic from Ghana appears on page 115.

[56] Emily Achtenberg, “Community Organizing and Rebellion: Neighborhood Councils in El Alto, Bolivia,” Progressive Planning, No.172, Summer 2007.

[57] Although the author of this piece chooses the term government, the underlying concept should not be given parity with what in Western society is considered to be government. In the ayllu tradition, leadership is not a privileged social position or a position of command, but a form of “community service.”

[58] Emily Achtenberg, “Community Organizing and Rebellion: Neighborhood Councils in El Alto, Bolivia,” Progressive Planning, No.172, Summer 2007.

[59] All the quotes on Symphony Way come from Daria Zelenova, “Anti-Eviction Struggle of the Squatters Communities in Contemporary South Africa,” paper presented at the conference “Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilizations,” at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, June 2009.

[60] Oxfam America, “Havana’s Green Revelation,” www.oxfamamerica.org [viewed December 5, 2005]

[61] Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, New York: Free Life Editions, 1974, pp. 163–164.

[62] This theory for the fate of Easter Island is convincingly argued in Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, New York, Viking, 2005.

[63] Eric Alden Smith, Mark Wishnie, “Conservation and Subsistence in Small-Scale Societies,” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 29, 2000, pp. 493–524. “As population density and political centralization increases, communities may exceed the size and homogeneity needed for endogenous systems of communal management” (p. 505). The authors also pointed out that colonial and postcolonial interference ended many systems of communal resource management. Bonny Anna Nardi, “Modes of Explanation in Anthropological Population Theory: Biological Determinism vs. Self-Regulation in Studies of Population Growth in Third World Countries,” American Anthropologist, vol. 83, 1981. Nardi points out that as decision-making, society, and identity go from small-scale to a national scale, fertility control loses its effectiveness (p. 40).

[64] Bruce Stewart, quoted in Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words, White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2000, p.162.

[65] Jared Diamond, Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, New York: Viking, 2005, pp. 292–293

[66] For example, the United States and Western Europe, responsible for most of the world’s greenhouse gases, are currently forcing hundreds of millions of people to die every year rather than curtailing their car cultures and reducing their emissions.

[67] The ten percent figure and mention of the two attacks in Germany come from Nathaniel C. Nash, “Oil Companies Face Boycott Over Sinking of Rig,” The New York Times, June 17, 1995.

[68] Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, New York: Viking, 2005, p. 277.

[69] H. Van Der Linden, “Een Nieuwe Overheidsinstelling: Het Waterschap circa 1100–1400” in D.P. Blok, Algemene Geschiednis der Nederlanden, deel III. Haarlem: Fibula van Dishoeck, 1982, p. 64. Author’s translation.

[70] This analysis is well documented by Kristian Williams in Our Enemies in Blue. Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press, 2004.

[71] In 2005, 5,734 workers were killed by traumatic injury on the job, and an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 died from occupational diseases, according to the AFL-CIO “Facts About Worker Safety and Health 2007.” www.aflcio.org
Of all the killings of workers by employer negligence between 1982 and 2002, fewer than 2000 were investigated by the government, and of these only 81 resulted in convictions and only 16 resulted in jailtime, though the maximum allowed sentence was six months, according to David Barstow, “U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges for Deaths in Workplace,” New York Times, December 22, 2003.

[72] These are widely available statistics from US Census bureau, Justice Department, independent researchers, Human Rights Watch, and other organizations. They can be found, for example, on drugwarfacts.org [viewed 30 December, 2009].

[73] Wikipedia “Seattle General Strike of 1919,” en.wikipedia.org [viewed 21 June 2007]. Print sources cited in this article include Jeremy Brecher, Strike! Revised Edition. South End Press, 1997; and Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Perrenial Classics Edition, 1999.

[74] Diana Denham and C.A.S.A. Collective (eds.), Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca, Oakland: PM Press, 2008, interview with Cuatli.

[75] Alan Howard, “Restraint and Ritual Apology: the Rotumans of the South Pacific,” in Graham Kemp and Douglas P. Fry (eds.), Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World, New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 42.

[76] Both observer quotes from Jamie Bissonette, When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: a true story in the movement for prison abolition, Cambridge: South End Press, 2008, p. 160.

[77] One can’t help but compare this to the British spreading opium in China or the US government spreading whiskey among indigenous people and, later, heroin in ghettos.

[78] Natasha Gordon and Paul Chatterton, Taking Back Control: A Journey through Argentina’s Popular Uprising, Leeds (UK): University of Leeds, 2004, pp. 66–68.

[79] Graham Kemp and Douglas P. Fry (eds.), Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World, New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 73–79. The cross-cultural study is M.H. Ross, The Culture of Conflict, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

[80] Graham Kemp and Douglas P. Fry (eds.), Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World, New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 163.

[81] All quotes and statistics on the Navajo come from Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft, Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Everyday Lives, Monsey, NY: Willow Tree Press, 2001, pp. 53–59.

[82] www.harmfreezone.org (viewed November 24, 2006)

[83] Philly’s Pissed, www.phillyspissed.net [Viewed May 20, 2008]

[84] George R. Edison, MD, “The Drug Laws: Are They Effective and Safe?” The Journal of the American Medial Association. Vol. 239 No.24, June 16, 1978. A.W. MacLeod, Recidivism: a Deficiency Disease, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965.

[85] Jamie Bissonette, When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story in the Movement for Prison Abolition, Cambridge: South End Press, 2008, p. 201. Also consider the stories of John Boone and other bureaucrats presented in this story.

[86] Some mainstream sources still contest that the Makhnovists were behind anti-Semitic pogroms in Ukraine. In Nestor Makhno, Anarchy’s Cossack, Alexandre Skirda traces this claim to its roots in anti-Makhno propaganda, while citing unfriendly contemporary sources who acknowledged that the Makhnovists were the only military units not carrying out pogroms. He also references propaganda put out by the Makhnovists attacking anti-Semitism as a tool of the aristocracy, Jewish militias that fought among the Makhnovists, and actions against pogromists personally carried out by Makhno.

[87] Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, Oakland: AK Press, 2005, p. 218.

[88] Makhno hoped that Lenin and Trotsky were motivated by a personal vendetta against him rather than an absolute desire to crush the free soviets, and would call off the repression if he left.

[89] Alexandre Skirda, Nestor Makhno, Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917–1921, London: AK Press, 2005, p. 314.

[90] Amy Goodman, “Lakota Indians Declare Sovereignty from US Government,” Democracy Now!, December 26, 2007.

[91] From an anonymous illustrated pamphlet, “The ‘Oka Crisis’ ”

[92] Oscar Olivera, Cochabamba! Water War in Bolivia, Cambridge: South End Press, 2004.

[93] George Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Oakland: AK Press, 2006, p. 123

[94] Jaime Semprun, Apología por la Insurrección Argelina, Bilbao: Muturreko Burutazioak, 2002, p.34 (translated from French to Spanish by Javier Rodriguez Hidalgo; the translation to English is my own). The quotes in the next paragraphs are from p.18 and p.20.

[95] Jaime Semprun, Apología por la Insurrección Argelina, Bilbao: Muturreko Burutazioak, 2002, pp.73–74 (translated from French to Spanish by Javier Rodriguez Hidalgo; the translation to English is my own).

[96] Ditto, p.80 . Regarding the fourth point, in contrast to Western society and its various forms of pacifism, the peacefulness of the movement in Algeria does not preclude self-defense or even armed uprising, as evidenced by the preceding point regarding the martyrs. Rather, peacefulness indicates a preference for peaceful and consensual outcomes over coercion and arbitrary authority.

[97] Ditto, p.26.

[98] George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1938, pp.26–28.

[99] There were 40,000 armed anarchist militants in Barcelona and the surrounding region alone. The Catalan government would have been effectively abolished had the CNT simply ignored it, rather than entering into negotiations. Stuart Christie, We, the Anarchists! A study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927–1937, Hastings, UK: The Meltzer Press, 2000, p. 106.

[100] Ditto, p. 101

[101] John Jordan and Jennifer Whitney, Que Se Vayan Todos: Argentina’s Popular Rebellion, Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2003, p. 56.

[102] Natasha Gordon and Paul Chatterton, Taking Back Control: A Journey through Argentina’s Popular Uprising, Leeds (UK): University of Leeds, 2004.

[103] John Jordan and Jennifer Whitney, Que Se Vayan Todos: Argentina’s Popular Rebellion, Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2003, p. 9.

[104] George Katsiaficas, “Comparing the Paris Commune and the Kwangju Uprising,” www.eroseffect.com. That the resistance was “well-organized” comes from a report from the conservative Heritage Foundation, Daryl M. Plunk’s “South Korea’s Kwangju Incident Revisited,” The Heritage Foundation, No. 35, September 16, 1985.

[105] Goods produced in environmentally friendly ways, by workers who receive a living wage in healthier labor conditions.

[106] Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, New York: Free Life Editions, 1974, p. 71.

[107] David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004, pp. 54–55.

[108] John Jordan and Jennifer Whitney, Que Se Vayan Todos: Argentina’s Popular Rebellion, Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2003, pp. 42–52.

[109] Ditto, pp. 43–44.

[110] Diana Denham and C.A.S.A. Collective (eds.), Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca, Oakland: PM Press, 2008, interview with Yescka.

[111] Ditto, interview with Leyla.

[112] “Longo Maï,” Buiten de Orde, Summer 2008, p.38. My own translation.

[113] Natasha Gordon and Paul Chatterton, Taking Back Control: A Journey through Argentina’s Popular Uprising, Leeds (UK): University of Leeds, 2004.

[114] For those who cannot read French or Spanish, in 2004 Firestarter Press put out a good zine about this insurrection, called “You Cannot Kill Us, We Are Already Dead.” Algeria’s Ongoing Popular Uprising.

[115] Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, Oakland: AK Press, p. 212–213.

[116] Harold Barclay, People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy, London: Kahn and Averill, 1982, p. 57.

[117] “Pirate Utopias,” Do or Die, No. 8, 1999, pp. 63–78.

[118] To name just one example, “humanitarian” UN missions have been caught repeatedly setting up sex trafficking rings in the countries where they are stationed for peacekeeping. “But the problem goes beyond Kosovo and sex trafficking. Wherever the UN has established operations in recent years, various violations of women seem to follow.” Michael J. Jordan, “Sex Charges haunt UN forces,” Christian Science Monitor, 26 November 2004. What the mainstream press cannot go so far as to admit is that this reality is universal to militaries, whether they wear blue helmets or not.

[119] “About RAWA,” www.rawa.org Viewed June 22, 2007

[120] See the citation of van der Dennen and Rappaport in Chapter 1.

[121] Harold Barclay, People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy, London: Kahn and Averill, 1982, p. 122.

[122] Haudennosaunne oral traditions always maintained this early date, but racist white anthropologists discounted this claim and estimated the league began in the 1500s. Some even hypothesized that the Five Nations constitution was written with European help. But recent archaeological evidence and the record of a coinciding solar eclipse backed up the oral histories, proving that the federation was their own invention. Wikipedia, “The Iroquois League,” http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois_League Viewed 22 June 2007

[123] Stephen Arthur, “Where License Reigns With All Impunity:” An Anarchist Study of the Rotinonshón:ni Polity,” Northeastern Anarchist No. 12, Winter 2007 nefac.net

[124] See, for example, Dmitri M. Bondarenko and Andrey V. Korotayev, Civilizational Models of Politogenesis, Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2000.

[125] The argument that certain societies were able to take over the world because of geographic conditions rather than any inherent superiority is skillfully presented by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.