After the fall of Saddam’s dictatorship, a wave of looting erupted in towns and cities across Iraq. The media was outraged, often more concerned about stolen property than the civilians wounded and murdered by the US invasion. It was proclaimed that Iraq was falling into “anarchy.” This is unsurprising, if annoying, for anarchists. It is worthwhile to explain why the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq is not anarchy nor, in fact, a case against anarchism.
Kropotkin once said that “without disorder, the Revolution is impossible” and he was right. Every revolution has been marked by “disorder,” by strikes, riots, looting and so on. However, in social revolutions such periods are short lived. Inspired by... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Everyone has their own definition of anarchism. One I find generally useful is the first three paragraphs of the article Peter Kropotkin was asked to write for the 11 th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1905. This is the collection of volumes which (however repugnant we now find its sales techniques) is the place we look for a working definition of most things.
Kropotkin’s first paragraph said that:
ANARCHISM (from the Greek, contrary to authority), is the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded betwe... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Anarchism is a political philosophy based on freedom and the idea that groups of people should not hold established power over others. This power over others is authority, and it happens in a lot of ways: the rich over the rest of us, white people over people of color, men over women, etc. And those in power enforce it in many ways: the police, the KKK, domestic abuse, etc. An anarchist is someone who tries to live life fighting those power structures so that we can all come up and achieve freedom without becoming the oppressors.
“and the old folks tell me it’s been going on since back in the day,
but that don’t make it okay
and the white folks tell me all the looting and shootin’s insane,
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
TORONTO — Accompanied by much fanfare and a bit of controversy, this Canadian city was the setting August 17–23 for its second international anarchist/anti-authoritarian gathering in a decade. The organizers titled the event, “Active Resistance,” (AR) after the 1996 Chicago anarchist actions of the same name at the Democratic National Convention. (See Fall 1996 FE)
Approximately 700 people registered for a week of workshops, forums and demonstrations, but numerous other unregistered people swelled actions like a “Hands Off Street Youth” demonstration to nearly twice that number. An impromptu rally of 250 people in front of the US consulate followed Clinton’s terrorist bombings in Sudan and Af... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
There’s a particular narrative–surprisingly common in certain corners of the anarchist scene–that no one has really bothered to call out and so has grown rather fat and comfortable over the last few decades. It goes something like this:
Thinking or acting from a big-picture perspective is–if not The Problem–then at least a major root cause of everything miserable about our world. Any claims, theories, ideals, or motivations that extend our frame of reference beyond our immediate lives are predicated in the same mistaken arrogance, a mistake responsible for the seemingly intractable poison within the left and activist struggles, as well as so much more. In response we must ward ourselves from the ideologi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“Finally came Stirner, the prophet of contemporary anarchism.”
— Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886)
In 1994 Todd May initiated a new turn in contemporary theory — poststructuralist anarchism, commonly abbreviated to “post-anarchism.” May’s seminal study, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism called attention to ways in which the political philosophy of anarchism echoes the concerns of poststructuralist thought, notably in its critique of oppression. Taking aim at Marxism, he (rightly) argued that anarchism has a more sophisticated grasp of how oppression disperses across the social field. According to May, Marxists did... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
To start out the hottest summer, (to date) the planet has had, I decided to help out by spending two months driving around the country, burning fossil fuels and talking about Anarchy and a variety of other anarchist topics to people all around the Midwest and East Coast. Much of the collective joined the tour at one point or another and together we visited over two dozen towns and attended five different weekend events over a nine week period.
As a member of the new collective I wanted to get involved in the enormous project of understanding people’s perception of the magazine and getting direct knowledge of local anarchist politics throughout the country. I was able to do this because of personal economic devastation (resultin... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
On the evening of Sunday August 25th the hall of the Patriotic Club, Clerkenwell Green, London, E.C., was well-filled by Socialists anxious to bear the debate between our comrade John Turner, Anarchist Communist, and HERBERT Burrows, the Social Democrat.
Morrison Davidson, who occupied the chair. said be sympathized with both Anarchists and Social Democrats. Anything that taught the English people to revolt against authority was, in his opinion, good. Anarchy was not as the ignorant imagined a synonym for disorder. Those who advocated it regarded. it as the highest form of order. They regarded Law as an evil in itself. They regarded the government of the majority as little better than the government of the oligarchy. He believed. howeve... (From: AnarchyArchives.)
Most tendencies within anarchist circles have a narrow conception of what exactly makes an anarchist, what an anarchist project is, and what the transformation to an anarchist world will look like. Whether Green or Red, Communist or Individualist, Activist or Critical, Anarchists spend as much time defending their own speculative positions on these complicated issues as they do learning what others have to offer — especially other anarchists.
As a result many find that they would prefer to do their projects, political and social, outside of anarchist circles. Either they do not think their particular project is interesting to anarchists but believe it’s important none the less (as in most progressive activism) or they do ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
It Works When We Make It Work
The many people who conspired to commit these rebel stories to paper and get them into your hands have been thoughtful enough to provide you with one parting example of anarchy: the book itself. Imagine the decentralized network, the harmonious chaos, the confluence of liberated desires, that made it possible. With passion and determination millions of people breathed life into the stories we present, and many of them struggled even past the point of certain defeat in the hopes their utopias might inspire future generations. Hundreds of other people documented these worlds and kept them alive in our minds. A dozen more came together to edit, design, and illustrate the book, and even more collaborated wit... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
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