Anarchism pages

“I’m not an anarchist but anarch ism [sic] has some deep truths that one has to take into consideration.” Cornel West

“It seems to me that the truly American revolution would be to abolish power.” Karl Hess

Like most isms there is a plethora of variation in the isms. Practically every post and page on this site relates to one of the isms, but the items below define some of the boundaries and objections.

also see the order pages for what anarchism could look like

“Anarchism” has a clearer etymology than “feminism”, or “communism”, or “socialism”, or “social justice”, and it targets not something as macroscopic and aggregate as “women” or “community” but an incredibly important conceptual tangle that gets at the root of many of our society’s problems. The crux of “anarchy” is an ethical orientation, not a political platform. It’s intellectually easy to be a sociopath and also a feminist or a communist, or whatever. In the very best currents of such traditions “never holding control over another mind” is still only loosely stitched on as a bullet point. Anarchism is simply more closely tied to “no power relations ever” or “see others freedom as your own” and this matters in a wider array of situations than something historically particular. Anarchism can be corrupted and obviously often is, but it’s harder, in the grand scheme of things, to corrupt anarchism than anything else. We’ve numbered in the millions and moved the world yet deliberately never seized power. For all the shit that’s cropped up in our ranks, unlike virtually any other comparable framework you care to name no anarchist has ever been responsible for genocide or megadeath. That is actually, sadly, amazingly unique in history. Our focus on power itself rather than any of its instantiations has an effect that’s hard to deny. We may fuck up, but we course-correct. If not ourselves then our comrades. The cognitive dissonance is usually just too great. source

Anarchy is Order, like a fractal in Chaos Theoy, Order generated from the ‘Chaos’ of the many paths crossing to seek Order. If the paths are libertarian in nature they will shed minimal turbulence to disturb others, and find order via liberty if they have also shed the fetters of Authority in their wake. Anarchism is more process and ethic than final solutions to land a monopoly in control of process and the outlook. The solution is in an evolution around moving forward as needed to preserve a better world with liberty justice in tow.

“Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship.” —Voltairine de Cleyre

“The real revolution is the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character. The only real emancipation is individual…” —Will Durant

“There is nothing intrinsically wrong about utopias, the problem is if you just have one of them, we need as many utopian visions as possible…” David Graeber

“Hayekian Anarchism” PDF