Anarchists From The United States

"Anarchism believes in everyone's ability to take part in thinking through and acting on, in compassionate ways, the world they inhabit. It maintains that everyone deserves to shape and share in society."

"Constantly working to bring both liberation and freedom to the table, within moments of resistance and reconstruction, is part of that same juggling act of approximating an increasingly differentiated yet more harmonious world."

"The anarchist ethic of the equality of unequals shatters the dehumanizing notion promulgated under capitalism that everything, including each person, is exchangeable—equally a commodity, and thus without inherent worth—replacing it with the rehumanizing concept of the value of each individual. It gives qualitative meaning to justice. Under representative democracies, justice is blind to the uniqueness of each person and the specificity of their circumstances. Particularities aren't weighed, and "justice" is meted out in vastly unjust ways. Within anarchism, being just entails being clear-eyed about the differences between people and their situations, which in turn makes it at least possible to negotiate personal and social relations, including conflicts, in ways that are substantively fair. Everyone and everything has equal value, and should equally be provided sustenance in order to fully blossom."

"Anarchism appears to be the only form of that speaks to the times and people's dreams."

"Anyone who has ever been involved in a voluntary collective project knows that people can manage to get things done in ways that account for differences in talents, proclivities, and the common good. They can do this without force, equivalency, unhappiness, or the state. To the contrary, such experiments viscerally point to a sense of personal and social satisfaction that far outstrips systems of "from each according to what they are forced to do, to each according to their financial means, and otherwise people go without.""

"When felt and lived out as a daily sensibility, in combination with other anarchist ethics, cooperation creates fundamentally different social relations, which offer humanity the best odds of transforming the values of a hierarchical society. In a hierarchical society, charity is a form of "giving" that no matter how benevolent, ends up forging paternalistic relationships. The giver is in a position of authority; the recipient is always at their mercy, even if the giver needs the recipient to feel good about themselves (or as a tax write-off). This leads to an ethics of self-interest: one shouldn't give unless one receives something equal in return, regardless of whether each person has something equal to give. Mutual aid, in contrast, stresses reciprocal relations, regardless of whether the gift is equal in kind. Humans give back to each other in a variety of ways—the inequality of equals. Individuals and societies flourish because the different contributions are not only equally valued but combine to make for a greater whole."

"Still, the grand experiments of the past aimed at a free and self-governing society have not been extinguished—they have reemerged in the anarchistic strains charted here and, most promisingly, the current contest against capitalism fought along antiauthoritarian lines. Not a bad beginning to the twenty-first century."

"These days, words seem to be thrown around like so much loose change. "Democracy" is no exception. We hear demands to democraticize everything from international or supranational organizations to certain countries to technology. Many contend that democracy is the standard for good government. Still others allege that "more," "better," or even "participatory" democracy is the needed antidote to our woes. At the heart of these well-intentioned but misguided sentiments beats a genuine desire: to gain control over our lives. This is certainly understandable given the world in which we live. Anonymous, often-distant events and institutions—nearly impossible to describe, much less confront—determine whether we work, drink clean water, or have a roof over our heads. Most people feel that life isn't what it should be; many go so far as to complain about "the government" or "corporations." But beyond that, the sources of social misery are so masked they may even look friendly: starting with the Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone of "caring" capitalism to today's "green" version, from the "humanitarian" interventions of Western superpowers to a "change we can believe in" presidency. Since the real causes appear untouchable and incomprehensible, people tend to displace blame onto imaginary targets with a face: individuals rather than institutions, people rather than power. The list of scapegoats is long: from Muslims and blacks and Jews, to immigrants and queers, and so on. It's much easier to lash out at those who, like us, have little or no power. Hatred of the visible "other" replaces social struggle against seemingly invisible systems of oppression. A longing for community—a place where we can take hold of our own life, share it with others, and build something together of our own choosing—is being distorted around the globe into nationalisms, fundamentalisms, separatisms, and the resultant hate crimes, suicide bombings, and genocides. Community no longer implies a rich recognition of the self and society; it translates into a battle unto death between one tiny "us" against another small "them," as the wheels of domination roll over us all. The powerless trample the powerless, while the powerful go largely unscathed."

"Mutual aid is one of the most beautiful of anarchism's ethics. It implies a lavish, boundless sense of generosity, in which people support each other and each other's projects. It expresses an openhanded spirit of abundance, in which kindness is never in short supply. It points to new relations of sharing and helping, mentoring and giving back, as the very basis for social organization. Mutual aid communalizes compassion, thereby translating into greater "social security" for everyone—without need for top-down institutions. It is solidarity in action, writ large, whether on the local or global level."

"Direct democracy, on the other hand, is completely at odds with both the state and capitalism. For as "rule of the people" (the etymological root of democracy), democracy's underlying logic is essentially the unceasing movement of freedom making. And freedom, as we have seen, must be jettisoned in even the best of representative systems. Not coincidentally, direct democracy's opponents have generally been those in power. Whenever the people spoke—as in the majority of those who were disenfranchised, disempowered, or even starved—it usually took a revolution to work through a "dialogue" about democracy's value. As a direct form of governance, therefore, democracy can be nothing but a threat to those small groups who wish to rule over others: whether they be monarchs, aristocrats, dictators, or even federal administrations as in the United States."

"Communities see libraries as something necessary and valuable to everyday life, as something that should be freely available to all. Anyone can use the library as much or as little as they see fit, with no sense of scarcity. People can borrow what they want, with no judgment (in the ideal) about the quantity or quality of their usage. They can enjoy the library space itself, on their own or with the assistance of a librarian. They can use it without offering anything in return, or if desired, freely give back by donating books or volunteering time to reshelf them. Imagine if everything from energy to education was such a "from each, to each" institution. Many of the best anarchist experiments today—albeit still within the limitations of state and capitalism—are about trying to put this notion into practice, from bike and food coops, to skill shares and free clinics."

"Certainly, liberation is a basic necessity: people need to be free from harm, hunger, and hatred. But liberation falls far short of freedom. If we are ever to fulfill both our needs and desires, if we are ever to take control of our lives, each and every one of us needs the "freedom to" self-develop—individually, socially, and politically."

"The point here is that anarchists agree on the necessity of a world without capital and states, precisely to allow everyone to make good on their lives, liberties, and happiness—to be able to continually define as well as take part in the quality of these categories. In relation to the state specifically, anarchists contend that everyone is thoroughly capable and deserving of self-determining their lives. Anarchists believe that together, people will likely envision, deliberate over, and settle on more creative, multidimensional social organization. Here again, anarchists offer a revolutionary praxis that both improves current conditions and points past them."

"Anarchism is a synthesis of the best of liberalism and the best of communism, elevated and transformed by the best of libertarian Left traditions that work toward an egalitarian, voluntarily, and nonhierarchical society. The project of liberalism in the broadest sense is to ensure personal liberty. Communism's overarching project is to ensure the communal good. One could, and should, question the word "free" in both cases, particularly in the actual implementations of liberalism and communism, and their shared emphasis on the state and property as ensuring freedom. Nonetheless, respectively, and at their most "democratic," one's aim is an individual who can live an emancipated life, and the other seeks a community structured along collectivist lines. Both are worthy notions. Unfortunately, freedom can never be achieved in this lopsided manner: through the self or society. The two necessarily come into conflict, almost instantly. Anarchism's great leap was to combine self and society in one political vision; at the same time, it jettisoned the state and property as the pillars of support, relying instead on self-organization and mutual aid."

""We're only human," the saying goes, but our humanity is profoundly damaged by the alienated world of control that we inhabit. Anarchism contends that people would be much more humane under nonhierarchical social relations and social arrangements."

"Anarchism understood that any egalitarian form of social organization, especially one seeking a thoroughgoing eradication of domination, had to be premised on both individual and collective freedom—no one is free unless everyone is free, and everyone can only be free if each person can individuate or actualize themselves in the most expansive of senses. Anarchism also recognized, if only intuitively, that such a task is both a constant balancing act and the stuff of real life. One person's freedom necessarily infringes on another's, or even on the good of all. No common good can meet everyone's needs and desires. This doesn't mean throwing up one's hands and going the route of liberalism or communism, propping up one side of the equation—ultimately artificially—in hopes of resolving this ongoing tension. [...] Anarchism understood that this tension is positive, as a creative and inherent part of human existence. It highlights that people are not all alike, nor do they need, want, or desire the same things. At its best, anarchism's basic aspiration for a free society of free individuals gives transparency to what should be a productive, harmonic dissonance: figuring out ways to coexist and thrive in our differentiation. Anarchists create processes that are humane and substantively participatory. They're honest about the fact that there's always going to be uneasiness between individual and social freedom. They acknowledge that it's going to be an ongoing struggle to find the balance. This struggle is exactly where anarchism takes place. It is where the beauty of life, at its most well-rounded and self-constructed, has the greatest possibility of emerging—and at times, taking hold."

"I expect Anarchism and Its Aspirations to become the introduction to anarchism of the next decade."

"From the start, anarchism was an open political philosophy, always transforming itself in theory and practice. This, too, might be seen as part of its very definition. Anarchism has to remain dynamic if it truly aims to uncover new forms of domination and replace them with new forms of freedom, precisely because of the ever-present strain between personal and collective freedom. Self-organization necessitates everyone's participation, which requires being always amenable to new concerns and ideas. Yet when people are introduced to anarchism today, that openness, combined with a cultural propensity to forget the past, can make it seem a recent invention—without an elastic tradition, filled with debates, lessons, and experiments, to build on. Even worse, it can seem like a political praxis of "anything goes"—libertine without the libertarian—without regard for how one person's acts impact another person or community. It is critical to understand anarchism's past in order to understand its meaning, but also its problems and shortcomings as well as what we might want to retain and expand on. We study anarchist history to avoid repeating mistakes, but also to know we aren't alone on what has been and will likely be rocky, detour-filled "paths in utopia," to borrow the title of a Martin Buber book. Of course, it's generally helpful to understand historical contexts. Anarchism, for its part, is in large measure filled out and changed by its lived engagement in social struggle and visionary experimentation."

"You only feel pain and grief over things you love and care about."

"Anarchism is distinguished as a political philosophy by its clear, uncompromising position against both capitalism and states. There are many ways within anarchism to explain specifically what's wrong with capitalism or states, and even more ways to approach ridding the world of them. But anarchists maintain that the pair has to go because they each have power over the vast majority of the human and nonhuman world. At its heart, political philosophy is about power: who has it, what they do with it, and toward what ends. Anarchism, more sweepingly than any other political philosophy, responds that power should be made horizontal, should be held in common."

"Revolution entails evolution."

"Whether it's contradictions between the local and the global, independence and interdependence, autonomy or direct democracy, anarchists honestly and transparently struggle to find unities that don't deny differences. This ethical commitment is essential to anarchist experiments, since it intimately relates to anarchism's definition. Much of what anarchists do in practice involves crafting relationships, processes, and agreements, personally and within self-organized institutions, that are precisely about finding the balance of a unity in diversity."

"The concept of utopia within anarchism isn't some faraway, never-neverland; nor is it a way to ignore material needs or desires. Rather, it's precisely a means of taking full account of material as well as nonmaterial needs and desires—not simply bread and butter, but bread, butter, and also roses—and imagining ways that everyone can fully satisfy them. Anarchism looks to the past, when people lived out communal and self-governed forms of organization; it sees potentialities in the present; and it sustains the clear-eyed trust that humans can always do better in the future. The utopian sensibility in anarchism is this curious faith that humanity can not only demand the impossible but also realize it. It is a leap of faith, but grounded in and indeed gleaned from actual experiences, large and small, when people gift egalitarian lifeways to each other by creating them collectively."

"It's when people increasingly take charge, instituting and participating in nonhierarchical organization, that they begin to have the power to reshape society, rather than simply the "power" to react against those forces that ultimately have power over them."

"At the core of Jewishness and Judaism is this foundation of continually questioning and interpreting and communally coming at ways of living. So, putting those together, I understand the core of Jewishness and Judaism as being ultimately a story of liberation and how we continually strive for that in the here and now, wherever we end up. I understand Judaism as a sacred duty, which goes along with anarchism. For most of that history — and I understand myself as a diasporic Jew — we’ve existed outside of empires or states or nations. We’ve almost never been part of those bodies, yet we’ve continually created these really powerful communities. So to me, Judaism and Jewishness is this incredible experiment and beautiful lived practice of having community and solidarity and life without states."

"What gets forgotten in relation to direct action mobilizations is the promise implicit in their own structure: that power not only needs to be contested; it must also be constituted anew in liberatory and egalitarian forms. This entails taking directly democratic processes seriously—not simply as a tactic to organize protests but as the very way we organize society, specifically the political realm."

"Anarchism is not just an ideal; it is not merely a thought experiment. Nor is it a blueprint or rigid plan. Its reconstructive stance dreams up ways to embody its ethics, and then tries to implement them."

"It is in the process of constructing new worlds that transformation happens, in how people set about making their way toward something appreciably better."

"The beauty of the direct action movement, it could be said, is that it strives to take its own ideals to heart."

"Accountable, democratic structures of our own making, in short, provide the foundation for trust, since the power to decide is both transparent and ever-amenable to scrutiny."

"Anarchism is a compelling political philosophy because it is a way of asking the right questions without seeking a monopoly on the right answers. The point is to destroy monopolies, along with all other singular choke holds on people's collective ability to be free. Self-organization is the key to ensuring the nonexclusive ownership—or rather, the ownership in common—of freedom. As anarchism thoroughly grasps, freedom is only possible when people all share the ability to determine and shape social relations and social organization. The only way to create such far-reaching forms of justice is to ensure that everyone has an equal portion of power, that we not only discuss, debate, and dialogue about what kind of society and everyday life we want but also problem solve, implement, evaluate, and revisit those decisions over the whole of life."

"We're not putting off the good society until some distant future but attempting to carve out room for it in the here and now, however tentative and contorted under the given social order. In turn, this consistency of means and ends implies an ethical approach to politics. How we act now is how we want others to begin to act, too. We try to model a notion of goodness even as we fight for it."

"I've never been at home in this world, though. That's why I fight so fiercely for other possible ones. That's why, as both an anarchist and Jew, I've long dreamed of do-it-ourselves, egalitarian forms of social organization ones in which we're all reciprocally and abundantly cared for, not to mention messy-beautifully whole."

"At its core, anarchism is indeed a spirit—one that cries out against all that's wrong with present-day society, and boldly proclaims all that could be right under alternate forms of social organization. It is also precisely the quality of an airy free-spiritedness that gives anarchism its attraction. Anarchism playfully travels across the mists of time and space to borrow from the best of human innovations, to give body to the most lofty of ideals. It can be hauntingly beautiful. But it involves a difficulty as well: pinning down this ghostly figure, this "inhabitant of an unseen world," with any definition or substance, much less getting other people to believe in the utopian apparition called anarchism."

"Anarchism serves unflinchingly as a philosophy of freedom, as the nagging conscience that people and their communities can always be better."

"There are many different though often complementary ways of looking at anarchism, but in a nutshell, it can be defined as the striving toward a "free society of free individuals.""

"For centuries, people grew up believing, in essence, that reason was only to be gleaned from the word of a monarch and/or god. Enlightenment philosophy gave voice to the ideas of on-the-ground social struggles and, in percolating through society, gradually shattered such self-abnegation with the increasingly hegemonic understanding that everyone has the ability to think for themselves."

"Like capitalism, the state will not "negotiate" with any other sociopolitical system. It attempts to take up more and more governance space. It is neither neutral nor can it be "checked and balanced." The state has its own logic of command and control, of monopolizing political power. Anarchists held that the state cannot be used to dismantle capitalism, nor as a transitional strategy toward a noncapitalist, nonstatist society."

"From its beginnings, anarchism's core aspiration was to root out and eradicate all coercive, hierarchical social relations, and dream up and establish consensual, egalitarian ones in every instance. In a time of revolutionary possibility, and during a period when older ways of life were so obviously being destroyed by enormous transitions, the early anarchists were frequently extravagant in their visions for a better world. They drew on what was being lost (from small-scale agrarian communities to the commons) and what was being gained (from potentially liberatory technologies to potentially more democratic political structures) to craft a set of uncompromising, reconstructive ethics. These ethics still animate anarchism, supplying what's most compelling about it in praxis. Its values serve as a challenge to continually approach the dazzling horizon of freedom by actually improving the quality of life for all in the present."

"Anarchism always "demands the impossible" even as it tries to also "realize the impossible." Its idealism is thoroughly pragmatic. Hierarchical forms of social organization can never fulfill most peoples' needs or desires, but time and again, nonhierarchical forms have demonstrated their capacity to come closer to that aim. It makes eminent and ethical sense to experiment with utopian notions. No other political philosophy does this as consistently and generously, as doggedly, and with as much overall honesty about the many dead-ends in the journey itself."

"Anarchism is not immune from the increasing fragmentation and immediacy, among other conditions, that characterize much of contemporary capitalist society. It is just as damaged by the phenomena it decries. Even as anarchists advocate a community of communities, they are, like most people today, alienated from any sense of place and hence each other. Nonetheless, there remains a profound sense of recognition between anarchists, based on a shared set of distinct values, which in turn structure their lives and projects."

"First and foremost, anarchism is a revolutionary political philosophy. That is, anarchism is thoroughly radical in the true sense of the word: to get at the root or origin of phenomena, and from there to make dramatic changes in the existing conditions. Anarchism aspires to fundamentally transform society, toward expansive notions of individual and social freedom."

"Anarchism is not satisfied with remaining on the surface, merely tinkering to make a damaged world a little less damaging. It is a thoroughgoing critique aimed at a thoroughgoing reimagining and restructuring of society. It views this as essential if everyone is to be free, and if humanity is to harmonize itself with the nonhuman world."

"Anarchism from the start focused on what appeared as the two biggest stumbling blocks to a libertarian society: capitalism and the state. This pair, sadly, are still the predominant forms of social immiseration and control. Capitalism and statecraft loom large in terms of naturalizing—and thereby being at the root of—this immiseration and control. Their separate yet often-interrelated internal logics consolidate power monopolies for a few, always at the expense of the many. This demands that each system must both continually expand and mask its dominion. To survive, they have to make it seem normal that most people are materially impoverished and disenfranchised as economic actors, and socially impoverished and disenfranchised as political actors. They have to restructure social relations in their own image—as unthinkingly assumed ways of being and acting. The world that most of humanity produces is, as a result, denied to the vast majority, and a relative handful get to make binding decisions over all of life. Anarchism is therefore staunchly anticapitalist and antistatist, which ensures that it is a revolutionary politics, since battling such primary systems necessarily means getting to the root of them. Moving beyond capitalism and states would entail nothing less than turning the world upside down, breaking up all monopolies, and reconstituting everything in common—from institutions to ethics to everyday life."

"Implementing anarchism as a lived political project can seem a daunting task. It takes seriously the notion that hierarchy and domination in their many manifestations need to be torn apart, and that society needs to be restructured along fundamentally different lines. It means transforming the whole of life. It means overcoming alienation, countering humanity's estrangement from the world and each other with nonalienated relationships and organizations. This must be an ongoing quest, with better (and worse) approximations of freedom appearing in various times and places, only to seemingly disappear or greatly diminish again. Still, with each approximation, the very idea of freedom expands along with the notion of what it means to be human and humane. Remnants of freedom remain, in fact or in memory. Vestiges of experiments linger. People are transformed and pass their sense of potentiality along to others."

"Capitalism has indicated that humans might be able to achieve a postscarcity society—a world in which everyone has enough of what they need to sustain life. But despite grocery stores and dumpsters overflowing with food, billions of people go hungry; despite labor-saving technologies, most people work more for less; despite breakthroughs in health care, many die needlessly. Meanwhile, consumption has been transformed into a barometer of one's worth, a never-ending quest for happiness via commodity choices. And it's always premised on what one has to exchange for that abundance, or else it's denied."

"Coming to anarchism, taking up the mantle of imagining a world beyond hierarchy, is like a lightbulb going off inside one's head. It first offers a sense of one's own empowerment and liberation, and then, hopefully, a sense of collective social power and freedom. There is something euphoric in casting off, even if only on the level of personal beliefs initially, the idea that hierarchy is somehow a given, and that one has to abide by its rules. It's a life-altering leap when one truly uproots the belief within oneself that, say, racism or states are normal and necessary. The move toward increasingly nonhierarchical mind-sets, relations, and institutions opens up a whole world of possibility—at least as a start, within oneself. The first act might be critical thought, a less estranged relationship with oneself and others, or the reappropriation of imagination as a step toward a nonalienated society."

"Anarchism doesn't concentrate on just the economic, political, cultural, psychological, or other spheres. Nor does it separate any single issue from its relation to other issues, even if one personally places emphasis on a particular area. It concerns itself with everything that makes people human, including the nonhuman world. The work of anarchism takes place everywhere, every day, from within the body politic to the body itself."

"Anarchists design modest experiments with grand goals to allow people to meet their needs and desires, be ecological, craft new social relations, set up spaces and organizations, and make decisions together—all in nonhierarchical ways. These are partial experiments, sometimes short-lived, especially given the force of the current systems of domination. Yet they form a tangible fabric of horizontalist innovation. [...] The idea is that people establish counterinstitutions as well as lifeways that gain enough force—because they capture the hearts, minds, and participation of enough people—to ultimately exist on a level with, or finally in victorious contestation to, centralized power."

"Any vision of a free society, if it is to be truly democratic, must of course be worked out by all of us—first in movements, and later, in our communities and federations."