Anarchism

By TwoStickSquidge
Created on: 2024-07-06 13:24

"Justice doesn't flow from police guns. I'm reminded of that all the time. As long as there is a law peace will be a crime."
-Ramshackle Glory, First Song Pt. 2 (2011) [1]

Introduction

"Anarchy..." what conjures in the mind of the layperson when they hear the word is a state of chaos and destruction, a world where everyone does what they want and no one is safe from the violence of human impulse. They see a world where people murder one another with no rhyme or reason or recourse. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Anarchism as a political ideology seeks to liberate the individual from all hierarchical and coercive structures of power. It seeks to make people equal, so that no one person has power over another to coerce or force someone to make decisions that are in the interest of a person or cause greater than themself. It seeks to put an end to the political violence of the state with its prisons and militaries, as well as the political violence of the property owners who act as millions of petty tyrants across the world.

Anarchism takes many forms and there are about as many strains of Anarchist thought as there are Anarchists. However, all seek the destruction of hierarchy, the state, and the capitalist system of dictatorial property ownership. Many of these strains of thought have to do with the methods, how the economy will function, and overall what society will look like when fully Anarchist.

My Anarchism

I myself would be what can be described by other Anarchists as an "Egoist Anarcho-Syndicalist with a Mutualist bend." to the layperson this may just seem like a bit of a word salad and it's easy to see why. These are specifications on an ideology already seemingly adopted only by the fringes who know how to describe their oddly specific belief systems. I will do my best to explain.

  1. Egoism is the belief that humans are ultimately driven by their own preferences, that no moral facts about the world exist, and that in order to be truly free one would do what is best for themself and not give their lives to a higher cause than themself.
  2. Syndicalism is a method of attaining an Anti-Capitalist society by means of radical unionism. By unionizing a workforce and causing a total work-stoppage that brings a firm to its knees and turning it into a worker run democratic system. This method was used in the Spanish Civil war by the CNT-FAI from 1936-1939. In a more modern sense this might look like workers striking until the business is forced to sell, and then buying the business to convert it to a worker democracy. This tactic was employed by the CUPS union at White Electric Coffee in Providence Rhode Island in 2021. [2]
  3. Mutualism is a market economic system in which the workplace and housing are co-operatively owned by the people who work and live in them. Goods and services are still bought and sold for a profit, however the authoritarian structure of private property ownership has been eliminated.

I believe that making small-scale attempts at escaping the capitalist system and building power among common people to end their dependence on governmental systems is the best way forward toward a completely free society. There are also other strains of Anarchism that disagree with this framework, some are more revolutionary and believe that a violent uprising to destroy the state and capitalist class will bring about an Anarchist society. Some believe that Anarchism and freedom are "morally good" and are a higher cause to strive for, incompatible with Egoism. Anarcho-Communists believe in a full gift-economy, where goods and services are not bought and sold but instead are just done for the sake of doing them and for benefitting your fellow man. I personally find all of these to be either too utopian or, in the case of revolution, too far out from our time to be realized. I am more pacifistic in my beliefs in that I think the systems of power should not be violently retaliated against but rather they should be rendered obsolete by alternative methods of organizing.

References

  1. Ramshackle Glory, First Song Pt. 2, 2011, Live the Dream. YouTube.
  2. Kelly G., The Story Behind White Electric Coffee’s Move to a Cooperative Model, July 2021, Rhode Island Times