q anarchy 101

228 Pages·2014·3.45 MB·English

T
Q
1 ANARCHY 101
Covering classic and contemporary writings from
a wide range of anarchists spanning the globe, this
bolo’bolo
new introductory compilation from the bolo’bolo
guides to
collective explores the theories and practices of
anarchism,
anarchism and reflects on what it means to be an
anarchy and
anarchist in the early 21st century.
anarchists

Q
bolo’bolo
guides to
anarchism,
anarchy and
anarchists
1: ANARCHY 101
Published in 2014 by bolo’bolo books
www.bolobolo.co.za
Edited by the bolo’bolo anarchist collective
Layout & design by Aragorn Eloff
Body set in Adobe Garamond Pro 10/12 and its italic.
Display set in Liberation Sans.
All rites reversed. We fight for a world without property
of any kind.
n b s a r c
About the bolo’bolo guides

W

hAt is AnArchism? What does it look like?
What does it envision? now that more and more people from various
walks of life are beginning to move past the tedious cliches – anarchy
as chaos, irresponsible hyper-individualism or something to do with
youthful angst and punk music – we feel it’s vital for us, as anarchists,
to answer these questions in as clear and non-sectarian a way as possible.
A surprisingly large amount has been written on the subject and it can
be daunting for anarcho-curious folks to find a suitable entry-point
into the 160-odd years of anarchist history and ideas that form our
broad tradition. The project of this series, then, is to provide some
loose, non-dogmatic guides and reference points for those setting out
to explore this, the most radical, hopeful and liberatory contemporary
(anti-)political philosophy we know of, for the first time.
Beyond outlining the theory and practice of anarchism, we hope to map
some of the more interesting and productive ways in which it intersects
with other movements aimed towards freedom and equality. What do
anarchists have to say about patriarchy, racism or animal exploitation?
What is the history of anarchist involvement in grassroots environmental
movements? is there an anarchist spirituality? Finally, we also aim to
explore what everyday life could be like under conditions of anarchy.
how would communities function? What would families look like?
how would we care for ourselves and each other? What would we do?
A final note: our approach in producing these guides is to compile as
broad a range of voices as possible, representing different times, places,
positionalities and practices without being tokenistic. some might
caution against this kind of pluralism; after all, if you ask ten anarchists
what anarchism is you’ll get at least eleven different answers...but that’s
exactly why we’ve asked even more!
Yours in hope,
the bolo’bolo anarchist collective
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Table of contents
INTRODUCTION 8
SECTION ONE: in A nUtshELL
1: Alexander Berkman - What do you want out of life? 11
2: Errico malatesta - The word ‘anarchy’ 16
3: stuart christie - Anarchy: a definition 18
4: Emma Goldman - What I believe 20
5: colin Ward - Anarchism - a short introduction (excerpts) 30
6: comrades of the chaco - Anarchist manifesto 43
7: itō noe - The facts of anarchy 45
8: The bolo’bolo collective - Statement of values 47
SECTION TWO: WhAt mUst GO
thE stAtE
9: Donald rooum - The origin of government and democracy 51
10: mikhail Bakunin - Man, society and freedom 54
cAPitALism
11: Wolfi Landstreicher - Property: the enclosing fences of capital 62
12: ricardo Flores magón - Voluntary slavery 66
13: Peter Gelderloos - Commoning and scarcity: a manifesto against 68
capitalism
thE cLAss DiViDE
14: Alfredo m. Bonanno - A question of class 74
15: Wolfi Landstreicher - From proletarian to individual: toward an 78
anarchist understanding of class
hiErArchY AnD DOminAtiOn
16: cindy milstein - Hierarchy and domination in general 82
17: crimethinc - No gods 85
18: crimethinc - Divided and conquered 93
SECTION THREE: WhAt WE WAnt
FrEEDOm AnD EQUALitY
19: Errico malatesta - Majorities and minorities 99
20: nestor makhno - The anarchist revolution 101
21: Peter Kropotkin - Our riches 110
mUtUAL AiD
22: Peter Kropotkin - Mutual aid 115
23: Donald rooum - Selfishness and benevolence 119
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(r)EVOLUtiOn
24: Errico malatesta - The anarchist revolution 121
25: cnt-FAi - Comrade peasant, listen 128
26: Penelope rosemont - Disobedience: the antidote for miserablism 132
27: Kubo Yuzuru - On class struggle and the daily struggle 136
28: crimethinc - There is a secret world concealed within this one 139
DirEct ActiOn
29: rob sparrow - Anarchist politics & direct action 141
PrEFiGUrAtiOn
30: Uri Gordon - Prefiguration 146
31: crimethinc - Prefiguration 150
FEDErALism, intErnAtiOnALism, DEcOLOniZAtiOn
32: Daniel Guérin - From theory to practice 152
OrGAniZAtiOn AnD cOUntErPOWEr
33: Errico malatesta - Anarchism and organization 157
34: cindy milstein - From protest to popular power 163
35: The curious George Brigade - The end of arrogance: 170
decentralization and anarchist organizing
An EnD tO ViOLEncE
36: Wayne Price - Why I am not a pacifist 176
37: Wolfi Landstreicher - Against the language of militancy 182
rEinVEntinG OUrsELVEs
38: Andrej Grubacic & David Graeber - Anarchism, or 184
the revolutionary movement of the twenty-first century
SECTION FOUR: cAUtiOUs UtOPiAs
39: Errico malatesta - Towards anarchism 194
40: ricardo Flores magón - New life 198
41: Peter marshall - Dancing in the new millenium 205
42: Federico Arcos - Empyrean 209
43: Peter Gelderloos - Untitled 210
APPENDIX 1: tYPEs OF AnArchists 212
APPENDIX 2: AnArchism in POint FOrm 216
APPENDIX 3: cOmmOn QUEstiOns 220
FURTHER READING 224
CURRENT & FORTHCOMING TITLES 226
7
Introduction

T

hE First timE thE trUE scOPE of anarchism really
struck me was several years back. it was late november 2010, a month
into an ambitious six month tour of the contemporary international
anarchist milieu i’d embarked on with a friend, and we were in Buenos
Aires visiting the Biblioteca-Archivo de Estudios Libertarios, a famous
anarchist archive housed on the first floor of a rickety wooden building
that was at that time the home of the Federación Libertária Argentina, a
venerable local anarchist organisation.
As i walked along the rows of dusty cupboards and the hundreds
of tattered cardboard boxes containing tens of thousands of books,
periodicals and assorted artifacts, i experienced a deep sense of awe,
almost immediately followed by panic (amplified by the fact that several
of the people in the space were casually smoking, seemingly oblivious
to the highly combustible nature of our immediate environment): i
wanted to know what was written on every page of every publication in
every box! What could i learn about the anarcho-syndicalist movement
in sydney from the box marked “Australia: 1930s”? What was in
“La Revista Blanca 1904-1923”? What was it like to be an anarchist
in Argentina 120 years ago? “Argentinos 1890” held the answer. And
then there was the locked metal drawer labeled “Kropotkin: original
correspondence”...
here in this humble storage area, probably unknown to most of
the locals passing by the building and certainly unknown to most of
the rest of the world, were the stories of countless women and men who
had lived and loved and struggled and lost and won together. Who had
dreamed of something better – a society where the freedom of each was
bound up in the freedom of all – and had tried, in so many different
ways, both in word and deed, to move towards it and to reflect their
aspirations in the conduct of their everyday lives.
One dropped cigarette, i thought, and all this would be gone.
i never did get to read much of what was inside those boxes, and the
archive is now jealously hoarded by a small clique of sectarians, but what
has stuck with me ever since is the importance of sharing at least some
of the radical spirit they held within them: the history of the perennial
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struggle for freedom and equality that has rallied millions of common
people under the black flag – the flag that signifies an end to all flags –
for over a century and a half.
in this, the first book in our anarchist guide series, we hope to have
captured at least enough of this spirit to ignite a small flame of resistance
and hope in the heart of every person who, looking at the world around
them, sees, and thinks to themselves, ‘it cannot go on like this.’
Within the pages that follow you will find various explanations of
what anarchism is and what anarchists want. There are articles, letters,
manifestos, poems, rants and disquisitions from a motley array of
anarchists stretching from the late 1800s right through to the present
day. some were written at the writing desks of the great libraries of
Europe, others by gas lamp in the living quarters of rural communes,
others still were dispatched directly from the barricades at the front lines
of revolutions.
Our hope is that when you’re through with this book – and
perhaps some of those that follow – you will not only have a better
understanding of why it is that anarchists want to get rid of, among
other things, capitalism, the state and organised religion, or what they
mean by mutual aid, prefiguration, direct action, class war or federalism,
but, more importantly, you will realize why so many people continue to
proudly identify as anarchists, no matter how impossible our ideals may
sometimes seem.
Finally, this book is also an invitation: an invitation for all of us to
live life as it really could be lived, together. today, as we teeter on the
edge of compounded social and ecological crises, more and more of us
are beginning to recognise the relevance of the anarchist vision and,
while an anarchist society may still be far off on the horizon, perhaps
further away than we’ll ever reach, it is also right here between us, in
how we treat ourselves and each other, in our words and actions and in
our myriad individual and collective refusals of the logics of hierarchy
and domination.
Anarchists, let’s take our lives back from them!
For the wild,
Aragorn Eloff (editor)
9
z
SECTION ONE:
IN A NUTSHELL
“Anarchism is the movement for social justice through freedom.
It is concrete, democratic and egalitarian. It has existed and
developed since the seventeenth century, with a philosophy and
a defined outlook that have evolved and grown with time and
circumstance. Anarchism began as what it remains today: a
direct challenge by the underprivileged to their oppression and
exploitation. It opposes both the insidious growth of state power
and the pernicious ethos of possessive individualism, which,
together or separately, ultimately serve only the interests of the
few at the expense of the rest.” - Stuart Christie
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