
The following is the introductory book chapter from one of the best
introductory books on anarchism, which is unfortunately out of print.  This
is excerpted from *Reinventing Anarchy: What are the anarchists thinking
these days?* edited by Howard J. and Carol Ehrlich and others, and
published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1979.  

Questions and answers about anarchism

The editors


1 How would an anarchist revolution come about?

For social anarchists revolution is a process, a process leading to the
total deflation of state authority. That process entails self- and
collective education and the building of alternative institutions as
mechanisms of survival, of training and as models of a new society.
Continuing parts of that process are repeated symbolic protests and direct
assaults on ruling class institutions.
As more and more people regard the anarchist alternatives as preferable to
the status quo, state power begins to be deflated. When the state can no
longer maintain the confidence of substantial segments of the population,
its agents will have to rely increasingly on the mobilization of the police
and the military. Of course, that increase in force has multiple possible
outcomes, ranging from the total repression of the Left to the further
leftward mobilization of the population that regards this increased use of
force illegitimate.
Our scenario does not rule out guerrilla warfare and armed struggle. But in
the United States, for example, with its mammoth police apparatus,
extensive files and surveillance of radicals, and its over 3,600
underground 'emergency operating centers' for ruling-class and military
retreats, the idea of a primarily military revolution is an atavistic
Marxist fantasy.
So where do we go from here? The next act in the revolutionary drama
remains to be written. Drawing a battle plan today seems pointless. The
overthrow of the state - the building of anarchist societies - will be an
overwhelming majoritarian act. It cannot be otherwise. When, say, 5-10 per
cent of the population identify themselves as anarchists, it is our guess
that there would be a range of contingencies available that we could not
possibly anticipate today.

2 Who will make the anarchist revolution?

Everyone. Every day in their daily lives.


3 How can an anarchist society prevent the development of informal elites,
new bureaucracies and a reconcentration of power?

There is nothing integral to the nature of human social organization that
makes hierarchy, centralization and elitism inescapable. These
organizational forms persist, in part because they serve the interests of
those at the top. They persist, too, because we have learned to accept
roles of leadership and followership; we have come to define hierarchy as
necessary, and centralization as efficient. All of this is to say that we
learned the ideological justifications for elite organizational forms quite
well.
We could dismiss the question by pointing out that social motivations to
power, elites and elitism and bureaucracy would not exist in an anarchist
society. The question should not be dismissed, however, when we talk about
building an anarchist society in the shell of another. In
such a context we will inevitably be struggling against the life-denying
values of our socialization. Hierarchy, dominance and submission,
repression and power - these are facts of everyday life. Revolution is a
process. and even the eradication of coercive institutions will not
automatically create a liberatory society. We create that society by
building new institutions, by changing the character of our social
relationships. by changing ourselves - and throughout that process by
changing the distribution of power in society. It is by the constant
building of new forms of organization, by the continual critical evaluation
of our successes and failures, that we prevent old ideas and old forms of
organization from re-emerging.
If we cannot begin this revolutionary project here and now, then we cannot
make a revolution.


4 How will decisions be made? by consensus? by majority?

Groups will make decisions by consensus because majority rule is
unacceptable for people who think that everyone should run his or her own
life. Decision-making by majority rule means that the minority voluntarily
gives up control over the policies that affect them.
To operate by consensus, groups will discuss an issue until it is resolved
to the satisfaction of everyone. This doesn't mean that there's only one
way of doing things. People must accept that many ways can coexist. They
also must realize that there can be multiple policies on most issues with
people free to choose which policy they want.
The principle of consensus can be effective because membership in a
community is voluntary and because that membership entails agreements on
its basic goals and values.
The workings of consensual decisions have many advantages. It is the only
way to prevent a permanent minority from developing. It takes into
consideration the strength of feelings. It is more efficient for group
action because people are genuinely involved in achieving consensus and are
therefore more likely to act on their decisions.
One of the things people have difficulty understanding about group
consensus is that it does take into account the strength of feelings and
differences in perspectives of all of the people involved. In a social
anarchist meeting the process of decision-making is as important as the
outcome itself.
Of course, people will have to learn to recognize what they want and to
express their desires in a constructive way. If they do not know what they
want a false consensus develops because people are just trying to go along
with the group so as not to make trouble. If decisions are reached this way
people remain unhappy about the outcome; their
participation may drop to a low level and they may ultimately feel that
they have to leave the group.


5 How can people be motivated to participate in decisions that affect them
if they don't want to participate?

In the kinds of societies in which we live now, this is a pseudo-question.
People are managed; they are rarely asked to participate. The unmotivated
citizen of the capitalist/socialist state has sized up the situation
correctly, and has concluded that non-participation is the only realistic
choice .
What about an anarchist community, where everyone would have genuine
control over his or her life? We would assume that nonparticipants would be
few - but if they existed, we would have to ask why. This is no idle
question: if it wished to survive, an anarchist community would have to
solve this problem. If it failed to do so, the community would be on the
road back to social inequality. And it would no longer be anarchist.
There are two reasons why a person might not participate in making
decisions. The first would be lack of time. But if a person is too busy,
then either s/he has voluntarily taken on too much work, or the others are
shirking. In neither case is the community functioning on genuine social
anarchist principles.
The second reason is quite different. Non-participation would be due not to
working too much out of a misplaced sense of priorities, but to failure to
see the linkage between personal autonomy and community functioning. Some
people may feel that community decision-making is beneath them; this 'star'
mentality needs to be effectively challenged every time it occurs. Others
may genuinely believe that the community affords them everything they need
for their physical and psychological well-being, so they are perfectly
happy letting others make the decisions. Still others may feel alienated,
or lack confidence in their ability to make competent decisions.
All of these people are handicapped by 'old ideas.' These are well suited
to a stratified society in which a few run the lives of everyone, but they
are severely damaging to an anarchist community. People who think in these
ways need loving support from others, a feeling of being an essential part
of the community, and gentle (but firm) pressure to participate. This may
take time, but it can be done.


6 When does a community become too large to operate with direct
participation by everyone? Is a system of representation ever justified?

We do not really know the maximum or optimum size of a community that would
still allow effective participation, but there are numerous examples of
communities, some as large as 8,000 people, where all the people actively
participated in self-government. For example, during the Spanish Revolution
self-governed villages all over Spain formed into federations to
co-ordinate decisions affecting all of them. In Denmark in 1971 about 600
people occupied an army camp and set up a viable functioning community that
not only lasted for years but was able to defend itself nonviolently from
attacks by the government.
In these examples everyone made decisions about the goals of the community
and how to achieve them. Then the people who were actually doing the
particular tasks were able to work in their own way.
In a decentralized society that is composed of many communities the lines
of communication go in multiple directions. Two-way television and other
technological improvements make direct democracy possible in larger groups,
but there will probably still be times when representatives will be
necessary. Selection procedures for these representatives would no doubt
vary. Sometimes representatives could be drawn by lot and other times on
the basis of task-specific skills or abilities.
The system of representation, however, must meet certain criteria.
Representatives must come from the group of people whom they represent and
they must be accountable to that group. To make them accountable,
representatives should be assigned for a brief period of time or to do a
specific task. In an anarchist society nobody could make a career of
'politics.' The role of representative could be rotated among members of
the community. All important decisions would be made by the group as a
whole; the representatives would just communicate the decisions of their
group to the larger group. Representatives must also be subject to
immediate recall.
The decisions about what functions best for one community or one group will
have to be made by that group at the time depending upon the circumstances.
But there is every reason to believe that people can effectively
participate in managing their own lives.


7 Will there still be experts and specialization? If so, how will experts
be trained? How will we know they are competent? Can we have experts in a
non-hierarchical society?

Differences in skill and knowledge will continue to exist. Such differences
are compatible with a free and egalitarian society. People may also want to
develop their abilities in their own way. And this too is compatible with
social anarchism.
Much of the work that is now done by specialists can be learned in
a relatively short time so that it could be done by nearly everyone. One
problem with specialists in our society is that they restrain the number of
people who are trained. Obviously there is some work, such as surgery or
architecture, that requires a high degree of skill acquired through lengthy
training. No one wants to be operated on by someone who has only two weeks
of training, and few people would feel comfortable in a five-story building
assembled without blueprints. The real problem becomes training specialists
who will be accountable to the people they serve. We want co-operation
between specialist and 'client,' not solidarity among specialists. To
ensure this there could be no positions of privilege for specialists, and
they must be committed to sharing their knowledge with everyone.
In a decentralized or small society, judging the competence of someone
whose labor is highly visible, such as a carpenter, is not difficult. In
somewhat more complex cases, say in judging the competence of a surgeon,
one possibility is to have the people who work with the surgeon along with
those from the community be the judge of the quality of work .
Expertise and non-hierarchy can co-exist only if specialization does not
convey special privileges: only if people who are experts do not monopolize
or control resources or information; and only if people are committed to
co-operative and collective work rather than destructive competition.


8 Who will do the dirty work?

We all will. In an anarchist community, people wouldn't categorize work as
'dirty' or clean,' as 'white-collar' or 'blue-collar.' That way of thinking
can exist only in a class-stratified society - one that teaches its members
that maintenance tasks are undignified, demeaning, and to be avoided if
possible. For anarchists, all socially useful work has dignity. and
everyone would co-operate to sustain the community at a mutually
agreed-upon level of health, comfort and beauty. Those who refuse to
collect the garbage, clean streets and buildings, trim the grass, provide a
clean water supply and so on would be acting in a most irresponsible
fashion. It they continued to refuse, they would be asked to leave.
Does this seem coercive? A successfully self-governed community must be
comprised of people who voluntarily live and work together, who agree on
the necessary tasks, and who have the self-discipline to carry out their
share of these tasks (no more and no less). Those who refuse are coercing
others; they are implicitly saying that their time is to be spent doing
more important things; that they are above such menial tasks. In an
anarchist community no one is 'above' anyone else; no one is more important
than anyone else. To think so will destroy both equality and freedom.
One of the things that makes 'dirty' work so onerous is that only some
people do it, and they work at it full-time. Very few maintenance tasks
would seem totally awful if they were rotated, and each person knew s/he
would be doing it for a short period of time. Short work periods on the
garbage truck, or cleaning public bathrooms or fertilizing fields would
seem - well. not ,fun of course (anarchists aren't stupid) but would be
tolerable if each person knew they would end soon.


9 Will any people have more money and property than others? Who will
control the means of production and how will profits be distributed?

In an anarchist society everyone will have an equal right to the basic
liberties and material goods. which is consistent with a similar right for
others. People would, of course, maintain personal possessions, but we
would expect that the matter of the accumulation of property and property
rights would be very different. Certainly the meaning of money and property
would be quite different in an egalitarian and nonhierarchical society.
It is hard to conceive of a serious alternative to a market economy.
However, unlike the capitalist market place, the anarchist economy would
not be based on the maximization of control and profit. Therefore, there
would be no need to monopolize resources, expand markets or create useless
products and/or consumer demands. Worker and community control of the
workplace would be the organizational form for regulating productivity and
profits in keeping with the needs of the community .
While an anarchist economic theory remains to be written. its theorems will
all have to be derived from principles of social justice, from principles
that claim the maximum values of freedom and equality for all people.


10 Aren't anarchists ignoring the complexity of urban life? Aren't they
rejecting technology and industrial development? Don't they really
want to go back to a simpler society?

Any anarchists who ignore the complexities of modern urban-industrial
societies are wrong. A return to a 'simpler' society' is a fantasy of
escapists, not of persons seriously committed to building a new society.
The underlying issue for us as social anarchists is the determination of
the optimum size for urban settlements. The equation for an optimum
size would doubtless have to balance factors of self-sufficiency, self
governance and the minimizing of damage to the ecosystem.
The related technological problems must be taken seriously by all
anarchists. Can we satisfy our energy requirements with technologies that
do minimal environmental damage? Can we develop a technology that can be
comprehended by most people? Can we develop a technology that is a genuine
substitute for human labor? The answer to these questions is yes. The
technology and knowledge are already here: the issue is their
implementation.
The result of implementing such technological changes and building
self-governing and relatively self-sufficient communities would probably
bring about substantial differences in urban settlements. We suspect that
these differences would yield even more 'complex' urban arrangements than
we now have. We suspect, too, that they would result in more genuinely
humane cities.

11 How will an anarchist society meet the threat of foreign invasion?

Paradoxically, the more successfully it meets the threat of armed force,
the more likely it is to move away from anarchist principles. War always
seems to turn relatively free and open societies into repressive ones. Why?
Because war is irrational: it fosters fear and hopelessness in the gentle;
it brings out aggression, hatred and brutality in the truculent; it
destroys the balance between people and nature; it shrinks the sense of
community down to one's immediately endangered group; and under conditions
of starvation and deprivation it pits neighbor against neighbor in the
fight for survival. If a besieged anarchist community did successfully
resist foreign invasion, then it should immediately work to reestablish the
interrelationships of trust, mutual aid, equality and freedom that have
probably been damaged. 'War is the health of the state;' but it can be a
fatal disease for an anarchist community.
If war came, however, how would the society organize to defend itself? Let
us assume that the anarchist federation of North America is invaded by
troops of the Chinese, Swedish, Saudi Arabian or Brazilian government. What
would happen? There would be no state apparatus to seize; instead, the
invaders would have to conquer a network of small communities, one by one.
There would be no single army to defeat, but an entire, armed population.
The people would challenge the invasion with resistance - strikes,
psychological warfare, and non-co-operation as well as with guerrilla
tactics and larger armed actions. Under these circumstances, it is unlikely
that the invaders would conquer the federation .

12 What about crime?

Much of what is now defined as crime would no longer exist. The
communalization of property and an ethic of mutual aid would reduce both
the necessity and the motivation for property crimes. Crimes against people
seem more complex, but we reject the idea that they are rooted in 'original
sin' or 'human nature.' To the degree that such crimes stem from societally
based disorders of personality, we can only anticipate that their incidence
- as well as their actual form - would be radically altered .
In a social anarchist society, crime would be defined solely as an act
harmful to the liberties of others. It would not be a crime to be different
from other people, but it would be a crime to harm someone. Such hostile
acts against the community could be prevented, above all, by inculcating a
respect for the dignity of each person. Anarchist values would be
reinforced with the strongest of human bonds, those of affection and
self-respect.
Remaining crimes would not be administered by masses of lawyers, police and
judges; and criminals would not be tossed into prisons, which Kropotkin
once labeled 'universities of crime.' Common law and regularly rotated
juries could decide whether a particular act was a crime, and could
criticize, censure, ostracize or even banish the criminal. However, in most
cases we anticipate that criminals would be placed in the care and guidance
of members of the community.


13 How shall public health issues be handled?

Public health issues would be handled like all other issues. This means
that decisions about inoculations and other health issues would be made at
the local level by the people who would be affected by the decision. This
would result in a very different type of health care. Health care workers
would be members of the community where they worked. Their function would
be to provide day-to-day care and advice to people on how to remain
healthy. People would have a chance to talk frequently with these workers
and would know that they were really concerned about health and not about
making money or gaining status in the community.
If there were a threatened epidemic of some deadly flu and a vaccine were
developed the people in the community would be able to get together to
discuss the risks and benefits of the inoculations. Once the group decided
that inoculations would benefit the community they would try to persuade
everyone to be inoculated because the more people who were protected the
less likelihood there would be of an epidemic. If there were a clear case
of people being a danger to the health of the entire community then they
would be asked to make a choice between being vaccinated and remaining in
the community, or leaving to find another group that was more compatible.


14 There are times when the state takes care of the sick and elderly, or
protects individuals against coercion (for example, children brutalized
by parents; blacks attacked by whites). If the state disappears, who will
take over these functions?

People who look at the world this way believe that there are only two
possibilities: either there is state regulation and an orderly society, or
there is a stateless chaos in which life is nasty, brutish and short. In
fact, even when the state functions in a benevolent or protective manner,
it is capricious: sometimes it helps the helpless; other times it doesn't.
Sometimes social welfare workers remove a child from a vicious environment
- and other times the child is left at home, perhaps to be further
brutalized, even killed. Sometimes the state protects the civil rights of
oppressed minorities; other times it ignores these rights, or even joins in
the persecution. We cannot count on the state to do anything to protect us.
It is, after all, the major task of the agents of the state to protect the
distribution of power. Social justice is a secondary concern.
In fact, we can only count on ourselves, or on those with whom we are
freely associated in community. This means that helping functions will be
performed by those groups that have always done them, with or without the
state: voluntary associations. However, in an anarchist community, the need
for such services will be less frequent. For example, if there is no longer
systematic poisoning of the environment, diseases caused by this pollution
(pesticide poisoning, asbestosis, Minimata disease) won t happen; if there
are no longer extremes of wealth and poverty, diseases caused by lack of
adequate food, shelter, and medical care will not exist; if children and
adults can freely choose whether or not to live together, much violence
against loved ones will disappear; if racism is systematically attacked,
then the majority ethnic group won't harass minorities. There will, of
course, still be a need for mutual aid and protection - but this will be
provided by the community, for all its members.


15 Would an anarchist society be less likely to be sexist? racist?

Anarchists usually talk about the illegitimacy of authority, basing their
arguments on the premise that no person should have power over another. A
logical extension of this argument is to attack the power relationships in
which men dominate women and some racial and ethnic groups dominate others.
Thus anarchism creates the preconditions for abolishing sexism and racism
Anarchism is philosophically opposed to all manifestations of racism and
sexism. Equally important as its philosophical commitments is the fact that
with anarchism there would be no economic basis to support racist or sexist
ideas or practices. Work and income would be divided equitably, so there
would be no need to subordinate a class of people to do the dirty work or
to work at low pay to support the dominant class.
Sexism and racism would not automatically disappear in the process of
building an anarchist society. A conscious effort would have to be made to
change old behavior and attitudes.


16 What do anarchists think about sex, monogamy, and family?

Anarchists believe that how you live your daily life is an important
political statement. Most people in industrialized societies spend a
significant portion of their lives in what may be the last bulwark of
capitalism and state socialism - the monogamous nuclear family. The family
serves as the primary agent for reproducing the dominant values of the
society, both through the socialization of children and the social control
of its members. Within the family all of the pathologies of the larger
society are reproduced: privatized social relations escapism patriarchal
dominance, economic dependency (in capitalist society), consumerism, and
the treatment of people as property.
In an anarchist society, social relations will be based on trust, mutual
aid, friendship and love. These may occur in the context of the family (if
people choose to live in a family setting), but they certainly do not have
to. Indeed, these conditions may be more easily achieved outside the
family.
Will there be monogamous relations in an anarchist society? Clearly people
will have the option to choose how they want to live with whom, and how
long they want to live in these relationships. This will of course include
the option of monogamy. However, without a system based on patriarchy.
economic insecurity and religious or state authority, we doubt that
monogamy would be anything more than an anachronism If and when people did
elect to live monogamously. it presumably would be seen as a choice made by
both persons. Today, of course, monogamy is considered far more important
for women than for men. This is called the double standard: and it has no
place in a society of free and equal women and men.
The family? The nuclear family is not universal, but social systems for the
rearing of the young, the care of the elderly, and companionate relations
are. We think that whole new forms of communal and collective living
arrangements will grow to replace the traditional family system .
Sex? Of course. But this does not mean that all kinds of sexual behavior
would be condoned. We cannot imagine a truly anarchist society condoning
rape, sexual exploitation of children, or sex that inflicts pain or
humiliation, or involves dominance and submission. In sexual behavior, as
in all other forms of behavior, social anarchism is based on freedom, trust
and respect for the dignity of others. In fact, in an anarchist society
sexuality would lose all the inegalitarian and oppressive meanings it now
has.


17 Is it coercive to require education for children? What should its
content and structure be?

When people today worry about the coercive character of mandatory public
education, we think that their concern really stems from the authoritarian
character of schooling. Schools are an extension of the state; they
reproduce the class, sex, race and other divisions on which the state is
built. In an anarchist society, the social function of schools and the
potential of education would be quite different.
Even today, we think that the implications of withholding basic education
from young children are far more coercive than the requirement that they be
educated. Without at least a minimal level of literacy, people would be
much worse off than they already are. In an anarchist society education
would, of course, provide far more. Education would be fundamentally
liberating because it would help people learn how to learn; and it would
teach them much more than they could ever acquire on their own about the
physical world and the world of ideas. It would also help them learn to be
free and self-directed.
Such education is so important for young children that neither they nor
their parents should be able to decide that the child doesn't need it.
Bakunin stated the reason well:

Children do not constitute anyone's property . . . they belong only
   to their own future freedom. But in children this freedom is not yet
   real; it is only potential. For real freedom - . . . based upon a feeling
   of one's dignity and upon the genuine respect for someone else's
   freedom and dignity, i.e., upon justice - such freedom can develop in
   children only through the rational development of their minds,
character, and will.

What would anarchist education teach the young? Intellectual and physical
skills that help to develop literate, healthy and competent people should
be taught. Essential intellectual materials would include some that
children now learn, and some that they don't: reading and writing,
self-care (emotional and physical), farming and carpentry, cooking, and
physical education. Children in the upper elementary grades would be
introduced to literature and the other arts, crosscultural materials, and
the principles of anarchist community organization and economics. However,
the content of these materials should reflect anarchist values: it would be
senseless to teach the principles of capitalist politics and economics
(except perhaps as a horrible example), an acceptance of stratification, or
materials that advocate racist, sexist or other inegalitarian ideas.
Not only the content, but also the structure of anarchist education is
vitally important. It is difficult to develop liberatory modes of thought
and action in an atmosphere of intimidation, regimentation, boredom and
respect for authority. We do not mean to imply that children should devalue
teachers; but genuine respect must be based upon what someone knows and how
effectively s/he teaches it, not upon position, age or credentials. It will
be difficult to create an atmosphere of mutual respect and orderly process
without imposing discipline. But liberatory education cannot take place in
an authoritarian setting.
What else? Well, schools should be small, so that each child can get the
attention and stimulation s/he needs. Activities should be varied, and
distinctions between work and play narrowed as far as possible. Grading and
competition with each other would be eliminated. Students would learn to
set standards for themselves, and to try to meet them. (If they did not,
the child should not evaluate him/herself negatively. Guilt and
self-deprecation are enemies of autonomy and healthy functioning ) Teachers
would be selected on the basis of knowledge and interpersonal competence,
not upon the possession of formal
credentials. Probably few people would make a career of teaching, but many
members of the community (including some older children) would spend time
doing it. Schools would be integrated into the community, and everyone
would participate in the direction of the schools.
When would education end? Ideally, never. Instead of being a prison, which
inmates flee as soon as the guard's back is turned (which is what many
public schools are like today), the anarchist school would encourage people
to see education as a lifelong process. As the child becomes an adult,
education would increasingly become an informal self-directed activity
which would take place outside the school. But people would return for
further formal study as often, and as long, as they wish.


18 What is the relation of children to authority?

The line between nurturance and the authoritarian control of children is
difficult to draw. Perhaps in an anarchist society that boundary line will
be more clearly sketched.
Infants and young children are unquestionably dependent on others for their
survival. Perhaps the difference between nurturance and authoritarianism
arises when a child has acquired the skills for her or his own survival. If
we accept that boundary, then we will have to work at determining what
those skills minimally are. The skills themselves - once we go beyond the
acquisition of language - are not absolute. They are relative to the social
conditions under which people live. For example, under capitalism, where
income and work are tied together and where both are prerequisites for
food, housing, medical care and the like, survival training must last
longer. Partly because of this long period of dependency, there has been a
strong tradition in such settings to view the child (and young adult) as
property, hence at the disposal of the family or state. Certainly, the
political economy is one condition that fosters dependence on authority.
Fostering authoritarian dependence is, in fact, a major mechanism of social
control in capitalist and state socialist societies. Today it is easier to
catalog examples of dependence and authoritarian social conditions than it
is to provide examples of social conditions that encourage self-management
and autonomous behavior.
The quintessence of nurturant child-rearing in an anarchist community would
be the teaching of children to like themselves, to learn how to learn, and
how to set standards for self-evaluation.

19 Has there ever been a successful anarchist organization? If so, why
don't they last longer?

Yes, there has been. In fact, there have been many groups that have been
organized without centralized government, hierarchy, privilege and formal
authority. Some have been explicitly anarchist: perhaps the best-known
examples are the Spanish industrial and agricultural collectives, which
functioned quite successfully for several years until destroyed by the
combined forces of the authoritarian Left and the Right.
Most anarchist organizations are not called that - even by their members.
Anthropological literature is full of descriptions of human societies that
have existed without centralized government or institutionalized authority.
(However, as contemporary feminist anthropologists point Gut, many
so-called 'egalitarian' cultures are sexist.)
Industrialized societies also contain many groups that are anarchist in
practice. As the British anarchist Colin Ward says, 'an anarchist society,
a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence,
like a seed beneath the snow.' Examples include the leaderless small groups
developed by radical feminists, co-ops, clinics, learning networks, media
collectives, direct action organizations such as the Clamshell Alliance;
the spontaneous groupings that occur in response to disasters, strikes,
revolutions and emergencies; community-controlled day-care centers;
neighborhood groups; tenant and workplace organizing; and so on. Not all
such groups are anarchist, of course, but a surprising number function
without leadership and authority to provide mutual aid, resist the
government, and develop better ways of doing things.
Why don't they last longer? People who ask this question expect anarchist
organizations to meet standards of permanence that most anarchists, who
value flexibility and change, do not hold; and that most non-anarchist
groups cannot meet. There is, of course, another reason why many anarchist
organizations do not last longer than they do. Anarchists are enemies of
the state - and the state managers do not react kindly to enemies.
Anarchist organizations are blocked, harassed, and sometimes (as in the
case of Spain, and more recently Portugal) deliberately smashed. Under such
circumstances, it is a tribute to the persistence and capabilities of many
anarchists that their organizations last as long as they often do.



11 How will an anarchist society meet the threat of foreign invasion?

Paradoxically, the more successfully it meets the threat of armed force,
the more likely it is to move away from anarchist principles. War always
seems to turn relatively free and open societies into repressive ones. Why?
Because war is irrational: it fosters fear and hopelessness in the gentle;
it brings out aggression, hatred and brutality in the truculent; it
destroys the balance between people and nature; it shrinks the sense of
community down to one's immediately endangered group; and under conditions
of starvation and deprivation it pits neighbor against neighbor in the
fight for survival. If a besieged anarchist community did successfully
resist foreign invasion, then it should immediately work to reestablish the
interrelationships of trust, mutual aid, equality and freedom that have
probably been damaged. 'War is the health of the state;' but it can be a
fatal disease for an anarchist community.
If war came, however, how would the society organize to defend itself? Let
us assume that the anarchist federation of North America is invaded by
troops of the Chinese, Swedish, Saudi Arabian or Brazilian government. What
would happen? There would be no state apparatus to seize; instead, the
invaders would have to conquer a network of small communities, one by one.
There would be no single army to defeat, but an entire, armed population.
The people would challenge the invasion with resistance - strikes,
psychological warfare, and non-co-operation as well as with guerrilla
tactics and larger armed actions. Under these circumstances, it is unlikely
that the invaders would conquer the federation .

12 What about crime?

Much of what is now defined as crime would no longer exist. The
communalization of property and an ethic of mutual aid would reduce both
the necessity and the motivation for property crimes. Crimes against people
seem more complex, but we reject the idea that they are rooted in 'original
sin' or 'human nature.' To the degree that such crimes stem from societally
based disorders of personality, we can only anticipate that their incidence
- as well as their actual form - would be radically altered .
In a social anarchist society, crime would be defined solely as an act
harmful to the liberties of others. It would not be a crime to be different
from other people, but it would be a crime to harm someone. Such hostile
acts against the community could be prevented, above all, by inculcating a
respect for the dignity of each person. Anarchist values would be
reinforced with the strongest of human bonds, those of affection and
self-respect.
Remaining crimes would not be administered by masses of lawyers, police and
judges; and criminals would not be tossed into prisons, which Kropotkin
once labeled 'universities of crime.' Common law and regularly rotated
juries could decide whether a particular act was a crime, and could
criticize, censure, ostracize or even banish the criminal. However, in most
cases we anticipate that criminals would be placed in the care and guidance
of members of the community.


13 How shall public health issues be handled?

Public health issues would be handled like all other issues. This means
that decisions about inoculations and other health issues would be made at
the local level by the people who would be affected by the decision. This
would result in a very different type of health care. Health care workers
would be members of the community where they worked. Their function would
be to provide day-to-day care and advice to people on how to remain
healthy. People would have a chance to talk frequently with these workers
and would know that they were really concerned about health and not about
making money or gaining status in the community.
If there were a threatened epidemic of some deadly flu and a vaccine were
developed the people in the community would be able to get together to
discuss the risks and benefits of the inoculations. Once the group decided
that inoculations would benefit the community they would try to persuade
everyone to be inoculated because the more people who were protected the
less likelihood there would be of an epidemic. If there were a clear case
of people being a danger to the health of the entire community then they
would be asked to make a choice between being vaccinated and remaining in
the community, or leaving to find another group that was more compatible.


14 There are times when the state takes care of the sick and elderly, or
protects individuals against coercion (for example, children brutalized
by parents; blacks attacked by whites). If the state disappears, who will
take over these functions?

People who look at the world this way believe that there are only two
possibilities: either there is state regulation and an orderly society, or
there is a stateless chaos in which life is nasty, brutish and short. In
fact, even when the state functions in a benevolent or protective manner,
it is capricious: sometimes it helps the helpless; other times it doesn't.
Sometimes social welfare workers remove a child from a vicious environment
- and other times the child is left at home, perhaps to be further
brutalized, even killed. Sometimes the state protects the civil rights of
oppressed minorities; other times it ignores these rights, or even joins in
the persecution. We cannot count on the state to do anything to protect us.
It is, after all, the major task of the agents of the state to protect the
distribution of power. Social justice is a secondary concern.
In fact, we can only count on ourselves, or on those with whom we are
freely associated in community. This means that helping functions will be
performed by those groups that have always done them, with or without the
state: voluntary associations. However, in an anarchist community, the need
for such services will be less frequent. For example, if there is no longer
systematic poisoning of the environment, diseases caused by this pollution
(pesticide poisoning, asbestosis, Minimata disease) won t happen; if there
are no longer extremes of wealth and poverty, diseases caused by lack of
adequate food, shelter, and medical care will not exist; if children and
adults can freely choose whether or not to live together, much violence
against loved ones will disappear; if racism is systematically attacked,
then the majority ethnic group won't harass minorities. There will, of
course, still be a need for mutual aid and protection - but this will be
provided by the community, for all its members.


15 Would an anarchist society be less likely to be sexist? racist?

Anarchists usually talk about the illegitimacy of authority, basing their
arguments on the premise that no person should have power over another. A
logical extension of this argument is to attack the power relationships in
which men dominate women and some racial and ethnic groups dominate others.
Thus anarchism creates the preconditions for abolishing sexism and racism
Anarchism is philosophically opposed to all manifestations of racism and
sexism. Equally important as its philosophical commitments is the fact that
with anarchism there would be no economic basis to support racist or sexist
ideas or practices. Work and income would be divided equitably, so there
would be no need to subordinate a class of people to do the dirty work or
to work at low pay to support the dominant class.
Sexism and racism would not automatically disappear in the process of
building an anarchist society. A conscious effort would have to be made to
change old behavior and attitudes.


16 What do anarchists think about sex, monogamy, and family?

Anarchists believe that how you live your daily life is an important
political statement. Most people in industrialized societies spend a
significant portion of their lives in what may be the last bulwark of
capitalism and state socialism - the monogamous nuclear family. The family
serves as the primary agent for reproducing the dominant values of the
society, both through the socialization of children and the social control
of its members. Within the family all of the pathologies of the larger
society are reproduced: privatized social relations escapism patriarchal
dominance, economic dependency (in capitalist society), consumerism, and
the treatment of people as property.
In an anarchist society, social relations will be based on trust, mutual
aid, friendship and love. These may occur in the context of the family (if
people choose to live in a family setting), but they certainly do not have
to. Indeed, these conditions may be more easily achieved outside the
family.
Will there be monogamous relations in an anarchist society? Clearly people
will have the option to choose how they want to live with whom, and how
long they want to live in these relationships. This will of course include
the option of monogamy. However, without a system based on patriarchy.
economic insecurity and religious or state authority, we doubt that
monogamy would be anything more than an anachronism If and when people did
elect to live monogamously. it presumably would be seen as a choice made by
both persons. Today, of course, monogamy is considered far more important
for women than for men. This is called the double standard: and it has no
place in a society of free and equal women and men.
The family? The nuclear family is not universal, but social systems for the
rearing of the young, the care of the elderly, and companionate relations
are. We think that whole new forms of communal and collective living
arrangements will grow to replace the traditional family system .
Sex? Of course. But this does not mean that all kinds of sexual behavior
would be condoned. We cannot imagine a truly anarchist society condoning
rape, sexual exploitation of children, or sex that inflicts pain or
humiliation, or involves dominance and submission. In sexual behavior, as
in all other forms of behavior, social anarchism is based on freedom, trust
and respect for the dignity of others. In fact, in an anarchist society
sexuality would lose all the inegalitarian and oppressive meanings it now
has.


17 Is it coercive to require education for children? What should its
content and structure be?

When people today worry about the coercive character of mandatory public
education, we think that their concern really stems from the authoritarian
character of schooling. Schools are an extension of the state; they
reproduce the class, sex, race and other divisions on which the state is
built. In an anarchist society, the social function of schools and the
potential of education would be quite different.
Even today, we think that the implications of withholding basic education
from young children are far more coercive than the requirement that they be
educated. Without at least a minimal level of literacy, people would be
much worse off than they already are. In an anarchist society education
would, of course, provide far more. Education would be fundamentally
liberating because it would help people learn how to learn; and it would
teach them much more than they could ever acquire on their own about the
physical world and the world of ideas. It would also help them learn to be
free and self-directed.
Such education is so important for young children that neither they nor
their parents should be able to decide that the child doesn't need it.
Bakunin stated the reason well:

Children do not constitute anyone's property . . . they belong only
   to their own future freedom. But in children this freedom is not yet
   real; it is only potential. For real freedom - . . . based upon a feeling
   of one's dignity and upon the genuine respect for someone else's
   freedom and dignity, i.e., upon justice - such freedom can develop in
   children only through the rational development of their minds,
character, and will.

What would anarchist education teach the young? Intellectual and physical
skills that help to develop literate, healthy and competent people should
be taught. Essential intellectual materials would include some that
children now learn, and some that they don't: reading and writing,
self-care (emotional and physical), farming and carpentry, cooking, and
physical education. Children in the upper elementary grades would be
introduced to literature and the other arts, crosscultural materials, and
the principles of anarchist community organization and economics. However,
the content of these materials should reflect anarchist values: it would be
senseless to teach the principles of capitalist politics and economics
(except perhaps as a horrible example), an acceptance of stratification, or
materials that advocate racist, sexist or other inegalitarian ideas.
Not only the content, but also the structure of anarchist education is
vitally important. It is difficult to develop liberatory modes of thought
and action in an atmosphere of intimidation, regimentation, boredom and
respect for authority. We do not mean to imply that children should devalue
teachers; but genuine respect must be based upon what someone knows and how
effectively s/he teaches it, not upon position, age or credentials. It will
be difficult to create an atmosphere of mutual respect and orderly process
without imposing discipline. But liberatory education cannot take place in
an authoritarian setting.
What else? Well, schools should be small, so that each child can get the
attention and stimulation s/he needs. Activities should be varied, and
distinctions between work and play narrowed as far as possible. Grading and
competition with each other would be eliminated. Students would learn to
set standards for themselves, and to try to meet them. (If they did not,
the child should not evaluate him/herself negatively. Guilt and
self-deprecation are enemies of autonomy and healthy functioning ) Teachers
would be selected on the basis of knowledge and interpersonal competence,
not upon the possession of formal
credentials. Probably few people would make a career of teaching, but many
members of the community (including some older children) would spend time
doing it. Schools would be integrated into the community, and everyone
would participate in the direction of the schools.
When would education end? Ideally, never. Instead of being a prison, which
inmates flee as soon as the guard's back is turned (which is what many
public schools are like today), the anarchist school would encourage people
to see education as a lifelong process. As the child becomes an adult,
education would increasingly become an informal self-directed activity
which would take place outside the school. But people would return for
further formal study as often, and as long, as they wish.


18 What is the relation of children to authority?

The line between nurturance and the authoritarian control of children is
difficult to draw. Perhaps in an anarchist society that boundary line will
be more clearly sketched.
Infants and young children are unquestionably dependent on others for their
survival. Perhaps the difference between nurturance and authoritarianism
arises when a child has acquired the skills for her or his own survival. If
we accept that boundary, then we will have to work at determining what
those skills minimally are. The skills themselves - once we go beyond the
acquisition of language - are not absolute. They are relative to the social
conditions under which people live. For example, under capitalism, where
income and work are tied together and where both are prerequisites for
food, housing, medical care and the like, survival training must last
longer. Partly because of this long period of dependency, there has been a
strong tradition in such settings to view the child (and young adult) as
property, hence at the disposal of the family or state. Certainly, the
political economy is one condition that fosters dependence on authority.
Fostering authoritarian dependence is, in fact, a major mechanism of social
control in capitalist and state socialist societies. Today it is easier to
catalog examples of dependence and authoritarian social conditions than it
is to provide examples of social conditions that encourage self-management
and autonomous behavior.
The quintessence of nurturant child-rearing in an anarchist community would
be the teaching of children to like themselves, to learn how to learn, and
how to set standards for self-evaluation.

19 Has there ever been a successful anarchist organization? If so, why
don't they last longer?

Yes, there has been. In fact, there have been many groups that have been
organized without centralized government, hierarchy, privilege and formal
authority. Some have been explicitly anarchist: perhaps the best-known
examples are the Spanish industrial and agricultural collectives, which
functioned quite successfully for several years until destroyed by the
combined forces of the authoritarian Left and the Right.
Most anarchist organizations are not called that - even by their members.
Anthropological literature is full of descriptions of human societies that
have existed without centralized government or institutionalized authority.
(However, as contemporary feminist anthropologists point Gut, many
so-called 'egalitarian' cultures are sexist.)
Industrialized societies also contain many groups that are anarchist in
practice. As the British anarchist Colin Ward says, 'an anarchist society,
a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence,
like a seed beneath the snow.' Examples include the leaderless small groups
developed by radical feminists, co-ops, clinics, learning networks, media
collectives, direct action organizations such as the Clamshell Alliance;
the spontaneous groupings that occur in response to disasters, strikes,
revolutions and emergencies; community-controlled day-care centers;
neighborhood groups; tenant and workplace organizing; and so on. Not all
such groups are anarchist, of course, but a surprising number function
without leadership and authority to provide mutual aid, resist the
government, and develop better ways of doing things.
Why don't they last longer? People who ask this question expect anarchist
organizations to meet standards of permanence that most anarchists, who
value flexibility and change, do not hold; and that most non-anarchist
groups cannot meet. There is, of course, another reason why many anarchist
organizations do not last longer than they do. Anarchists are enemies of
the state - and the state managers do not react kindly to enemies.
Anarchist organizations are blocked, harassed, and sometimes (as in the
case of Spain, and more recently Portugal) deliberately smashed. Under such
circumstances, it is a tribute to the persistence and capabilities of many
anarchists that their organizations last as long as they often do.

