“Anarchism and Anarchy: A Historical Perspective” Barry Pateman at the 2009 NAASN Con

[1871]

Quote from the ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman (see below)


Introduction




I want to tell you about Anarchism.

I want to tell you what Anarchism is, because I think it is well you should know it. Also because so little is known about it, and what is known is generally hearsay and mostly false.

I want to tell you about it, because I believe that Anarchism is the finest and biggest thing man has ever thought of; the only thing that can give you liberty and well-being, and bring peace and joy to the world.

I want to tell you about it in such plain and simple language that there will be no misunderstanding it. Big words and high sounding phrases serve only to confuse. Straight thinking means plain speaking.

But before I tell you what Anarchism is, I want to tell you what it is not.

That is necessary because so much falsehood has been spread about Anarchism. Even intelligent persons often have entirely wrong notions about it. Some people talk about Anarchism without knowing a thing about it. And some lie about Anarchism, because they don't want you to know the truth about it.

Anarchism has many enemies; they won't tell you the truth about it. Why Anarchism has enemies and who they are, you will see later, in the course of this story. Just now I can tell you that neither your political boss nor your employer, neither the capitalist nor the policeman will speak to you honestly about Anarchism. Most of them know nothing about it, and all of them hate it. Their newspapers and publications - the capitalistic press- are also against it.

Even most Socialists and Bolsheviks misrepresent Anarchism. True, the majority of them don't know any better. But those who do know better also often lie about Anarchism and speak of it as 'disorder and chaos'. You can see for yourself how dishonest they are in this: the greatest teachers of Socialism - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - had taught that Anarchism would come from Socialism. They said that we must first have Socialism, but that after Socialism there will be Anarchism, and that it would be a freer and more beautiful condition of society to live in than Socialism. Yet the Socialists, who swear by Marx and Engels, insist on calling Anarchism 'chaos and disorder', which shows you how ignorant or dishonest they are.

The Bolsheviks do the same, although their greatest teacher, Lenin, had said that Anarchism would follow Bolshevism, and that then it will be better and freer to live.

Therefore I must tell you, first of all, what Anarchism is not.

It is not bombs, disorder, or chaos.

It is not robbery and murder.

It is not a war of each against all.

It is not a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man.

Anarchism is the very opposite of all that.

Anarchism means that you should be free; that no one should enslave you, boss you, rob you, or impose upon you.

It means that you should be free to do the things you want to do; and that you should not be compelled to do what you don't want to do.

It means that you should have a chance to choose the kind of a life you want to live, and live it without anybody interfering.

It means that the next fellow should have the same freedom as you, that every one should have the same rights and liberties.

It means that all men are brothers, and that they should live like brothers, in peace and harmony.

That is to say, that there should be no war, no violence used by one set of men against another, no monopoly and no poverty, no oppression, no taking advantage of your fellow-man.

In short, Anarchism means a condition or society where all men and women are free, and where all enjoy equally the benefits of an ordered and sensible life.

'Can that be?' you ask;'and how?'

'Not before we all become angels,' your friend remarks.

Well, let us talk it over. Maybe I can show you that we can be decent and live as decent folks even without growing wings.

- Alexander Berkman, Anarchist

quote;

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism, known as "anarchists", advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations.

There are many types and traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive. Anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. Strains of anarchism have been divided into the categories of social and individualist anarchism or similar dual classifications. Anarchism is often considered to be a radical left-wing ideology,and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflect anti-statist interpretations of communism, collectivism, syndicalism or participatory economics. However, anarchism has always included an individualist strain supporting a market economy and private property, or morally unrestrained egoism. Some individualist anarchists are also socialists or communists while some anarcho-communists are also individualists.

Anarchism as a social movement has regularly endured fluctuations in popularity. The central tendency of anarchism as a mass social movement has been represented by anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with individualist anarchism being primarily a literary phenomenon which nevertheless did have an impact on the bigger currents and individualists also participated in large anarchist organizations. Most anarchists oppose all forms of aggression, supporting self-defense or non-violence (anarcho-pacifism), while others have supported the use of some coercive measures, including violent revolution and propaganda of the deed, on the path to an anarchist society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism




(^Re Fistful Of Dynamite - the questioner misunderstands the point that when the Bakunin book is thrown away the army find the book and his family are located and murdered - the point the writer and director were attempting to convey)

btw - Fistful Of Dynamite, a 'western' is one of the great anarchist anti politics films - action/comedy/irony/history and a good introduction to anarchism and revolution,

[1871]

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http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/spain/

http://www.nodo50.org/fai-ifa/WebFAI_files/Web_FAI.html

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/durruti.html

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ravachol/

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Rava...peech.html

http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/spain/





http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_arc...asons.html





http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/iron.html

Miners strike/anarchists;

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/awg/awg_thatcher1.html

Dynamite/Alarm (anarchist writers);

http://www.chicagohistory.org/dramas/act...tion_f.htm

^
From above link,QUOTE;

Click on the image to see the text (approximately 425 words). The image is an engraving titled "Anarchist Ammunition," from Michael Schaack's Anarchy and Anarchists (1889).
Some of the discussions of dynamite that so inspired and energized anarchists, and angered and terrified their enemies, verged on incantations to the explosive's magical ability to make a single worker the equal of the gathered minions of capital. An editorial in the Alarm of November 15, 1884 read:

"Dynamite is the emancipator! In the hand of the enslaved it cries aloud: "Justice or—annihilation!" But best of all, the workingmen are not only learning its use, they are going to use it. They will use it, and effectually, until personal ownership—property rights—are destroyed, and a free society and justice becomes the rule of action among men. There will then be no need for government since there will be none who will submit to be governed. Hail to the social revolution! Hail to the deliverer—Dynamite."

"Dynamite!" is in much the same spirit. Its author is listed in the typed transcript as T. Lizius of Indianapolis. (The first initial is an error, since it was Gerhard Lizius of this same city who submitted articles to the Arbeiter-Zeitung and the Alarm.) Lizius became city editor of the former paper after he moved to Chicago in 1886. The prosecution's inclusion of this article as People's Exhibit 39 indicates, among other things, how the words of others, as well as their own rhetoric, were used against the Haymarket defendants.













A practical proposal for implementing anarchosyndicalism in Spain in 1936.

D.A. de Santillan was a leading figure amongst the anarchist revolutionaries during the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939.This traveler, journalist, editor and economist, who suffered imprisonment for fighting the old regime, was asked by the CNT at the height of Spain's revolutionary fervor to help outline and flesh out the new world being built.

This popular economic manifesto outlines a practical programme for an anarcho-syndicalist society, tailored to the needs of the Spanish people in 1936-1937. The economic analysis is interspersed and enriched by his philosophical reflections upon the nature and place of anarchism in the modern world. For anyone interested in anarchism during the Spanish Civil War and the historical development of anarcho-syndicalist theory, Santillan's book is a lucid and extremely important historical/philosophical document.


http://membres.multimania.fr/anarchives/...lution.htm

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/g...ggers.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Abad_...ill%C3%A1n



quote'

James Horrox

Gustav Landauer (1870-1919)

Although acknowledged by those who have encountered his ideas as one of the finest minds ever to have come out of the anarchist movement, Gustav Landauer remains relatively unknown outside the German- and Hebrew-speaking world. Precious little of his voluminous corpus of work is presently available in English, and despite a minor resurgence in interest in his ideas during the early 1970s Landauer is known today primarily for his involvement in the Bavarian revolution of 1918-19, or in connection with one or more of the many illustrious individuals with whom he was in close touch throughout his life, rather than for his own inimitable philosophy.

Landauer's was a Romantic, non-doctrinaire anarchism which, although rooted in the ideas of Proudhon and Kropotkin, went unashamedly against the grain of the anarchist orthodoxy of late 19th and early 20th century Europe. Central to his thinking is a fundamental comprehension that the capitalist state by its very nature is not something that can be “smashed” — rather, as he famously declared in 1910, it is “a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently” [1]. Rejecting the historical materialists' reification of the state and society he argued that in reality “we are the State and continue to be the State until we have created the institutions that form a real community”. He maintained that although externally imposed the state lives within each and every human being, and can only perpetuate itself as long as human beings exist in this `statual' relationship which makes its coercive order necessary; following thinkers like Étienne de la Boétie he therefore insisted that all it takes is for human beings step out of this relationship, this artificially-created social construct of reality, and the state is rendered obsolete, it disintegrates.

Landauer’s middle-class origins, his uncompromising pacifism and disdain for the sterile dogmatism and reductive rationalist arguments of many of the dominant theories of his day meant that he spent most of his life ostracised by the bulk of the mainstream European workers’ movement. Nevertheless, the philosophy he put forward points to a level of insight into human psychology and the nature of social relationships uncommon among anarchists of his time and many, particularly the more intellectual factions within the European Left, recognised that the populist-Romantic strain underpinning his ideas actually brought his unique brand of anarchism closer to accounting for the complexity of the human being than theories which reduce the manifold intricacies of human existence to the simplistic rigidity of two battling classes. Thus the ethical-idealism for which he received a good deal of flak from many of his contemporaries also earned him a sizable army of admirers, including some of the most highly esteemed literary and philosophical figures of his day, and he has continued to find a small but dedicated group of followers in every generation since his death.


http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Jame...1919_.html



http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/daniel...evolution/

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.guerin.html





http://libcom.org/library/what-is-anarch...er-berkman

[YaelTheGreat]

I love you, so much. Thanks for adding all that background info, I did not know most of what he was talking about. He makes great points that are helpful for people of all ideologies to consider.

[YaelTheGreat]

Beautiful

Quote:To me, someone without a master, someone who is free, an individual, an anarchist, is one who is his own master, who has unearthed the desire that tells him who he truly wants to be. This desire is his life. The way to heaven is narrow. The way to a newer, higher form of human society passes by the dark, fatal gate of our instincts and the terra abscondita- the "hidden land"- of our soul, which is our world. This world can only be constructed from within. We can discover this land, this rich world, if we are able to create a new kind of human being through chaos and anarchy, through unprecedented, intense, deep experience. Each one of us has to do this. Once this process is completed, only then will anarchists and anarchy exist, in the form of scattered individuals, everywhere. And they will find each other. But they will not kill anyone except themselves- in the mystical sense, in order to be reborn after having descended into the depths of their soul. They will be able to say of themselves, in Hofmannsthal's words: "I have rid myself of anything common in me as completely as I have left the soul underneath my feet." Only those who have journeyed through their own selves and waded deep in their own blood can help to create the new world without interfering with the lives of others.

-Gustav Landauer