Anarchy in Action

Chapter 14 - Anarchy and a Plausible Future
Chapter XIV. Anarchy and a Plausible Future For the earlier part of my life I was quieted by being told that ours was the richest country in the world, until I woke up to know that what I meant by riches was learning and beauty, and music and art, coffee and omelets; perhaps in the coming days of poverty we may get more of these ... W. R. Lethaby, Form in Civilization This book has illustrated the arguments for anarchism, not from theories, but from actual examples of tendencies which already exist, alongside much more powerful and dominant authoritarian methods of social organization. The important question is, therefore, not whether anarchy is possible or not, but whether we can so enlarge the scope and influence of libertarian methods that they become the normal way in which human beings organize their society. Is an anarchist society possible? We can only say, from the e... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 13 - How Deviant Dare You Get?
Chapter XIII. How Deviant Dare You Get? In a free society you would have to come to terms with yourself and with others like yourself, with the man who backs his car into yours, with the man next door who has to feed three times as many mouths as you do, with the drunks who get into your garden. You would have to sort things out with them yourself, instead of having social workers or political parties or policemen or shop stewards to do the job for you, and in the process you would be forced to face up to what sort of person you yourself really were. Peter Brown, Smallcreep’s Day Every anarchist propagandist would agree that the aspect of anarchist ideas of social organization which people find hardest to swallow is the anarchist rejection of the law, the legal system and the agencies of law-enforcement. They may ruefully agree with our criticism of the methods of the police, the falli... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 12 - The Breakdown of Welfare
Chapter XII. The Breakdown of Welfare All institutions, all social organizations, impose a pattern on people and detract from their individuality; above all it seems to me, they detract from their humanity ... It seems to me that one thing is in the nature of all institutions, whether they are for good purposes, like colleges, schools and hospitals, or for evil pluposes, like prisons. Everyone in an institution is continually adapting himself to it, and to other people, whereas the glory of humanity is that it adapts its environment to mankind, not human beings to their environment. John Vaizey, Scenes From Institutional Life Anarchists are sometimes told that their simple picture of the state as the protector of the privileges of the powerful is hopelessly out of date: welfare has changed the state. Some politicians even claim that their parties invented welfare. The late Hugh Gaitskill, fo... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 11 - A Self-Employed Society
Chapter XI. A Self-Employed Society The split between life and work is probably the greatest contemporary social problem. You cannot expect men to take a responsible attitude and to display initiative in daily life when their whole working experience deprives them of the chance of initiative and responsibility. The personality cannot be successfully divided into watertight compartments, and even the attempt to do so is dangerous: if a man is taught to rely upon a paternalistic authority within the factory, he will be ready to rely upon one outside. If he is rendered irresponsible at work by lack of opportunity for responsibility, he will be irresponsible when away from work too. The contemporary social trend towards a centralized, paternalistic, authoritarian society only reflects conditions which already exist within the factory. Gordon Rattray Taylor, Are Workers Human? The novelist Nigel... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 10 - Play as an Anarchist Parable
Chapter X. Play as an Anarchist Parable The boy who swings from rope to horse, leaping back again to the swinging rope, is learning by his eyes, muscles, joints and by every sense organ he has, to judge, to estimate, to know. The other twenty-nine boys and girls in the gymnasium are all as active as he, some if them in his immediate vicinity. But as he swings he does not avoid. He swings where there is space — a very important distinction — and in doing so he threads his way among the twenty-nine fellows. Using all his facilities, he is aware if the total situation in that gymnasium — of his own swinging and if his fellows’ actions. He does not shout to the others to stop, to wait or move from him — not that there is silence, for running conversations across the hall are kept up as he speeds through the air. But this “education” in the live use if all his senses can only come if his twenty-nine fellows a... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter VII. We House, You Are Housed, They Are Homeless In English, the word “housing” can be used as a noun or as a verb. When used as a noun, housing describes a commodity or product. The verb “to house” describes the process or activity of housing ... Housing problems are defined by material standards, and housing values are judged by the material quantity of related products, such as profit or equity. From the viewpoint of a central planner or an official designer or administrator, these are self-evident truths ... According to those for whom housing is an activity, these conclusions are absurd. They fail to distinguish between what things are, materially speaking, and what they do in people’s lives. This ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter III. The Dissolution of Leadership Accustomed as is this age to artificial leadership ... it is difficult for it to realize the truth that leaders require no training or appointing, but emerge spontaneously when conditions require them. Studying their members in the free-for-all of the Peckham Center, the observing scientists saw over and over again how one member instinctively became, and was instinctively but not officially recognized as, leader to meet the needs of one particular moment. Such leaders appeared and disappeared as the flux of the Center required. Because they were not consciously appointed, neither (when they had fulfilled their purpose) where they consciously overthrown. Nor was any particular gratitude shown by me... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter II. The Theory of Spontaneous Order In every block of houses, in every street, in every town ward, groups of volunteers will have been organized, and these commissariat volunteers will find it easy to work in unison and keep in touch with each other ... if only the self-styled “scientific” theorists do not thrust themselves in ... Or rather let them expound their muddle-headed theories as much as they like, provided they have no authority, no power! And that admirable spirit of organization inherent in the people ... but which they have so seldom been allowed to exercise, will initiate, even in so huge a city as Paris, and in the midst of a revolution, an immense guild of free workers, ready to furnish to each and all th... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter IV. Harmony through Complexity People like simple ideas and are right to like them. Unfortunately, the simplicity they seek is only to be found in elementary things; and the world, society, and man are made up of insoluble problems, contrary principles, and conflicting forces. Organism means complication, and multiplicity means contradiction, opposition, independence. P.-J. Proudhon, The Theory of Taxation One of the most frequently met reasons for dismissing anarchism as a social theory is the argument that while one can imagine it existing in a small, isolated, primitive community it cannot possibly be conceived in the context of large, complex, industrial societies. This view misunderstands both the nature of anarchism and the na... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Introduction to the Second Edition The anarchist movement grows in times of popular self-activity, feeds it and feeds off it, and declines when that self-activity declines... The anarchists in England have paid for the gap between their day-to-day activities and their utopian aspirations. This gap consists basically of a lack of strategy, a lack of ability to assess the general situation and initiate a general project which is consistent with the anarchists utopia, and which is not only consistent with anarchist tactics but inspires them. John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuze: The Lost History of the British Anarchists (Paladin 1978) Anarchism as a political and social ideology has two separate origins. It can be seen as an ultimate derivative ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)