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 5 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 6 (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 8 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 10