Anarchism is based on a radical and complex conception of freedom that could be divided into three parts.
To this negative conception is added a positive conception of freedom since they consider that freedom is also a potentiality, the possibility for the individual to realize and to flourish all his qualities.
Finally, the anarchists have a social conception of freedom, which has the consequence of inseparably linking freedom and equality. Indeed, anarchism postulates that the individual can be free only within a solidarity society composed of free individuals. Thus, according to Bakunin, man is truly free only so far as his freedom, freely recognized and represented as a mirror by the free consciousness of all others, finds confirmation of its extension to infinity in their freedom . Man is truly free only among other equally free men; and as it is free only as a human being, the slavery of a single man on earth, being an offense against the very principle of humanity, is a negation of the liberty of all (Revolutionary Catechism).
Anarchist is anyone whose project of society is determined by these positive and social conceptions of freedom. This project varies according to the situations (social, cultural, historical, geographical ...), but it always proposes the autonomy of individuals in the responsibility, the self-management of the communities within the framework of non-hierarchical, radically democratic social structures, decentralized and federalist.
Anarchists have in common a perception of human nature that justifies the viability of such a libertarian society.
Yet this perception is rich in differences. For example, the Russian Kropotkin considered that the instinct of cooperation and mutual aid predominated in all animal species and found its perfect embodiment in humans. Other libertarians (such as Peter Marshall) have rather developed an existentialist view of human nature, believing that human behavior adapts to social structures and norms. All of them, however, agree that the only possible harmonious future for humanity is a refusal of economic exploitation (human beings, continents of the south, resources of the planet ...) within the framework of a society finally liberated from the relations of domination and power.
Here's the common used logo which resumes this idea:
All the variants of anarchism have in common an anti-authoritarian criticism of contemporary societies.
Anarchists dispute all relations of hierarchical domination, of whatever nature (economic, social, cultural, skin color, sex ...). Anarchist criticism extends to all oppressive institutions, such as the Church, the traditional school, the enterprise, the political parties ... and in the first place to the State (army, police, social control, order moral ...), which they regard as the very incarnation of domination.
The extent of this criticism is one of the factors that distinguishes anarchism from Marxism. Anarchism opposes oppression as much as exploitation, authority as much as property and the state as much than capitalism. This explains why many ecologists, feminists, pacifists, trade unionists and human rights activists are attracted by this radical social criticism of our societies.
Finally, the anarchists have in common to propose strategies of revolutionary change implying the immediate institution of their self-managed political project. They have always opposed authoritarian communist strategies (transition by a pseudo-dictatorship of the proletariat) and the conquest of state power by hierarchical political parties. They are generally abstentionist during elections ("standing for election to a deliberative assembly while refusing to take up any seats won or otherwise participate in the assembly's business.") without making it an immutable rule. Anarchists work above all in social movements and advocate direct action (preferably nonviolent) and the self-organization of citizens at the grassroots level.
It was on the strategies of change that the anarchists were most divided. For example, some advocated, mainly during the last two decades of the nineteenth century in my neighboring country, France, at a time when capitalist exploitation was particularly fierce (child labor, forced transfer from agriculture to nascent industry ...) a form of violent direct action called propaganda by the fact. But after a wave of individual attacks that led only to popular rejection and a renewal of state repression, this strategy was abandoned in favor of an investment by libertarians in the social movement.
Anarchists insist today on community action (collective, social centers, coordination ...), on the formation of alternative institutions on a local basis (libertarian schools, self-managed agricultural communities, production cooperatives, free radio and press associative ...) which are real miniature laboratories of what could be a libertarian society.
Anarcho-syndicalists, for their part, focus their strategy on mass action in companies and the construction of trade unions conceived as the embryos of the new society. They advocate forms of direct action such as sabotage, boycott, partial strike and general management and expropriating strike.
Anarcho-pacifists insist on non-violent direct action and civil disobedience as a means of overthrowing the oppressive hierarchical order. Although they are revolutionaries, anarchists do not reject partial, intermediate forms of struggle and daily.
On the contrary, other theoreticians consider that evolution and revolution are part of the same process and that each action can be effective if it is part of a perspective anti-authoritarian. Libertarians consider self-education and education to be among the main levers to access a society of free, autonomous and responsible human beings. Let us conclude that a minority of libertarians is not revolutionary. They argue that "big night dreams" are themselves potentially repressive, and believe that it is up to the individual to liberate himself by rejecting the dominating society.
For many individualists, being an anarchist means being "outside" and living according to one's own principles, by refusing to collaborate with oppressive institutions. This attitude sometimes leads to a form of aristocratic individualism of Nietzschean inspiration.
What kind of anarchist are you or would you be?. Or maybe you simply wouldn't? Tell me in the comments!
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