About AnarchismToday.org Original

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By personman and the AnarchismToday.org community

I'm planning to write a new About Us, but I thought I would also put the old one up here to see if the community wants to hack away at it. If you have any ideas for it, give it a shot; start a new article and link it from the main page. -personman

"Anarchy: 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."

- Alexander Berkman

The basic purpose of the site, is a place for regular people to discuss the issues that affect us and the world. By "regular people," I mean people who aren't part of the political or social elite. We're not billionaires, we're not politicians, we aren't the owners of society, we don't sit in the halls of power. Some examples of the sorts of issues I'm referring to could be social, political, economic issues, locally, domestically, abroad, or on a global scale, but are not limited to those.

People who are unfamiliar with anarchism, or who are only familiar with the establishment view of anarchy as "disorder, chaos" might be wondering:

"What does regular people discussing society have to do with Anarchism?"

The answer is, quite literally, everything.

Anarchism is the empowerment of regular people. It empowers us to make our own decisions for ourselves, our communities and our workplaces, rather then to elect elite “representatives” who do not represent us, or submit to bosses and corporate hierarchy.

Anarchism is "direct democracy from the bottom up" rather than "representative democracy from the top down."

Anarchism is freedom and equality. It is the tendency to seek out unjust, undesirable or coercive forms of authority, to question their existence, and to abolish them if a suitable justification cannot be given.

"The burden of justification is on authority."

- Noam Chomsky

Anarchism is solidarity. The idea that regardless of artificial borders politicians draw with our blood, and lines such as race and sex that are sometimes used to divide us, we are all one human family. What affects one of us affects us all. We are not any more deserving of freedom than anyone else, and in fact on the contrary it is the freedom of others that confirms our own.

"I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation."

- Mikhail Bakunin

For these reasons and many others, anarchists oppose racism, sexism, nationalism, and in general most ideas that seek to separate us into groups rather than unite us as people.

"I mean, those people who are coming across the border from Mexico, they are not alien to me, you see. You know, Muslims who come to this country to live, they are not alien to me, you see. These demonstrations, these wonderful demonstrations that we have seen very recently on behalf of immigrant rights, say, and you’ve seen those signs saying, you know, “No human being is alien.” And I think that’s true. Except for the people in Washington, you see."

-Howard Zinn

Anarchism opposes capitalism and corporations. Under capitalism, the businesses are privately owned. Authority is rigid, and top down, leaving the workers (us) with virtually no control over the workplace. We are at the mercy of our employers, whose interests are directly opposed to our own.

"The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites. . . You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. . . A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called 'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid." [The Abolition of Work and other essays, p. 21]

Anarchists generally favor worker ownership and control of "the means of production" (economic-geek-talk for business) as opposed to the exploitative and authoritarian private ownership and control we have under capitalism.

Corporations, aside from being capitalist institutions, are powerful "unaccountable private tyrannies."

If a corporation pays it's employees more then it has to, or creates a better product than it needs to, they can be sued by their shareholders for failing to maximize profits. This actually happened in the famous case of Dodge vs Ford. Henry Ford tried to pay his workers higher then the going rate, and to build better cars then they had to. He was taken to court by his shareholders, and he lost.

Corporations are legally required to be as greedy as they can possibly get away with.

An important thing to consider in light of all this, is what impacts are there from these massive unaccountable corporations marching around the globe like Bulls on Parade, using our planet as an infinite resource and our air and water as a toilet? What is the impact of having our power and our media concentrated among an elite minority whose interests run counter to the majority of the people of the world?

"Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must -- namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival." - Noam Chomsky

• NOTE: This is intended to give a brief overview of anarchism and what we're about. For a more complete description, I'd recommend reading An Anarchist FAQ.