Fighting for Our Lives

8/9/2019 Fighting for Our Lives

1/13

fghtingor our lives

an anarchist primer

FREEABSOLUTELY


2/13

We dropped out of school, got di-vorced, broke with our families and ourselves and everything wed known.

We quit our jobs, violated ourleases, threw all our furniture outon the sidewalk, and hit the road.

We sat on the swings of childrens

playgrounds until our toes werefrostbitten, admiring the moon-light on the dewy grass, writingpoetry on the wind for each other.

We went to bed early and lay awakeuntil well past dawn recounting allthe awful things wed done to oth-ers and they to usand laughing,blessing and absolving each otherand this crazy cosmos.

We stole into museums showingreruns of old Guy Debord lmsto write ght foulandfaster, myfriend, the old world is behind youon the backs of theater seats.

The scent of gasoline still fresh onour hands, we watched the newsun rise, and spoke in hushed voic-es about what we should do next,thrilling in the budding conscious-ness of our own limitless power.

We used stolen calling card num-bers to talk our teenage loversthrough phone sex from telephonesin the lobbies of police stations.

We broke into the private poolsand saunas of the rich to enjoythem as their owners never had.

We slipped into the ofces whereour browbeaten friends shufed

papers for petty despots, to draftanti-imperialist manifestos ontheir computersor just sleep un-der their desks. They were shockedthat morning they nally walked inon us, half-naked, brushing ourteeth at the water cooler.

We lived through harrowing, ex-hilarating moments when we didthings we had always thought im-possible, spitting in the face of allour apprehensions to kiss unap-proachable beauties, drop bannersfrom the tops of national monu-ments, drop out of colleges . . . andthen gritted our teeth, expectingthe world to endbut it didnt!

We stood or knelt in emptyingconcert halls, on rooftops underlightning storms, on the deadgrass of graveyards, and sworewith tears in our eyes never to go

back again.

We sat at desks in high school de-tention rooms, against the wornbrick of Greyhound bus stations,on disposable synthetic sheets inthe emergency treatment wardsof unsympathetic hospitals, onthe hard benches of penitentiarydining halls, and swore the samething through clenched teeth, butwith no less tenderness.

We communicated with each

other through initials carved intoboarding school desks, designsspray-painted through stencilsonto alley walls, holes kickedin corporate windows televisedon the ve oclock news, lettersposted with counterfeit stamps orcarried across oceans in friendspacks, secret instructions codedinto anonymous emails, clandes-tine meetings in coffee shops,love poetry carved into the planksof prison bunks.

We sheltered illegal immigrants,political refugees, fugitives fromjustice, and adolescent runawaysin our modest homes and beds,as they too sheltered us.

We improvised recipes to bakeeach other cookies, cakes, break-fasts in bed, weekly free meals inthe park, great feasts celebrating

our courage and kinship so wemight taste their sweetness onour very tongues.

We entrusted each other with ourhearts and appetites, togethercomposing symphonies of ca-resses and pleasure, making lovea verb in a language of exaltation.

We wreaked havoc upon their gen-der norms and ethnic stereotypesand cultural expectations, show-ing with our bodies and our rela-tionships and our desires just howarbitrary their laws of nature were.

We wrote our own music and per-formed it for each other, so whenwe hummed to ourselves wecould celebrate our companionscreativity rather than repeat theradios dull drone.

In borrowed attic rooms, wetended ailing foreign lovers andstruggled to write the lines thatcould ignite the res dormant inthe multitudes around us.

In the last moment before dawn,ashlights tight in our shakinghands, we dismantled power boxeson the houses of fascists who wereto host rallies the following day.

We fought those fascists tooth,nail, and knife in the streets, whenno one else would even confrontthem in print.

We planted gardens in the aban-doned lots of ghettos, hitchhikedacross continents in record time,tossed pies in the faces of kingsand bankers.

We played saxophones togetherin the darkness of echoing cavesin West Virginia.

In Paris, armed with cobblestonesand parasols, we held the gen-darmes at bay for nights on end,until we could almost taste the newworld coming through the tear gas.

We fought our way through theirlines to the opera house and tookit over, and held discussions theretwenty-four hours a day as to whatthat world could be.

In Chicago, we created an under-ground network to provide illegalabortions in safe conditions anda supportive atmosphere, whenthe religious fanatics would havepreferred us to die in shame andtears down dark alleys.

In New York we held hands andmassaged each others shoulders asour enemies closed in to arrest us.

In Quebec we tore up the high-way and pounded out primordialrhythms on the trafc signs withthe fragments, and the sound wasvaster and more beautiful than anysong ever played in a concert hall.

In Santiago, we robbed banks to

fund papers of transgressive poetry.

In Siberia, we plotted impoescapesand carried themcircumnavigating the globeforged papers and borrowed mto return to the arms of our fr

In Montevideo, in the sqtownship, we built huts fro

wood and plastic sheeting, pelectricity from nearby powerand conferred with our neigas to how we could contribour new community.

In San Diego, when they jailedspeaking our minds, we invitfriends and lled their prisonthey had to change their polic

In Oregon, we climbed treelived in them for months totect the forests we had hikecamped in as children.

In Mexico, when we met hofreight trains, we traded sabout working with the Zatas in Chiapas, about oodnessed from boxcars pathrough Texas, about our gparents who fought in the can revolution.

[Overture: A True Story]


3/13

Its true. If your idea of healthy human relations is adinner with friends, where everyone enjoys everyone elsescompany, responsibilities are divided up voluntarily andinformally, and no one gives orders or sells anything, thenyou are an anarchist, plain and simple. The only questionthat remains is how you can arrange for more of yourinteractions to resemble this model.

Whenever you act without waiting for instructions orofcial permission, you are an anarchist. Any time youbypass a ridiculous regulation when no ones looking,you are an anarchist. If you dont trust the government,the school system, Hollywood, or the management toknow better than you when it comes to things that affectyour life, thats anarchism, too. And you are especiallyan anarchist when you come up with your own ideas andinitiatives and solutions.

As you can see, its anarchism that keeps thingsworking and life interesting. If we waited for authoritiesand specialists and technicians to take care of everything,we would not only be in a world of trouble, but dreadfullyboredand boringto boot. Today we live in that world of(dreadfully boring!) trouble precisely to the extent that we

abdicate responsibility and control.Anarchism is naturally present in every healthy human

being. It isnt necessarily about throwing bombs or wearingblack masks, though you may have seen that on television(Do you believe everything you see on television? Thats notanarchist!). The root of anarchism is the simple impulse todo it yourself: everything else follows from this.

We fought in that revolution, andthe Spanish civil war, and theFrench resistance, and even theRussian revolutionthough notfor the Bolsheviks orthe Czar.

Sleepless and weather-beaten, wecrossed the Ukraine on horsebackto deliver news of the conictsthat offered us another chance toght for our freedom.

Tense but untrembling, we smug-gled posters, books, rearms, fu-gitives, ourselves across bordersfrom Canada to Pakistan.

We lied with clean consciences tohomicide detectives in Reno, tomilitary police in Santos, to angry

grandparents in Oslo.We told the truth to each other,even truths no one had ever daredtell before.

When we couldnt overthrow gov-ernments, we raised new genera-tions who would taste the sweetadrenaline of barricades andwheatpaste, who would carry onour quixotic quest when we fell ored before the ruthless onslaughtof the servile and craven.

When we could overthrow gov-ernments, we did.

We stood, one after the other,decade after decade, century af-ter century, behind the witnessstand, and shouted so the deafestself-satised upright citizen at theback of the courtroom could hearit: . . . and if I could do it all overagain, I would!

As the sun rose after winter par-ties in unheated squats, we gath-ered up great sacks of brokenglass and washed stacks of dishesin freezing water, while our critics,sequestered in penthouses withmaid service, demanded to knowwho would take out the garbagein our so-called utopia.

When the good intentions of lib-erals and reformists broke downin bureaucracy, we collected foodfrom the trash to feed the hungry,broke into condemned buildingsand transformed them into palac-es t for pauper kings and banditqueens, held the sick and dyingtight in our loving arms.

We fell in love in the wreckage,shouted out songs in theuproar, danced joyfully inthe heaviest shackles theycould forge; we smuggled ourstories through the gauntletsof silence, starvation, andsubjugation, to bring themback to life again and again asbombs and beating hearts; webuilt castles in the sky from

the ruins of hell on earth.

One of us evenassassinated the Presidentof the United States.

Accepting no constraintsfrom without, wecountenanced nonewithin ourselves, either,

and found that the worldopened before us like thepetals of a rose.

Im speaking, of course, ofanarchistsand when peopleask me about my politics, I tellthem: the best reason to be arevolutionary is that it is simplya better way to live. Their lawsguarantee us the right to remainsilent, the right to a public trialby a jury of our peers (though

my peers wouldnt put me ontrialwould yours?)whatabout the right to live life likewe wont get another chance, tohave reasons to stay up all nightin urgent conversation, to lookback on every day without regretor bitterness? Such rights we canonly claim for ourselvesandshouldnt these be our centralconcerns, not the minutiae ofprotocol and survival?

For those of us born into a captivitygilded by the blood and sweatof less fortunate captives, thechallenge of leading a life worthliving of stories worth telling is alifelong project, and a formidableone; but all it takes, at anymoment, to meet this challenge isto contest that captivity.

When we fght, werefghting or our lives.


4/13

n the beginning, harmony: tribes of human beings live asne, gathering and eating and playing and sleeping and sing-

ng and making love and telling stories together. And, occa-onally, discord: an argument breaks out, strong words arexchanged, a blow is struck.

When this happens, the tribe meets and arrives at a resolu-on. Tribes that cannot do this break up, and the memberstarve or freeze or are hunted down by wild beasts, or join an-ther tribe that can resolve conicts. Conicts between tribesre resolved in a similar manner. For thousands upon thou-ands of years, this way of life works and endures.

But one day, there is a conict that cannot be resolved. Dis-ussion, placation, even combat are not enough; the adversar-s still seek vengeance. Perhaps it is a spiritual aberration, orome technological or cultural innovation that allows them toontinue contending long after it is healthy, but they do notnd their way back to peace as the others did before. Theyecome machines of war. Their relationship with the environ-

ment shifts: the earth must be disciplined, now, to providehem stores of food to last through their struggle. Their rela-onships with each other change: they view all others as po-ential comrades-in-arms or enemies, appraising might abovel other qualities.

The neighboring tribes do not escape unscathed. Soonhey are embroiled in this conict, and must contend with annemy such as they have never encountered. Many of these

The next military campaigns are a symptom of social vicious-ness, no longer a cause. Now the invisible violence of econom-ics ordains the visible violence of armies: soldiers cut paths intothe last wilderlands of barbarism so further resources can beseized by merchants, and the freshly destitute barbarians con-stitute a new consumer base. Whole continents are despoiled,and the inhabitants enslavedand then their destitution iscited as proof of their racial inferiority, by the inheritors of theirstolen worlds! Missionaries are in the front lines of the assault,enforcing the reign of the jealous One and Only God as surelyas the soldiers enforce the reign of brutality. Terror for territory,blood for money, money for blood, He ordains it allas it or-dains Him.

The successors of the missionaries pray directly to themarket. These new priests are even more successful than thesoldiers in imposing the rule of power: a day comes whenshackles are no longer needed to make slaves servile, whenidolatry alone is enough to keep them submissively ghtingamongst themselves. Now no one can remember any otherlife, and son ghts brother ghts father ghts neighbor, as thespecters of fear and avarice look over their empire from above.Kings, generals, presidents rise and fall, but the system, hier-

archy, remains: competition itself holds the crown, picking anddiscarding its champions without pity.

Everyone in these relationships of violence still wants, des-perately, to escape, but again and again they bear the seedsof this violence with them, destroying every refuge as theyenteras the refugees who ee to the New World do, andthe Communists who overthrow the Czar. Even those who doescape, like the artists whose communes gentrify neighbor-hoods, whose provocative innovations set precedents for thenext generations fashion photography, only pave the way forthe steamrollers that will follow in their footsteps.

Violence reaches an all-time high. Schoolchildren, mail-men, formerly the very picture of sociability, begin to gundown their companions in cold blood. Ministers molest al-tar boys, fathers batter their daughters, teenagers rape theirdates. Prisons overow. Millions perish in holocausts acrossnations and decades, and the maimed survivors initiate sub-sequent holocausts. Nuclear missiles point at everyone, untilthe imminence of t he nal holocaust can only be discussed inplatitudes. Now we are all on death row, all political prisoners.Even in the loftiest citadels of the United States, protected bythe most sophisticated and well-equipped military in the his-tory of the solar system, white-collar workers with full benetsand life and health insurance are no longer safeairplanescrash, skyscrapers fall. Terror threatens us all.

Tonight a Palestinian youth struggles to work out the

equation: have his enemies lled his world with enough mis-ery that he feels more hatred for them than he does love forlife? He thinks of his crippled father, of his bulldozed house,of his departed friendswho computed this same equationdaily, always coming to one conclusion, until the day theycame to another.

Where, through all this, is love? It is still here, in the formsit has always taken: families eating together, friends embrac-ing, gifts given simply for the pleasure of giving. We still for-give, converse, fall deeply in love; it even happens occasionallythat new tribes federate to confront a common antagonistnot out of malice, but for the sake of peace, hoping to con-

communities perish outright; others, the ones who would sur-vive at any cost, nd that they too must become war machines.They too subjugate the earth and its animals, enslave theirvanquished foes, even their own people, anything to endurein the face of this terror. They become the terror, they outdo it,and this is their undoing.

Spreading like a cancer, from tribe to tribe, strange changessweep the face of the earth. Little tribes merge to become bigtribes, and ultimately nations; temporary military leaders be-come hereditary monarchs; the vision of once peace-lovingpeoples becomes clouded with carnage. And it is not only inmilitary matters that these tribes change. Territory is claimedand marked, and becomes the source of new conicts. Marketeconomics is invented: peoples who no longer trust each oth-er insist on trades where gifts once sufcedand scramble tooutbargain each other, to cut a prot even in peacetime. Patri-archy appears: the undeclared war between the sexes, the gen-der roles of warrior and servant, institutionalized and enforced

by each generation on the next. Organized religion is invented:now men not only vie for land, food, property, revenge, butalso for each others minds and hearts.

All of these innovations are catastrophic for human beings.They try to offset the effects with new innovations, which aregreater catastrophes. Governments, convened to protect peoples,extract taxes from them and thrive idly off their sweat and toil;police ll the streets to prevent crime, and perpetrate the worst

crimes with impunity. Defending themselvesfrom the monstrosities of civilization, thesepeoples breed more awful monsters.

Minor nations, hell-bent on with-standing the assaults of greater ones,arm themselves to the teethand go onghting and conquering in exaggeratedresponse to the original threat until theybecome great empires. So the RomanEmpire nds its origins in the resistanceof rural farmers to Etruscan encroach-ments; so the rest of Europe becomesa snakepit of competing empires, as aconsequence of hundreds of years spentghting that one. Later historians will lookat the bloody wars waged on the edgesof every civilization as evidence that theheart of darkness beyond this frontier

is a bloody barbarism; but perhaps itis the peace-loving barbarians who aredefending themselves from the blood-thirsty. Perhaps the true heart of darknesslies at the center of these empires, in theeye of the hurricane, where violence is sodeeply ingrained in human life that it isno longer visible to the naked eye: slavesgo about in the streets as if of their ownvolition, powerless even to rebel; gladia-tors slaughter each other in the circuses,and it is called entertainment.

clude conicts as they were in the days before wacommerce. These moments, even when they occuonly a few individuals, are as powerful and preciouever were. And they are still infectious, as infectiolence and hatred, if only they can nd unarmored which to catch hold.

The world now waits for a war on war, a love friendship which can defend itself. Anarchy is a woto describe those moments when force cannot suand life ourishes as we know it should; anarchismence of creating and defending such moments. It is which aspires to uselessnessthe only kind of weapwield, hoping against hope that this time, through alchemy, our weapons will not turn upon us.

We know that after the revolution, after every rthe struggle between love and hatred, between coercioperation, will continue; but, then, as now, as always, ttant question iswhich side are you on?

Preface:A Genealogy of Force


5/13

People with very little actual historical background often say of anarchy that it wouldnever workwithout realizing that not only has it worked for much of the history of thehuman race, but it is in fact working right now. For the time being, lets set aside the ParisCommune, Republican Spain, Woodstock, open-source computer programming, and allthe other famed instances of successful revolutionary anarchism. Anarchy is simply coop-erative self-determinationit is a part of everyday life, not something that will only hap-pen after the revolution. Anarchy works today for circles of friends everywhereso howcan we make more of our economic relations anarchist? Anarchy is in action when peoplecooperate on a camping trip or to arrange free meals for hungry peopleso how can weapply those lessons to our interactions at school, at work, in our neighborhoods?

To consult chaos theory: anarchy is chaos, and chaos is order. Any naturally orderedsystema rainforest, a friendly neighborhoodis a harmony in which balance per-petuates itself through chaos and chance. Systematic disorder, on the other handthediscipline of the high school classroom, the sterile rows of genetically modied corn

defended from weeds and in-sectscan only be maintainedby ever-escalating exertions offorce. Some, thinking disorder

is simply the absence of anysystem, confuse it with anarchy.But disorder is the most ruth-less system of all: disorder andconict, unresolved, quicklysystematize themselves, stack-ing up hierarchies according totheir own pitiless demandsselshness, heartlessness, lustfor domination. Disorder in itsmost developed form is capital-ism: the war of each against all,rule or be ruled, sell or be sold,from the soil to the sky.

We live in a particularly vio-lent and hierarchical time. Themaniacs who think they benetfrom this hierarchy tell us thatthe violence would be worse

without it, not comprehending that hierarchy itself, whether it be inequalities in economicstatus or political power, is the consequence and expression of violence. Not to say thatforcibly removing the authorities would immediately end the waves of violence createdby the greater violence their existence implies; but until we are all free to learn how to get

along with each other for our own sake, rather than under the guns dir ected by the oneswho benet from our strife, there can be no peace between us.

This state of affairs is maintained by more than guns, more than the vertigo of hier-archy, of kill-or-be-killed reasoning: it is also maintained by the myth of success. Ofcialhistory presents our past as the history of Great Men, and all other lives as mere effectsof their causes; there are only a few subjects of history, they would make us believetherest of us are its objects. The implication of any hierarchy is that there is only one freeman in all society: the king (or president, executive, movie star, etc.). Since this is theway it has always been and always will b e, the account goes, we should all ght to becomehim, or at least accept our station beneath him gracefully, grateful for others beneath usto trample when we need reassurance of our own worth.

But even the president isnt free to go for a walk in the neighborhood of his choosing.Why settle for a fragment of t he world, or less? In the absence of forcein the egalitarianbeds of true lovers, in the democracy of devoted friendships, in the topless federationsof playmates enjoying good parties and neighbors chatting at sewing circleswe are allqueens and kings. Whether or not anarchy can work outside such sanctuaries, it is be-coming clearer and clearer that hierarchy doesnt. Visit the model cities of the new worldordersit in a trafc jam of privately owned vehicles, among motorists sweating andswearing in isolated unison, an ocean lling with pollution to your right and a ghetto onyour left where uniformed and ununiformed gangs clashand behold the apex of hu-man progress. Ifthis is order, why not try chaos!

To say that anarchists subscribe to anarchism is like saying pianists subscribe to pia-nism. There is no Anarchismbut there is anarchy, or rather, there are anarchies.

For as long as power has existed, the spirit of anarchy has been with us too, named ornameless, uniting millions or steeling the resolve of a single one. The slaves and savageswho fought the Romans for their freedom and lived in armed liberty, equality, and frater-nity, the mothers who raised their daughters to love their bodies in deance of the dietadvertisements leering from all sides, the renegades who painted their faces and threw

tea into Boston Harbor, and all the others who took matters into their own hands: theywere anarchists, whether they called themselves Ranters, Taborites, Communards, Abo-litionists, Yippies, Syndicalists, Quakers, Mothers of the Disappeared, Food Not Bombs,Libertarians, or even Republicansjust as we are all anarchists, to the extent that we dothe same. There are as many anarchists today as there are students cutting class, parentscheating on their taxes, women teaching themselves bicycle repair, lovers desiring out-side the lines. They dont need to vote for an anarchist party or party linethat woulddisqualify them, at least for that momentto be anarchists: anarchy is a mode of being, amanner of responding to conditions and relating to others, a class of human behavior . .. and not the working class!

Forget about the history of anarchism as an ideaforget the bearded guys. Its one thingto develop a language for describing a thingits another thing entirely to live it. This is notabout theories or formulas, heroes or biographiesits about yourlife. Anarchy is what mat-ters, everywhere it appears, not armchair an-archism, the specialists study of freedom!There are self-proclaimed anarchists whonever experienced a day of anarchy in theirliveswe should know how much to trustthem on the subject!

So how will the anarchist utopia work?Thats a question well never again be dupedinto disputing over, a red herring if thereever was one! This isnt a utopian vision, or

a program or ideal to serve; its simply a wayof proceeding, of approaching relationships,of dealing with problems nowfor surelywell never be entirely through dealing withproblems! Being an anarchist doesnt meanbelieving anarchy, let alone anarchism, canx everythingit just means acknowledg-ing its up to us to work things out, that noone and nothing else can do this for us: ad-mitting that, like it or not, our lives are inour handsand in each others.

Capitalismmeans constantstruggle!

Does anarchy work?

Anarchy, not Anarchism!

He calls for thepaper to check

opinion polls. Lthrough this ltsubjects, he seeis looking for, nis looking at. Thof stealth bombof thousands ofhundreds of thotons of bombs aprotect the emphis empire. Letnot enough.


6/13

Anarchists use democracybut we dont let democracy use us. For us, the rst andlast matter is always the needs and feelings of the individuals involvedany system toaddress them is provisional at best. We dont try to force ourselves into the connes of anyestablisthed procedureswe apply procedures to the extent that they serve human needs,and discard them past that point. Seriously, what should come rstour systems, or us?

We cooperate or coexist with others, including other life forms, whenever its possible.But we dont prize consensus, let alone The Rule of Law, above our own values anddreamswhen we cant come to an agreement, we go our own ways, rather than limitingeach other. In extreme cases, when others refuse to acknowledge our needs or persist indoing unconscionable, harmful things, we intercede by whatever means are necessarynot on behalf of Justice or revenge, but simply to represent our own interests.

We see laws as nothing more than the shadows of our predecessors customs,lengthened by the years to seem more wise than our own judgment. They persist asundead creatures, imposing unnatural stipulations upon us that do not enable justice,but only interfere with itwhile at the same time estranging us from it, framing it assomething we cannot carry out without arcane formalities and judges wigs. These laws,having multiplied and atrophied over time, are now so alien and inscrutable that a priest

class of lawyers makes a living off the rest of us as astrologers of the stars our well-meaning ancestors set in precarious orbit. The man who insists that justice can only bemaintained by the rule of law i s the same one who appears on the witness stand at the war crimetribunal swearing he was only following orders. Theres no Justiceits just us.

Anarchist economies are radically different from other economies. Anarchists notonly conduct their transactions differently, but trade in an entirely different currencyone which is not convertible into the kind of assets for which capitalists compete andcommunists draft Five Year Plans. Capitalists, socialists, communists exchange products;anarchists interchange assistance, inspiration, loyalty. Capitalist, socialist, communisteconomies make human interactions into commodities: policing, medical care, educa-tion, even sexual relations become services that are bought and sold. Anarchist econo-mies, focusing above all on the needs and desires of the individuals involved, transformproducts back into social relations: the communal experience of gardening or dumpsterdiving or playing music, the excitement and self-righteous hi gh of stealing from a super-market or squatting a building. The typical economic interaction in capitalist relations isthe sale; in anarchist economics, it is the gift.

Anarchist economies depend on social capital, which is the opposite of private property.Private capital disappears when utilized, as in the case of money spent by day laborers onfoodor, when applied with avaricious calculation, serves to accrue more private capitalat others expense, as in the case of the corporation that exploits those laborers. Socialcapital, on the other hand, is available in abundancein fact, it is precisely that capitalwhich, utilized by some, becomes more available to them and others: the communitygarden which produces more food the more people cooperate in it, the squatted buildingwhich is better renovated for community usage and better defended from the police themore people commit to it. In friendships, as in lovemaking, as in potluck dinners anddancing, the more one gives, the more everyone gets.

Today, most of us participate in both kinds ofeconomies at once. Ostensibly private property isstill shared, at least in limited contexts: a teenagerbrings his basketball for the neighborhood game,a rock band buys a communal van. Even a housebelonging to a middle class family, althoughoff-limits for most, still hosts visiting relatives,a P.T.A. meeting, a sleep-over party. Instanceslike these are reminders of how much morepleasurable sharing can be than commerce.Anarchists nurture visions of a world suitable fora sharing that knows no borders.

Is this what democracy looks like?

Just about everyone lovesdemocracy and hates thegovernment. Anarchy

thats just democracywithout the government!

The economics of anarchy

But who will take out the garbage?

It was in Barcelona, some years after the civil war,when the memory of the syndicates still remained,unutterable, under the iron heel of the fascist regime

City bus #68 was making its rounds oneparticularly sunny spring day, when the driverslammed on the brakes at an intersection. Fuckthis, he swore in angry Catalan, and, opening thebus doors, stomped out into the sunshine.

The passengers watched in shock at rst, and thenbegan to protest anxiously. One of them stood upand started to honk the horn. After a few tentativebeeps, he leaned on it with all his might, soundingit like a burglar alarm; but the fed up ex-bus drivercontinued, nonchalant, on his way down the street.

For a full minute, the riders sat in stupeedsilence. A couple stood up and got off the bus

themselves. Then, from the back of the bus, awoman with the appearance of a huge cannon balland an air of unconquerable self-possession steppedforward. Without a word, she sat down in the driversseat, and put the engine in gear. The bus continuedon its route, stopping at its customary stops, untilthe woman arrived at her own and got off. Anotherpassenger took her place for a stretch, stopping atevery bus stop, and then another, and another, and so#68 continued, until the end of the line.

A scoundrels fear is a societymoney: for in ssociety he woulthe respect he dBen Franklin


7/13

Itmeansguringouth

owtoworktogethertomeetour

individualneeds,workingwitheachotherratherthanor

oragainsteachother;an

dwhenthisisimpossible,

itmeans

preerringstrietosubmissionanddomination.

Itmeansnotvaluinga

nysystemorideologyabovethe

peopleitpurportstoserve,notvaluinganythingtheoretical

abovetherealthingsinthisworld.

Itmeansbeingaithul

torealhumanbeings(andanimals,andecosystems),

ghtingorourselvesandbesideeachother,notouto

responsibility,notorcausesorotherintangible

concepts.

Itmeansdenyingthatthereisanyuniversal

standardotruth,aesthe

tics,ormorality,andcontesting

whereveritappearsthe

doctrinethatlieisessentially

one-dimensional.

Itmeansnotorcingy

ourdesiresandexperiencesintoa

hierarchicalorder,butacknowledgingandembracingallo

them,acceptingyoursel

.Itmeansnottryingtocompelthe

seltoabidebyanyexte

rnallaws,nottryingtorestrictyour

emotionstothesensible

orthepracticalorthepolitical,

notpushingyourinstinctsandpassionsintoboxes:orthere

isnocagelargeenough

toaccommodatethehumansoul

inallitsfights,allitsheightsanddepths.Itmeansseeking

awayoliewhichgivesreeplaytoallyourconficting

inclinationsintheproces

socontinuouslychallengingand

transormingthem.

Itmeansnotprivilegin

ganyonemomentolieover

theothersnotlanguishinginnostalgiaorthegoodold

days,orwaitingortomorrow(or,orthatmatter,

orthe

Revolution!)orreallietobegin,

butseizingandcreatingit

ineveryinstant.Yes,oc

ourseitmeanstreasuringmemories

andplanningortheutu

reitalsomeansremembering

thereisnotimehappines

s,resistance,

lieeverhappensbut

NOW,

NOW,

NOW!

Itmeansreusingtop

uttheresponsibilityoryourlie

inanyoneelseshands,whetherthatbeparents,

lovers,

employers,orsocietyitsel.

Itmeanstakingthepursuito

meaningandjoyinyourlieuponyourownshoulders.

Aboveall!Itmeansnotacceptingthisoranymaniestoor

denitionasitis,

butma

kingandremakingitoryoursel.

Anarchismisthe

revolutionaryideathatno

oneismorequaliedthan

youaretodecidewhat

yourliewillbe.


8/13

Whats good for others is goodfor us, since our relationships withthem make up the world in whichwe live; but serving their needs atour own expense would cheat themof our potential as free and happycompanions, which is perhaps thebest gift we can offer. Our vision ofhealthy relationships rests on thenotion that self versus other, selshversus seless, is a f alse dichotomy,like all dichotomies. Those whopreach self-sacrice for the greatergood are still working from thecompetitive model of individual-ver-sus-society, as are those who wouldaspire to an individualist indepen-dence; for us, individuals and communities alike are both convergences of threads in the

great web of existence, inseparable from one another, corresponding to one another. Thefreedom and self-determination we cherish are only possible in the context of the culturewe create together; yet in order to contribute to that creation, we must create ourselvesindividually.

That is: if you can save yourself, you could save the worldbut you must save theworld to save yourself.

As anarchists propose that friendship, or at least family, could be the model for allrelationships, we prize above all those qualities which make good friendships possible:reliability, generosity, gentleness. Most of us have been indoctrinated into hierarchyand contention since we were born, and that makes it no small feat to interact in ways

that liberate and enable more than cripplestill, it happens allthe time! Each of us tries to give without demanding in return, tobe a person with whom no one must feel ashamed. Its been saidthat we are against marriage, but the opposite is more true: yes, weemphasize that no one is the property of another, but even moreso that everybody on this planet is practically marriedand weinsist that everyone act accordingly.

All this is not to say we approach soldiers with owers whenthey come for our chi ldrennor do we offer corporations our chil-

dren when they come for our owers. Sometimes love can onlyspeak through the barrel of a gun.

Self-sacricemakes it easier

to sacriceothers without

blushing.

Not to be forced by expectation, doctrine, or necessity to claim one fragment of yourselfand disown others. Not to take sides within and against yourself, not to play judge andjury constantly at your own trial. Not to protect pristine ignorance with inaction, but tolearn from mistakes and thus grow wise. Not to choose one path in life and follow itto the exclusion of all others, but to throw false unity and consistency to the windtogive expression to every impulse and yearning in what you deem its proper time, andappreciate what is fertile in turmoil. To do this knowing you are a part of a communitythat cherishes you unconditionallyand to cherish others in their entirety, as they reectparts of yourself.

To live without the petty squabbles of pecking order and power structure inside anymore than aroundthat is the anarchist dream of selfhood.

A community in which people direct their own activities and look out for each otherdoes not need a prison or factory built in it to create jobs. A community of peoplewho share their own channels of communication are not at the mercy of any corporate

media version of truth. A community of people who make their own music and art andorganize their own social events would never settle for the paralyzing spectacle of MTV,let alone computer dating services and pornography. A community of people who knoweach others histories and understand each others needs can work through conictswithout any need for interference from uniformed strangers with guns. The extent towhich we can create these communities is the extent to which we can solve the problemswe face today, and no legislation or charity will do this for us.

Institutions can only be as good as the people who make them workand they usuallyarent, anyhow. Solutions from above have proved ineffective over and over: the redtape of medical programs, the inefciency of social services, the lies of presidents. Ifyou dont trust the people, you can be sure you cant trust the police.

It was not until laterthat I realized that thecarefree intensity of our

iendship was a spell castinto the world for other

such friendships, thateach dream we realized

together was a seedplanted for togetherness

everywhereand forrealized dreams.

Civic hedonism

A fellowship of friends and lovers

Self-determination begins at home

Direct action gets the goods

Western man lls hispantry with groceries,

and thinks himselfself-sufcient.

-Gandhi

. . . but its still upto us to make poetry.

If we bet on anit is that its mimportant for pto feel that thematter than it them to keep uappearances. Ifsometimes act that suggest otperhaps it is bebeen so long sinfelt they had th

Im man enougtell you that I cmy nger on exwhat my philosnow, but Im e

Malcolm X,shortly before h

Purity is the oppintegritythe cthing you can d

a person is makashamed of hercomplexity. Theof our lives havmorals. Any sinconclusion drawwould be false; episodes, takenare untranslataincomparable. are to concludewe can only conagainst conclus

Now, nally, I am my ow nsouls emperor: and my rst

act is abdication.

Poetry ismade by all,

not one!


9/13

Anarchists not only deny the authority of God, Chief of Police of the Universe, but

also maintain a healthy distrust of his successors: Nature, History, Science, Morality.We dont account any being the right to our unquestioning faith, since even when weesteem others knowledge or judgment better than our own we are still responsible forthe choice to trust them. Accordingly, we dont regard any contention or assumption asabove dispute, and revel more in moving freely between paradigms than in debatingwhich one is The Truth. We are especially suspicious of experts who would mediatebetween us and deities or spheres of knowledge, and prefer both to learn about the worldand to contact the divine for ourselves.

Justice as Judgment we count of little worth: we want to be practical, to solve problems,not to treat human relations and conduct as another economic exchange with righteous-ness for currency. We apply the idea of personal responsibility only to the extent t hat it is

useful in making our relation-ships work; otherwise, it is oflittle interest to us whether apersons soul is damned orredeemed, whether conductis moral or immoral, whether

society or the individual is toblame for a wrong.

Let it not be said about usthat we hold nothing holy! Onthe contrary, we hold every-thingholy. Denying hierarchymeans venerating the singu-lar, incomparable beauty ofevery creature, every featureof the cosmos, every moment.Only appraisal and condem-nation are anathema to us.

Anarchism is aristocraticanarchists just insist that the elite should consist ofeveryone,

that the struggle of the common man can become the struggle of the uncommonwomen and men it produces.

We have no illusions that there are any shortcuts to anarchy. We dont seek to leadthe people, but to establish a nation of sovereigns; we dont seek to be a vanguard oftheorists, but to empower a readership of authors; we dont seek to be the artists of a newavant garde, but to enable an audience of performerswe dont so much seek to destroypower as to make it freely available in abundance: we want to be masters without slaves.

We recognize that power struggles and dynamics will always be a part of human life;many of us have a tyrannical muse we obey, albeit willingly, so we reserve even theright to command and serve, when it pleases us. But, as they say, the only free humanbeings are the pauper and the kingthe king being the less free of the two, since hiskingdom still encumbers and limits him, while on her luckier days the hobo can feelthat the whole of the cosmos exists for the sake of her pleasure and freedomso weprefer not to trivialize ourselves by competing for such fools gold as ownership orauthority. Andwhen struggle is unavoidable, we would still prefer to be at the mercyof the violence and stupidity of other individuals than the violence and stupidity ofhumanity as it is distilled and marshaled by the State.

Were not egalitarians in the old sense: were not out to pull the rich and powerfuldown to our levelrather, we pity them for not being ambitious enough in theiraspirations, and hope they will abdicate to join us in ghting to make it possible foreveryone to ascend to greatness (that way, we wont have to guillotine them). Were notagainst the glory assigned to pop icons and movie stars, per sewe just deplore the wayit is squandered on distant objects, when it rightfully belongs to the moments of our ownheroic lives. Were not against the homage and devotion that the monototheists Godreceives; we simply nd it healthier to devote it to each other. Were not against property,exactly, so much as we are the pettiness of bickering over it: for we understand that torule the world, we must share it alland not demolish or meddle with it, for that matter.The true pauper king walks the forests of his domain proudly, watching the interactionsof the complex ecosystems in awe, knowing the only appropriate conduct for a monarchof such a wonderland is a policy of veneration and non-intervention (except to thwartthe occasional logging corporation). Were not waiting for the revolution to give usthe rights we deserve; deeming ourselves the highest authorities we need recognize, wegrant them to ourselves immediately and therefore make revolution constantly as a way toassert and protect them.

We will settle for nothing less than total world domination, for one and all.

The anarchist is a very erce creature. It is rst cousin to thegorilla. It kills presidents, princes, executives, likewise sabotagestheir summits and summer holidays. It has long, unkempt hair onits head and all over its face. Instead of ngernails it has long, sharpclaws. The anarchist has many pockets in which it carries rocks,knives, guns, and bombs. It is a night animal. After dark, it gathersin groups, large and small, and plans raids, murders, plagues. Lotsare drawn to select who must carry out the work.

The anarchist does not li ke water. It never washes or changesits clothes. It is always thirsty and drinks only salt water. The homeof the anarchist is in Europe, especially Italy. Some few have beenexported to North America, where they are feared and hated by alldecent folks and hunted wherever they show themselves.

Papa does not like anarchists a bit. They give him bad dreams,he says. He has given orders to have them caught and put in cages,and he will not allow any more to come into this country if he canhelp it. If any sneak in, he will have them shot like rabid dogs,Mexicans, mountain lions, and such animals. I practice every daywith my rie so I can shoot these wild beasts when I grow up.

-A White House nursery composition, 1904

All gods, all masters . . . And every god a

When I am govery very good, I am bad I am -B. Bardot

Without Truthyou are the Loo-grafto on LisbChristmas 2001

I oud makof my bain a

dutifu, if way,sf;

but my snss,wilfu pins,

bld, pfringxi to ocupation.


10/13

All of us have grown up divided and c onquered along lines of gender and sexual preference,

body type and ethnicity, class and race, bought off with privileges and beaten down withpsychological warfare so well do our parts to keep the pecking order in place. Whitesupremacy, patriarchy, and heterosexism are the pillars of this civilization. We anarchistsght against these oppressive structures whether we nd them in society or ourselves; but weaim for more than the liberation of human beings of all identitieswe want the lib eration ofall human beingsfrom identity.

We believe there are no universals. Group i dentities are self-perpetuating fabrications thatbegin with circumstantial evidence and end by imposing uniformity. There are two genders,for example, like there are only twelve tones in every octave: it seems true when you look at apiano, but try opening your mouth and singing! Though femininity may appear ordained bynature to those who grew up in environments where all women shave their legs and armpits,it is just a generalization drawn from generations of standardized behavior, reinforced byeach replication. Butas there is no pure femininity, no substance the generalization refersto besides what all the individual instances are perceived to have in common, and so eachgeneration is not the original but a copythe entire paradigm is at risk in every newgeneration, as it may be transformed . . . or abandoned.

At best, generalizations like class and gender can be used to undo themselvesto expose

and confront the patterns of oppression that run through individual lives, to nd commoncause in ghting the invisibility of certain experiences and histories. We want to get beyondthese and all categories and conicts, but its only going to happen if we begin by addressingthem. In mens groups, human beings constructed as men can exchange skills for rewiringtheir programming; in women-only spaces, those constructed as women can explore similarlywithout the presence of men interfering. Of course we defend the right of individuals to choosehow they want to be identied, if they so desire (though this strikes some of us as analogous tochoosing ones masters)and no vision of unbounded life is any excuse to pretend the world

is yet free anywhere from powerimbalances. But ultimately it isrevolution were after, not reform:were not petitioning for morerights for special interest groups,or more freedom of movementbetween established categorieswere taking and makingour rightto make and remake ourselves inevery moment, and wrecking thesystem of divisions in the process!

We are feminists who wouldabolish gender, labor organizerswho would abolish work, artistsghting to destroy and transcend

art. Our class war is a war againstclass, against classes and classi-cation. When we say that we areagainst representation, we do notonly mean representative democ-racy; we also mean that each of usis an irreducible individual, thatnone can speak for another. Nei-ther politicians nor abstractions,neither delegates nor demograph-ics can represent us!

Beware of struggle. Not a few radicals get involved in politics because they knoweverything about resisting and little about anything else. They turn every i nteraction intoa conict between the forces of good and evil, taking a stand and drawing the line untilit really is them against the world. For would-be career agitators, this can be a great wayto maintain that careerbut it accomplishes little else beyond getting people agitated inthe strictest sense of the word. Most will just stop paying attention entirelywho doesntalready have enough antagonism and unpleasantness to deal with?

There are always wars waiting to be foughtagainst, against, against. Fighting thesewars perpetuates the dualities that give rise to them. Anarchists anachronize wars, bytranscending oppositions. That is revolution.

Dont join an existing conict on its terms and make yourself a pawn of its patterns:dene and redene the terms of the conictfrom democracy versus terrorism to free-dom versus power, for example! Find ways to make premises subvert themselves, to drawpeople together in ways they thought impossible, to upset the entire paradigm of struggle.

So if you want to provoke revolt, dont draw a line between yourself and the rest of

the world and threaten everyone across it. Dont propagate a universal program, dontcampaign for recruits, for heavens sake dont educate the masses! Forget aboutpersuading people to your opinionencourage them to develop the power to formtheir own. Everyone having their own ideas is more anarchist than everyone having TheAnarchist Idea. Any central organizationor recognized authority on revolt canonly stie self-determination by orderingit (pun intended). Individuals actingfreely, on the other hand, can inspire andreinforce liberty and resistance in eachother: independence, like all good things,is available in abundance. It certainlydoesnt need to becannot bedoledout sparingly by a central committee toconstituents waiting in breadlines!

And when it comes to propaganda,dont try to say the truth. Meddle withThe Truth, undermine it, create a spacein which new truths can form. Introducequestions, not answersthough remem-ber, not all questions end in questionmarks. For the revolutionary, the essenceof a statement lies in its effects, not in

whether or not it is objectively truethis approach distinguishes her fromphilosophers and other idle bastards.

Historians tell of the mighty emperor Darius, who led hisinto the steppes with the intention of subduing the Scythianadding their territory to his empire. The Scythi ans were a nopeople, and when they learned that Darius forces were to deupon them, they broke camp and began a slow retreat. Theyat such a speed that though Darius armies could always desthem on the horizon, they were never able to close in. For daed ahead of the invadersthen weeks, months, leaving all food in their wake destroyed and all the water poisoned; theyintruding armies in circles, into the lands of neighboring pewho attacked them, through unbroken deserts where gaunt licked bleached bones. The proud warriors, accustomed to their bravado in swift, dramatic clashes, were in despair. Dara message with his fastest courier, who was barely able to deto the laziest straggler of the Scythian ank: As your ruler,I order you to turn and ght!

If you are our ruler, came the reply, scratched carelesslyrock face they came upon the next day, go weep.

Days later, after they had given up all hope, the scouts maa line of Scythian horsemen charging forward across the plawere waving their swords excitedly and letting out great whoof enthusiasm. Caught unprepared but relieved at the prospdoing battle at last, the warriors took up their armsonly toin confusion, that the Scythians were not charging their linesomewhat to the side of them. Looking closer, they made outhe horsemen were pursuing a rabbit. Upon this humiliationsoldiers threatened mutiny, and Darius was forced to turn bleave Scythia in defeat. Thus the Scythians entered history amost unconquerable of clans by refusing to do battle.

Dont liberate meIll take care of that.

Gross generalizations Anarchists make revolutions, not war

Not a position, but a proposition

To b adia issimpy to kep up

with aity.

No, its theother way

round!


11/13

These days it can be difcult, even terrifying, to be an anarchist. You may well beone of those people who hides her anarchism, at least in certain situations, lest others(equally scared, and probably by the same things) accuse you of being too idealistic orirresponsibleas if politely burying the planet in garbage isnt!

You shouldnt be so timidyou are not alone. There are millions of us waiting for youto make yourself known, ready to love you and laugh with you and ght at your side for abetter world. Follow your heart to the places we will meet. Please dont be too late.

Not to be brusque, but havent you been paying attention? Were not trying to get youto convert to a religion or vote for a party hereon the contrary. The best and the hardestpart of this is that its entirely in your hands.

. . . but it is the kind of paradox we anarchists relish. Urging people to think for themselves,seizing power to abolish it, making war on war, these are all contradictionsbut its goodtactics to engage in obvious hypocrisy, if you want the rebels to depose you along withother authorities! Flying a black ag to express opposition to ags sounds senselessbut,living in the shadow of so many ags that aglessness is interpreted as acquiescence, itmay be sound senselessness. Better a black ag than a white one, anyway!

SoCreate momentum! Dont sit endlessly in meetings, meeting about when you shouldbe meeting to discuss how to conduct your next meeting. If your masochistic comrades feelthe unfathomable compulsion to spend weeks, months, years of yammering hammeringout the wording of a platform to which they can all pledge themselves, and then furtheryears in internal dissension and rupturing, let them, but dont feel obliged to join in just toprove how committed to the Revolution you are. Dont feel obliged to join in anythingthisis yourrevolution!

Create momentum! Dont demand changerealize it yourself with your actions. Allyou can accomplish is what you do yourself with your companions, and thats a lot: this

is how you keep your dignity in a mad world, how you write your own life story and thuslet others know they arent powerless either.Acting on your desires puts you in touch withthemotherwise, you have to put the sameenergy into disavowing them. Skip down thestreet if youre happy, burn down a buildingif it outrages you. Love blossoms on a battle-eldits easier to release yourself to it whenyoure ready to back it up! When you live outyour own most secret wishes, youll nd youexpress those of others, too. Find yourself proj-ects that engage you, that put you in situationsin which you are wholly present in the mo-ment. And dont be afraid of being unrealis-ticit is precisely the unreal which needs real-izing. You cant create unless you can dream.

Create momentum! Anarchists dont giveinstructionswe give license. Help othersgive themselves permission to live, by settingprecedentsand offer support, share skills,create opportunities for the civilians around youto express their own radical desires in action.Youll be surprised who will ght the pigs in the

streets, when the chance arises!Dont sighingly sign petitions, pose for the

cameras, await some window of opportunity.Doparticipate in town parades and street festivals,break into abandoned buildings to throw greatbanners down the sides, start conversations withstrangers, challenge everything you thoughtyou knew about yourself in bed, maintain a

constant feeling in the air that something is happening. Live as if the future depends onyour every deed, and it will. Dont wait for yourself to show upyou already have. Grantyourself license to live and tear those shackles to ribbons: Create momentum!

It starts when yact, when you dafter they say nyou say We, a

who you meanday you mean

Anarchism is a paradox

Create momentum!

Beautiful anarchists desire you

OK, Im interested. What do I do next?

Cest triste dire, mais je ne pense que lon puisse vaincre sansles drapeaux rouges et noirs. Mais il faut dtruirepres.

Jean Genet, Paris, 1968

Unfortunately, I dont think we can win without the red and black ags.But they must be destroyed afterwards.

Full Contact Anarchism:Not a spectator sport!


12/13

Composed by some anarchists. The we used throughout these texts is the anarchistwe: that is, it reers to all who would associate themselves with the statements in

question, and to no others. Further material and additional copies o this publicationare available free in any quantityrom the CrimethInc. Free Press, P.O. Box 13998,

Salem, OR 97309 U.S.A.or more inormation, consultwww.crimethinc.com.Donations, correspondence, and other gits gladly received in return!

Rousing conclusion

In some moments, in this i nsane world, anarchy appears in ragments, whispering o hidden that beckon rom within this one: those hours you spend with your best riends ater work, the reo a poster pasted on an alley wall, that instant masturbating or making love when you are neitnor emale, at nor skinny, rich nor poor. In other moments, that insanity is the exception, the raand anarchy is simply the world we live. One hundred thousand o us can ound a new civilizaone hundred can transorm a city, two can write the bedtime stories our children have been wahearand sow the seeds or millions to come.

When one o us defes the protection racket o public opinion and necessity and drops eveto live as she has dreamed, the whole world receives the git o that reedom. When we fll the sdance and blow fre, we can remember with our bodies that we deserve such dances and such them. When the ski resorts burn and department store windows shatter, or a moment private pis neither private nor propertyand we create new relations between ourselves and a cosmos tsuddenly ours, and new, once more. I we risk our lives, it is because we know only by doing somake them our own. See you on the ront page o the last newspaper those motheruckers ever

Noam Deguerre, CrimethInc. Black Writers Bloc

Thank the heavens I have nothing.Help me not to hate the onesI must destroy.

A maddeningly incomplete selection of possible titles for further reading could include:

1984George Orwell

Anarchism and the Black RevolutionLorenzo Komboa Ervin

Assata:An AutobiographyAssata Shakur

The DispossessedUrsula K. Le Guin

Feminism is for Everybody:Passionate Politicsbell hooks

IshmaelDaniel Quinn

A Language Older Than WordsDerrick Jensen

Lies My Teacher Told Me:Everything Your American History Textbook Got WrongJames W. Loewen

Living My LifeEmma Goldman

No LogoNaomi Klein

Open Veins of Latin America:Five Centuries of the Pillage of a ContinentEduardo Galeano

A Peoples History of the United StatesHoward Zinn

Thats Revolting! :Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilationedited by Matt Bernstein Sycamore

T.A.Z.Hakim Bey

The Teenage Liberation Handbook:How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education Grace Llewellyn

Unjobbing:The Adult Liberation HandbookMichael Fogler

Webs of Power:Notes from the Global UprisingStarhawk

. . . not to mention these books from the CrimethInc. ex-Workers Collective:

Days of War, Nights of Love:Crimethink for BeginnersExpect Resistance:A Crimethink Field Manual

Recipes for Disaster:An Anarchist Cookbook

www.crimethinc.com www.infoshop.org

For access to a wide variety of similar books and resources, contact AK Press / 674-A 23rd St. /Oakland, CA 94612, or look up www.akpress.org. Cyberspace cadets can scour these websites

for further ports of entry to the mysterious anarchist underworld:


13/13

Documents

Fighting for Our Lives