Anarchism: An Everyday Philosophy
“If we switch our mental focus and ground our conception of anarchism in the here and now, then what would our anarchism look like?”
Snacks at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Image by Ochlo on Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons.
The Real vs the Ideal
As an anarchist, I’m accustomed to having my ideas challenged by others on a regular basis. When other people hear that I’m an anarchist, they generally start by telling me why they think anarchism “couldn’t possibly work,” without noticing that they haven’t applied the same standard to the system we all live under right now. We live in a world that is rapidly sliding toward ecological disaster, and our system isn’t even making a serious attempt to address the problem. Even if every country in the world met the targets in the Paris Climate Accords, it still wouldn’t be enough. So, in what sense does our current system work?
In effect, they’re making an apples and oranges comparison: our current system is not expected to be ideal, but anarchism is always being judged against an imaginary anarchist utopia. As a result, capitalist democracy is given a pass for being imperfect, but anarchism has to either be absolutely perfect or it couldn’t possibly work.
Why do people hold anarchism to this unrealistic standard? It’s because they think of anarchism as a utopian philosophy, not an everyday approach to political power. They compare every anarchist idea to an imaginary future, a hypothetical anarchist society that could only exist after a worldwide revolution. I think this is misguided, and we should be speaking of anarchism as an approach that is immediately relevant in the here and now rather than as an imaginary utopian society.
Everyday Anarchism
If we switch our mental focus and ground our conception of anarchism in the here and now, then what would our anarchism look like? First, it starts from the assumption that the current system has no legitimate authority. It cannot and will not protect us against the forces that threaten us most, and we won’t even ask it to do so.
If our communities need protection, we’ll protect them ourselves, as in the many community defense groups that rose up in Minneapolis in the aftermath of the Uprising. We’ll keep ourselves and our neighbors safe, and we won’t do so by murdering unarmed people or terrorizing entire communities the way the police do.
If a corporation wants to destroy our environment for its own profit, we’ll prevent it from doing so through direct action, as in the many direct actions against the Line 3 pipeline project going on right now.
When fascism threatens us, we confront it and destroy it in our own communities, and not by asking the FBI or the police to do it for us. Why? Because we know that the FBI and the police are much more closely aligned with the fascists than they are with us – they always have been, and they always will be, and trying to reform them is a waste of time and effort.
If we have decisions to make as a community, we can make them together by meeting and talking things out, just like the community meetings happening behind barricades in autonomous zones all over the world.
Anarchism is an everyday attitude to political power, not a purely utopian philosophy. It’s not based on an imaginary perfect system, but on a clear-eyed present-tense understanding.
The system of authority and control doesn’t work at all, and we have to look out for each other. If you agree with that simple statement, you may already be an anarchist.
Christopher Scott Thompson
Photo by Tam Hutchison.
is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, and devotee of Brighid and Macha.