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�� The method one proposes for carrying out the struggle against
the present order reflects the sort of existence one desires. The anarchist
project has its origin in the desire of individuals to create their lives for themselves,
on the basis of their own passions, inclinations and capacities. This
aspiration becomes insurrectional when it confronts the institutions that
presently define social relationships and determine the conditions of existence
and the individual recognizes the necessity of destroying these institutions in
order to realize this desire.
�� The dream
of unfettered, self-determined life is the positive impulse that moves us to
rebel. But it is not a blueprint for a new social order. It does not provide
the answers in advance, but rather raises questions and draws us into the
unknown. It presents us with the task of destroying our prison so that we can
discover what lies beyond its walls.
�� Some
anarchists find such a dream inadequate. They desire certainties, clear visions
and answers. They come up with plans, schemes, programs and blueprints of the
new society�usually based on models from some real or imagined past. But
perhaps the proposal that I find the strangest is the one that calls us to
start creating counter-institutions now to replace the institutions of
domination.
�� The
contention behind this proposal is that the institutions through which
domination is maintained also serve essential functions for the maintenance of
social life. Since the mechanisms of social life must not be interrupted, it is
necessary to put new �non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian� institutions in
place to take over these functions. Should we fail to do so, we would be
leaving the field open for new form of domination to arise, one that may be
even worse than the present form. This is what we are told.
�� And the
questions are raised: �With what shall we replace the state?� �With what shall
we replace capitalism?� It amazes me when anarchists ask such questions with a
straight face. Does one replace the hated chains which held one captive? Does
one rebuild the burnt-down prison from which one has escaped? But the
proponents of counter-institutions have more foresight than this. They would
have us forge the new chains and build the new prisons now in order to avoid
the encounter with the unknown, with a wild world that may make our lives
unpredictable. At least this new prison would be self-managed.
�� The
actual counter-institutions that have been created are rarely anything more
than alternative businesses, charities, NGO�s and the like. They offer no
challenge to the present social order, but integrate quite well into its
framework becoming dependent upon it. Certainly, anarchist bookshops, infoshops
and publishers can be useful tools, but they are hardly models for a world in
which every individual is free to determine her life as she sees fit with full
access to all he needs to do so since they have little choice but to comply
with the requirements of the economy. Undoubtedly, these counter-institutions
would fall with the collapse of the social order upon which they depend.
�� From an
anarchist perspective, perhaps the most absurd of the counter-institutional
proposals is one that originates in libertarian municipalism, the proposal for
the creation of institutions for directly democratic decision-making. (I will
not go into the critique of democracy here, having done so several times in the
past.) It seems to me that the institutionalization of decision-making is the basic
description of socio-political authority. The power of decision is taken from
the individual and placed into the hands of the institution representing
society. This institution then decides for the individual, requiring that the
individual abide by that decision. A structure of this sort is already an
authority, a government. When it encounters self-willed individuals who refuse
to abide by its decisions, would it refrain from creating further institutions
to enforce its decisions�institutions which would constitute a state? In any
case, there is nothing anarchist about this proposal; it is inherently
authoritarian.
�� While in
practice the conception of counter-institutions has only succeeded in producing
mirror images of mainstream institutions, its theoretical foundation is a
fallacy. The assumption that the institutions of domination serve any necessary
social function that must be continued when they are destroyed is groundless as
the inability of the proponents of counter-institutions to describe these
functions shows. The fundamental function of every institution�what makes it an
institution rather than a project, an activity, a free relationship�is the
alienation of the creative energy of individuals and their capacity to grasp
the conditions of their existence in order to take control of them and channel
them into the reproduction of the social order and so of domination and
exploitation. It has been said many times, but I will say it again: it is our
activity that creates the conditions of our existence. Institutions simply take
control of this activity to guarantee the continuation of that which is.
�� The idea
that counter-institutions would function in a significantly different way is an
illusion already exposed by the proponents of this method themselves when they
tell us that the mechanisms of social life must not be interrupted. The very
existence of a social life that can be considered as mechanistic originates in
the alienation of our creative energy and our capacities. If each of us is to become
the creator of his own existence in association with whom she chooses, then
social life must cease to be a mechanism into which we are fitted like gears or
cogs. It is necessary that we reappropriate our creative energy and the
conditions of our existence so that we can carry out essential social functions
in terms of our desires not in terms of social reproduction�society is only
useful as a tool for the full realization of our lives. In itself, it has no
value.
�� In this light, it should be clear that the revolution toward
which we anarchists make our efforts would be far more than a mere interruption
of the mechanisms of social life. It would aim to destroy these mechanisms in
order to free social life from a mechanistic, instrumentalist framework, to
transform it into a tool for individual realization. Such a project not only
has no need for institutions; it is by its nature anti-institutional. It
requires a fluidity that corresponds to our passions and desires, to our
individuality. There could not be a blueprint for such a world; there couldn�t
even be an outline. Any institution would be its enemy, the potential framework
in which a new authority could arise.
�� So the argument for counter-institutions has gotten it
backwards. Certainly, a disruption of the social order that opens every
possibility is a gamble. No one would claim otherwise. Among the possibilities
opened by an insurrectionary break is that of the return of domination. But
providing such a potential power with the tools it would need to establish
itself, institutional structures for defining and controlling social
relationships, would only make their task easier. Institutions do not prevent
domination; indomitable individuals do.
�� So the question is not that of what structures to create to
replace those we destroy, but of how to go about destroying the present social
order in such a way that we transform ourselves into indomitable individuals
capable of creating and transforming fluid relationships reflective of our
dreams and aspirations.
�� We all have a great capacity for self-organization. It is
expressed every day as we go about our life, though in a form that is
constrained to follow the limiting channels of the institutions that surround
us. Proposals for counter-institutions and blueprints defining the new society
in advance are simply more constraining channels, games of politicians looking
for adherents to their cause. Such programs could only produce a society as
alienated as the present one where the lives of individuals have already been
defined for them before they even start living. Thus, in these kinds of
proposals, the world that I see as the motivating force of anarchist struggle,
the world in which every individual can create her life as he sees fit, has
already been suppresses and the framework for new forms of domination set in
place.
�� If, rather than starting from our fear of
social rupture, our fear of upheaval, our fear of the unknown, we start from
our dreams and aspirations and our capacity for self-organization, the need for
programs, institutions and blueprints disappear. It becomes clear that what is
necessary is revolt, insurrection, the destruction of the institutions that
dominate our lives, or to put it more clearly, self-organized attacks against
the institutions of domination. Rather than become politicians proposing
programs and institutional frameworks into which to channel the struggle and
seeking adherents to our programs, it makes much more sense for us to be
comrades in struggle practicing and proposing methods of struggle free of
formalization and institutionalization that encourage self-organization and
self-activity in revolt. Only such self-organized revolt could ever create the
indomitable individuals who would stop the rise of a new dominating power at
its conception. Only in such a practice do we begin to see the glimmer of the
new world we seek. Nothing is guaranteed by this, but if we hedge our bets in
order to guarantee everything in advance, we have already lost.