�UTOPIA: = Imagined perfect place or state of things.
A. I�m afraid not, Anarchists have been traditionally dismissed as starry eyed idealists or blood thirsty terrorists. I�m afraid the truth is a little more mundane and boring. Anarchists don�t want to change human nature, they don�t want to blow up human beings and they don�t want to crater a utopian fantasyland.
Anarchists have a healthy respect for human nature and understand that people can be manipulated and cajoled into committing the most extraordinary crimes. History is littered with examples of human beings who have for the good of their tribe, clan, nation or race committed the most appalling acts of cruelty against other human beings. Their actions have been recorded, lauded and hailed as the acts of heroes. Anarchists have a very good understanding of what in the right social context human beings are capable of:-�Their, but for the grace of God I.�
They understand that human nature is a given, that you can�t create a new �man�. Faced with this realistic assessment of what human beings can do, they want to create a society where institutions and structures, that allow individuals or a small group to exercise absolute power, are replaced with structures and institutions that are controlled by the community as a whole. This isn�t a utopian dream; it�s a practical solution to an ongoing problem that accepts human nature is a biological given.
Anarchist communities, like other communities, will continue to experience problems. The central difference is that everybody is in the same boat. Unlike the societies we currently live and work in, some people will not be sitting in the top deck throwing back gin and tonics while the rest of the community is rowing the boat. Anarchists attempt to find solutions to the problems they face that involve everyone, they attempt to use the resources they have access to, to satisfy the needs of those people that live in that community. Anarchism isn�t as utopian philosophy, it�s a legitimate, logical, practical philosophy that gives people the opportunity to create a society that�s both safe and secure and that satisfies their short and long term needs.
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Q. WHAT IS A DUAL POWER SITUATION?
A. Anarchists are fond of using the words revolution and dual power in the same breath. In real life, the terms rarely coincide. Revolution, the forcible overthrow of a government, doesn�t necessarily result in the creation of an anarchist society. Revolutionary situations can lead to the creation of both authoritarian and non-authoritarian societies. Revolutions that occur in a political vacuum normally result in the creation of a society where a small group is able to exercise power through the use of force. In revolutionary situations where no one group enjoys a monopoly on the use of force, warlords spring up who use force to try to extend their sphere of influence within that society.
The creation of a dual power situation, a society within a society, is a goal that many anarchists have tried to achieve and continue to work for. An egalitarian non-authoritarian community is likely to be created by the slow methodical formation of institutions, communities, co-operatives, collectives and cultures that challenge the power exerted by the State and the corporate sector. Groups become movements when activists create enough viable structures within the societies they live and work in, that they pose a direct challenge to the power of those who normally exert power. As these parallel structures (societies within a society) increase in size and strength, they begin to pose a real challenge to dominant ideology and culture. Eventually the tensions that are created between two competing cultures and ideologies that share the same physical space become so intense that movements that begin their lives as a collection of ideas pose a direct physical threat to what were considered to be monolithic societies.
The Anarchist movement that participated in the Spanish Revolution was able to survive for so long in the midst of a brutal Civil war because they had been able to create a dual power situation in significant sections of Spain as a result of 70 years of struggle. When the fascist forces attempted to seize the State apparatus through a military coup on the 19th of July 1936, anarchists were able to temporarily thwart the military takeover because they had created parallel institutions, organisations and structures that allowed power to be directly transferred from the State, the church and the corporate sector into the hands of parallel structures that had been created through decades of political, cultural and ideological struggle.
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Q. ADVANCING IN DIVERSITY, STRIKING IN UNISON?
A. Sounds very nice in theory, but what does it mean? Anarchists want to create and live in a society without rulers not rules. Anarchists understand in order to do this, power needs to devolve from hierarchical centralised structures into non hierarchical decentralised structures. The strength of a decentralised movement is its diversity. Its weakness is its inability to strike in unison. The key to the success of any decentralised movement is its ability to create structures which allow different groups to move forward simultaneously.
One of the problems faced by the anarchist movement is that too many organisations believe they and they alone hold the key to radical egalitarian social change. Competition between groups for the same members and endless arcane historical arguments about the past, combine to create a climate of powerlessness. The creation of an anarchist community within society at large, makes individual participants feel powerful and important within their own tight knit circles, but makes them impotent and powerless in the wider community.
The failure or success of a particular strategy is subjected by its success in the wider community, not the intensity of internal debates. These anarchist organisations that cannot accept that anarchism is a diverse movement, whose strength lies in that very diversity, soon fade from the pages of history. Those that strike a cord in the community they live and work in, grow and prosper. An anarchist organisation sows a seed; that seed dies or takes root. If it takes root, another group forms that reflects the diversity of the community they live and work in. Each group moves forward by taking into account the reality they are faced with.
The challenge for a decentralised anarchist movement lies in the ability of groups to form links with other groups. Successful Federations are those that link established groups and organisations. Federations that are formed to create local groups, spring into life, splatter on for a few years and then die out. Whether anarchists will ever be able to overcome the pivotal problem of creating structures that allow diverse groups to act in unison will determine whether anarchism remains a dream in our hearts or becomes a practical reality.
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Q. RIGHTS? LIBERTIES?
A. Anarchists have traditionally looked at rights and liberties in 2 ways. Some believe that all rights and liberties in a non anarchist world are illusory and meaningless. They maintain that people enjoy rights and liberties in a non anarchist society because the rights and liberties people are able to exercise do not pose a direct threat to the State. If they do pose a challenge, they can be arbitrarily removed by the declaration of a state emergency. Other anarchists claim that liberties people enjoy in society are directly related to post and present struggles. The islands of liberty that are created are directly related to the intensity of the struggles people have been involved in. The greater the pressure placed on the corporate sector and the State, the greater the rights and liberties that people are able to carve out for themselves.
Those anarchists, who believe that the rights and liberties we currently enjoy are islands of freedom in a sea of tyranny, believe struggles to both defend and extend these rights and liberties are important elements of the struggle to create an anarchist society. It�s not unusual for anarchists to become involved in such struggles. With the passage of time, people tend not to exercise those rights and liberties they take for granted. In such a climate, it�s easy for the State to legislate away rights and liberties people have fought and died for.
The same problem could arise in an anarchist community, rights and liberties that are not exercised could easily be taken away. There is nothing to stop a determined minority seizing the instruments of power in an anarchist society. Although there is no centralised State apparatus to seize, a determined authoritarian minority could monopolise the decision making processes, taking the initiative because other members of the community can�t be bothered to exercise those rights and liberties which make an anarchist community what it is. It�s no exaggeration to say that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty in an anarchist society.
