what is anarchy to you

When people talk to me about politics, and I start talking about my standings and anarchism, people automatically assume that I want to fuck shit up and blow up buildings. To the layman, anarchy is violent and crass ('scuse the pun )
It's something so much better; anarchy is a way of opening peoples eyes.

People ask me why I don't own a car, and ask why I skate/walk/use public transport so much. Me not driving everywhere may not do much to save the environment, but it's something.
Anarchy is a way of making a difference brick by brick.

Many of my friends wonder why I'm into all of this punk shit, and why I have the views I do.
My answer: Anarchism is more than a political view, it's a way of life.

I think this guy did pretty well at answering the question too:

"What is anarchism? What does it mean to be an anarchist? Why? Because it is
not a definition that can be made once and for all, put in a safe and considered
a patrimony to be tapped little by little... Anarchism is not a concept that can
be locked up in a word like a gravestone… It is a way of conceiving life, and life,
young or old as we may be, old people or children, is not something definitive:
it is a stake we must play day after day."

—Alfredo Bonanno, The Anarchist Tension

 

to me it is complete freedom , and everyone workin together

 

It's a good start

 

Well a general definition would be the belief that government should not exist.

But to me personally?

It's about being left alone. About living according to natural law. It's about government keeping their mits off private issues (private business, bodies, firearms, drugs, gay marriage etc.). It is about creating a world where we can form our own communities, with our own "rules", our own monetary systems etc.

But on a deeper level anarchism is about being spiritually free. I've always said "If your mind and soul arent free, how could you ever be that way?". Its about not being owned by a country, a company, a specific religion etc. (I would like to note I practice zen buddhism and attend a unitarian church, so Im not trying to bash faith or whatever).

Its about being able to hang out at my friend's ranch and fire guns while smoking a joint, banging a hooker, getting married to a guy (or 15 guys for that matter). Its about me having the room to live, not the room to cause chaos. It's about ending victimless crimes, coercive taxation, useless laws, indirect democracy, smoking laws, the drug war etc.
I dont want these freedoms so I can necessarily do these things, but so that liberty is ensured across the board so I have the freedom to do what I feel necessary.

 

I don't see any finite end, more of an eternal work in progress. A constant continuous striving for greater individual freedom on the one end and quality of life at the other end. The only conclusion besides failure or cataclysm would be some almost inconceivable utopia where all enjoy virtually complete freedom and ideal quality of life. Like Wilde said, it's just a progression from utopia to utopia, we work to build a better world, and the generation who are raised in it will build theirs and so on. Almost like Vinge's intelligence explosion.

 

Anarchy to me is coexisting as individuals, working together to acheive a common goal. Violence is not what I want, but I realise in a revolution that would be the case. I also don't believe we are ready for anarchy, as a people, we are hardly ready for reform, which would be the best next step. (In my eyes of course)

 

anarchy for me is living in society without authority, without the state, without hierarchy, without gender roles, without patriarchy, without economic exploitation, without discrimination.
so, anarchy is one normal society where people decide together about things which concern them. societt where people like each other and help each other.
society which is totally counter from this present lunatic society.
and in this lunatic society, there are even anarchists who just speak in harmony with anarchist theory but in reality they watch their ass and they don't care for human beings, they have possession behavior about property and they will misuse it to impose their will in your life, etc, etc.
true anarchists would share what they possess even today in present system, among themselves, but people like people, keep resources for themselves.
I am homeless and I see when I ask people something how much they refuse, even it is some stupid thing, for example, I asked to send money to one anarchist just to pay domain name for me (I don't have bank account and Visa card) and his reaction was deleting of my username from forum.
one anarcho-punk girl from east europe was kicked out from two squats in west europe just because she takes things without to ask. materialism and possession are very important for people from west because they grew up in such system.
and so I can make many examples where so called anarchists are just theoretical anarchists, people are still products of capitalism, in their heads.
without feelings for people, without mutual aid among people, anarchism will never become reality.

 

Dude, I think many would agree with me when I say that manners are important.
Being presumptuous and taking things isn't cool. Especially if those things had a certain kind of value to a person.
There's nothing wrong with asking someone who owns something if you can use their whatever.

 

Yes I want reform but most at mo are unwilling to take a lesson from the past to move into the lessons learnt in the present, they have gone right back to the start of total nihilism, as i have said its popularity has succesfully been popularised outta universities but which often comes from a place of wealthy experiance to those who are not and post modernism and the like, which ends up going nowhere as it did before it became a true movement but we don't have to repeat mistakes or use completely the same tactics but when some are used, success arises, no heros no leaders no masters no gods as it were, get busy.

 

Haha...I just read your sig...About the casualties.

 

Got a problem with it? O_O
HUH?!
xD

 

Half of your politics suck.

Anarchism is the fast lane to Communism. Minus the utopian bull about us "fre individuals" "working together" etc, it's a democratically planned economy, decentralization, and common ownership over the means of production. That's not "my view" that's straight fucking Kropotkin, aka what Anarchism actually is.

Now for a big ol' quote from Georges Fontenis explaining it better than I can:

"It was in the 19th Century, when capitalism was developing and the first great struggles of the working class were taking place - and to be more precise it was within the First International (1861 - 1871) - that a social doctrine appeared called 'revolutionary socialism' (as opposed to reformist or statist legalist socialism). This was also known as 'anti-authoritarian socialism' or 'collectivism' and then later as 'anarchism', 'anarchist communism' or 'libertarian communism'.

This doctrine, or theory, appears as a reaction of the organised socialist workers. It is at all events linked to there being a progressively sharpening class struggle. It is an historical product which originates from certain conditions of history, from the development of class societies - and not through the idealist critique of a few specific thinkers.

The role of the founders of the doctrine, chiefly Bakunin, was to express the true aspirations of the masses, their reactions and their experiences, and not to artificially create a theory by relying on a purely ideal abstract analysis or on earlier theories. Bakunin - and with him James Guillaume, then Kropotkin, Reclus, J. Grave, Malatesta and so on - started out by looking at the situation of the workers associations and the peasant bodies, at how they organised and fought.

That anarchism originated in class struggles cannot be disputed.

How is it then that anarchism has very often been thought of as a philosophy, a morality or ethic independent of the class struggle, and so as a form of humanism detached from historical and social conditions?

We see several reasons for this. On the one hand, the first anarchist theoreticians sometimes sought to trust to the opinions of writers, economists and historians who had come before them (especially Proudhon, many of whose writings do undoubtedly express anarchist ideas).

The theoreticians who followed them have even sometimes found in writers like La Boetie, Spencer, Godwin, Stirner, etc. ideas which are analogous to anarchism - in the sense that they demonstrate an opposition to the forms of exploitative societies and to the principles of domination they discovered in them. But the theories of Godwin, Stirner, Tucker and the rest are simply observations on society - they don't take account of History and the forces which determine it, or of the objective conditions which pose the problem of Revolution.

On the other hand, in all societies based on exploitation and domination there have always been individual or collective acts of revolt, sometimes with a communist and federalist or truly democratic content. As a result, anarchism has sometimes been thought of as the expression of peoples' eternal struggle towards freedom and justice - a vague idea, insufficiently grounded in sociology or history, and one that tends to turn anarchism into a vague humanism based on abstract notions of 'humanity' and 'freedom'. Bourgeois historians of the working class movement are always ready to mix up anarchist communism with individualist and idealist theories, and are to a great extent responsible for the confusion. These are the ones who have attempted to bring together Stirner and Bakunin.

By forgetting the conditions of anarchism's birth, it has sometimes been reduced to a kind of ultraliberalism and lost its materialist, historical and revolutionary character.

But at any rate, even if revolts previous to the 19th Century and ideas of certain thinkers on the relations between individual people and human groups did prepare the way for anarchism, there was no anarchism and doctrine until Bakunin.

The works of Godwin for example express the existence of class society very well, even if they do so in an idealist and confused way. And the alienation of the individual by the group, the family, religion, the state, morality, etc. is certainly of a social nature, is certainly the expression of a society divided into castes or classes.

It can be said that attitudes, ideas and ways of acting of people we could call rebels, non-conformers, or anarchists in the vague sense of the term have always existed.

But the coherent formulation of an anarchist communist theory dates from the end of the 19th Century and is continued each day, perfecting itself and becoming more precise.

So anarchism could not be assimilated to a philosophy or to an abstract or individualist ethic.

It was born in and out of the social, and it had to wait for a given historic period and a given state of class antagonism for anarchist communist aspirations to show themselves clearly for the phenomenon or revolt to result in a coherent and complete revolutionary conception.

Since anarchism is not an abstract philosophy or ethic it cannot address itself to the abstract person, to the person in general. For anarchism there does not exist in our societies the human being full stop: there is the exploited person of the despoiled classes and there is the person of the privileged groups, of the dominant class. To speak to the person is to fall into the error or sophism of the liberals who speak to the 'citizen' without taking into account the economic and social conditions of the citizens. And to speak to the person in general while, neglecting the fact that there are classes and there is a class struggle, while satisfying oneself with hollow rhetorical statements on Freedom and Justice - in a general sense and with capital letters - is to allow all the bourgeois philosophers who appear to be liberals but are in fact conservatives or reactionaries to infiltrate anarchism, to pervert it into a vague humanitarianism, to emasculate the doctrine, the organisation and the militants. There was a time, and to be honest this is still the case in some countries within certain groups, when anarchism degenerated into the tear-shedding of absolute pacifism or of a kind of sentimental Christianity. It had to react to this and now anarchism is taking up the attack on the old world with something other than woolley thoughts."

 

"Not even close to what anarchism means to me. Communism is another oppressive regime with those on top ruling everyone else. I guess that is some more of my sucky politics."

It is, because you don't even know what Communism is.

Ugh, Communism is STATELESS and CLASSLESS, no matter whatever knee jerk Reagan reaction you have to the word.

 

Kool Jack, thats wat i meant by we must learn our lesson and be in this world now too or be doomed, the first crux for most others is the point of losing indiviudality and we cannot ignore the fact that other certain philosiphies or movements have brought positive change tio many and should be included after the fact or if willing to agree to basic terms, as anyone and a willigness to work alongside or together with other groups of our kind under mandate(keep it simple), so its organised but not just centralised on personalities which it often has become), also too deny positives other organisations or individualists(human behaviour...) have done and an unwillingness to accept them even basically makes a mockery of us wishing to be part of the world and retecent to the future which has been coerced in itself, get busy...

 

Jack you gave us a big speech about anarchy from someone elses point of you. But what is yours?

 

its fine to referance too

 

I agree, referencing is fine, when you claim it for what it is. It is somebodys OPINION, he is using it as if it is written law.

 

dodn't agree but thats ok