There’s no excuse for any disunity or internal conflict between anarchists.
Some regard it as a sad inevitability that factions will always develop and squabble with each other, but that doesn’t have to be the case.
We are not in the same position as the Marxist left, where different groups are (theoretically at least!) vying to form the leadership of post-revolutionary government.
Our aim is simply to reach a certain point where anarchy has been achieved and then allow freedom to take its course.
We could term this point, or line, the Anarchy Threshold. All of our efforts go into taking humanity across this finishing tape. After that, it will be the actions and ideas of the people who find themselves in that happy situation that will take things forward from there.
We have no idea when we will reach the Anarchy Threshold and whether we as individuals will be around when that time comes.
If we are there, we will have our say as to how the new society is shaped – as individuals like everyone else. If we aren’t, we won’t.
We really don’t have to worry about that. All we need to worry about is getting there in the first place.
Of course, there are many different ideas about how we can best reach the A-Threshold – almost as many as there are different anarchists. It’s understandable to want to try and persuade other anarchists to see it your way – but only up to a point.
Ultimately, none of us know which will prove to be the most worthwhile approaches and certainly a diversity of tactics is the most likely strategy to succeed.
As far as the post-Threshold world is concerned, none of us will have any control over how that looks, and neither, as anarchists, could we desire to have any.
The views of other anarchists as to what that world might look like do not represent any threat to us, as they cannot – by anarcho-definition – be forced upon us or upon anyone else.
Your idea of utopia may not be the post-industrial eco-anarchist vision, but that vision (as a vision held by anarchists) is not going to be imposed on you or on society.
Neither will industrially-minded anarcho-communists be in a position to force anyone to work in a collective factory or down a collective coal mine. That’s not what anarchy means.
In the meantime, we will continue to express our diverse daydreams about the world we would like to live in, but the differences between them and other anarchists’ dreams should not be the focus of our anarchist identity.
It’s not a prevalent belief in today’s world that all government and authority is more harmful than helpful, and that the whole set-up should be scrapped. Put that together with our common condemnation of all forms of inequality, injustice and intolerance, and there’s plenty there for anarchists to unite around.
So what’s stopping us? Ego perhaps? A sense of personal “identity” derived from belonging to certain sub-sect? All that needs to burned off and left behind.
We need a strong and clear anarchist movement made up of strong and clear individuals whose political focus is purely on helping humankind reaching the Anarchy Threshold and who have unwavering faith in the freedom that lies beyond.
Leave a Reply