Anarchy :: essays research papers

Anarchism, more than anything else, is about the efforts of millions of revolutionaries changing the world in the last two centuries.Here we pull up stakes discuss some of the high contingents of this movement, all of them of a profoundly anti-capitalist nature. Anarchism is about radically changing the world, not just making the present system slight inhuman by encouraging the anarchistictendencies within it to grow and develop. While no purely anarchist revolution has taken place yet, there deem been numerous oneswith a highly anarchist character and level of participation. And while these devour all been destroyed, in each case it has been atthe hands of extraneous force brought against them (backed either by Communists or Capitalists), not because of any internalproblems in anarchism itself. These revolutions, despite their failure to survive in the face of overwhelming force, have been bothan inspiration for anarchists and proof that anarchism is a viable social theory an d can be practised on a large scale. What these revolutions share is the situation they are, to use Proudhons term, a "revolution from below" -- they were examples of"collective activity, of popular spontaneity." It is only a transformation of society from the bottom up by the action of the crush themselves that can create a bleak society. As Proudhon asked, "what serious and lasting Revolution was notmade from below, by the people?" For this reason an anarchist is a "revolutionary from below." Thus the social revolutionsand mass movements we discuss in this section are examples of popular self-activity and self-liberation (as Proudhon put it in1848, "the proletariat must emancipate itself"). quoted by George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon A Biography, p.143 and p. 125 All anarchists echo Proudhons idea of revolutionary change from below, the creation of a new society by theactions of the oppressed themselves. Bakunin, for example, argued that anarchists are "foes . . . of all separate organisations assuch, and believe that the people can only be happy and free, when, organised from below by means of its ownautonomous and completely free associations, without the supervision of any guardians, it will create its own life."Marxism, Freedom and the State, p. 63 In section J.7 we discuss what anarchists think a social revolution is and what itinvolves. It is important to point out that these examples are of wide-scale social experiments and do not imply that we ignore theundercurrent of anarchist practice which exists in everyday life, even under capitalism.