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what anarchism is not

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Does the Anarchist Cookbook really have anything to do with anarchism? Is there such a thing as anarcho-capitalism? Fortunately for anarchists, there is no central committee or theory coordinator to decide what the correct anarchist line is on any given topic. Anarchism is very much defined and given form by its supporters. But there comes a time when the concept must be defended against those who would lie about it, misrepresent it, profit from it, or just plain not understand it. That is the purpose of this page. The anarchist movement is a big tent with a great many sideshows, but there are just some folks who are not circus performers.

National Anarchists and Third Positionists

Be aware that there are efforts underway to fuse nationalist, white supremacist, and neo-nazi ideology with anarchism. While anarchists are fundamentally against fascism, nationalism, racism, and white supremacy, we can't control those who associate anarchism with these ideologies. The following websites represent attempts by neo-nazis to pass themselves and their ideas off as compatible with anarchism:

Destructive "anarchism"

While many schools of anarchist thought promote the destruction of oppressive institutions, many people and organizations take part in violent and destructive activities without political or ethical motives. Unfortunately for the movement, many of these people claim to be anarchists. Anarchism is more about creating alternative instutions, communities, and lifestyles rather than blindly destroying those already in place.

The Anarchist Cookbook

The Anarchist Cookbook is an example of this kind of anger-motivated destruction. Here are some links to articles about what the anarchist community has to say about the Cookbook:

Those who believe violent destruction and anarchy are synonymous

Links to sites that promote this kind of "anarchy":

Fake Anarchists

There are some who occasionally commit outright fraud while using the label, 'Anarchist'. Even though they may appear to be legitimate initially, these individuals or organisations fail to meet Anarchist criteria upon closer inspection. Below is a reference of fake Anarchist sites/organisations and evidence against them.

The Anarchist International (AI), who attempt to change history with much of the material found in their website. Apparently the goal of members operating under the names in the warnings seems to be to disrupt actual discussion on internet forums, by inciting hostile encounters.

Anarchy and Social Attitudes

Often Anarchy is misappropriated as merely a label by various individuals, who are usually fairly young, believing that they are somehow cool for being an anarchist. They believe it lends them an aura of coolness, stemming from the danger or radical connotations the term carries.

See also: Anarchism is Not Cool

Black hat hacking

Breaking into computers, collecting private information, and destroying data are actions that some people claim to do in the name of anarchism. These actions do not necessarily represent the ideals of those of us in the anarchist movement and generally do more harm than good. There is, however, a small minority of crackers that use their knowledge of computer security to break into computers and carry out actions against corporations and governments that engage in objectionable practices. These people are refered to as "grey hat hackers." However, most "hackers" (who are refered to as "black hat hackers") do not have ethical or political motives. Some of these black hat hackers claim to be anarchists, while they usually are not.

Commerical Sites

  • Anarchy Entertainment - Anarchy Entertainment is a company that designs games and trade off their hip "anarchist" image.
  • Anarchy-Online.com - While Anarchy-Online is not as bad as fake anarchy websites, it is still misleading. Anarchy-Online is a website for hackers and not Anarchists.

Capitalism/Big "L" Libertarians

The word "libertarian" is rightfully a synonym for anarchism, especially used in repressive times when the term "anarchy" will get a person in trouble, But capitalists in the USA have (for the time being) managed to convince people there are two definitions which are often separated by the geographical regions of North America and Europe. In Europe the term libertarian (little "l") usually means one who is of an Anarchist persuasion, whereas in North America the term generally refers to a member of the Libertarian party or various shades of advocacy of private states created somehow without a political process. Many capitalists calling themselves "libertarian" have called for state repression or personal repression ("I'm going to pick up my shotgun") violence against anarchists who oppose private property - it should be no wonder that anarchists see no basic difference between the various labels of capitalism/conservativism: whether they advocate voting and political parties, or claim they do not but never lift a finger to oppose the parties, or whether they claim to support small business but oppose corporations - but never lift a finger to fight corporations, claiming their supposed "non-initiation of force" clause blocks them from doing this, but does not block them from shooting a trespasser on their land and allows them to keep property and wealth their relatives stole from slaves and indigenous people.

Anarcho-capitalism

Anarcho-capitalism has been totally written off by most Anarchists as a fraud. The claim it's legitimacy is still in dispute has been repeatedly presented by capitalists who wish to undermine anarchism's opposition to capitalism by "poisoning the well" and always returning society to capitalism - even after an anarchist revolution - by sneaking capitalist ideas and names of individual historical capitalists into the anarchist lexicon on the Internet where information is vulnerable to ideological attack, altering, redirection and misinformation.

There is no form of capitalism that does not rely on the concentration of wealth and the existence of private property, and the need for defense of this property through a public or private state. Right-wing Cold War hawks such as James Donald and Bryan Caplan have attempted (on the Internet in the 1990's) to frame their arguments in language and documents that appear to be legitimate because they use certain key phrases and structure and some author's attempts to have some connection to scholarly circles with anarchist legitimacy. None of the big names and figures mentioned in anarcho-capitalist propaganda include actual anarchists (they play lip-service to Benjamin Tucker or Fred Woodworth only to grab an occasional condemnation of socialism or seeming advocacy of "anarchist private property", yet once this is established these people quickly disappear to be replaced by more "pure" capitalist individuals such as Bastiat and Rothbard), such people are simply republicans and conservatives of various stripes who claimed that earning profit was equal to freedom, and anyone who says this is not the case is an evil authoritarian socialist (pretty much the only reason Bastiat is even mentioned is that he hated socialism in 1850, yet talked favorably of capital and equated it with liberty, for example - yet what boss-to-be would not say such a thing?)

The term "anarcho-socialist" was manufactured by James Donald in the 1990's to create an artificial designation, when in fact anarchist opposition to capitalism comes not from a moral or socialist or marxist epistemology, but rather an individualist-through-working-class-eyes perspective. Anarchism, or libertarian socialism, or (properly) libertarianism (in the non-capitalist sense) rejects capitalism in the name of egoism - the egoism of the working class.

Capitalists, just like Leninists, attempt to frame the central human social conflict in terms of "freedom vs. socialism" or "capitalism = liberty vs. socialism = authority", when from an anarchist perspective, capitalism is always authoritarian and always creates the need for a public or private state, while socialism, like democracy and liberty, can be recuperated or compromised by capitalists as a control mechanism, but the terms themselves are benign in that in order for a society with social harmony to exist, it must have some form of liberty, grass-roots/direct democracy (or some decision making process that encourages all of those affected by a decision to have some say in it, whatever it is called), and socialism that is not simply a capitalist and statist authoritarian trick. Anarchists define the primary social conflict of humanity as "the liberty of the people/everyone/the common person/the worker vs. the liberty of the bosses/rulers/owners". This is a very different approach than that of the capitalists, and that of the marxists/leninists, because by this definition, the capitalists and the marxists/leninists are opposed to freedom because by their own definition (without their weasel-words and misdefinitions) they are fundamentally authoritarian.

One of the major problems has been that in countries like Poland there are a number of anarchists who believe that individualism is possibly defined in some instances as "synonymous with capitalism" because the Soviet governments dressed themselves in the words "socialism" and "democracy" and opposed individualism (just as Marx opposed Stirner). So if the capitalists in America can frame the debate in terms of "freedom vs socialism", then a number of individualist anarchists (some in America too, such as Fred Woodworth and Joe Peacott) who have no real reason to support capitalism can be tricked into accepting strangers into the "libertarian" category who's only claim to any libertarian designation at all is that they use the label, and they say they don't like socialism, mouth a few anarchist aphorisms that may have just as easily come from the lips of Emma Goldman, and claim to be against the state. This is the main way capitalists "sneak under the door" support for authoritarian business models, corporations, advocacy of Ayn Rand's ideas, private property, private armies, private states, anti-democratic and anti-liberty-for-workers measures, and even second-handed or implicit support for Libertarian Party political candidates, under the auspices of these things having any connection to "liberty" or "anarchism". Once the capitalists control and frame the debate, everything is altered in their authoritarian favor, from simple flags to elaborate quizzes and "maps" to determine where one rests on the political spectrum.

The anarcho-capitalist strategy is always the same: First they create the idea that the idea of a capitalist anarchy can *possibly* exist, then they produce entries that insist that it does, and point to their web sites. Once they redirect people interested in anarchism to their websites, their control of the debate and the way it is framed, as well as symbols (such as the color gold, dollar signs, etc) and concepts, is totally under their control, so they are permitted to manufacture anything they wish about the concept of freedom, completely rewrite history, and frame it so that everything that is anti-capitalist is to be called authoritarian and everything that is pro-capitalist is not.

The goal and results of all anarcho-capitalist ideology, symbolism, history and debate is indistinguishable from run-of-the-mill capitalist conservatives - who it should be noted are made up of people who are religious and people who are not, people who vote and people who do not, people who are socially (but not economically) liberal and people who are not, people who are isolationist and people who are not, and people who are pro-war and people who are not. Contrast this with the libertarian socialism of the anarchists vs. the authoritarian socialism of the Leninists or the partial "democracy" and "liberty" of the Statist Liberals ("Classical" statism or not) where in the later comparison there is a vast world of difference and ordinary people have decision-making power in their lives that is not defined by economists and bosses of various labels. So-called "anarcho-capitalism" has little purpose outside of a public relations gimmick - a way for capitalists to rewrite history to absolve themselves of any guilt for authoritarian and anti-individualist historical crimes by redefining words, replacing symbols, and rewriting historical record. It is a kind of "meme theft" conducted on the Internet and on some college campuses and in economic think tanks.

Anarchism that rejects capitalism is not "Red", it is Black, or sometimes Red-and-Black. The red of the anarchists is not the same as the red of the marxists. This is the fundamental difference between anarchism and marxism, even if both use the term "socialism" - the anarchist rejection of capitalism is on the basis of individualism and egoism that benefits the most people (the working class, the poor, the unemployed) as well as on social/grass-roots democratic grounds, while the marxist concept of socialism is based purely on the rejection of egoism and individualism and only based on social grounds (and when the individual is removed from the social, there is no choice but to rely on authority), as was demonstrated by Karl Marx's responses to and rejections of the ideas of Max Stirner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Mikhail Bakunin, and Vladimir Lenin's responses to and rejections of the ideas of Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman.

Just One of the criticisms from classical Anarchists is that unequal distribution of capitals means unequal distribution of power and freedom (hierarchy), a condition incompatible with anarchy. There are a number of other criticisms available in the Anarchist FAQ.

External links

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