By Cake Boy
If anarchism as a mass movement wants to have meaning, it has to be clear in what its goals are. It has to formulate an understandable vision. People have to be able to imagine it right away. People have to be able to see themselves in such an anarchist social setting. For now, this often isn’t the case. As Stirner said, freedom has to materialize. When it’s just a concept, it’s nothing.
What a pluralist anarchist world would be like? Imagine the political parties in your country. An anarchist order would be as if every political party just stopped being a party but had its own part of the land. For example, we have the socialist party in this country. They have to compete in the parliament. In an anarchist setting, they would have their own province in the country and wouldn’t have to ‘convince’ others of their ideas. People who support them would live in their zone. The same would go for the other parties, the liberals, Christians, etc. In this way, we still have the plurality of all the different branches of thought that form our culture, without any of them having total control over the whole country. Christianity, socialism, liberalism, it’s all part of the Western culture. They can exist next to each other and don’t have to compete. But it would still come together to arrange things they can all agree on.
The social zones would work together to defend the whole country/federation. They could all raise taxes to fund an army to protect the borders, and they should all be connected all the time in consultative bodies.
There would be commons, or legalized autonomous zones, to ensure that people are not forced to be part of the whole arrangement. This makes it anarchic. People can drop out of the system, they then don’t pay tax, but they won’t get any benefits. This would also lead to companies and institutions having to provide good services. Monopoly leads to corruption, which is the problem we saw with neoliberalism and communism. If people can’t escape, then officials can abuse the people.
How would we ever get to a world like that? If it exists, it could arise after the collapse of the existing neoliberal system. After systems crash, new orders have a chance. Also, within crises, a movement like this could find space to experiment.
Otherwise, it could be done through a prolonged process, using the current political institutions like think tanks, parties, NGOs, etc. That would all propagate self-government, decentralization, and the re-emergence of commons
We can call this pluralist anarchism, or maybe the word pluralist libertarianism is better because that word is less loaded, and libertarian was always another word for anarchism.
Yesterday, I was at the swimming pool, thinking about the political vision I was writing about. I saw the ordinary working-class people there, and I observed them a little bit. What would the world look like if many people here knew about anarchism/pluralist libertarianism? If they could just say: yes, I’m an anarchist? If that would be the case, then anarchism as a movement would have meaning. If anarchists want to succeed, then that is something that they should want to reach. Step out of the domain of subculturalism/adolescence and into the domain of actual political proposals
Now, often, anarchism is ‘against’ all kinds of things. But the anarchism I formulated is for a lot of things. This makes it a stronger fundament for future anarchist organization. It’s a creative anarchism, not a destructive, sentimental anarchism. This anarchism is also as realistic as it can get. No utopian vision, no dreams of a ‘new man’, no sectarianism, and no pretentions. Just a program people can agree with, or disagree, nothing else.
We could write down all kinds of points that a pluralist anarchist movement demands. But I think the picture is clear for now. If anarchism doesn’t succeed in reformulating itself, then it will die as a movement very soon. There is a crisis of neoliberalism, but there is also a crisis of anarchism.
If anarchism would be competent, it would look a bit like what the communists are doing now. Getting thousands of people together in mass meetings etc. Something like this is actually relevant political organization. Besides, what do you think of their ideas? I disagree with them
https://www.youtube.com/@revolutionarycommunists/videos
