By Cake Boy
So, you want to be an anarchist. How do you organize? Let’s examine the different formats of anarchist organization.
How do leftist/collectivist anarchists organize?
European and American Leftist anarchists have marginal parties that function like hierarchical cults, where people come together to fight for a so-called revolution. In a way, these cults are like communist parties, but their goal is a little bit different. They want a world in which there is not one big communist state but thousands of little communist states—a communism of the councils. But these councils will still function like states.
If you are a member of a party like this, you must pay the party’s secretariat monthly. And nobody knows what they do with that money. The leaders of the party never tell. There is no democracy within the party because leftist anarchists are against free speech, so then you also don’t need democracy. They are against free speech because free speech could potentially hurt people’s feelings.
Everything within leftist anarchism is focused on their so-called ‘revolution’ that will never happen. To them, this ‘revolution’ also means a cultural revolution. An anarchist world will be a world full of drag queens, veganism, mental breakdowns, and gender transitions.
Let’s look at libertarian anarchism and their form of organization
How do libertarians organize? They have their libertarian party. This party is a classical liberal party that wants a smaller state. Libertarians flirt with anarchism and show anarchist symbols, but their politics is about classical liberalism. I think they use the anarchist symbols to make a statement, to shock some people
So, what is an actual anarcho-capitalist organization? Anarcho-capitalists talk about the idea of dodging taxes and ‘starving the beast’ by doing so. The masses should refuse to pay taxes, and the state will fall.
This never happens because only the rich can avoid taxation. The poor do not have the money to hire professionals who can help you dodge the taxes. So, this strategy failed. The people should organize around financial professionals to kill the state, according to anarcho-capitalists. After the state is gone, the capitalists will take over everything the state used to do prior. Most people in my country think this is a bizarre theory. Anarchists often don’t like the idea of capitalists owning all the infrastructure and all the natural resources, and capitalists/neoliberals don’t like the idea of anarchism. So, the theory falls between a rock and a hard place.
Individualist anarchist organization
Then there is the individualist anarchist perception of organization. I would call it an affinity organization.
Individualist anarchists create little affinity groups that are conditional and meant to support their members. It’s not a party or official organization. It’s just a way to help others and help yourself. See it like a group of friends, but with more support regarding topics like work, finance, and struggle. This individualism is different than neoliberal individualism because it’s an individualism that recognizes the fact that (most) people are social animals and recognizes that solidarity and individualism do not have to exclude each other.
The agorism of Samuel Konkin is also an individualist model for informal organization based on free association and dissociation.
A critique of individualist anarchism is that it is apolitical, middle-class-oriented, and decadent in the eyes of some leftist people. A strong point of this kind of organization is that it’s very practical and goal-oriented.
Mutualist organization
Mutualists want to create cooperatives, communal land trusts, credit unions, mutualist/interest-free banking, and residential groups. These institutions will eventually push away capitalism and the state without using violence. They call this strategy the ‘dual power strategy’. So, they organize to slowly push away the old world and create a new world based on usufruct and free markets.
This form of organization is both about a new society and about the here and now. It’s both individualistic and constructive.
We see this mutualist practice already in the world in different forms. In my country, for example, we have a successful mutualist banking project that doesn’t call itself anarchist because the project’s initiator probably thinks this word would scare people away. But when I talked with him, he knew everything about Proudhon’s theory. We have also seen that the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain are pretty successful. The Mondragon people also don’t talk about Proudhon or mutualism. But I think the people who started have read some mutualist economics. I think Mondragon would be less successful if it were called ‘an anarchist project’. But when you put Proudhon’s ideas into practice, then people often think these ideas are reasonable.
I personally think the individualist and mutualist forms of organization are the most suitable for this period (at least, suitable for this period in the West; I can’t talk for the Third World). Affinity groups are suitable because they work and are flexible and pragmatic.
Mutualist organizations are suitable because many people like the practices that came from the mutualist tradition. People like the idea of credit unions, cooperatives, and practical financial mutual aid. Mutualism respects individualism while at the same time rejecting usury. This resonates with a lot of common people. When I talk with people about the different schools of anarchism, they often say that they think mutualism is the most reasonable position. The people with moderate liberal or social democratic views often see some value in mutualism
You can create a zine out of the cake boy texts, if you want to, and spread them on anarchist or libertarian events or anywhere. If you want to contact Cake Boy, you can do so through Preston’s mail. He will then contact me.
