The purpose of Attack the System has always been clear, though often misunderstood. Its objective is not to add one more faction to the marketplace of ideologies, nor to win a temporary skirmish in the field of electoral politics, nor to establish a new orthodoxy to replace an old one. The aim is far more ambitious: to plant and cultivate a metapolitical insurgency whose fruits will be nothing less than the intellectual and cultural hegemony of anarchism itself. Not anarchism as a subculture or a movement confined to the margins, but anarchism as the central paradigm through which political life is understood. Not anarchism as the hobbyhorse of radicals, but anarchism as the reigning assumption of civilization.

This vision is articulated explicitly in the foundational texts of Attack the System. The Statement of Purpose insists that anarchism is not a sect, not a doctrine frozen in amber, but a “vast intellectual and cultural paradigm” whose lineage runs from the Cynics of Greece to the Taoists of China, from the heretical sects of medieval Europe to the utopian socialists and classical anarchists of the 19th century. Anarchism is as old as power itself, because wherever power has arisen, so too has the instinct of revolt. The task before us is not to invent anarchism but to universalize it, to transform what has long been a dissident current into the dominant stream of human thought.

Anarchism as Historical Counterpoint

Every civilization has its official creeds. The Middle Ages bowed before the authority of the Church, the early modern world enthroned the divine right of kings, the modern era crowned liberalism and socialism in their turn. Each epoch has its orthodoxy, its paradigm of legitimacy. Anarchism has always been the shadow, the counterpoint, the refusal. From Diogenes mocking the pretensions of Alexander, to the Brethren of the Free Spirit defying both pope and emperor, to Bakunin’s denunciation of Marx’s statist socialism, the anarchist has been the gadfly, the negator, the reminder that power rests on nothing firmer than consent.

But the time has come for anarchism to cease being the shadow and become the substance. Just as liberalism displaced feudalism, just as socialism unmasked the hypocrisies of bourgeois equality, so anarchism must rise as the philosophy that displaces statism itself. For too long, even radicals have assumed the state to be the inescapable framework within which politics must be conducted. For too long, the imagination of empire has shaped the possibilities of human life. Philosophical anarchism must dissolve this assumption and render the very idea of sovereignty absurd.

From Subculture to Civilization

The anthology of Attack the System documents the many tendencies that fly the anarchist banner: collectivist, individualist, syndicalist, mutualist, primitivist, transhumanist, capitalist, communist, traditionalist, postmodernist. To the casual observer, this cacophony appears as chaos, a symptom of disunity. But the genius of the anarchist paradigm lies precisely in its pluralism. Where others see disarray, we see richness. Where others see fragmentation, we see resilience.

The objective is not to elevate one tendency above all others, but to make anarchism itself—the rejection of centralized authority and coercive hierarchy—the universal baseline. Imagine a civilization in which every political current, whether conservative or progressive, traditionalist or modernist, must articulate its program in anarchist terms. Conservatives would no longer clamor for laws that enforce their morality, but would build intentional communities that live their values voluntarily. Progressives would not lobby for bureaucratic decrees in the name of equity, but would organize mutual aid networks that embody egalitarianism directly. Entrepreneurs would no longer justify themselves by appealing to cronyism or regulation, but would defend their activity as the practice of free exchange free from state favoritism. Cultural radicals would not beg for recognition from the state, but would cultivate spaces in which their experiments flourish by voluntary choice.

In this world, anarchism ceases to be a marginal identity and becomes the grammar of politics itself. Philosophical anarchism becomes the hegemonic lens, the framework within which all else must operate.

Metapolitics and Cultural Insurgency

The road to this hegemony does not lie through elections or parliaments. It cannot be won by capturing the state, for the state is the enemy. It cannot be achieved by replacing one ruling party with another, for the problem is not the party but the principle of rule. The path is metapolitical: a war of position, an insurgency of culture and ideas.

The Statement of Purpose calls Attack the System a “meta-political media collective and strategic platform.” Its task is not to organize a party but to undermine the faith in parties altogether. Its work is not to construct a state but to dissolve the legitimacy of statism. Just as the Enlightenment undermined the religious foundations of monarchy, so must anarchism undermine the secular faith in the nation-state. The battleground is the university, the media, the internet, the arts, the subcultures—everywhere human beings learn what is possible and what is legitimate.

Philosophical anarchism achieves hegemony not when anarchists form the majority, but when statists of every stripe can no longer defend themselves except in anarchist terms. When the defender of capitalism justifies his system by invoking free association rather than state subsidy. When the defender of socialism appeals to solidarity rather than bureaucratic fiat. When even the reactionary insists that his tradition is preserved voluntarily, not enforced by law. At that moment, anarchism has won, even if the banner of anarchism is not explicitly flown.

The Necessity of Pluralist Coalition

This objective demands a broad and inclusive strategy. The anthology documents ATS’s insistence on engaging the widest possible spectrum of dissident currents: anarchists of every variety, libertarians, communitarians, post-Marxists, populists, paleoconservatives, cultural radicals, radical ecologists, traditionalists, and many more. The guiding principle is not sectarian purity but anti-statism. Any current that erodes the legitimacy of centralized power contributes to the advance of anarchism, whether consciously or not.

Such pluralism provokes outrage from purists. But the hegemony of philosophical anarchism cannot be built by narrow sectarianism. It requires that anarchism cease being a subculture and become a civilization. Just as Christianity absorbed and reinterpreted pagan currents in its rise to dominance, just as liberalism co-opted republican and democratic impulses in its triumph, so anarchism must welcome diverse tributaries into its broad river. The goal is not ideological uniformity but the delegitimation of the state.

The Delegitimation of Power

The path to anarchist hegemony will not be a sudden apocalyptic collapse. It will be a process of delegitimation. States will falter under the weight of debt, corruption, and incapacity. Empires will stumble into overreach. Managerial elites will discredit themselves with hypocrisy, repression, and failure. In this environment, philosophical anarchism must become the interpretive key.

Just as Marxism provided a vocabulary for the exploited workers of the 19th century, and liberalism provided a creed for the rising bourgeoisie of the 18th, anarchism must provide the world with a language of resistance in the 21st and beyond. The crises of our time—economic inequality, ecological collapse, imperial overreach, cultural alienation—are all failures of centralized power. Anarchism must name these failures for what they are, and offer the alternative: autonomy, decentralism, voluntary association.

The hegemony of anarchism will be complete when the state can no longer justify itself, when every crisis is interpreted as evidence of the state’s redundancy, when the default assumption of humanity is that authority is illegitimate unless proven otherwise.

Anarchism as the New Common Sense

The ultimate measure of victory will be when anarchism is so deeply woven into the fabric of civilization that it ceases to need a name. Just as few today call themselves “anti-feudalists” because feudalism is dead, so the day will come when few need to call themselves anarchists because statism has been delegitimized. The black flag will cease to be a symbol of rebellion and will become the invisible grammar of daily life.

The goal is not the triumph of anarchism as a party or a movement, but the elevation of philosophical anarchism to the status of global common sense. When every ideology must justify itself in terms of voluntary association, when every community must legitimate itself by the principle of autonomy, when every institution must exist by consent rather than decree, anarchism will have achieved hegemony.

Conclusion

The ultimate objective of Attack the System is not reform, not revolution in the conventional sense, not the substitution of one ruling class for another. Its aim is metapolitical and civilizational: to make philosophical anarchism the dominant worldview of the future. The enemy is not only the state but the assumption of the state. The task is not only to attack regimes but to delegitimize the very principle of sovereignty.

When that day comes, humanity will look back on statism as we now look back on monarchy or papal supremacy: as a primitive superstition. The age of empire will be remembered as the dark night before the dawn. And anarchism, once dismissed as utopian, will stand revealed as the common sense of a liberated world.

Bibliography

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Graeber, David. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004.

Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. New York: New York University Press, 1972.

Noonan, Eric, ed. Attack the System: An Anthology. Richmond: ATS Publishing, 2023.

Preston, Keith. Attack the System: Statement of Purpose. Richmond: ATS Publishing, 2023.

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. What Is Property? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Ward, Colin. Anarchy in Action. London: Freedom Press, 1982.