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Why is anarchism so troubling to political commentators? I present here six interrelated answers to that question. I make no claims that this is anything other than a personal exploration of the idea, but then again, that is the way in which anarchism is best developed; personally, individually, and autonomously.
The trouble with anarchism is that the word "anarchy" has developed false connotations. There is nothing in its Greek origins which implies chaos, violence or vandalism. It in fact describes a particular type of association, or a decision-making method, in which there are no identifiable leaders or rulers. The word is derived from a-, the prefix denoting the absence of something, and arkhos, ruler; compare this with monarch (one ruler), oligarch (few rulers) and so on. Now, it is true that language evolves, and therefore so do meanings. But in a country where the high form of language is still called the "King's/Queen's English", we cannot forget that control over the evolution of language is just one more means of exercising political power. When one sees the relatively abstract word "anarchy" applied to the material phenomenon of, say, a riot, one must remember that this is an application of a metaphor. Therefore, perhaps the first and most important task of the modern anarchist is to seek to reclaim the word.
It is easier to twist political terms into any desired shape because of their inherently abstract nature. This is why Orwell wrote [1] that "most political writing is bad writing". Language is slippery enough at the best of times: most words have multiple meanings even in the dictionary, let alone in everyday life. However, at least when we talk about a dog, a car or a forest, everyone will have had material experience of such an object (even if the specific form of the object will differ between people). With political ideas, no clear material example is available, so we fall back on metaphors. To say, as I've already done, that "anarchy" describes a particular kind of decision making process is easy. To describe what the experience of anarchy is like to someone who believes themselves never to have encountered it is harder: the metaphors keep crowding in, attempting to make our conversation easier but in fact obscuring our intention.
Whereas "anarchy" describes a particular form of association, my particular take on anarchism is that it is a critique of the belief that authority over one's life can be legitimately delegated to others [2]. Note, though, that this delegation of autonomy (whether actively consented to or not) is exactly how states have claimed legitimacy since the 18th century, whether they be liberal-democratic or state communist. So it is perhaps unsurprising that anarchists find themselves under attack from both sides and, to be fair, that they in turn criticise both approaches to the state (the division being essentially economic rather than political). [3]. Anarchism does not deny that power has an economic basis, but this is not all that power is; it is also psychological. Anarchism explores the ways in which we are encouraged to yield to arbitrary authority, and the practical means by which we can reassert our autonomy in the face of this authority.
The trouble with anarchism is that the central concepts of authority and autonomy are as abstract as "anarchy" itself. We may define "authority" as the power to impel someone to do something they would not otherwise have done, but it is not as simple as that. Authority does inhere in certain people, such as judges, politicians, nightclub bouncers or one's own children (I write that as a parent...). But authority may also lie in objects: a red traffic light, for example, or a no smoking sign. And what of abstract things such as laws, human rights, customs and rituals?
Authority is not wholly objective. At least in part, it resides in the minds and dispositions of those who are subject to it. Calculations of costs and benefits are not always made consciously, but they still play a part: we stop at the red traffic light because we accept that not doing so will probably have dangerous consequences. But sometimes, de jure authority (that is, existing in law) becomes disconnected from de facto authority (existing in fact), as seems to have happened with the smoking of cannabis in the UK (most people who want to smoke cannabis are already doing so regardless of the fact it is still illegal at the time of writing). Therefore, our response to authority varies from person to person, and situation to situation.
Authority should not be thought of as permanent and/or unchanging. We may think that authority is somehow permanently institutionalised in a government, or the police force, or (for schoolchildren) in one's teachers, but it is not. Authority is multifaceted and dynamic. It updates itself in response to new developments. It can also be challenged, and in such moments of challenge, change and development occur. A law may lose its moral force (such as the laws against homosexuality in the 1960s); a child may defy his or her teachers or parents and so realise they are not perfect beings; police orders to demonstrators to turn back from a barricade may be ignored. At these moments, what emerges from under the shadow of authority is the light of free will; or, as I shall term it, autonomy. I suggest, then, that authority and autonomy are concepts in opposition to one another.
This is not a dichotomy, but a continuum: there are shades of grey inbetween these two poles just as there are between "black and white", "young and old" or "capitalist and communist". There are times when the exercise of authority is perfectly justified, such as when a parent stops their child expressing their autonomy by running out into a busy street. The child may resent it, but no-one would consider this illegitimate. (The red traffic light performs a similar function.) But most questions of autonomy versus authority are more ambiguous than this. It may seem perfectly normal to delegate autonomy in, say, medical diagnosis to a doctor, and this is something most people do freely -- and usually with good reason. But doctors can make mistakes. They can also "medicalise" conditions in which their intervention is not always for the best (is the child hyperactive and in need of Ritalin, or is he/she just bored to tears with irrelevant teaching?). Anarchists have pointed to the dangers that lie in the unquestioning obedience of authority: "a man [sic] can decide to obey the commands of another without making any attempt to determine for himself whether what is commanded is good or wise" [4].
Similarly there are dangers with the totally free expression of autonomy. At the very least we should accept J. S. Mill's "harm principle", whereby free will should always become subject to controls if and when it does harm to others [5]. We are conscious, reasoning beings: responsibility for our actions is a consequence of our capacity to choose. In this simple insight lies both the defence of autonomy, and of agreed-upon authority. Wolff argues that it is a complete violation of our humanity to delegate both the choice and the responsibility to arbitrary "authority". We should accept that some constraints on our actions are necessary, but these constraints are only legitimate if and when they have been negotiated and agreed upon. Finally, these constraints should not be permanently set, but subjected to constant review and dependent on circumstance [6]. (See section 4 of this essay.)
Autonomy, then, has both "negative" and "positive" aspects [7]. In negative terms, it is the absence of arbitrary authority and the coercion which flows from this authority. In positive terms, autonomy means the ability to understand and recognise that one has a free choice, that there are always alternative courses of action. It means having enough (trustworthy) information on which to base a decision; to have enough education, wisdom or intelligence to judge the quality of this information and to weigh up the alternatives; and to have the self-confidence to make the decision. Finally it means having the maturity to accept responsibility for the consequences of one's choice.
What one can never remove from anarchism is the self. People cannot be reduced to "voters", or "employees", or "consumers", or "donors", or "viewers" (I could go on). In anarchism, every individual human being remains a conscious, self-motivated actor, who ideally will have agreed upon all constraints to which they are subjected. Herein lies anarchism's essential strength; it also represents the reasons why anarchism is so problematic to large, bureaucratic organisations which depend precisely on usurping the autonomy of the many people whose lives they affect, and reducing them to one or all of the classifications mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph.
I must however accept that I am describing ideals here. In reality anarchism faces certain practical questions, which I deal with in the remainder of this essay. First, how can effective action take place if the conditions have to be continually negotiated? Second, what happens if the negotiated conditions and constraints are simply ignored? Finally, what hope do these ideals have when faced with the depressing reality, of dominance by exactly the large, bureaucratic institutions which it fundamentally opposes?
The trouble with anarchism is that many people have a deeply ingrained belief that only through the imposition of hierarchy or authority will anything get done effectively. This belief has been termed "hierarchism", and "holds that to act together successfully in the world necessarily entails a hierarchy of command, centralised control and the institutionalisaion of roles of expertise and leadership.... it relies heavily on the division of labour, the systematisation of tasks and the immunisation of elite decision-makers against input from those defined as lacking expertise" [8]. In other words, that without authority people will spend their time arguing rather than acting and "unqualified" people should not be entrusted with decisions.
However, this belief is simply not borne out by reality. In fact, both (non-human) nature and (human) society are characterised by active collaboration, which emerges without the conscious direction of "leaders" or "rulers". In 1902, the anarchist scientist Peter Kropotkin published Mutual Aid, a comprehensive refutation of Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism. It was Spencer who coined the term "survival of the fittest", applying it to human (capitalist) society as well as to nature. Social Darwinists believed that nature, society and the marketplace were all perpetual struggles in which only the strongest or meanest survived and thrived. Kropotkin did not deny that "survival of the fittest" had some basis in fact, but he totally dismissed ideas that "fitness" was based on conflict. On the contrary, he listed hundreds of examples from nature and human society (from primitive times to the present) to show that "fitness" was in fact more a function of collaboration and co-operation, whether within a species/society or between them. No species or society which expended all its energy in constant conflict would thrive. Rather, the benefits of spotaneous union were so strong that this could, indeed, be considered a law of nature. In fact, it was only things which had been fixed by no authority that could truly be considered "natural". [9]
Some of Kropotkin's examples seem a little naïve now, but that is only because he did not have access to later developments from physics and other discplines. For instance, he suggested that the flocking of birds derived from a conscious, social impulse [10]. But even if his explanations are misguided, his conclusions are in fact reinforced by developments such as chaos theory and complexity theory, which show how patterns and order can arise from "chaos" (in fact, from a state which is on the boundary between true chaos and rigid structure) even without conscious direction or arrangement. In the weather, in animal behaviour, in human organisations, in economies, structure, patterns and direction are constantly emerging without the need for leadership [11]. Ward writes that "people used to smile at Kropotkin when he instanced the lifeboat institution as an example of the kind of organisation envisaged by anarchists, but he did so simply to illustrate that voluntary and completely non-coercive institutions could provide a complex network of services without the principle of authority intervening" [12].
Anarchy is not "unnatural" then - in fact it is hierarchy which has usurped a collaborative "state of nature". Large hierarchies such as nation-states are not things which have spontaneously emerged, but all have been imposed by small, powerful groups on the mass of a population. The products of collaborative action (whether these be material goods, or the less tangible benefits of "community") are expropriated by elites who are not themselves productive: the Church hierarchy, funded through tithes; a state hierarchy funded through taxes and given specious "validity" through a corruption of community bonds into nationalism; a corporate hierarchy, funded through non-voluntary labour. Sometimes this imposition is made on one's "fellow" people (e.g. the British state, which was created by and for the aristocracy, and in which "universal" suffrage had to be struggled for), or on a conquered or colonised people (e.g. the British Empire). All states, once formalised, have done their best to restrict activities such as nomadism and to absorb and colonise other mutual support networks through processes such as taxation, control over education, welfare, and so on. Dissenters to the state were co-opted into governing it, marginalised or eliminated [13].
Of course, the anarchist must still explain why hierarchies emerge and are so durable if they are so clearly morally illegitimate. The temptation is often to see hierarchs as expressing a will-to-power, or to be part of some global conspiracy of power. This does not have to be the case. Hierarchy is perhaps best seen as a particular kind of system which is very effective at self-perpetuation, and does so mainly by drawing energy from other systems. If it is threatened, certain defence mechanisms can come into play; for example, the "knee-jerk" (but in fact automatic) media vilification of autonomous political actors. But just because something is durable and powerful does not make it inevitable; and hierarchy can also be rejected, despite its temptations. When the revolutionary Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was co-opted into the French Assembly in 1848, he recognised that government was an "isolator"; absorbed by the everyday processes of administration, he entirely lost touch with both abstract "public opinion" and the more concrete reality of what it is like actually to live under a particular government, set of laws and so on [14]. Once again, there is abstraction from reality rather than an acceptance of the reality and autonomy of individual human beings. But this abstraction is not at all a necessary condition for effective action on behalf of -- or by -- these beings. The normal activities of life do not need external motivation by some abstract "power" [15]. Produhon's response was to abandon his belief that it was who ran a state that mattered, and direct all his actions against the state hierarchy itself. In short, he declared himself an anarchist.
The trouble with anarchism is that its emphasis on self-motivation and autonomy encourages in some the belief that it advocates action without any restrictions whatsoever; that any and all restrictions on action are "coercive" and therefore to be resisted. Some proponents of the "fuck you" school of pseudo-anarchism adopt this attitude because they have heard the famous quote from Proudhon's Confessions of a Revolutionary:
"Whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy."
...but have not properly thought through the implications of this, nor indeed read any of Proudhon's other work. Egoism/egotism also finds support in the work of Max Stirner (The Ego and His Own) who advocated an extremist position of self-absorption. Philosophically, there is some use for Stirner; conceptual extremes are always useful anchor points. But one can better assess the implications of the Stirnerite position by noting another possible situation in which one can act without any restrictions: when power gives one the ability to simply trample on those in one's way, to override their autonomy with a naked exercise of strength. Invariably this power is a function, at least in part, of wealth, and the access this brings to legal expertise or the corridors of government. In this particular "fuck you" politics, there is no longer a culture of mutual aid, but one of complete mutual indifference [16]. Certainly there is autonomy, but this is a travesty of autonomy which can only be asserted through economy and private property. If one seeks aid from another, one must buy it. This is the essence of the "libertarian" position. (For more discussion on the role of capital and private property in a productive anarchism, see section five.)
The true anarchist recognises an absolute need to deal with others, because all authority is fallible: and this therefore includes oneself. Just as one should never listen to only one "expert", nor read only one perspective on any subject, so one should never fully trust one's own judgment. Of course, this does not mean that one should take advice from others about which way to travel to work in the morning, but what it does require is the mutual and reciprocal recognition of all other people as autonomous beings. The trick anarchism needs to pull off -- and it is the same trick as democracy must master -- is to preserve the autonomy of the individual within the collaborative efforts of the group. Group decisions are based on individual preferences, but they must transcend them. Reaching a consensus does not mean talking until one gets one's own way; a consensus is innately and irrevocably a group creation [17] which can only arise through a process of deliberation in which (ideally) all those affected by the decision under discussion have an equal chance to participate.
If and when mutual respect is lost, however, the critical eye of the anarchist can easily turn inwards. Hierarchies may re-emerge within a group, all the more insidious now because their existence is denied or disbelieved [18]. They may now be based around experience within a group, "commitment" to a cause, ideological "soundness", appearance, or how "hardcore" one is or behaves. These are just as arbitrary a definition of legitimacy as how much money one has; the "ego-warrior" is just as dangerous as the libertarian to true, productive anarchy. The minute one starts to see oneself as the putative leader or designer of the future anarchist society, then one has succumbed to this temptation.
Consensus is not about holding a veto over any decision one dislikes, nor is it about agreeing only with friends or sympathisers and dismissing more distant opinions out of hand. The point of anarchism is to dismantle all orthodoxy, not create a new one. The need to understand what consensus really means becomes vital if one seriously contemplates the abolition of government [19]. Too many people declare themselves to be committed to it, but have never made a conscious effort to study the obstacles which lie in the way, and the ways these are best avoided. [20]
The trouble with anarchism is that it must start from such a disadvantaged position. Every inch of the globe and every thought in our heads are at least partially controlled by the state-corporate network. But why should this be an excuse not to act? The use of the word "utopian" in a derogatory way is just another example of the control of language by dominant groups. Utopianism is a perfectly valid method of political critique whereby a seemingly unrealistic proposition is made; but it is made for perfectly realistic reasons, that is, to critique what presently exists. What presently exists is by definition all one has to work with(in). If the scale of the task dissuades one from ever acting, then all hope of change is lost. Anarchism must squarely face up to the existence of capitalism and state hierarchies, as no "clean slate" will emerge at any time in the foreseeable future.
The issue of anarchism's relationship with capitalism deserves further discussion, if only because of the existence of libertarianism [21]. Many anarchists, whether through ideological commitment or the mere fact of their living in communes and/or working in co-operatives, hold to a vague anarcho-communism in which all private property is redistributed among a group [22]. Certainly this should be approved of: if all members of a particular group agree to have their property so redistributed. If anyone does not so agree, this is a completely illegitimate imposition on their autonomy. Yet we have already discussed how the possession of wealth is easily translatable into power in the capitalist society, and this has other damaging consequences. How might this paradox be resolved?
I believe one way out of the dilemma is to first divorce ideas of property as always equating to wealth and thereby power. It is a fallacy to consider "property" as a uniform thing that is always somehow undesirable or at best, anti-anarchist. I do not deny that personal possessions can be fetishised to the extent that they come to substitute for happiness or mutually-beneficial relationships: as Marcuse wrote, "people... recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment... social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced." [23]. But think of the ways in which a music collection, or the contents of a wardrobe, are also expressions of the unique personality of someone. Personality can also be invested in the decoration of a room or a whole house, or the cultivation of a garden. It is not necessarily an expression of capitalist alienation to attach oneself to an object: babies develop this kind of self-expression very early in life. Now, if one attaches oneself to, say, a television, then one is certainly guilty of fetisihism: TVs can be replaced easily. But to me it would seem rather abnormal not to have a personal attachment to a collection of music. Here, the whole is more than the sum of its parts - all music collections are unique configurations and most are, to all intents and purposes, irreplaceable. Would life end if all one's music was stolen -- or appropriated somehow? No. Would it upset the owner, and be a violation of their private space? Most definitely. We have built collections of property. In the first instance then I think we should distinguish between abstract examples of property and more personal kinds, which the owner has invested time and effort in accumulating. More significantly, this latter type of property also applies to products made by people in creative or labour-intensive processes, which are then offered for sale for personal benefit (as of course may be things like music collections). Pirsig noted how the problem with modernity is not its reliance on technology as such, but our alienation from it: our loss of a personal identification with the products we use and (for some of us) make. [24]
I do not therefore accept that this kind of small-scale, personal "property" can and should be treated as identical to the large-scale, mass appropriation of the world's common resources -- forests, water, land, information, labour and others -- by the faceless systems of global capitalism. (One should also note that the state's declared support for personal property rights is shown up for the arbitrary thing it is by procedures like compulsory purchase, appropriation of property by the military, tax subsidies to prop up industries such as arms and aviation, and so on.) It is vital that anarchists make a distinction between mass appropriation like this and one-to-one, voluntary transactions in which money happens to be used as the medium of exchange. If consumer buys directly from producer, and both parties agreed to the transaction, how can this be illegitimate?
Criticising this as idealistic is fair but also misses the point: for anarchism itself is idealistic, in all the good senses of that term (that is, pointing us towards what ought to be as a way of criticising what really exists). What we have lost, in the 21st century global capitalist system, is our autonomy as consumers. Just as our autonomy as political actors is sucked away by bureaucratic party organisations, quangoes, representatives, international political organisations like the EU and IMF and the capitalist system itself, so our autonomy as producers and consumers is drained away by gross advertising, VAT, limits on genuine competition and so on. Once again, the problem is abstraction. When we pass our money over the counter, who really benefits? Capitalism has transformed almost all people from self-motivated consumers and producers, autonomously engaging in mutually-beneficial exchanges, into mortgaged taxpayers, wage-earners and dependents of the system itself.
The true hypocrisy of global capitalism lies not in its ideals of free competition and exchange, but in its utter failure -- indeed its refusal -- to live up to those ideals. The global market is not "free", it is directly controlled for the benefit of existing hierarchies, via subsidies, laws, the media, advertising and repression of small producers. Private property and profit are not the problem (every business needs to make at least a small surplus each year, to compensate for the physical deterioration of whatever equipment it owns). Anarchists must not gloss over the damage done to their integrity if and when they support programmes of, say, heavy arbitrary taxation (something which is not only a gross violation of autonomy, but also simply supports the state system and is therefore doubly damaging). Just as some people may happen to be stronger than others, or better-looking, or better musicians, so they may be better-off, or be more effective entrepreneurs. In this lies the diversity of humanity. What we must ask is, what flows from their greater wealth? How can this wealth be used to override justice? And how, ultimately, can anarchism contribute to the most necessary project of all in the 21st century: the vital struggle to break down the absurd dominance of economics in the world?
Proudhon wrote 150 years ago [25] that while "extremist disciples" of economics were dangerously wrong to "speak out boldly against Justice... [and] demand wealth...", so it was equally unrealistic to "retreat into the past" and hope to recover a way of life in which economics played no part. Instead he wrote that:
"...justice and economics ought not to restrict each other or make trivial concessions. This would merely be detrimental to both, and useless. They ought to be systematically interwoven, justice serving as a law for economics. Thus, instead of constraining the economic forces, whose constricted growth is killing us, we ought to make them BALANCE each other by virtue of a little-known and even less well-understood principle: namely, that opposites should not destroy but should compensate each other, precisely because they are opposites."
The question of what practical steps can be taken towards this goal is, of course, something which has beset politics since Marx onwards: but Marx was no anarchist, and the arbitrary appropriation of the justly-acquired property of others is therefore not something which anarchists should condone. Once again I believe the answer lies in reclaiming autonomy and personal responsibility from the abstractions which have come close to destroying our humanity. Whenever money is spent, ask who is benefitting from the transaction, and never spend money without thought. Spend with the small-scale producer whenever possible: if it costs more, so be it -- laws of economics are there to be broken just like any other law.
By now, readers may think I'm just trying to impose my view of anarchism on others, thus perpetuating some of the problems mentioned above. But that is the way of this field. I write with the full acknowledgement that all of this can be ignored, refuted, challenged. I hope, however, that some may absorb the ideas, not as "truth", uncritically, but as a contribution to their own self-understanding.
The trouble with anarchism is that its beauties are not shouted from the rooftops. The positive, empowering experience of anarchy can and must be shared. The word must be reclaimed, and this will only happen by communicating its true meaning to others through both literature and practical experience. The role of the anarchist is the role of the true democrat; constant interrogation of what exists, absolute refusal to accept the abstractions and compromises ingrained in the modern state-capitalist system. It is by respecting others as individual human beings that these abstractions can be shown up for the dehumanising things they are.
One must also constantly interrogate one's own practices, but this should not collapse into self-abnegation. That all too easily can lead to depression, nihilism and ultimate rejection of the wider project. We are the best judges in our own cause, but at times we must accept we are not always objective; so the good anarchist should never lose their willingness to learn from others -- but not uncritically.
Organising without hierarchy is not easy. Nor is practising mutual respect. It is easier to yield to time pressures or peer pressure and buy, or vote, or travel, in ways one's been told to do by others, rather than worked out for oneself. But to yield to these pressures is to perpetuate them, at least in the short term.
The more overt pressures (laws, military force, control) exerted by the state-corporate system cannot be ignored either. But, at least at the present time, the system still outwardly claims to be democratic. As often as possible, it can and should be shown up for the hypocrisy that it is. All human beings have a duty to do this, and to communicate their reasons. Regardless of whether your friends do it, or your family, or your work colleagues: do it yourself. In the end, that's all people can do: and that's why anarchism might not be any trouble at all.
1. Orwell, G. (1950), "Politics and the English Language" in Shooting an Elephant, London, Secker & Warburg.
2. In this I am broadly following the position of R. P. Wolff (1970), In Defense of Anarchism, Berkeley, University of California Press.
3. Various anarchist critiques of Marxism and state communism can be found in Woodcock, G. (ed.) (1977), The Anarchist Reader, Brighton, Harvester, pp. 138-162.
4. R. P. Wolff, op cit., p. 14. See also M. Bakunin, God and the State (the relevant passage is included on this month's snippets page).
5. J. S. Mill (1865), On Liberty, London, Longman.
6. R. P. Wolff, op cit., p. 14-18.
7. compare with Berlin, I. (1991), "Two Concepts of Liberty", in Miller, D. (ed.) Liberty, chapter 2.
8. Blaug, R. (1999), "The Tyranny of the Visible: Problems in the Evaluation of Anti-Institutional Radicalism", Organization 6/1, p. 35.
9. Bakunin, M. (1910), Ouevres vol. 4: quoted in Woodcock, G. (1977), The Anarchist Reader, Brighton, Harvester, p. 85.
10. M. Kropotkin (1902), Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, London, Heinemann.
11. see also Marion, R. (1999) Edge of Organization: Chaos and Complexity Theories of Formal Social Systems, London, Sage.
12. Ward, C. (1973), Anarchy in Action, London, Allen & Unwin.
13. see R. Wolff, op. cit., p. 28: Wolff, J. (1999), Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State, Cambridge, Polity, p. 49.
14. Proudhon, P.-J. (1849 [1977]), "Parliamentary Isolation", in Woodcock, G. ed., The Anarchist Reader, Brighton, Harvester, pp. 110-11.
15. Goodman, P. (1965), People and Personnel, in in Woodcock, G. ed., The Anarchist Reader, Brighton, Harvester.
16. Geras, N. (1999), "Minimum Utopia: Ten Theses" in Panitch, L. and Leys, C. eds., Socialist Register 2000, Rendlesham, Merlin Press, pp. 41-52.
17. Follett, M. P. (1920), The New State: Group Organization, the solution of popular government, New York, Longman Green.
18. Freeman, J. (1970), "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html.
19. cf. Woodcock, G. (1977), "Anarchism: A Historical Introduction", in Woodcock, G. ed., The Anarchist Reader, Brighton, Harvester, pp. 11-12.
20. There are many books offering advice in this area: I believe the best single work here to be Gastil, J. (1993), Democracy in Small Groups: Participation, Decision Making and Communication, Philadelphia, New Society - although of course one should never read just one book...
21. The best attempt to justify a pure libertarianism, where the state exists only to regulate and defend transactions of private property but has no other valid rights over individuals and communities, is that of Nozick, R. (1974), Anarchy, State and Utopia, Oxford, Blackwell. For a critique, see J. Wolff, op. cit.
22. This is particularly noticeable in George Orwell's experiences in Spain as described in Homage to Catalonia. Incidentally, a BBC programme transmitted in 2003, to mark the centenary of Orwell's birth, spent a whole hour describing Orwell's time in the Spanish Civil War without once daring to mention the word "anarchist". In his grave BBC tones, the narrator used the term "militia" throughout, despite the fact that this was a documentary with serious intentions, and the anarchism of at least some elements of the anti-Franco coalition is obvious when one reads the book. Never underestimate the power of a word.
23. Marcuse, H. (1964), One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 9.
24. Pirsig, R. M. (1999 [1973]), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, London, Vintage.
25. Proudhon, P.-J. (1970 [1858]), Selected Writings ed. S. Edwards, London, Macmillan, p. 50.