This piece is a follow-up, response, and addition I suppose to Andy's "What is Anarchy."Anarchy.

Defined in Funk & Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary,it is:
anarchy
1. absence of government
2. Lawless confusion and political disorder.
3. General disorder.

Of the three, the first is the only one that is correct. That is, in a nutshell, anarchy. The absence of government. While some stipulate that without a government society would descend into, as stated above, general disorder, true anarchists do not believe this to be the case. We are not opposed to order as such. We are opposed to an order forcefully imposed by a state or other authority. But the order that results from the willing and free association and co-operation of individuals is exactly what anarchist societies are founded on. As for how anarchy may be established, that is a point of debate among many of us. There are many anarchistswho advocate a violent overthrow of the state, and others that believe in a peaceful transition by educating the masses. My personal belief lies somewhere in between. While I do not advocate violence for anything other than self-defence, I believe in direct action..but that's another piece of writing altogether.

Andy contends that some anarchists believe that anarchy means anti-government. I am in full agreement, in fact anarchy itself IS an anti-government belief. Its roots lie in Greek, an without, archos leader. Anarchist theory holds that governments in all forms are incompatible with social and individual liberty, and should thus beabolished.

However, I disagree with the statement that anarchists are against all forms of hierarchy. Hierarchy is defined as "any group of persons or things arranged in successive orders or classes, each subject to or dependent on the one above it". Now, most hierarchies that exist involve a power over others on a lower level in the hierarchy, which of course anarchists are in full opposition to. However, it has been my experience that there are in fact beneficial hierarchies in some (albeitfew) cases.For example: I am involved in a grass roots anti-racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. group. I have been for almost a year now. When I first became involved, I noticed that there was a hierarchy in place not only in the individual chapter with which I'm affiliated but in the entire network as well. And it has become evident to me that this hierarchy that exists is beneficial to our organizing for various reasons. Because of the sometimes nefarious and seditious nature of our organizing, keeping tight security is a prime concern for us, as I imagine it is for any activists. As such, when new people get involved, there is certain information which we won't immediately disclose until we can establish a level of trust with those people. Which to me is simply common sense, but it is a hierarchy nonetheless. As soon as any sort of levels are established, for example, different levels of information access, you have a hierarchy as far as I am concerned. This is only one reason for it though. Picture an anarchist community, that has been established for a long time. Things are running very smoothly. Everyone has plenty to eat, everyone does a share of the necessary work, and there are no major disputes that cannot be reasonablyresolved. Everyone is happy. Now, a new person comes to town and wants to join the community. They know nothing of the ways things run in this community. But they wish to learn and become a part of it. Now, the onus is on the rest of the community to educate this individual. Not to boss them around. Simply to impart what knowledge they've gleaned from their experience. So again, you have a hierarchy of sorts, but in what I feel to be a beneficial way. It would not do to have newcomers to anarchist society running amok and wreaking havoc. This may sound elitist, and I don't intend to be that way. Anarchy is anything but elitist. But realistically there are going to be people who have more knowledge and experience than others. This isn't to say that they should therefore have power over others. The hierarchies I am referring to are by no means authoritative, and are not intended to be forced upon one the way hierarchies of, for example, race or gender are in conventional western society. Anyway the point to all that was I think there are beneficial hierarchies that many people are unawareof.

So I've gotten way off track here.I was talking about anarchy initially. Why? Some people wonder. Why would you want to go to all that trouble? Cos it ISN'T going to be easy. Everyone should know that. The state isn't going to suddenly collapse cos a bunch of kids are sporting circle A armbands. Anyway back to the original question: Why anarchy? Well, first and foremost for me anarchy means freedom and equality. And I see no way of having either of those things under any system of government. If you are governed you are not free. If you are governed you are not equal to those governing you. Thus anarchy seems to be the only logical route to freedom and equality. Anarchy means that no one has any more power than someone else. No one is entitled to any more or less than someone else. Thus gender, race, and other priveleges should disappear. Think about our current society. In North America, it is MUCH easier for the white upper middle class male heterosexual to succeed in life than for example, a womyn of colour. In an anarchist society there would be no reason that a womyn of colour could not do or have something that a white man would have. This is only one example. The priveleges granted by financial status would disappear as well, as any sort of economy that existed would be in the interests of the people, not of a priveleged few as is the case now. Being free of competitive 'profit not people' thought that exists now in North America, we should have less if any problems with prejudice towards minorities such as wimmin, people of colour, homosexuals etc. A lot of racism among people here can be traced to white working class folk who are barely scraping by, seeing a lot of unemployed (by no fault of their own) people, particularly people of colour and immigrants, recieving social assistance cheques. Now the white working class person feels slighted by the fact that they bust their ass all day to barely eke out a living while someone else recieves a cheque when they don't evenwork.

I think what we have here is a classic case of attacking the symptom instead of the disease. The white working class person's financial state, the unemployment, all of these things are a product of free market capitalism. And this is exactly what the government and the corporations want. People to blame each other instead of looking for the real root of the problem. Minorities are an easytarget.

Anyway the point of all that is that I think many if not all of these prejudices are products of capitalism and would die with it. Leading once again to our anarchist society of freedom and equality. Heterosexuals wouldn't be angry with rising gay rights because everyone would have the same rights. Men wouldn't be angry with wimmin being granted more rights because..you guessed it, EVERYONEWOULD HAVE THE SAME RIGHTS. Period. No gender. No race. No class. No sexual orientation. Fuck all the distinctions we've been taught. They only make it easier to dehumanize people and thus justify their enslavement or other mistreatment or even outright murder.

ANARCHY=EQUALITY.

So equality can't exist without anarchy. And the reverse is also true. You couldn't have anarchy if everyone wasn't equal. Cos if everyone wasn't equal, someone would have power over someone else. And thus they wouldn't be free.

Other reasons.

Hmm..well it would make more sense to me if everyone was working together in the interests of the people then competing in the interests of ourselves. We probably wouldn't be destroying the planet at half the rate we are now if we were just producing enough to meet consumption needs. Production under crapitalism does not equal consumption. So much food and goods are wasted. If we were producing food and goods for the purposes of our own survival rather than having several huge multinationals producing them for the purposes of stuffing their pockets then there would be less waste and more food to go around. Instead of the few having a lot and the many having little, everyone would have enough. Disney wouldn't be clear cutting forests to build more nasty theme parks. McDonalds wouldn't be clear cuttingforests to raise cattle.

This of course implies anarchy on a large scale. The time it would take for that to happen may very well be beyond our short lifetime. But as for myself I see no other alternative. I refuse to sit idly by and watch western crapitalism fuck the world to death. As little as it may be, my contribution to the struggle is there. And those little contributions add up.

As Ian Mackaye of Minor Threatfame said: "You tell me that I make no difference, well at least I'm fucking trying! What the fuck have youdone?"

Anyway I could sit here and write a goddamned novel, repeating myself again and again and boring you all to death. If you're interested there is plenty of excellent anarchist literature available. Perhaps we should compile a list of good resources to post here on the site that interested people could check out. Whaddya think Andy? So this is my $0.02. PLEASE respond if you have any questions comments or complaints or anything else like that. If there's something in here that offends you that I've ignored from my priveleged white male hetero perspective, PLEASE let me know.Communicate. Share ideas. We won't get anywhere otherwise.Thankx for taking the time to read, you'll probably here from me again unless Andy decides to oust my PC tree hugging anarchist ass from the premises.

-Ray Straitor