Consent or Coersion

Anarchism is the belief that people can voluntarily cooperate to meet everyone's needs, without bosses or rulers, and without sacrificing individual liberties. A common misunderstanding is that anarchism is the total absence of order; that it is chaos, or nihilism. There are even people who call themselves "anarchists" who have this misperception. Anarchists are opposed to order arbitrarily imposed and maintained through armed force or other forms of coercion. They struggle for the order that results from the consensual interaction of individuals, from voluntary association. If there is a need, anarchists believe that people are capable of organizing themselves to see that it is met. [...]

Compare this to the way most organizations function. [...] The elite attempts to entrench itself by making it difficult for the members to oust it, and constantly works to increase its power. The elite may ban criticism of its leadership and policies, or it may attribute superhuman qualities to itself, far surpassing those of "mere" members. Eventually the elite is no longer under the control of the members, and cannot be challenged. [...] Laws and authority which were originally aimed at preventing harm are turned into tools for inflicting harm on whoever is targeted by the elite.

Another problem with laws and rules is that if you do not have voluntary compliance, the unlawful behavior will still take place, whether or not there is a law against it. The outlawed activity will be driven underground or will be protected by the imprecise wording of the laws. Having failed to win people's voluntary cooperation, through education or persuasion, the government passes volumes and volumes of laws, in a hopeless attempt to address and control every possible situation. [...]

Sometimes the police fabricate charges against people they wish to punish, or they simply beat people as an "attitude adjustment" (if you are not sufficiently terrorized by the police, they consider it an attitude problem). It is also not uncommon for the laws to be overly vague, or to be misapplied.

[...] It now means that the government has the power to decide what is or is not reasonable ... The law means whatever those in power say it means. The courts have ruled, for example, that conscription is not involuntary servitude, and that the government can force you to choose between a military uniform and a prison uniform. [...]

Anarchists do not wish to see traffic fatalities, rapes, or murders. Quite the contrary. They feel the current combination of tyranny and social chaos are responsible for much of the suffering in the world. What anarchists fear is the corrupting influence of power and the inevitable abuse of power. An individual can only do so much damage, but the same person in a position of authority, or worse yet, an organized, systematic application of corrupted power, can wreak horrible damage. [...]

And note that the police only prevent crimes in rare situations, such as when a police officer just happens to be at the scene of a crime in progress. The police almost always show up after the crime has been committed. Most crimes go unsolved. Attempting to punish offenders after they have committed their crimes is not a very effective way to protect people. This false "cure" is just an attack on the symptoms without treating the underlying problem - a society that is losing its social consciousness. [...]

Bourgeois democracy ... these republics also rely on coercion to achieve their goals. The political party which wins, with the help of big money, restrictive ballot access, and winner-take-all election laws, does not have the right to inflict its will on those who do not support it. [...] ... less than half of the eligible voters participate in elections in the U.S. The government loudly proclaims its mandate anyway.

Most of the objections people have to anarchism as a social system are based on the assumption that people are unreasonable and irresponsible. If this were the case, no amount of police, judges and jails could conjure order out of chaos. [...]

Much of the destructive behavior we suffer from is committed by individuals who have been raised in the most dire conditions, and who face very limited personal choices due to the material and cultural poverty they were raised in. This occurs across all ethnic groups and in all countries, but some societies are wise enough to attack the conditions that foster destructive behavior instead of merely punishing offenders after the acts have been committed. This is a social problem which needs to be dealt with, not a given fact of human nature. [...]

In general, the more atomized and alienated individuals are from their society, the more likely they are to engage in destructive behavior, against others and against themselves. And people cannot be blamed for not identifying with an unsympathetic, and even predatory, society. Some anarchists argue that it is precisely because people have become so maladjusted that no one can be trusted with power over others. [...]

Anarchists believe that people should be free to organize themselves as they see fit, but are divided as to which methods are the most just or desirable. Some anarchists claim that everyone has a right to an equal share of the wealth, since it has been produced primarily by generations of wage slaves living under the threat of dire poverty. They see the functioning of society as a team effort. [...]

The other general category includes anarchists who feel that people should be able to be independent of any organization if they so choose, including economic organizations. [...]

What about those who argue "abolish work"? Like a perpetual motion machine, or cold fusion, there is no scheme currently known that can provide everyone with what they need which does not require anyone to perform tasks which they find unpleasant. [...] Through job sharing and the elimination of unproductive activities, the amount of unpleasant work can be fairly shared and reduced to a minimum. Those who wish to abstain from the consumption of work enhanced products could not reasonably be expected to work. [...]

At the present time, since there is not widespread agreement that anarchism is the best form of social organization, it is up to us to spread these ideas and to implement them as best we can among ourselves. It would be impossible to compel people to participate in an anarchist project, since anarchism relies on voluntary cooperation and self discipline to make it work. Once large numbers of people agree that this is the way things should be organized, not even a tyrant can stop them from reorganizing themselves. [...]